Obama chief scientist Steven Koonin says sea levels rising no cause for alarm

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Here we continue our interview with Dr Steven Koonin, chief scientist in the US Department of Energy during the Barack Obama administration and author of the just-published book, Unsettled: What Climate Science Tells Us, What It Doesn’t, And Why It Matters.

JT: The media and NGOs have propagated the notion of that we are facing a climate disaster of apocalyptic dimension, time is running out and we need to declare a global state of emergency. What would you say to somebody who has this idea that we’re facing an apocalypse?

SK: What I would say is, the models show no signs of apocalypse. A lot of the bad things that people talk about just have not been happening, and the quantitative projections that are in the reports explicitly say this is not a big deal.

In fact, one of the key findings is climate is only one, and a relatively minor, factor in determining economic well-being. It’s right there in the report. So I don’t understand why people think this is going to be a disaster.

JT: Well, one effect, which is very much up front in the media and in people’s minds, is sea level rise. People are used to seeing pictures in television of masses of ice breaking off from glaciers and falling into the ocean. This is really horrifying. What do you say about that?

SK: Well there is both a quantitative and a qualitative issue. Let me start with a quantitative issue first. As I talk about in the book, global sea level rise is not easy to measure. Data on local sea rise is a lot better. But if you look at the rate of global sea level rise, as well as we have been able to measure over the last century, it’s got ups and downs.

JT: For many ordinary people, just to hear that the sea levels are rising at all is enough to terrify them. Popular media coverage of global warming often leaves the impression that sea level rise per se is something new and caused by humans.

And yet it is well known that sea levels have been rising more or less continuously for the last 20,000 years, since the last ice age. Sea rise is nothing new, nor is large-scale melting of continental and polar ice.

Everyone ought to have learned that in school. In your book you note that the rate of sea level rise varies quite a bit. What has been happening in the recent period? Are there signs that the rise is accelerating?

SK: If you go back to 1940 or so, global sea level was going up two and a half millimeters a year. And then if you go to 1960 it was going up only one millimeter per year. The rate went down tremendously. And then it went back up again; currently it’s at about three millimeters a year, just a bit higher than it was in 1940.




Eighteen-year leading trends in rate of Global Mean Sea Level rise since 1900. Estimates from three different tide gauge analyses are shown, together with a single value from satellite altimetry. (Courtesy Steve Koonin)

We’ve got a good deal of natural variability in the records that we have, and we are only just beginning to understand why it did that. Greenland ice 70-80 years ago was melting agt about the same rate as – or even faster than – it is now. So, we have got to untangle the natural variability before we get really excited about what we’ve seen over the last 30 years.

If you look at the example in the book of sea level as recorded by the tide gauge at the Battery – the tip of Manhattan – it has got very clear oscillations in the rate of rise.




Thirty-year trailing trends in the sea level rise at The Battery, Manhatten from 1923 to 2020. The horizontal line indicates the average rate of 3.02 mm per year. (Courtesy Steven Koonin)

It’s really hard to judge what the cause is because although human influences have been growing during that trend, you see this very strong oscillatory behavior, which says that natural variability is playing an important role here.

Now, that said, it’s clear that the warming of the planet will lead to less ice and therefore a higher sea level. But according to the IPCC projections of what the rate of rise will be – it’s different in different places – you know, we might see another 30 centimeters by the end of the century or equivalently the rate would go from the current average of three millimeters to something like four millimeters per year. But we don’t see that yet.

https://asiatimes.com/2021/05/rising...-change-alarm/

[no worries]

Mini-Dotard, Goverrnor DeSanity is worried.

Gov. Ron DeSantis signed into law a pair of bills Wednesday that will annually float tens of millions of dollars to help combat the effects of rising sea levels across the state.

The bills, which include creation of a Resilient Florida Grant Program in the Department of Environmental Protection to aid local communities, came only a few years after Republican lawmakers began to openly acknowledge the impacts of climate change.

“We’re really putting our money where our mouth is when it comes to protecting the state of Florida and particularly our coastal communities from the risks of flooding and storms,” DeSantis said during an event to sign the bills (SB 1954 and SB 2514) at Rusty Bellies Waterfront Grill in Tarpon Springs.

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Mini-Dotard, Goverrnor DeSanity is worried.

Gov. Ron DeSantis signed into law a pair of bills Wednesday that will annually float tens of millions of dollars to help combat the effects of rising sea levels across the state.

The bills, which include creation of a Resilient Florida Grant Program in the Department of Environmental Protection to aid local communities, came only a few years after Republican lawmakers began to openly acknowledge the impacts of climate change.

“We’re really putting our money where our mouth is when it comes to protecting the state of Florida and particularly our coastal communities from the risks of flooding and storms,” DeSantis said during an event to sign the bills (SB 1954 and SB 2514) at Rusty Bellies Waterfront Grill in Tarpon Springs.

Let’s Work For Science With Integrity: Steve Koonin’s New Book “Unsettled”

It is not the global climate system that’s broken, it’s the alleged “climate consensus” that is. That in a nutshell is a central message of physicist Steve Koonin’s new book, “Unsettled: what climate science tells us, what it doesn’t, and why it matters”, available in bookstores and on Kindle on May 4th. The “climate consensus” alleges that:

Humans have broken the earth’s climate. Temperatures are rising, sea level is surging, ice is disappearing, and heat waves, storms, droughts, floods, and wildfires are an ever-worsening scourge on the world. Greenhouse gas emissions are causing all of this. And unless they’re eliminated promptly by radical changes to society and its energy systems, “The Science” says Earth is doomed.

Settled Science vs. Real Science

“Settled science”, an oxymoron, is anything but settled says the author. Holman Jenkins in his recent op-ed in the Wall Street Journal captures the author’s contribution to the climate change literature succinctly: “Mr. Koonin argues not against current climate science but that what the media and politicians and activists say about climate science has drifted so far out of touch with the actual science as to be absurdly, demonstrably false”.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/tilakdo...h=569d7ef52f38

[no worries]

Let’s Work For Science With Integrity: Steve Koonin’s New Book “Unsettled”

It is not the global climate system that’s broken, it’s the alleged “climate consensus” that is. That in a nutshell is a central message of physicist Steve Koonin’s new book, “Unsettled: what climate science tells us, what it doesn’t, and why it matters”, available in bookstores and on Kindle on May 4th. The “climate consensus” alleges that:

Humans have broken the earth’s climate. Temperatures are rising, sea level is surging, ice is disappearing, and heat waves, storms, droughts, floods, and wildfires are an ever-worsening scourge on the world. Greenhouse gas emissions are causing all of this. And unless they’re eliminated promptly by radical changes to society and its energy systems, “The Science” says Earth is doomed.

Settled Science vs. Real Science

“Settled science”, an oxymoron, is anything but settled says the author. Holman Jenkins in his recent op-ed in the Wall Street Journal captures the author’s contribution to the climate change literature succinctly: “Mr. Koonin argues not against current climate science but that what the media and politicians and activists say about climate science has drifted so far out of touch with the actual science as to be absurdly, demonstrably false”.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/tilakdo...h=569d7ef52f38

“Mr. Koonin argues not against current climate science but that what the media and politicians and activists say about climate science has drifted so far out of touch with the actual science as to be absurdly, demonstrably false”.

Koonin is right, teabaggers (www.teaparty.org) listen to politicians and FOX.

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“Mr. Koonin argues not against current climate science but that what the media and politicians and activists say about climate science has drifted so far out of touch with the actual science as to be absurdly, demonstrably false”.

Koonin is right, teabaggers (www.teaparty.org) listen to politicians and FOX.

You're a total fuckwit, that's not what he is saying at all.

[cancel2 2022]

You're a total fuckwit, that's not what he is saying at all.

Did you read the following few paragraphs, if not, then why not??

It is not the global climate system that’s broken, it’s the alleged “climate consensus” that is. That in a nutshell is a central message of physicist Steve Koonin’s new book, “Unsettled: what climate science tells us, what it doesn’t, and why it matters”, available in bookstores and on Kindle on May 4th. The “climate consensus” alleges that:

Humans have broken the earth’s climate. Temperatures are rising, sea level is surging, ice is disappearing, and heat waves, storms, droughts, floods, and wildfires are an ever-worsening scourge on the world. Greenhouse gas emissions are causing all of this. And unless they’re eliminated promptly by radical changes to society and its energy systems, “The Science” says Earth is doomed.

Settled Science vs. Real Science

“Settled science”, an oxymoron, is anything but settled says the author. Holman Jenkins in his recent op-ed in the Wall Street Journal captures the author’s contribution to the climate change literature succinctly: “Mr. Koonin argues not against current climate science but that what the media and politicians and activists say about climate science has drifted so far out of touch with the actual science as to be absurdly, demonstrably false”.

Koonin points out scientific facts supported by hard data and the peer-reviewed literature that stand against the reigning climate change narrative: humans have had no detectable impact on hurricanes over the past century; Greenland’s ice sheet isn’t shrinking any more rapidly today than it was eighty years ago; tornado frequency and severity are not trending up; the number and severity of droughts are not rising over time either; the extent of global fires has been trending significantly downward; the rate of sea-level rise has not accelerated; global crop yields are rising, not falling; the net economic impact of human-induced climate change will be minimal through at least the end of this century even if global average temperatures rise by 3C which is double the Paris Agreement goal.

To be sure, what Koonin points out as facts and convincing scientific interpretations have been covered by other equally qualified scientists such as William Happer (Professor of Physics, Emeritus, at Princeton University), Richard Lindzen (atmospheric physicist, retired Professor of Meteorology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology), Roger Pielke Jr. (previously Director of the Center for Science and Technology Policy Research at the University of Colorado Boulder) and Judith Curry (American climatologist and former chair of the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology).

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Obama administration scientist says climate ‘emergency’ is based on fallacy

The media constantly points to tragic fires in places like Australia (pictured) and California as evidence of climate change. But the global area burned by wildfires has declined more than 25 percent since
‘The Science,” we’re told, is settled. How many times have you heard it?

Humans have broken the earth’s climate. Temperatures are rising, sea level is surging, ice is disappearing, and heat waves, storms, droughts, floods, and wildfires are an ever-worsening scourge on the world. Greenhouse gas emissions are causing all of this. And unless they’re eliminated promptly by radical changes to society and its energy systems, “The Science” says Earth is doomed.

Yes, it’s true that the globe is warming, and that humans are exerting a warming influence upon it. But beyond that — to paraphrase the classic movie “The Princess Bride” — “I do not think ‘The Science’ says what you think it says.”

For example, both research literature and government reports state clearly that heat waves in the US are now no more common than they were in 1900, and that the warmest temperatures in the US have not risen in the past fifty years. When I tell people this, most are incredulous. Some gasp. And some get downright hostile.

These are almost certainly not the only climate facts you haven’t heard. Here are three more that might surprise you, drawn from recent published research or assessments of climate science published by the US government and the UN:

 Humans have had no detectable impact on hurricanes over the past century. Greenland’s ice sheet isn’t shrinking any more rapidly today than it was 80 years ago.

The global area burned by wildfires has declined more than 25 percent since 2003 and 2020 was one of the lowest years on record.

Why haven’t you heard these facts before?

https://nypost.com/2021/04/24/obama-...ed-on-fallacy/

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Did you read the following few paragraphs, if not, then why not??

No Worries has buggered off now!

[Poor Richard Saunders]

Here we continue our interview with Dr Steven Koonin, chief scientist in the US Department of Energy during the Barack Obama administration and author of the just-published book, Unsettled: What Climate Science Tells Us, What It Doesn’t, And Why It Matters.

JT: The media and NGOs have propagated the notion of that we are facing a climate disaster of apocalyptic dimension, time is running out and we need to declare a global state of emergency. What would you say to somebody who has this idea that we’re facing an apocalypse?

SK: What I would say is, the models show no signs of apocalypse. A lot of the bad things that people talk about just have not been happening, and the quantitative projections that are in the reports explicitly say this is not a big deal.

In fact, one of the key findings is climate is only one, and a relatively minor, factor in determining economic well-being. It’s right there in the report. So I don’t understand why people think this is going to be a disaster.

JT: Well, one effect, which is very much up front in the media and in people’s minds, is sea level rise. People are used to seeing pictures in television of masses of ice breaking off from glaciers and falling into the ocean. This is really horrifying. What do you say about that?

SK: Well there is both a quantitative and a qualitative issue. Let me start with a quantitative issue first. As I talk about in the book, global sea level rise is not easy to measure. Data on local sea rise is a lot better. But if you look at the rate of global sea level rise, as well as we have been able to measure over the last century, it’s got ups and downs.

JT: For many ordinary people, just to hear that the sea levels are rising at all is enough to terrify them. Popular media coverage of global warming often leaves the impression that sea level rise per se is something new and caused by humans.

And yet it is well known that sea levels have been rising more or less continuously for the last 20,000 years, since the last ice age. Sea rise is nothing new, nor is large-scale melting of continental and polar ice.

Everyone ought to have learned that in school. In your book you note that the rate of sea level rise varies quite a bit. What has been happening in the recent period? Are there signs that the rise is accelerating?

SK: If you go back to 1940 or so, global sea level was going up two and a half millimeters a year. And then if you go to 1960 it was going up only one millimeter per year. The rate went down tremendously. And then it went back up again; currently it’s at about three millimeters a year, just a bit higher than it was in 1940.




Eighteen-year leading trends in rate of Global Mean Sea Level rise since 1900. Estimates from three different tide gauge analyses are shown, together with a single value from satellite altimetry. (Courtesy Steve Koonin)

We’ve got a good deal of natural variability in the records that we have, and we are only just beginning to understand why it did that. Greenland ice 70-80 years ago was melting agt about the same rate as – or even faster than – it is now. So, we have got to untangle the natural variability before we get really excited about what we’ve seen over the last 30 years.

If you look at the example in the book of sea level as recorded by the tide gauge at the Battery – the tip of Manhattan – it has got very clear oscillations in the rate of rise.




Thirty-year trailing trends in the sea level rise at The Battery, Manhatten from 1923 to 2020. The horizontal line indicates the average rate of 3.02 mm per year. (Courtesy Steven Koonin)

It’s really hard to judge what the cause is because although human influences have been growing during that trend, you see this very strong oscillatory behavior, which says that natural variability is playing an important role here.

Now, that said, it’s clear that the warming of the planet will lead to less ice and therefore a higher sea level. But according to the IPCC projections of what the rate of rise will be – it’s different in different places – you know, we might see another 30 centimeters by the end of the century or equivalently the rate would go from the current average of three millimeters to something like four millimeters per year. But we don’t see that yet.

https://asiatimes.com/2021/05/rising...-change-alarm/

Interesting that your chart leaves out the last 2 decades for global sea level rise. What's another 2 feet of sea level rise by 2100? It won't affect anyone, right?

The interesting thing about the melting in Greenland 80 years ago being what it is today. That was an anomaly compared to 100 years ago and 60 years ago. But if you look at the chart of sea rise you see the increase in sea level rise that occurs at the time that Greenland is melting. Anyone with a semblance of honesty would see that the same rise is occurring today. If Greenland continues to melt at the same rates or accelerates for the next 80 years we will see sea level rise of at least 2 feet by the year 2100.

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.
Satellite sea level rise 1993-present according to the Goddard Space Flight Center is 3.3mm per year or around 26cm (10ins) till 2100.



https://climate.nasa.gov/vital-signs/sea-level/

[goat]

Mini-Dotard, Goverrnor DeSanity is worried.

Gov. Ron DeSantis signed into law a pair of bills Wednesday that will annually float tens of millions of dollars to help combat the effects of rising sea levels across the state.

The bills, which include creation of a Resilient Florida Grant Program in the Department of Environmental Protection to aid local communities, came only a few years after Republican lawmakers began to openly acknowledge the impacts of climate change.

“We’re really putting our money where our mouth is when it comes to protecting the state of Florida and particularly our coastal communities from the risks of flooding and storms,” DeSantis said during an event to sign the bills (SB 1954 and SB 2514) at Rusty Bellies Waterfront Grill in Tarpon Springs.

Don't believe your lying eyes, believe Primavera.

[no worries]

You're a total fuckwit, that's not what he is saying at all.

Yes he is, because he is one of them nut jobs, that believes humans and all their inventions, farming and deforesting and don't have any effect on the earth.

You're the fuckwit for believing the same.

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Yes he is, because he is one of them nut jobs, that believes humans and all their inventions, farming and deforesting and don't have any effect on the earth.

You're the fuckwit for believing the same.

I see that the cuckoo season has started.

[T. A. Gardner]

In most coastal areas tidal differences are greater than sea level rise due to climate change...

[no worries]

Did you read the following few paragraphs, if not, then why not??

Koonin points out scientific facts supported by hard data and the peer-reviewed literature that stand against the reigning climate change narrative: humans have had no detectable impact on hurricanes over the past century; Greenland’s ice sheet isn’t shrinking any more rapidly today than it was eighty years ago; tornado frequency and severity are not trending up; the number and severity of droughts are not rising over time either; the extent of global fires has been trending significantly downward; the rate of sea-level rise has not accelerated; global crop yields are rising, not falling; the net economic impact of human-induced climate change will be minimal through at least the end of this century even if global average temperatures rise by 3C which is double the Paris Agreement goal.

Yeah, HIS PEERS. Total BS.

I'll take NASA's, NOAA and EPA's word over this crack pot.