In Norfolk, evidence of climate change is in the streets at high tide

change we can discover without actually making meteorological measurements to the Nth degree.

It was called "Global Warming" until their ship got stuck in the ice in Antarctica recently. The biggest objection I have to Climate Change Lobby is that they say that scientists are unanimous in agreeing with them. They are not, of course. Another problem is that, even if you agree that the problem is there, you are not allowed to say that China and India are the problem. An industrious worker for the UN noticed a huge cloud of pollution coming from those countries, and he was fired for saying so. It seems to be part of the "shame America" drive - politics.

e:

mate

That was a tourist ship ...

Obviously not. 5% of the population is nuts. 97% of the top 300 climate sci entists do accept the scientific case for anthropogenic global warming and two of the ten hold-outs - Roy Spencer and John Christy - are fundamentalis t Christians whose reservations seem to be fundamentally irrational ..

us

The Chinese don't seem to have the same problem - they are investing heavil y in renewable energy. Their food production has a lot less slack than the US system, and they are correspondingly more nervous about the consequences of any more global warming. When a big drought hits the US, the population eats less meat. If one hit China, a few million people would starve. It's happened all too recently.

Rational enough. The US has 4.5% of the world population, and generates 25% of the greenhouse gas emissions. Having demonstrated the advantages of dis sipating a lot of energy per head, the US does have a responsibility to dem onstrate how you can generate that kind of energy per head in ways that won 't wreck the planet over the next century or so.

On Thursday I was listening to an IEEE lecture in Sydney on what's involved to doing that in Australia. At current prices it would double the cost of power, but since only 22% of what domestic users pay for electric power ref lects the cost of generating it, they only see a 22% rise in the price they 'd pay (which is dominated by the cost of the distribution network). Techni cally it's entirely feasible. The transition has to be spread over a decade or so, since it's going to take that long to ramp up the manufacture of re newable power generating kit, so it isn't going to disrupt the economy.

In fact, since it would decouple the country from the erratic rises in foss il carbon prices as the stuff gets progressively harder to extract from eve r-deeper holes in ever more remote and politically unstable countries, it w ould be more likely stabilise the economy that disrupt it.

Oh, but you're wrong! You see, they're not "real scientists" unless they believe in Global Warming.

Of course. The watermelon lobby.

te:

imate change we can discover without actually making meteorological measure ments to the Nth degree.

Antarctica recently.

Actually a tourist ship ...

that they say that scientists are unanimous in agreeing with them. They are not, of course.

y believe in Global Warming.

The Proceedings of the US National Academy of Science begs to differ.

The ten unpersuaded climate scientist in the top 300 are definitely seen as real scientists. Two of them - Roy Spencer and John Christy - are fundamen talist Christians, so their failure to believe what everybody else does pro bably isn't based on entirely rational argument. The other holdouts that I know something about have got comparable problems ...

You don't have to be all that sane to qualify as a "real scientist" but you do have to keep your irrational motivations out of your published work.

Most of what people call sea level rise is actually subsidance and erosion. And, of course, people building beachfront houses, with federal flood insurance, and getting predictably whacked.

Hey, centuries-old infrastructure tends to fail!

I like this sentence... The sea level in Norfolk is rising faster than anywhere else on the east coast. Mark

ate change we can discover without actually making meteorological measureme nts to the Nth degree.

Fred should have read the article more carefully. It talks about

"the concrete sea wall that has held it back for 100 years"

which is one century, not several.

Some of the "sea level rise" in Norfolk really is subsidence. The northern end of the UK was covered by an ice sheet during the last ice age, and sank a bit under the weight. Since the ice sheet slid off, some ten thousand ye ars ago, the underlying rock has been rising, pushing down southern half of the UK.

Figure 2 shows a more or less linear 10 metre fall for the Norfolk area ove r the last 6000 years - which would be roughly 0.5 feet per century of sea level rise, rather less than the 1.5 feet actually seen in the last century .

There has been a global sea level rise of some 0.67 feet over the last cent ury, so what Norfolk has been seeing is about half subsidence. This won't l ast - when the ice sheets start sliding faster off Greenland and West Antar ctica, global sea level rise will become dominant.

Here's why we're in trouble, big trouble:

coast.

What it seems to mean is that the underlying geology is sinking faster - th e northern half of the UK sunk under the weight of it's ice sheet during th e most recent ice age, and is still rebounding, which means that the southe rn half of the UK is now sinking in compensation.

Too complicated an idea for the Washington Post to try and comprehend, let alone articulate.

Which means the land is sinking faster than anywhere else.

New Orleans has that same problem. Keep pumping the water out, and build levees, and it goes down.

Don't be silly, and don't be wimpy. It's not like you'll be drowned in your bed or anything.

What you have replied with is just plain bullshit KRW.

The GFC was a direct result of the bursting of your house price bubble.

How do you think that your economy is going to react when it realises that sea-level rise is going to make a whole lot of your most expensive real-estate worthless?

Shore-front real estate in places like New York and Boston is going to be worth a whole lot less when people realise that it will be inundated by the next big storm.

What I "have replied with"? No, it's *exactly* what the AGW scammers are saying. You must be one of the watermelons.

climate change we can discover without actually making meteorological measu rements to the Nth degree.

in Antarctica recently. The biggest objection I have to Climate Change Lobb y is that they say that scientists are unanimous in agreeing with them. The y are not, of course.

they believe in Global Warming.

saying. You must be one of the watermelons.

If krw could do joined up logic, he'd have tried to produce a URL of an AGW enthusiast saying exactly that. Since this is krw, who has absolute confid ence in every fact he ever stored in his head, he hasn't bothered, and won' t ever realise that he would have failed if he'd tried.

So it's not bullshit, but self-delusion - a fine distinction, but one has t o be fair, even to krw.

I expect no net effect . A rising sea level will create new beach front property.

Dan

hat sea-level rise is going to make a whole lot of your most expensive real

-estate worthless?

property.

That's a trifle unrealistic. Wharfs, warehouses and container-handling area s represent a lot of capital investment. If the current lot is in the proce ss of being washed away, confidence in investing in anything that looks lik e beach-front (or looks likely to become beach-front in a few years) is goi ng to be reduced.

The fun part of anthropogenic global warming is that we don't exactly know what's going to happen, or precisely when. Loads of fear, uncertainty and d oubt.

If you are as mis-informed as John Larkin or James Arthur, and as good at b urying your head in the (already slightly damp) sand, you may be less susce ptible to the early stages of fear, uncertainty and doubt, but it won't tak e many more Katrinas, Sandys and Haiyans to pound the message into the thic kest skull.

At a mm per year or some such, it's not likely to be a panic.

You could dump a bucket of dirt in your yard every few months and keep ahead of it.

that sea-level rise is going to make a whole lot of your most expensive rea l-estate worthless?

property.

It's 3mm per year at the moment. It goes rather faster when large chunks of ice-sheet start sliding into the ocean, as they did at the end of the last ice age. Once they start moving, they tend to be hard to stop.

ead of it.

It's not the gradual rise that gets you, but the occasional storm surges - Katrina/Sandy/Haiyan - which can wash away a couple of metres of your yard in one bite when they do happen.

One of the side-effects of anthropogenic global warming is more frequent ex treme weather events. Even a small increase in average global temperature i s more water-vapour in the atmosphere and more latent heat of condensation to drive thunderstorms, hurricanes and the like.