Are The Seas Really Rising Faster Than Ever?

By William Teach May 16, 2015 – 7:32 am

Or, could it really have more to do with adjusted data? Here’s Jo Nova at Climate Change Dispatch

The Scandal Of Sea Levels — Rising Trends, Acceleration — Largely Created By Adjustments

Headlines across Australia yesterday told us the dire news that a new study finds that “Sea level rising faster in past 20 years than in entire 20th century“. A new paper by Watson et al is driving the headlines, but underneath this Nature paper is a swamp of adjustments, an error larger than the signal, and the result disagrees with many other studies and almost all the raw measurements. Paper after paper kept showing that sea levels rates had slowed (e.g Chen showed deceleration from 2004, Cazenave said in the last decade sea-levels had slowed 30% (but argued post hoc adjustments could solve that). Beenstock used 1000 tide gauges and found no acceleration of sea levels over the last 50 years. A different researcher — Phil Watson, found that Australian sea levels rose faster before World War II then slowed down.)

Firstly, hundreds of tide gauges show sea level rising at about a third of the rate than satellites do. Worse, the original satellite raw data showed the same slow rise, until it was suddenly adjusted. The real scandal is that the rapidly rising trend was largely created by adjustments in the first place. These latest corrections just adjust down part of the rate which had been created by adjusting up. On top of all that, the long paleo-history of sea levels done by people like Nils-Axel Mörner show that the current rise is not unusual or unprecedented at all. Could it get more pointless? It can: the acceleration Watson et al found is so small it’s less than the errors. (See the graph below).

Why, exactly, is the satellite data “adjusted” in such a manner? The data is the data, yet, Warmist “scientists” will trot out all sorts of excuses as to why their adjustments are needed, though they never answer “why” the data ends up being so far above the reality of the raw data. One of their favorite excuses is “bias drifts“, which, surprise!, ends up vastly increasing the results to match the Cult of Climastrology talking points.

Furthermore, the sea rise, as I’ve mentioned multiple times, is not unprecedented nor unusual. Since the end of the big sea rise from the end of the last glacial age slowed, about 7000 years ago, the average sea rise is 6-8 inches per century. Averages occur by taking two or more numbers, adding them, then dividing by the number of numbers. So, 2+14=16, divide by 2 and you get 7 inches. One would expect low to even negative sea rise during the cool Holocene eras, which typically last much longer than the Holocene warm periods, hence, we should expect a sea rise of at least 16 inches per year during a warm period. The sea rise was just 7 inches during the 20th Century. That’s a kick in the talking points, don’t you think? Of course, Warmists will screech out that the massive sea rise “is coming!!!!!!!!”

The conclusion of the paper is that instead of the sea levels rising at 3.2mm/yr as per the official satellite data, the are rising at 2.3mm/yr + 0.043mm/yr2 of acceleration. Over a century that means the projected sea level rise is revised downwards from 320mm to 251mm. That means sea level rise on current trends has dropped off the bottom end of any UNIPCC projection for sea level rise (AR5 WG1 SPM) for the period 2081-2100, as against 1985-2005. The likely range is between 260 and 820mm under all scenarios. The projection (mid-point 400mm) range is based on succeeding in cutting global emissions to near zero before 2100.

251mm equals 9.881 inches. So, barely above the average for the Holocene, and below what one would expect during a typical Holocene warm period.

Ms. Nova goes on to describe how the satellite data diverges from the sea level gauge data, well worth the read. Nor is this the first time the disparity has been noted. Steven Goddard (yes, I know the Warmists will blame the messenger) showed, using actual data, that the sea level data shows just .7mm a year and falling during the 21st Century.

This is also not the first time it has been shown that the adjusted satellite data is way off. Another study showed that the data has been adjusted upwards 34%, including “many years after publication, often repeatedly on the same data, and in defiance of the laws of probability, always in an upward direction.”

If tide gauges were good enough to figure out the rate of acceleration from 1900 – 1992, why are they wrong as soon as the satellites start operating? Does anyone think we should compare highly adjustified satellite data to tide gauges if there are continuous tide gauge records over the same period? Its like a tree-ring spliced to a thermometer: Good PR, bad science.

It’s harder to adjust the tide gauges, making it harder to come out with unhinged and doomy prognostications.

Read: Are The Seas Really Rising Faster Than Ever? »

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Was The Derailed Amtrak Train Hit By An Object?

By William Teach May 16, 2015 – 7:06 am

Another potential nail in the disgusting Blamestorming from Democrats

(WRAL/AP) The Amtrak train that derailed along the nation’s busiest tracks may have been struck by an object in the moments before it crashed, investigators said Friday, raising new questions about the deadly accident.

National Transportation Safety Board member Robert Sumwalt said an assistant conductor aboard the train told investigators that she heard the Amtrak engineer talking over the radio with an engineer for a regional railroad just before the crash.

The regional engineer, who was in the same area as the Amtrak train, said his train had been hit by a rock or some other projectile. The conductor heard Brandon Bostian, who was at the Amtrak controls, say the same had happened to his train, according to Sumwalt.

The windshield of the Amtrak train was shattered in the accident but one area of glass had a breakage pattern that could be consistent with being hit by an object and the FBI is investigating, he said.

Sumwalt declined to speculate about the exact significance of a projectile, but the idea raised the possibility that the engineer might have been distracted, panicked or even wounded in the moments before the train left the rails at more than twice the speed limit along a sharp bend.

The above article briefly mentions that two other trains were hit with some sort of object. A CNN article describes this in a bit more detail, including a different train being hit by something that made a “loud boom”

https://twitter.com/TheAlfredPrice/status/598306700802793472

Obviously, this is still all speculation, but, it might explain why the train sped up. Though it was still traveling 20 miles an hour too fast for the curve, and even exceeding the speed by 5mph could derail a train.

SEPTA trains traveling through the area — including one of the poorest and most violent parts of Philadelphia — have had projectiles thrown at them in the past, whether by vandals or teenagers, she said. It was unusual that the SEPTA train was forced to stop on Tuesday night.

Interestingly, this is also an area that heavily votes Democrat. Weird, eh? If they were hitting the trains with some sort of object, which sounds more like rocks or something similar rather than bullets, Democrats can think about how their policies created this situation.

The wreck has focused new attention on positive train control, a system that automatically brakes trains going too fast. It is installed on the tracks where the train derailed, but it had not been turned on because further testing was needed, Amtrak President Joseph Boardman said.

Huh. So, the system is there, just not on yet. I love how Democrats jump to conclusions in order to use a tragedy for political purposes, and then their disgusting narrative immediately starts to fall apart.

Crossed at Right Wing News.

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If All You See…

By William Teach May 15, 2015 – 1:00 pm

…is a farm that you hope only uses horse power, you might just be a Warmist

The blog of the day is Jammie Wearing Fools, with a post gay and straight traffic lights.

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Surprise: Climate Change Is Really About Progressive Politics

By William Teach May 15, 2015 – 10:02 am

I know, you’re totally shocked that “climate change” really has little to do with science

6 ways to promote economic equality and climate action at the same time

At a rally in front of the Capitol in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio and fellow liberal Democrats such as Rep. Barbara Lee of California unveiled a national agenda for greater economic equality. The 13-point “Progressive Agenda,” which was heavily influenced by Nobel-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz’s new 100-page report for the Roosevelt Institute on policy solutions to income inequality, is a left-wing wish list meant to echo Newt Gingrich’s 1994 Contract with America.

“The Progressive Agenda” includes plenty of popular, and populist, ideas, from raising the minimum wage to mandating paid employee sick leave. The emphasis is on correcting a system that has been rigged for the benefit of corporations and the wealthy, particularly through the tax code, and replacing it with a fairer system that rewards labor rather than just wealth. The agenda would do a lot to help the U.S. catch up to the policies of other developed countries that have more equitable income and wealth distributions.

Notably absent, though, is practically anything to do with the fossil fuel economy, suburban sprawl, and the policies that prop them up, which are bad for both regular Americans and the climate. De Blasio’s agenda contains a token reference to environmental protection, along with labor rights, as something that shouldn’t be sacrificed to global trade deals. Stiglitz makes brief mention of a carbon tax. But many sources of inequality related to the dirty energy economy — and sources of opportunity that arise from a shift to a clean economy — go unmentioned.

Then we get as the money quote

To help progressive leaders develop such a plan, here’s a list of six policies that would help cut carbon pollution, clean up the air, strengthen our cities, and redistribute tax dollars from fossil fuel companies and rich individuals to the poor and middle class.

The ideas are exactly what you’d expect, long on fossil fuels hatred, a carbon tax, eliminating the home mortgage deduction (because you evil people buy homes in the suburbs, which is Bad for Hotcoldwetdry), and others, along with shifting all the money to people who haven’t earned it. If you really pay attention to what Cult of Climastrology members say and push, it’s easy to see that this whole movement has everything to do with Progressive politics and nary a thing to do with science.

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We Face A Mad Max World Unless We Tackle “Climate Change” Or Something

By William Teach May 15, 2015 – 7:01 am

So says Charlize Theron. And, yes, she’s serious

(UK Guardian) The actor Charlize Theron, who takes a leading role in the new Mad Max movie as a one-armed warrior driving five sex slaves to safety, has expressed her fears that a bleak future awaits the planet unless global warming is addressed.

The film is set 45 years in the future, in a post-apocalyptic world desperately short of water and fuel and ruled by a barbaric dictator who enslaves men and imprisons women for breeding and breast-milk.

“It felt very grounded in real events,” said Theron at a press conference for the film, which opens worldwide this week, following its gala premiere at Cannes on Thursday. “The idea of globalisation and global warming and drought and the value of water, and leadership becoming completely out of hand.”

Say, I wonder how much energy and fossil fuels were used during the filming of the movie? How many plastic bottles of water were consumed and discarded? The use of hair dryers and ice makers, air conditioning and non-locally grown food? How did all the folks involved in the movie, including Ms. Theron, get Namibia, where a goodly chunk of the movie was filmed? How much energy and fossil fuels will be used to not only distribute the film for viewing, but be used to move viewers to the theaters? How much food will be wasted at the theaters? How did Ms. Theron travel to the premiere of the movie? Unfortunately, the Guardian failed to ask Ms. Theron (a fantastic actress) those questions.

Theron said that when she first watched a scene in the film depicting a terrifying thunder-and-sandstorm she wondered if it was a little far-fetched. “But there are images on Google right now of Sahara desert sand being blown, in that state, all through Africa. And that’s frightening. The hair lifted up on the back of my neck. What makes [the film] even scarier is that it is something that is not far off if we don’t pull it together.”

BTW, the original Mad Max was about the end result of a nuclear conflict.

My life fades. The vision dims. All that remains are memories. I remember a time of chaos… ruined dreams… this wasted land. But most of all, I remember The Road Warrior. The man we called “Max.” To understand who he was, you have to go back to another time… when the world was powered by the black fuel… and the desert sprouted great cities of pipe and steel. Gone now… swept away. For reasons long forgotten, two mighty warrior tribes went to war, and touched off a blaze which engulfed them all. Without fuel they were nothing.

Hence the reason no one was living in cities.

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NY Times: Stop Illegal Alien Detention

By William Teach May 15, 2015 – 6:43 am

Things that are Super Important In Liberal World

(NY Times) Of all the malfunctioning parts in the country’s broken-down immigration machinery, probably the most indefensible is the detention system.

This is the vast network of jails and prisons where suspected immigration violators are held while awaiting a hearing and possible deportation. Immigrant detainees are not criminal defendants or convicts serving sentences. They are locked up merely because the government wants to make sure they show up in immigration court.

That’s  a pretty good reason, since roughly 30-40% of illegals never appear, and the number of no-shows increased 153% over the past four years.

Detention is intended to help enforce the law, but, in practice, the system breeds cruelty and harm, and squanders taxpayer money. It denies its victims due process of law, punishing them far beyond the scale of any offense. It shatters families and traumatizes children. As a system of mass incarceration — particularly of women and children fleeing persecution in Central America — it is immoral.

Here’s a better idea: just deport them. Also, stop them from coming across the border in the first place. Oh, wait, many of these detainees are illegals caught crossing the border illegally. Because of idiot laws made by pro-illegal supporters law enforcement can’t simply drop them off across the border. Now the NY Times wants to release even more into the U.S. Who end up being a drain on taxpayer money. Then the NY Times and Democrats demand that they be made citizens. Weird how that works, eh?

A powerful case for ending immigration detention, along with an array of alternatives, is made in a new report from the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops and the Center for Migration Studies. It traces how the system has grown immense, from housing 85,000 detainees in 1995 to more than 440,000 in 2013. There are many reasons for this growth, including state and local immigration crackdowns, federal dragnet programs like Secure Communities and the flood of money from Congress to the private prison operators that have profited so fruitfully from immigrant criminalization. The system has gotten more sprawling and scandal-prone, but reforms don’t stick. The notorious Hutto family detention center in Texas, where children went to classes in prison scrubs, stopped housing families. But the surge of families at the border seeking refuge last year created a political crisis and led the department to resurrect family detention, with new centers with thousands of prison beds for mothers and children.

What all this actually shows is that our government, along with Useful Idiots like certain Social Justice Warrior groups and the NY Times, are doing all they can to entice illegals to come to the U.S. illegally, along with overstaying their visas. But, the Times has a plan!

Ending mass detention would not mean allowing unauthorized immigrants to disappear. Supervised or conditional release, ankle bracelets and other monitoring technologies, plus community-based support with intensive case management, can work together to make the system more humane. But neither Congress nor the Homeland Security Department has embraced these approaches, which would be far cheaper than locking people up.

If they aren’t criminals, why would they still be treated as such, Senor NY Times? Of course, none of these methods will stop the majority of the illegals from disappearing into the nation. Which is exactly what the NY Times and Democrats want. Then, they push for legalization. Notice that nowhere does the Times recommend quick deportation immediately after caught.

Crossed at Right Wing News.

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Say, When It Comes To “Climate Change”, What Can Cultists Do?

By William Teach May 14, 2015 – 4:09 pm

The solutions are very simple

(aNewsCafe) Climate Change is bearing down on us, accelerating month by month. Simply put, it’s all about carbon in the atmosphere. Carbon up = global warming; Carbon down = global cooling.

If only it was that simple. Especially since we’re discussing carbon dioxide, not carbon. But, hey, don’t let scientific facts get in the way of a good bit of moonbattery.

Individually, we can do some things, and collectively, some things we have to do. For those of us who are concerned but sometimes feel overwhelmed and perplexed, here are some ideas based on experience:

Here they are

  • Grow lots of food. It saves money, provides exercise and, since we don’t use chemical fertilizers or pesticides, it’s friendly to the environment.
  • Process lots of fruits and vegetables. We can and dry mostly because freezing uses energy and besides we often lose track of what we have in the freezer.
  • Avoid packaged processed food. We mostly buy fresh or bulk, so we don’t have to worry about plastics leaching into our food or throw out tons of plastic packaging that often finds its way into the sea and fish.
  • Prepare and cook from scratch so we have no need to heat up packaged food.
  • Avoid factory-farmed meat because of the packaging and because of environmental damage at the feedlots.
  • Reduce our water by using garden drip tapes and low-flow showerheads and toilets. Urban gardeners need to advocate for special water rates for growing food.
  • Reduce electric usage with compact fluorescent bulbs and a low energy refrigerator.
    Shop at and donate to Thrift Stores.
  • Practice the 4-R: ReUse, RePurpose, RePair, ReCycle.
  • Reduce number of car trips. We bundle the need to travel, for shopping and meetings. No single purpose car trips.
  • Study CC and organize presentations so I can write articles. Instead of talking, I would sing but I can’t carry a tune. (Use your individual talents to make a difference.)
  • Vote Climate Change. We would like to identify politicians who will work to mitigate for climate change. As 350.org founder Bill McKibben says, “First change your politicians, then worry about your lightbulbs.” (pg 252 A. Leonard in Is Sustainability Still Possible?)

Can anyone guess what’s missing? That’s right, giving up use of fossil fuels in their own lives. Weird how they don’t actually want to stop the one thing they claim is the worst in their own lives.

As for the last, is it unsurprising that this ends with politics? That’s always the end point.

Read: Say, When It Comes To “Climate Change”, What Can Cultists Do? »

Posted in Global Warming, New Climate Deniers | 31 Comments | Trackback URL

If All You See…

By William Teach May 14, 2015 – 1:00 pm

…is a horrible puppy which will use too many resources which causes tornadoes, you might just be a Warmist

The blog of the day is A View From The Beach, with a post on not being someone till you’re listed by the SPLC.

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Vox Offers 6 Reasons Conservatives Should Totally Take Hotcoldwetdry Seriously

By William Teach May 14, 2015 – 11:39 am

You’ll be shocked to learn that not one of them has anything to do with science, and, instead, are pretty much all about politics

(Vox) Jerry Taylor worked at the libertarian Cato institute for decades; for most of that time, he was a climate skeptic himself. But five or six years ago, a series of discussions convinced him that climate change is a serious problem and that conservatives need a policy answer. Now he’s heading up a new libertarian organization, the Niskanen Center, and has released a policy brief arguing “the conservative case for a carbon tax.” I interviewed him last week about right-leaning opinion on climate change, his tax proposal, and the political road forward. (Part 1; part 2.)

You should read the whole thing! But here are the top six takeaways.

They are

  1. Financial markets deal with risks like climate change all the time.
  2. The right’s thought leaders are beginning to shift away from the GOP’s denialism.
  3. Most Republicans are already on board with climate action.
  4. All that’s needed now is some Republican leadership.
  5. The proper level of carbon tax is likely beyond what politics can currently bear …
  6. … but wouldn’t take a very high carbon tax to do better than the status quo.

So, all politics, no science. Surprise!

As to 2 through 4, unlike Lefties, those on the Right don’t blindly follow the crowd, and we expect our elected officials to listen to us, not have the elected officials dictating the way we should think.

For the last two, what in the world makes Vox and the other Warmists think that a carbon tax in any way is a reason Conservatives should believe in “climate change”?

Read: Vox Offers 6 Reasons Conservatives Should Totally Take Hotcoldwetdry Seriously »

Posted in AGW Idiocy, Global Warming | 4 Comments | Trackback URL

Interesting: First Solar Energy Road Doing Better Than Anticipated

By William Teach May 14, 2015 – 9:40 am

I actually almost find myself in total agreement with this Climate Progress article

In its first six months of existence, the world’s first solar road is performing even better than developers thought.

The road, which opened in the Netherlands in November of last year, has produced more than 3,000 kilowatt-hours of energy — enough to power a single small household for one year, according to Al-Jazeera America.

“If we translate this to an annual yield, we expect more than the 70kwh per square meter per year,” Sten de Wit, a spokesman for the project — dubbed SolaRoad — told Al Jazeera America. “We predicted [this] as an upper limit in the laboratory stage. We can therefore conclude that it was a successful first half year.” (big snip)

Though the Netherlands’ solar road seems to be going as planned, solar roads overall typically aren’t as effective at producing energy as solar arrays on a house or in a field. That’s because the panels in solar roads can’t be tilted to face the sun, so they don’t get as much direct sunlight as panels that are able to be tilted. However, solar roads don’t take up vast tracts of land, like some major solar arrays do, and they can be installed in heavily-populated areas.

I’ve said before and I’ll say again, I think these kinds of projects are great ideas, and should be supported. Not for “climate change”, but simply for the reason that we should take advantage of “free” energy, such as solar energy, and use it. In this case, the energy should be used to provide lighting for the bike roadway. Paving helps create the Urban Heat Island Effect: why not offset it by using the roadway to produce energy?

The energy produced is rather low for solar panels, yet, the point of using roadways is still a good one. Of course, the cost needs to come down quite a bit. It supposedly cost $3.3 million to create this half mile of bike roadway. You could power quite a few homes for that chunk of change.

There are other projects out there to produce energy from roadways, both by turning them into solar receptors and from driving over the roadways. IMO, these projects should be supported if they show promise.

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