Getting a Rise
That's it, I can't blag about this stuff anymore. Effective after this post, I'm taking the pledge and getting on the wagon. The Australian has rent my mettle once too often. The straw (or, perhaps, straw man) that broke me was this November 7th report on a report by the Bureau of Meteorology's National Tidal Centre on Australian sea levels from July 2008 to June 2009. Here are its opening paragraphs (note the headline is 'Science is in on climate change sea-level rise: 1.7mm'):
SEA levels on Australia's eastern seaboard are rising at less than a third of the rate that the NSW government is predicting as it overhauls the state's planning laws and bans thousands of landowners from developing coastal sites.
The Rees government this week warned that coastal waters would rise 40cm on 1990 levels by 2050, with potentially disastrous effects.
Even yesterday Kevin Rudd warned in a speech to the Lowy Institute that 700,000 homes and businesses, valued at up to $150 billion, were at risk from the surging tide.
However, if current sea-level rises continue, it would not be until about 2200 - another 191 years - before the east coast experienced the kind of increases that have been flagged.
According to the most recent report by the Bureau of Meteorology's National Tidal Centre, issued in June, there has been an average yearly increase of 1.9mm in the combined net rate of relative sea level at Port Kembla, south of Sydney, since the station was installed in 1991.
This is consistent with historical analysis showing that, throughout the 20th century, there was a modest rise in global sea levels of about 20cm, or 1.7mm per year on average.
Yes, 1.9mm a year, not 1.7mm, is correct. For Port Kembla. If you actually read the NTC report, however, you find that Port Kembla had the thirteenth-highest net rise out of the sixteen stations the NTC collects data from. Given the Port Kembla station is the only one between the Mornington Peninsula and the mid-north coast of Queensland, an article about its recorded rise alone would only make sense in a Sydney paper like the Herald or the Telegraph. But The Australian is, as its name suggests, a national paper (in that the less than 0.5% of the population that read it live all over the country). What about Adelaide, Darwin and Perth, near which there have been net rises of 5.1mm, 7.5mm and 8.6mm a year respectively? If 8.6mm were sustained, the sea level on the south-west coast of WA wouldn't be 40cm higher in 2050 than it was in 1990: it would be over 50cm higher.
But it won't be sustained. The rises will rise. In economics, unemployment is known as a 'lagging indicator'. That is, if an economy enters a recession it can be months before unemployment rises, and as long or longer after the recession is over before it starts to fall. Sea level rises are likewise a lagging indicator. They are, as the NTC report states, 'an important consequence of climate change'. Yet The Australian's reporters don't understand, or wilfully misunderstand, this simple point. And that leads them to their bizarre non sequitur. They treat the 1.9mm a year net rise from 1991 to 2009 as if it will be constant forever and thereby refutes forecasts of catastrophic sea level rises. This kind of inductive error is comparable to saying a pack-a-day smoker over the same period will never develop a smoking-related illness because he never has (and even that analogy is imperfect: not all pack-a-day smokers will). But it is 'very likely', in the IPCC's couched language, that sea level rises will rise. What nobody knows is how much they will rise. The IPCC has been scrupulous about qualifying its determination of past sea level rises and its forecasts of future ones. Apparently The Australian has more faith in its powers of clairvoyance.
The article soon abandons whatever pretensions to seriousness it had. For some reason, it extensively quotes an old man from Wollongong who swims in the water there and says he hasn't noticed any rises, just no good meddling kids. Then it quotes both Bob Carter and William Kininmonth, who I've noted before don't publish in peer-reviewed journals like real climate scientists, presumably so they are freer to bruit mispresentations and falsehoods. Speaking of which, a week after the article, The Australian published an editorial declaring that 'what we know is that the Bureau of Meteorology's National Tidal Centre has observed modest average rises in sea levels of 1.9mm a year'. So it's not 1.9mm a year in Port Kembla anymore - it's 1.9mm a year in all of Australia's waters. The editorial also declares, in a marvellous bit of projection, 'Too much of the debate has been short on facts...' No mention of the denialists here; just 'the green movement' and its accomplices. Well, I could have named one egregious instance of fact-shortage for The Australian's editor Chris Mitchell. The November 7th article, deferring to the IPCC briefly, says that 'throughout the 20th century, there was a modest rise in global sea levels of about 20cm, or 1.7mm per year on average'. So what was that Australian journo doing saying the exact opposite and calling it 'fact' just three days previous?
SEA levels on Australia's eastern seaboard are rising at less than a third of the rate that the NSW government is predicting as it overhauls the state's planning laws and bans thousands of landowners from developing coastal sites.
The Rees government this week warned that coastal waters would rise 40cm on 1990 levels by 2050, with potentially disastrous effects.
Even yesterday Kevin Rudd warned in a speech to the Lowy Institute that 700,000 homes and businesses, valued at up to $150 billion, were at risk from the surging tide.
However, if current sea-level rises continue, it would not be until about 2200 - another 191 years - before the east coast experienced the kind of increases that have been flagged.
According to the most recent report by the Bureau of Meteorology's National Tidal Centre, issued in June, there has been an average yearly increase of 1.9mm in the combined net rate of relative sea level at Port Kembla, south of Sydney, since the station was installed in 1991.
This is consistent with historical analysis showing that, throughout the 20th century, there was a modest rise in global sea levels of about 20cm, or 1.7mm per year on average.
Yes, 1.9mm a year, not 1.7mm, is correct. For Port Kembla. If you actually read the NTC report, however, you find that Port Kembla had the thirteenth-highest net rise out of the sixteen stations the NTC collects data from. Given the Port Kembla station is the only one between the Mornington Peninsula and the mid-north coast of Queensland, an article about its recorded rise alone would only make sense in a Sydney paper like the Herald or the Telegraph. But The Australian is, as its name suggests, a national paper (in that the less than 0.5% of the population that read it live all over the country). What about Adelaide, Darwin and Perth, near which there have been net rises of 5.1mm, 7.5mm and 8.6mm a year respectively? If 8.6mm were sustained, the sea level on the south-west coast of WA wouldn't be 40cm higher in 2050 than it was in 1990: it would be over 50cm higher.
But it won't be sustained. The rises will rise. In economics, unemployment is known as a 'lagging indicator'. That is, if an economy enters a recession it can be months before unemployment rises, and as long or longer after the recession is over before it starts to fall. Sea level rises are likewise a lagging indicator. They are, as the NTC report states, 'an important consequence of climate change'. Yet The Australian's reporters don't understand, or wilfully misunderstand, this simple point. And that leads them to their bizarre non sequitur. They treat the 1.9mm a year net rise from 1991 to 2009 as if it will be constant forever and thereby refutes forecasts of catastrophic sea level rises. This kind of inductive error is comparable to saying a pack-a-day smoker over the same period will never develop a smoking-related illness because he never has (and even that analogy is imperfect: not all pack-a-day smokers will). But it is 'very likely', in the IPCC's couched language, that sea level rises will rise. What nobody knows is how much they will rise. The IPCC has been scrupulous about qualifying its determination of past sea level rises and its forecasts of future ones. Apparently The Australian has more faith in its powers of clairvoyance.
The article soon abandons whatever pretensions to seriousness it had. For some reason, it extensively quotes an old man from Wollongong who swims in the water there and says he hasn't noticed any rises, just no good meddling kids. Then it quotes both Bob Carter and William Kininmonth, who I've noted before don't publish in peer-reviewed journals like real climate scientists, presumably so they are freer to bruit mispresentations and falsehoods. Speaking of which, a week after the article, The Australian published an editorial declaring that 'what we know is that the Bureau of Meteorology's National Tidal Centre has observed modest average rises in sea levels of 1.9mm a year'. So it's not 1.9mm a year in Port Kembla anymore - it's 1.9mm a year in all of Australia's waters. The editorial also declares, in a marvellous bit of projection, 'Too much of the debate has been short on facts...' No mention of the denialists here; just 'the green movement' and its accomplices. Well, I could have named one egregious instance of fact-shortage for The Australian's editor Chris Mitchell. The November 7th article, deferring to the IPCC briefly, says that 'throughout the 20th century, there was a modest rise in global sea levels of about 20cm, or 1.7mm per year on average'. So what was that Australian journo doing saying the exact opposite and calling it 'fact' just three days previous?