A new paper from Landerer et al. (2009, Geophys. Res. Lett., doi:10.1029/2009GL039692, in press) derives the likely motion in earth’s pole caused by thermal expansion of sea water due to global warming. New Scientist has an interesting article about it.
The direction (in space) in which earth’s angular momentum points is only affected by torque external to the earth, mainly from the gravity of the moon and sun. But the angular momentum axis and the spin axis don’t necessarily coincide, so re-distribution of earth’s mass can alter the location of the spin axis. The net result is that the location of the pole can change by small amounts. It appears to be moving about 10 cm per year due to isostatic rebound of the continents, and an additional movement of about 2.6 cm/yr due to the melting of Greenland ice. According to the new research, we can expect more change from the thermal expansion of the oceans.
The change is slight. It’s not expected to have any climate impact, and it certainly won’t lead to disastrous (or even unpleasant) impact on human civilization or earth’s ecosystems. The only practical impact I can infer from the article is that we might be able to use precise measurement of axial tilt to estimate sea level rise. All in all, it’s scientifically quite interesting but has no real practical effect.
But that hasn’t stopped denialists from “spinning” conspiracy theories! WUWT did a post on the paper, and the post itself is simply a matter-of-fact report on the research. But the comments to that post are — well, right out of the loony bin. Read a few if you’re up for a good laugh, but be careful … you could feel your I.Q. dropping.
47 responses so far ↓
Gavin's Pussycat // August 26, 2009 at 1:45 pm |
Actually Jerry Mitrovica and colleagues analysed the effect on the Earth rotation axis of the West Antarctic ice sheet collapsing:
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/323/5915/753
Craig Allen // August 26, 2009 at 2:44 pm |
I looked briefly through some of those comments last week and my head still hurts.
But the loonier the better I say. Surely open minded visitors to his site with half a functioning brain will be dismayed at the class of twit that he attracts.
As you indicate, the post itself was rather dry nuts and bolts research. Interesting, but hardly controversial. And yet the gibbons were swinging around gleefully hooting about how it was further proof of how preposterous, left wing, stupid and conspiracy driven climate scientist’s claims are. Pea-brains, all of them.
Kaj L // August 26, 2009 at 2:50 pm |
Do you mean that the “best science blog in the world” maybe is not the best science blog in the world? LOL!!
Zeke Hausfather // August 26, 2009 at 3:44 pm |
I think my favorite was the WUWT commenter praising Velikovsky’s “Worlds in Collision” a few weeks back. Apparently some Woo never really dies.
TrueSceptic // August 26, 2009 at 4:35 pm |
WattsUpWithMyBrain gets worse almost by the day. Most of the comments there would fit right in at Denial Depot
And how about this for extreme irony?
dhogaza // August 26, 2009 at 5:01 pm |
At least Watts apparently understood this paper, which is unusual for him. Typically, you’d see something like this posted with a blaring headline declaring “New Paper Shows Earth Doesn’t Spin, Disproves Global Warming!”
Sekerob // August 26, 2009 at 6:53 pm |
Well, I think nowadays Lucia is aspiring the title of most mind-numbing science blog by such greats as this title”
GISSTemp: Declined Since June 2009
or such knock me over observations such as
“…warming trend has cooled from 0.56234C/100y to 0.56072C/100y…”
If she did a tongue in cheek, I thoroughly missed it in old woosh fashion (probably lost in translation, since inglese is not my native tongue)
As suggestion, think RC should have a poll (with a motivation section, for the real joy part), titled, “Least Luciant”. But serious, would this further any science of any sort?
As for this piece: Who knows would it work actually to accelerate precession and speed up the wished for global cooling and is it again save to BAU at our hearts content… there was no mention of that ;P
Zeke Hausfather // August 26, 2009 at 9:31 pm |
Reading through the comment thread, this one really takes the cake for irony:
[quote]
David Ball (08:09:28) :
My problem is that New Scientist will print unadulterated crap like this and yet never print anything that raises serious question regarding the validity of global warming, and the inconsequential effect of Co2. Flanagan, bill, Phil., Mary Hinge, Joel Shore, what have you to say about that? Isn’t it obvious why so few papers questioning the doctrine are “peer-reviewed” or published. When this BS (bad science ) gets a pass, and Beck’s work isn’t even allowed a chance (among countless others). New Scientist is actually hurting themselves. Think of the controversy (and units sold) if they printed an article that provides balance. The old argument of consensus is made moot once again. Oh, I forgot, it’s a conspiracy, ….
[/quote]
Wag the Dog // August 26, 2009 at 10:08 pm |
Loony bin, sea level, earth rotation, and conspiracy theories? All point to one person: Nils-Axel Mörner
http://newsbusters.org/node/13698
I fully expect the lack of any noticeable change in angular velocity to be cited as proof that global warming is a hoax.
TCO // August 26, 2009 at 11:27 pm |
Effect on celestial navigation (or GPS)?
Hank Roberts // August 26, 2009 at 11:38 pm |
> Nils-Axel
Nominative determinism?
Dan L. // August 27, 2009 at 2:00 am |
> Mörner
I wonder if he’s still guarding his tree?
MarkB // August 27, 2009 at 2:56 am |
dhogaza writes:
“Typically, you’d see something like this posted with a blaring headline declaring “New Paper Shows Earth Doesn’t Spin, Disproves Global Warming!””
My first thought when reading this comment is that it’s an exaggeration. No one would distort a study that badly. But considering the blog you’re referring to, it wouldn’t be surprising, so I laughed. A headline like “Confirmed: Changes in Earth’s tilt, not greenhouse gases, causes global warming. How will AGW alarmists spin this one?” seems likely.
dhogaza // August 27, 2009 at 4:02 am |
It is, and was meant to be.
By maybe 0.05% or so at most …
Ray Ladbury // August 27, 2009 at 4:50 am |
I don ‘t spend a whole lot of time over at Watts up ‘is arse, as I consider the sight to be mainly a giant collective brain fart. I don’t take much delight that our opponents are incompetent as competence does not seem to be a prerequisite to influencing policy. The question remains: How can democracy work when the majority of the population are scientifically illiterate?
Ian // August 27, 2009 at 6:00 am |
Well Watts has now got a paper in the peer reviewed literature
Georg Hoffmann // August 27, 2009 at 8:29 am |
WUWT has a readership well repersentative for a sort of negative elite of the US. The sort of people you see sometimes in Michael Moore ducumentaries and you wonder: hell, this guy with the gun in his hand really exists?
Anyhow, I guess even more astonishing for Watts and his loonies might be that you can measure the length of the day and its relationship to ENSO events. Mysteries over Mysteries.
http://ivs.nict.go.jp/mirror/publications/ar2003/acoso/
dhogaza // August 27, 2009 at 1:38 pm |
Yeah, he’s listed as author #26 of 40. And some people think physics papers have ridiculously long lists of authors …
This is RPsr’s paper proving that land use changes and bad weather station photography, not CO2, causes global warming.
Mahmood, R., R.A. Pielke Sr., K.G. Hubbard, D. Niyogi, G. Bonan, P. Lawrence, B. Baker, R. McNider, C. McAlpine, A. Etter, S. Gameda, B. Qian, A. Carleton, A. Beltran-Przekurat, T. Chase, A.I. Quintanar, J.O. Adegoke, S. Vezhapparambu, G. Conner, S. Asefi, E. Sertel, D.R. Legates, Y. Wu, R. Hale, O.W. Frauenfeld, A. Watts, M. Shepherd, C. Mitra, V.G. Anantharaj, S. Fall,R. Lund, A. Nordfelt, P. Blanken, J. Du, H.-I. Chang, R. Leeper, U.S. Nair, S. Dobler, R. Deo, and J. Syktus,
Jim Bouldin // August 27, 2009 at 2:46 pm |
I find this article quite timely and amusing, relative to point 59 of Rick Trebino’s heartbreaking masterpiece on getting a Comment published. Apparently, global warming really should be called global tilting!
http://scienceblogs.com/catdynamics/upload/2009/08/how_to_publish_a_scientific_co/How%20to%20Publish%20a%20Scientific%20Comment2.pdf
Jim Bouldin // August 27, 2009 at 3:07 pm |
That is very interesting, that Pielke decided to include Watts as co-author. One may reasonably assume that Watts was aching to be able to call himself a “peer-reviewed author”, and it will be even more interesting to see how he spins it now that he “is”.
Hank Roberts // August 27, 2009 at 3:08 pm |
> author #26 of 40.
Anyone done a frequency distribution on, say, total authors, total pages, or any measure of impact for papers with multiple authors? Some are intricately crafted papers with serious work by many people put together.
But I wonder if some are more like, well, petitions, in which some contributions amount to something more like “well, yeah.”
Mark // August 27, 2009 at 3:18 pm |
In the interests of narrowing the comment field, should that not have been called
“glibil tilting”?
That’s got to be a glyph or two thinner…
MarkB // August 27, 2009 at 4:52 pm |
“This is RPsr’s paper proving that land use changes and bad weather station photography, not CO2, causes global warming.”
No doubt that will be their claims on their blogs. As Michael Tobis nicely documents…
http://initforthegold.blogspot.com/2009/08/klotzbach-in-blogosphere.html
…which to me, is quite indicative of a political agenda.
In Mahmood et al., I see no reference to Watts’ political project (Surface Stations) or his Heartland Institute presentation.
I also don’t see a mean estimate for the alleged effect on the global trend, just an unrealistic upper bound and a call to study it more.
It also cites Parker et al. but ignores its main conclusions:
http://www.climatesci.org/publications/pdf/R-321b.pdf
dhogaza // August 27, 2009 at 5:10 pm |
He claims to be responsible for the parts dealing with the problems with the USHCN, so indirectly that’s referring to his surface stations projects, because their bad photography of stations “proves” that there are insurmountable problems with it.
Geoff Beacon // August 27, 2009 at 6:22 pm |
The Earth Systems Model´s that were used in IPCC AR4 did not include feedback effects from methane from undersea clatherates or melting tundra.
If any now have these effects, what do they show?
Is this a significant issue?
Jim Bouldin // August 27, 2009 at 6:39 pm |
glbl tltng is bs
Former Skeptic // August 27, 2009 at 10:16 pm |
dhogaza and Jim:
Watts was part of this NSF-sponsored workshop held in Aug 2007 called “Detecting the Atmospheric Response to the Changing Face of the Earth: A Focus on Human-Caused Regional Climate Forcings, Land-Cover/Land-Use Change, and Data Monitoring” that was co-organized by RPSr., Mahmood and Hubbard.
http://joss.ucar.edu/joss_psg/meetings/Meetings_2007/Detecting/Index.html
Watts and his new BFF both gave talks on biases in the surface temperature record. Watts’ was titled “A hands-on study of station siting issues for United States Historical Climatology Network Stations.” while BFF talked about “Land use change and microclimate exposure effects on near-surface air temperature assessments-unresolved issues.”
http://joss.ucar.edu/joss_psg/meetings/Meetings_2007/Detecting/Workshop%20agenda-08-24-07.pdf
It also appears that Mahmood, not Pielke, was the person responsible for including all the workshop participants as co-authors. It is unclear, however, how much editorial work RPSr. did to the submitted document.
David B. Benson // August 27, 2009 at 10:52 pm |
Zeke Hausfather // August 26, 2009 at 9:31 pm — Please don’t quote things like that! My I.Q. has already fallen far too much as it is. :-)
dhogaza // August 27, 2009 at 11:32 pm |
Oh, so that’s how you get forty names on such a paper …
Right. The “hands-on study” is the surface stations bad photography project.
David B. Benson // August 28, 2009 at 12:08 am |
Geoff Beacon // August 27, 2009 at 6:22 pm — Those sources of methanee are so far not signficant. Notice the “so far”. Much more important are anthropogenic sources such as cattle belches.
The single simplest thing you can do for the climate, your pocket book as also your health at the same time is
Eat Less Red Meat.
Wag the Dog // August 28, 2009 at 9:38 am |
“The single simplest thing you can do for the climate, your pocket book as also your health at the same time is: Eat Less Red Meat.”
The only problem with this strategy is the economic rebound effect. If the environmentally conscious (a significant minority) stop eating red meat, the price of red meat falls such that the environmentally careless (a significant majority) are incentivised to eat more of it. Secondly, the money that the born-again vegans save may be spent elsewhere in the economy like buying imported plastic goods, or jetting off abroad for vacation. And even if they don’t do that and simply keep the money in a bank, this higher saving rate has the effect of lowering interest rates which of course encourages more investments, building of houses, and higher resource consumption in the wider economy.
Until the majority start taking action, ya just cannot win.
Mark // August 28, 2009 at 9:53 am |
“Watts and his new BFF both gave talks on biases in the surface temperature record. ”
Huhm.
There are no biases shown.
There’s proof of how a bias could occur, but no proof that it is occurring.
And I suspect that Watt’s Best Friends Forever are talking about the avuenues for bias to creep into the station record, not any actual bias.
Bad writing, wot!
Jim Bouldin // August 28, 2009 at 12:52 pm |
I had it in my mind that Pielke was the lead author on that paper, but he apparently is not, so my comment back there that he was responsible for including Watts as co-author is unwarranted, and in fact we don’t know how that decision was made. But made it was.
And David Benson, I concur 200% with your red meat statement, adding “your conscience” and “the rights of animals” to your list of reasons.
TomG // August 28, 2009 at 4:50 pm |
Where have I saw Wag Dog’s reasoning before?
Dan R // August 28, 2009 at 6:32 pm |
“Until the majority start taking action, ya just cannot win.”
Majorities grow out of minorities.
As for the economics, I beg to differ Wag, but I’m more than willing to be corrected, this not being my area (picture if you will me grappling with basic Demand/Supply Price/Quantity diagrams….)
If you take yourself completely out of the market for meat, the demand curve drops. Assuming the supply curve remains where it was, this results in a lower price, AND a reduction in quantity, resulting in less CO2 emissions.
The people now buying more meat because of the cheaper price were always represented in the demand curve, and so their additional meat purchases do not move the demand curve back up again. Likewise, anyone hanging around waiting for a cheaper price to start buying meat were also always represented in the demand curve – they just weren’t buyers at the previous price.
Importantly, the new lower price means you have less suppliers willing to sell at that price, and ultimately, a smaller quantity of meat produced.
Only if you convince a once vegetarian to take your place in the meat market do you ‘kick’ the market back to equilibrium, thus negating your CO2 savings.
Like I said, if you know something about economics, and the above sounds a little bit like a first year textbook (correctly interpreted or otherwise :-)) instead of the real world, please contribute and correct as necessary.
Cheers.
As for diet and CO2 emissions, I once saw a very relevant talk from Eugene Cordero, which was great.
http://www.met.sjsu.edu/~cordero/
Jim Bouldin // August 28, 2009 at 10:05 pm |
The livestock industry is right down there with mountain top removal in terms of horrific and indefensible absurdity.
Geoff Beacon // August 29, 2009 at 8:48 am |
We have started a website http://www.nobeef.co.uk. No much on it yet but we have been promised a few hundred pounds to run a first “Barbecue to save the world”. The plan so far is to give people their last beef steak for a pledge that it is their last one.
We´ll send the money to Texas if anyone wants to arrange the first one there. Any takers?
Any are there any answers to my earlier post on Earth System Models and their lack of methane feedback?
Geoff Beacon // August 29, 2009 at 9:06 am |
David Benson´s comment was interesting but does not answer my question.
Methane from tundra and arctic seas is on the rise. When Earth Systems Models are run to predict climate for the next 80 years should they include these?
My view is they must include a best guess estimate or be worse than useless because they give a false sense of security.
Steve Bloom // August 31, 2009 at 1:03 am |
Geoff the problem with methane is learning enough about it to project the emissions usefully. I don’t think we’re there yet, although based on what we do know the range of outcomes seems to be from bad to very, very, bad.
I’ll be interested to see how the No Beef idea works. Based on my personal experience of giving up meat many years ago, having one last hunk doesn’t quite make sense as a way to start, but perhaps the ceremonial/performance art/media event aspect will be effective. Will you follow up with the participants to see how they do?
Steve Bloom // August 31, 2009 at 1:09 am |
Craig’s comment about gibbons at the top reminds me of a story (IIRC true) about when Edward Gibbon received a royal honor from George IV for his famous book on the history of the Roman Empire:
When Gibbon apporached the throne to receive his honor, George was heard to say “Another damned fat book, eh, Mr. Gibbon? Scribble, scribble, scribble.”
The yahoos will ever be with us.
Steve Bloom // August 31, 2009 at 1:13 am |
Just to note that the big Indian Ocean earthquake of a couple of years ago was calculated to have shifted the poles by several inches. Over the course of time such events are making the planet a little more spherical.
Steve Bloom // August 31, 2009 at 1:26 am |
RP Sr. has recently begun referring to Watts as a member of the “Pielke Research Group,” yet another attempt at legitimization. I think it’s pretty clear he’s behind all this stuff. The usual suspects like Christy aside, it’s a bit of a mystery to me why that long list of second- or third-raters would be interested in attaching their names to such a paper.
Even as we speak, be assured that RP Sr. is working hard to figure out some way to get Watts’ surface station crap published somewhere other than E+E.
David B. Benson // August 31, 2009 at 2:11 am |
Geoff Beacon // August 29, 2009 at 8:48 am — Ask Michael Tobis over on “Only In It For the Gold”. He is in Austin, TX.
dhogaza // August 31, 2009 at 3:42 am |
Yes, this is what is going on. It’s an attempt to game the peer review process for nothing more than political effects.
It’s an interesting, AFAIK new, approach. Sick, and an absolute indicator that RPsr has left morality aside.
But, then again, he’s supported the project for the last two-three years, so maybe it’s just a case of being *explicit* with his willingness to toss aside science for a hope to influence policy.
Jim Bouldin // August 31, 2009 at 2:03 pm |
Dhogaza, I’d guess it’s likely been done before. But whatever, there’s no way you can say 40 people legitimately contributed to this article. You don’t list people as co-authors just because they had something to do somehow with data sources you’ve used. If people did that routinely, there’d be 40 authors on every paper. Here’s where the trend of some journals of asking for specification of which author did exactly what task, would be very helpful in putting an end to this kind of nonsense.
Former Skeptic // August 31, 2009 at 11:53 pm |
Jim:
Apparently, Rezaul Mahmood insisted on getting ALL the 40 participants into the paper based on their presentations in the workshop. I was told that he (and perhaps RPSr.) culled all the available material into the manuscript; whether that is a legitimate point for being a listed author in a publication such as BAMS is definitely worth discussing, especially for their editorial board.
Steve Bloom:
With all respect, I object to your calling all the authors second or third rate. I am friends with several of the authors in that manuscript – their publication records in their climate subfields are beyond reproach – and their views on AGW are far removed from Pielke as you can get.
Jim Bouldin // September 1, 2009 at 12:42 am |
Thanks for that info FS. Mahmood does have that right, as lead author, if he wants to include everyone and BAMS is ok with it. And I agree with your last statement, based on the one co-author that I know.