Re: OT: sea level 'rise' hmmmmm....

Jonathan Kirwan wrote:
On Wed, 16 Jul 2008 14:10:22 -0700, Joerg
<notthisjoergsch@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Jonathan Kirwan wrote:
On Wed, 16 Jul 2008 12:51:59 -0700, Joerg
<notthisjoergsch@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Jonathan Kirwan wrote:
On Wed, 16 Jul 2008 09:14:46 -0700, Joerg
<notthisjoergsch@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
[...]

May I suggest you also write Dr.Steve Nerem?
Only a few days have passed. People have lives. My normal practice
is to wait a month, if my question is likely to involve more than a
minute or two of their time. I don't know what you wrote (feel free
to publish it here), but if you asked for something that might take
some care in responding I'd tend to allow a little more time.
Agreed. However, what I do when there is a request I don't have time to handle right now: I send a short email that I've got to run but will get back to the requester in about x weeks. Personally I try to avoid auto-replies but even that would be ok in this case.
Okay.

Let me know what you asked. If I can see what that is and agree with
the slant of it, I'd be willing to put it in my own words and find
someone else who might be able to answer. You've already started Dr.
Nerem on your point, so jumping from two sides within a week would be
a bit... excessive. But there are other scientists working in the
area and I could probably track one or two down on my own and try that
approach.
Email is on another secure PC, not easy to copy. What I wrote:

Thanked him for the quick reply. Wrote that I clicked all over their interactive map, could not find step increases either, suggested he try the same. Asked him how the graph was calculated.
Okay. I get the gist. Sounds like a reasonable question to me. I'll
see what I can do. I'll probably phrase it a little differently, of
course. But I'll see if there is someone "down in the mud" on this
stuff who can provide some insight.
Thing is, their data on the interactive map is given in cm while the main page has mm. So there may very well be a rise but one cannot say from the data presented.

Everything is in the details. As you well know. Let's just see about
what they are and let it all fall out where it may.

Coincidentally I had a discussion with a group in Germany who kind of ganged up on me as a hardcore denialist. Which I am not, I am just a skeptic. They were blaming the last record flood in Hamburg on the rising sea level. So, I asked them to present some data I could throw on Excel that proves beyond a reasonable doubt that the level there is rising. A link would suffice. Since then, silence ...

I don't have much to add. I think they overstepped. But unless they
are practicing scientists expressing a professional opinion, I
wouldn't worry too much. Like you and me, they are just folks.

Suppose you were looking at an oscilloscope trace, Joerg. It's
displaying the amplified voltage received from one narrow band of a
spread spectrum broadcast. And someone pointed to a specific peak at
a specific moment of time on the curve and asked you .. "Is this peak
because of the transmission? Or ambient environment or electronic
noise?" Who's to say? But in the end, the communication of an
intelligent signal works very well, as you know. Even if you can't
nail down one specific event as belonging here or there.

Climate science isn't so dissimilar, which is about detecting the
meaningful signals not concentrating on voltage X or current Y along
the way. And just like the several spread spectrum techniques are
quite obviously successful in communicating meaningful signals for us,
the anthropogenic signal is also quite clear and understandable.
Weather is essentially individual data points along the time axis. If
you have enough of them you can start to say something about their
collected meaning. But isolated? Nothing much, really.

For a more down to Earth example, you can look at Oregon. We have a
lot of water on the western side. 40-60 inches a year isn't all that
uncommon and some places regularly get more than that. We have "100
year flood plains" that are considered quite buildable for homes...
because, well, floods don't happen all that often there and the few
times they do is ... acceptable risk. But let's say that these areas
start seeing, because of an increase in the hydrologic cycle caused by
global warming, more precipitation per year and a change in the time
distribution of it so that there is even more in the winter and less
in the summer. So now we start seeing areas which only saw a certain
kind of flood once or twice or maybe three times in a century starting
to occur at a rate of once every 10 years. Is such a flood event
happening in 2008 caused by global warming?? Or the one in 1996? Or?
Noone can say, obviously. But what they can say is that the frequency
has indeed changed, the plains are no longer 100 year flood plains but
now appear to be 10 year flood plains (much worse to build on) and
that perhaps at least 5 or 6 of them in a century WERE the result of
global warming. Can't say which ones, of course. But there they
still are, all the same.

It's over-reaching to pick out a hot spell and say "Ah hah! Global
warming!" But it is also over-reaching to pick out a cold spell and
say "Ah hah! Global warming is over or never was!"

Now back to the spread spectrum point. Let's say someone looks at the
raw amplified curve of data and tells you, "There is no such thing as
spread spectrum communications." And they point to the noise level
without it and the noise level with it and it appears to the eye to be
about one and the same. Does this mean they are right?? No. But if
one is ignorant about how it works, and it takes some education to
fully apprehend all of the details how it works, then it would be easy
to argue that it was wrong or impossible and then to point to the raw
data here and there to make their ignorant claim seem right. Yet, you
would know infinitely better than they would. And you'd have no
question, at all. No matter how much they tried to convince you,
you've only to point to the obvious fact that it works.

Climate science works. And it can point to the very rapid warming,
the unparalleled loss of ice on Greenland and the north polar ice cap,
the decline in nearly 100% of all mountain glaciers around the world,
etc., to say "it works" to you. Now, that doesn't get into the
details. Just as you wouldn't need to in order to show them a
communications rig that obviously works just fine without having them
know how it works. But if one wants to get into the details of
climate science and see how the signal is extracted, they can do that.
It takes time, and education, and some math skills. But it is doable
if one is seriously engaged. But if not, all one needs to do is to
look at the broader reality.

The case grows by the week, too. Imagine the case where you are
looking at the tiny output of a single, small, 20mA LED pulsing from
across the room. You have a detector and an amplifier sitting across
the room, which itself is lit by bright fluorescent lamps using
various lower and higher frequencies to drive them and are of varying
lengths and with varying gas pressures in them (mean free path of
electrons.) It's a mess, at the detector. The tiny LED is simply NOT
visible to you. But you know, a priori, the exact pulse rate of the
LED (not necessarily the phase relative to anything.) So you set up
an accumulator process. You sample at a higher rate and bin the
samples. Soon, after some long time period, you will begin to see
that one of the bins (or, at most, three of them) are starting to rise
out of the "noise." The longer you continue, the higher above the
other bins it rises. Soon, it is clearly unmistakable when perhaps
somewhat earlier it would be arguably missing, entirely. And the more
time, the stronger the signal becomes. Like that.


I see the parallel to spread spectrum you are pointing out. But as in your example with the bins that requires that one never, ever alters data. In the same way one shall never leave out certain data points that don't fit the picture unless it is for sure a measurement error. Here I cannot resist the feeling that many AGW proponents are a bit too tempted.

Also, when someone criticizes a certain observation or conclusion as Moerner did the others should hear him out, and then answer his points, dispute them in a fair discussion. Simply stating that his work isn't reputable and that the media where he published it isn't credible does nothing to advance climate science. On the contrary, it discredits this science in the eyes of many. After all, this guy was on the IPCC team not very long ago AFAIK.

It's not that I am saying all AGW proponents are in that same boat, it's just that there are too many who IMHO (and that of others) seem to be out of line.

--
Regards, Joerg

http://www.analogconsultants.com/

"gmail" domain blocked because of excessive spam.
Use another domain or send PM.
.

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