Accurately measuring the sea level with a satellite is highly complex and fraught with uncertainty. Even the slightest equipment miscalibrations can produce inaccurate results.

Huge discrepancy exists between satellite measurements and observed coastal tide gauge readings. Source: CSIRO.

For sea level rise, the figures that are often cited come from namely two sources: satellite measurement, which go back 25 years and so do not properly account for multidecadal variations, and tide gauges placed along the coastlines where people actually live.

Satellite data may be overstating sea level rise

The assumed current global sea level rise from the satellite data TOPEX/Poseidon spacecraft and its successors, which began collecting data in late 1992, is reported by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) to be 2.8 inches (7 centimeters).

Some experts recently warned however — after having made adjustments to the satellite measurements — that sea level rise has  accelerated and thus could rise some 75 centimetres over the century, which would be in line with projections made by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in 2013.

Other sources say that sea level rise could be as much as 3.4 mm per year, and thus accelerating (e.g. see chart above).

Indeed if these high-end projections were accurate, then coastal areas would be facing serious challenges. But those alarmist claims have been met critically, and at times even with derision.

There remains lots of uncertainty, and so the question today is: How much are coastal areas (where it really matters) at risk really?

Tide gauges: “most extensive, accurate and significant” datasets

One way to check what’s really going on is to examine the tide gauges along the coasts worldwide. Since the early 1800’s, NOAA and its predecessor organizations have been measuring tide levels.

According to the NOAA, “This database has become one of the most extensive, accurate and significant geophysical data sets in existence.”

To do this the NOAA keeps a coastal station tide list for tracking global linear relative sea level (RSL). Manually I counted 358 stations. A number of them stopped measurement some years ago, while others were put in operation in the 20th century.

The data and charts can be looked at country-by-country here.

Less than 1% on track to meet IPCC’s 75 cm sea level rise by 2100

Examining the data to get a general idea how the sea level is behaving at these tide stations. A number of points were observed:

1) Only 3 stations show a RSL rise of 7.5 mm/year or more, meaning that only three stations (0.08%) are on track to reach the IPCC’s alarmist 75 cm sea level rise projection by 2100. And if we use the more conservative 60 cm rise, only 5 stations (1.4%) are on track!

Only 14% show a rise equal to or greater than satellite global rate

2) Only 51 tide gauges (14%) are measuring 3.2 mm/year or more, which is approximately equivalent to about what the satellites are said to be measuring globally. That figure would need to be near 50% if the satellites were true.

3) 54 coastal tide gauges (15%) show that relative sea level has in in fact been falling.

4) The mean relative sea level rise as to the tide gauges is about one third less than what is measured by the satellites, i.e. approx. 2.3 mm per year, or less than 10 inches per century.

This is only a rough overview. Naturally a more detailed look recent tide gauge trends of the last 2 or 3 decades would tell us more about accelerating sea level rise. Or maybe not: rate changes over such short time periods have more to do with natural variations.

So in general? If you’re living and working at the institutes who operate the satellites, then you might be showing concern about the figures from your getting (it’ll help with funding, in any case).

But if you’re the average person living near the coast, then in most places there’s not much to be alarmed about. There’s a good chance the satellites are overstating sea level rise just a bit and so you can better rely on what your local tide gauge has been showing.
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June 23, 2018 at 07:02AM

In questions of science, the authority of a thousand is not worth the humble reasoning of a single individual.

• Galileo Galilei

Ned Nikolov works for the US Forest Service in Fort Collins, Colorado. In 2016 he published the rather obvious observation that planetary temperature correlates with atmospheric pressure, not atmospheric composition.

Scientists published climate research under fake names. Then they were caught. – The Washington Post

While Obama was president, it was unacceptable for government employees to believe anything which strayed from the dogma of the global warming religion. Employees were implicitly threatened with termination for climate heresy.  So Ned used a pseudonym, and the Washington Post ignored their research on that basis.

Sally Jewell: ‘I Hope There Are No Climate Change Deniers In The Department Of Interior’ | HuffPost

I have lost several jobs (immediately) after the company I was working for discovered I was a climate skeptic. No company wants to be called out and boycotted by green fascists.  We live in dark times now – science and truth are for all intents and purposes illegal.

In a time of universal deceit – telling the truth is a revolutionary act.

– George Orwell

via The Deplorable Climate Science Blog

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June 23, 2018 at 06:50AM

What Produces Warmth?

I live in SE Queensland. Yesterday the surface air temperature rose from a frosty 2ºC at sunrise to a balmy 22ºC in mid-afternoon. The enormous heat needed to achieve this 20ºC of warming came via radiation from the sun. Carbon dioxide in the atmosphere plays no significant part in this daily heating event – in fact it may intercept a tiny proportion of the incoming solar radiation and re-radiate it in all directions, thus keeping the daytime surface temperature a tiny bit cooler than it would have been otherwise.

At the deep Mount Isa Mine in NW Queensland, the surface temperature may average about 25ºC but it increases by about 1ºC every 50 metres of depth – rock walls are red hot in places. The enormous heat causing this comes via conduction from Earth’s internal geothermal heat plus some oxidation and heating of the sulphide ores as they come in contact with natural air containing oxygen. Carbon dioxide in the atmosphere plays no part in this heating.

There are volcanic windows open right now in Hawaii, Japan and the Galapagos revealing the vast resources of volcanic geothermal heat which is always migrating towards the cooler surface, sometimes violently.

Temperatures vary greatly over Earth’s surface, making a mockery of attempts to calculate an “average” for the globe. Air surface temperature may be minus 30ºC at the South Pole, while at the same time it can be plus 30ºC at the Equator. This enormous difference is caused by the varying intensity of solar radiation striking the surface – carbon dioxide in the atmosphere plays no significant part in creating this variance.

Surface air temperatures in big cities can be 5-10ºC hotter than surrounding rural land partly because bitumen roads, roofs, solar panels and runways heat up more than grassy or forested countryside. Mega-cities are also full of heat-producing humans, engines, trains, vehicles, air conditioners, heaters, stoves, fridges, pumps and mowers.

Urban heat also comes from the warm bodies and hot exhalations from millions of humans digesting carbon-based foods, from stored chemical energy from burning hydro-carbons (wood, lignite, coal, oil and gas) or from nuclear power. Using green energy also adds to urban heat. Wind towers and solar farms extract energy from wind and sun in the country-side and release it where most of the electricity is used, usually in cities and suburbs. Aging black rooftop solar panels convert much of the solar radiation into heat not electricity, thus adding to urban heat. Carbon dioxide in the atmosphere plays no measurable part in producing these islands of urban heat.

Longer term, the Medieval Warm Era and the Little Ice Age were natural occurrences almost certainly triggered by solar cycles which activated submarine volcanic activity along Earth’s extensive mid-ocean trenches/ridges. Human production of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere played zero part in these natural global warming and cooling episodes.

Carbon dioxide in the atmosphere varies annually with the seasons reaching a maximum in the South Hemisphere summer for two perfectly natural reasons.

First, the huge southern oceans expel carbon dioxide as the surface water warms with the return of the summer (like an opened bottle of soda water in the sun).

At the same time it is turning to winter in the large northern hemisphere landmass where deciduous trees and forests are dropping their leaves, and crop residue is accumulating on cultivated lands. As this dead plant material decomposes it recycles its CO2 to the atmosphere. And as winter grips these densely populated lands, humans are also burning wood, peat, cow dung, coal, oil and gas to keep warm, releasing even more CO2.

Then as the sun-driven seasons change, the southern oceans cool again and much of this carbon dioxide returns to the sea from whence it came. And the northern farms and forests grow faster in their summer, absorbing atmospheric carbon dioxide and solar energy to produce food and lumber.

This annual fluctuation of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is a result, not a cause, of the seasonal temperature changes.

What happens in the seasonal weather cycle also occurs as a result of longer climate cycles of cooling and warming. The ice core records show that the changes in global temperatures precede by about 800 years any changes to the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. This is probably a result of large slow overturning in the oceans as global temperatures change in response to cycles of solar energy and earth volcanism.

Despite all of this evidence of natural changes in Earth’s temperature, man’s production of invisible life-supporting carbon dioxide is being slandered daily with words like “dirty” “black”, “polluting” “heat causing”. And those who point to dissenting evidence are called “deniers”, “shills” and worse, and gagged by intimidatory law suits and media silence.

Billions of dollars are also being spent on a propaganda storm of anti-carbon scare stories, Papal proclamations, cunning calculations, doctored data, and poignant pictures about polar bears, penguins, koalas, super-storms, social costs, floods, fires, mega-droughts, heat waves and blizzards, all supposedly impacted by rising atmospheric carbon dioxide. With just 0.04% in the atmosphere, to create such havoc carbon dioxide must be the most powerful super-gas ever imagined by the alarmists.

The green mafia is trying to lynch an innocent victim – the gas of life, carbon dioxide. They would be better served by focussing on real pollution of air, land and water caused by their own well-travelled, air-conditioned, electronic, fast-food, throw-away, tax-supported lifestyle. If they fear carbon dioxide so much, they should stop exhaling.

We need more light and less heat in the climate debate.

Further Reading:

Carbon Dioxide and the Oceans – temperature controls CO2, not the reverse:
https://carbon-sense.com/2010/12/29/forbes-co2-and-oceans/

Sun driven temperature changes cause changes in CO2:
http://notrickszone.com/2018/06/07/scientists-find-sun-driven-temperature-changes-led-co2-changes-by-1300-6500-years-in-the-ancient-past/

Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide and Marine Interaction:
http://www.bosmin.com/HenrysLaw.pdf

“Humans have zero influence on the CO atmospheric concentration – ”:
http://bosmin.com/SeaChange.pdf

Geothermal Heat from undersea volcanoes melting the Ice in West Antarctic:
https://climatechangedispatch.com/west-antarctic-glacial-melting-from-deep-earth-geological-heat-flow-not-global-warming/

Earth’s Climate is never constant – change is always with us:
https://www.thegwpf.org/content/uploads/2018/06/Berkhout.pdf

Greenpeace always makes a disaster out of it:
https://carbon-sense.com/2017/12/24/greenpeace-always-makes-a-disaster-out-of-it/

The Pope’s Misguided War On Fossil Fuels:
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2018/06/19/the-popes-misguided-war-on-fossil-fuels/

Ice cores taken in both Antarctica and Greenland show there is nothing new in climate change:
https://carbon-sense.com/2013/11/30/nothing-new-about-climate-change/

Carbon “Pollution” or Real Pollution:
https://carbon-sense.com/2012/10/15/real-pollution/

Powering the Portland Aluminium Smelter

Lessons for Victoria from South Australia

Alumina chairman, Mr Peter Day, said recently that his company was “agnostic” about the source of power to the smelter, so long as it was affordable and reliable.

“There have been many years of energy policy making that have effectively reduced energy security and reliability and substantially increased energy costs for industry.”

Victoria has plans to follow South Australia’s example by installing a grid-scale battery, but Mr Day said even Tesla’s new Hornsdale Power Reserve in South Australia (the world’s largest lithium ion battery) would not be sufficient to run Portland.

“If it was fully charged and available, it could run Portland for around 20 minutes,” he said.

Renewables can’t power aluminium smelter:
https://www.afr.com/business/energy/renewables-alone-cant-power-smelter-says-alumina-20180524-h10hw6

 A reader commented:

“At 0955 on 23/6/18, South Australia’s electricity demand and generation was:

• Demand                                 1551 MW
• Generation in SA                 853 MW
• Wind and other                    0 MW (this is not a misprint, it was zero)
• Import from Victoria              717 MW

“The data above is nothing unusual and was sourced from AEMO’s data dashboard.  Just for fun, I monitor it every day and believe me it is not a pretty sight.”

 But Wind Turbines are Good at Killing Birds

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5lb6VeMaXy8

PDF version of this post: https://carbon-sense.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/lynching-bystander.pdf [PDF, 1.4 MB]

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June 23, 2018 at 03:13AM

As much of Germany’s nearly 30,000 strong fleet of wind turbines approach 20 or more years in age, the list of catastrophic collapses is growing more rapidly. The turbines are now being viewed by technical experts as “ticking time bombs”.

According to a commentary by Daniel Wetzel of online German Daily ‘Die Welt’, the aging rickety wind turbines are poorly inspected and maintained and thus are now posing a huge risk.

Over the past months alone there’s been a flurry of reports over wind turbines failing catastrophically and collapsing to the ground, e.g. see here, here and here.

As the older turbines age, their components and electronic control systems are wearing out and beginning to gravely malfunction. And according to Wetzel, these turbines are not even subject to strict technical monitoring by Germany’s TÜV(Technical Inspection Association), which provides inspection and product certification services.

In Germany industrial systems are required to regularly undergo technical inspections and approvals in order to ensure that they operate safely. However wind turbines are exempt from this strict requirement and so many wind park operators are neglecting to properly inspect, maintain and repair the systems, which is costly. And so it surprises no one that the aging turbines are beginning to fail catastrophically.

As a result, the TÜV is calling for turbines to be treated like any other industrial system, and be required to undergo rigorous inspections as well, Wetzel writes.

In 2016, near in the region of Paderborn, a 100-tonne turbine and its rotors plunged to the earth. The turbine was nearly 20 years old. […]

Hazard to ground water

Another hazard comes from the hundreds of liters of transmission oil the turbines that seep into the groundwater. Moreover the huge reinforced concrete foundations require tremendous energy for their manufacture and they penetrate deep into the ground, which adversely effects soil and groundwater.

Growing list of disasters

The number of wind turbine disasters is mounting, reports Wetzel. Wind energy opposition group Vernunftkraft keeps a list, which has grown to be pages long. But the German Association of Wind Energy (Bundesverband Windenergie) downplays the incidents, calling them “isolated cases”.

Full post

via The Global Warming Policy Forum (GWPF)

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June 23, 2018 at 02:56AM