Donnie Dotard At Davos Claims Planting Trees Will Help Avoid Climate Catastrophe - He's An Idiot

Graph showing the rise in temperatures since 1900.

Even as Blowhard Dotard yesterday blustered to those gathered at Davos about ignoring the "perennial prophets of doom, the heirs of yesterday's foolish fortune tellers and their predictions of the apocalypse"  -   a veritable climate apocalypse was brewing across the planet.   And so  we beheld Greta Thunberg (Trump's intellectual superior) setting the record straight with a note of reality.  I.e. that “our house is still on fire” and that “naction is fueling the flames by the hour.”i

Incredibly even low IQ Dotard  at least knows that trees are beneficial. They give us oxygen, absorb CO2, provide nests for birds and habitats for wildlife, protect against flooding and even help to clean up air pollutants from traffic.  And so as the world’s forests  have come under increasing threat from fires, agriculture and logging, the World Economic Forum has launched an initiative to ensure 1 trillion trees are restored.  And Trump, to avoid his rep as a climate renegade,  jumped onto the  tree planting bandwagon.  But in relative terms it's akin to trying to save the Titanic with a bucket brigade. In other words, the tipping point is already upon us - with the record heat of the past five years proving it - and David Suzuki's first year of no seasons now imminent.

 So yeah, Trump is on board at least to the extent of a con.  Though like other climate deniers he did toss out the toxic memes that any form of genuine mitigation - like higher gas taxes, or cutting carbon emissions - amounts to 'loss of freedom' and socialism. But Greta Thunberg wasn't having any of that empty blather.  As  Thunberg responded to him at Davos: “Planting trees is very good of course, but is nowhere near enough and cannot replace real mitigation.” and said so, e.g.: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I3qbXSf93bc

Adding:

"Our house is still on fire, and your inaction is fueling the flames by the hour"

Recall Trump and his nitwit cult never got over Thunberg getting TIME's 2019  Person of the Year, and were so desperate they even reworked the TIME cover, e.g.

Photoshopping Trump's empty head on Thunberg's body.   The only word that comes to mind? Pathetic!

Thunberg's reinforced warning isn't apocalyptic doomsaying either.  We now know  that the year 2019 was the second hottest on record for the planet’s surface, according to latest research. The analyses reveal the scale of the climate crisis: both the past five years and the past decade are the hottest in 150 years.  All indications now are that climate author David Suzuki's forecast of the first "year of no seasons" will indeed occur by the year 2040 - if not before.

In his book It's A Matter of Survival (Harvard University Press, 1991) co-authored with Anita Gordon, Suzuki wrote in Chapter One, 'Beyond Your Worst Nightmare':

"A.D. 2040- If we were to give this year a name it would be Despair. This is the hopeless world we have left our children and grand children. Where once our lives were measured and enriched by the cycle of the seasons, there is now only searing heat and the certainty it will get hotter. Seasons exist only in the nostalgic longing of those of us old enough to remember the richness of life......

Daily, experts try to play God, desperate to determine what each new ecosystem will be, before it too is lost. This is the nightmare world of 2040 on this sad excuse for the planet we once called home."

On page 8 of the same chapter, the authors go on to link the total disappearance of the seasons worldwide to global mean temperatures being 5 C (9F) above what they were in 1991.  All signs  now are that we may equal or surpass that  - especially given there is absolutely no evidence that the planet's inhabitants are prepared to take the measures needed: significant taxes on gasoline, major emissions cuts back to 1990 levels, etc.  Hence we're living in a fools paradise.

Attesting to this we have the succession of records being broken year after year.   Described by one paleo climatologist as: “the drumbeat of the Anthropocene”.  That drumbeat   is bringing increasingly severe storms, floods, droughts and wildfires- including the recent ones smothering Australia and New Zealand in smoke.   The drumbeat is also bringing painful economic symptoms as WSJ columnist Greg Ip recently observed ('Economic Impact of Climate Change Is Here', Jnuary 17, p. A2), noting:

"McKinsey Global Institute estimated  that 'unusually hot summers' affected 15 percent of the Northern Hemisphere's land surface in 2015, up from 0.2 percent before 1980."

If you can do the math that is an increase of 75 times, or in other terms, 7500 %.

More ominous, McKinsey projects a "probability of a 10 % drop in wheat, corn, soybean and rice yields in any given year and which will rise from 6% now to 18 %  in 2050."

This is ominous because the current projections are that 2 billion more people will be added to the population by 2050.  How will they get sufficient food given the probable declines in grain yields?  Indeed, where will they all live, given vast land areas will become almost uninhabitable by then, thanks to  persistent, catastrophic drought or the prevalence of monster hurricanes, typhoons?

We also need to be more aware that we've been living on borrowed time thanks to the oceans absorbing the bulk of excess heat. An amount one specialist analogized to "five Hiroshima bombs being detonated every second."   This is serious given more than 90% of the heat trapped by human greenhouse gas emissions is absorbed by the oceans. On Monday last climate scientists revealed 2019 as the warmest yet recorded in the seas, calling it “dire news”.  It is indeed, given ocean life as in the food chain that supports thousands of  animals, is now at risk.  The krill population that feeds the Chinstrap Penguin alone has decreased by 25-30 %.  Other sea life - from the fish we consume, to crustaceans- are also at risk.  When Bill Maher informed his HBO audience two years ago that there may be no fish left at all in fifty years, no one believed it.  W(ell, it is more than likely there will still be Jellyfish)

As we can see from the attached (top) graph:  the average temperature in 2019 was about 1.1C above the average from 1850-1900, before large-scale fossil fuel burning began. The world’s scientists have warned that global heating beyond 1.5C will significantly worsen extreme weather and suffering for hundreds of millions of people.  The World Economic Forum’s global risk assessment for the next decade, also found the top five dangers were all environmental, including extreme weather, failure to prepare for climate change and the destruction of the natural world.  This is all supported by the WSJ's Greg Ip who writes (ibid.):

"Climate crises in the next 30 years might resemble financial crises in recent decades: potentially quite destructive, largely unpredictable, and - given the powerful underlying causes - inevitable."

“What is important is the totality of evidence from multiple independent data sets that the Earth is warming, that human activity is driving it and the impacts are clearly being felt. These announcements might sound like a broken record, but what is being heard is the drumbeat of the Anthropocene.”

Added Michael Mann , a climate scientist at Penn State University:

“It’s now official that we have just completed the warmest decade on record, a reminder that the planet continues to warm as we continue to burn fossil fuels,”

Let's also note that while instrumental temperature records stretch back to 1850, data from ice cores indicate that today’s temperatures were last seen at least 100,000 years ago. Furthermore, the level of carbon dioxide is the highest it has been for several million years, when the sea level was 15-20 meters  higher.By the early 1990s, climate scientists completed more precise studies of ice cores extracted from the Greenland ice sheet. Dust and oxygen isotopes encased in the cores provided a detailed climate record going back eons. It revealed that there had been 25 rapid climate change events like the Younger Dryas in the last glacial period.  The evidence in those ice cores  - many of them originally studied by Univ. of Alaska climate researcher Prof. Gunther Weller (at the Geophysical Institute) -

Prof.  Gunther Weller (1987) at Geophysical Institute - University of Alaska - Fairbanks.

Prof. Weller's  work and that of colleagues  has disclosed that over the past 800,000 years the CO2 concentration of  300 ppm was never crossed until after the advent of the Industrial Revolution and the burning of fossil fuels.  Prof. Weller's work was also critical in highlighting the phenomenon of "Arctic amplification".  In papers and seminars delivered at the GI over 1985-1990 he pointed out that a much warmer Arctic translated to a much more unstable polar region with more frequent intrusions ("waves")  of polar air

The four temperature datasets are compiled from many millions of surface temperature measurements taken across the globe, from all continents and all oceans. They are produced by the UK Met Office with the University of East Anglia (UEA), both Nasa and Noaa in the US, and Europe’s Copernicus Climate Change Service. Small differences between the analyses arise from how data-sparse polar regions are treated, but all agree that the past five years are the warmest five years since each global record began.

The Met Office’s forecast for global average temperature for 2020 suggests this year could well set another record and is very likely to be among the top three hottest. The UK government will host a critical UN climate summit in Glasgow in November. The UN secretary general, António Guterres, and many others are urging nations to increase dramatically their pledges to cut carbon emissions, which would lead to global temperatures rising by a disastrous 3-4C.

“It is obvious we are not succeeding in preventing dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system, which was the main goal of the original 1992 UN climate change convention,” said Bob Ward, of the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change at the London School of Economics.

“Even if we succeed in limiting warming to 1.5C, this would not be a ‘safe’ level of warming for the world,” he said. “Therefore we must focus on cutting global emissions to net zero as soon as possible. We know the transition to a net zero economy is the growth story of the 21st century.”

See also:

Climate report understates threat

And:

Media | Rupert Murdoch

Murdoch’s Massive Media Australia-on-Fire Disinformation Crusade

The Burning Amazon Shows The Cancer of Human Overpopulation Has Almost Run Its Course

Image above shows every fire that's started across Brazil since August, 13, 2019.


Scene from ground level near Humaita, Brazil on August 17.


Another view from Humaita, Brazil, from August 14th.

"Our house is burning. Literally. The Amazon rain forest - the lungs which produces 20% of our planet’s oxygen - is on fire. It is an international crisis."  - Emmanuel Macron,  Thursday

One need have looked no further than yesterday's  WSJ (page A5 story), e.g.

'Fires Destroy Amazon Rainforest, Blanketing Brazilian Cities in Smog '

https://www.wsj.com/articles/fires-destroy-amazon-rain-forest-blanketing-brazilian-cities-in-smog-11566397901

To behold how we are now at the tipping point for cataclysm with the planet's "lungs" now being burned to a crisp.  This as human population growth has triggered ecological upheaval from India to Brazil to Siberia and Alaska and in between.  While too many  dunderheads and dopes still believe humans are "too puny" to cause or create a negative global impact, the evidence is now all around us. 

In Brazil, for example, we learn (WSJ, ibid.) that many of the fires raging - and even visible from space- were set by loggers.  These demented fools "have been burning newly cleared land for cattle ranching and agricultural use. The resulting clouds of smoke have reached such epic proportions as to be captured from a NASA satellite in space."

The idea has been to plunder as many forest resources as possible from the last great carbon repository on the planet- holding the line between humans and the runaway greenhouse effect.   Of course, the 'joker' in the deck, if we can call it that, has been Brazil's Trump clone (nicknamed "the tropical Trump"), Jair Bolsonaro.  Like Donnie Hitler Jr., this authoritarian maggot has no use for preserving the planet for future generations and even calls himself "Captain Chainsaw".  He is the one who has incited farmers, loggers to go on this burning spree that now puts the whole planetary habitat at risk - for all of us.  And the swine has done it by his mocking of environmentalists over their concern for the Amazon's preservation. ( In one spasm of rage he actually compared the Amazon to a "virgin" that "the outsiders want to take first".)

But say one thing, say the next.  Though Bolsonaro and his anti-environmental policies are the  proximate cause of the Amazon conflagration, population pressures - for arable land, living space and such - also played a role.   Hence, we can't ignore the fact that twenty three million people live in the Brazilian Amazon, 45 % of them below the poverty line.  In the words of one Sao Paulo -based journalist:  "Starving people don't care about the rain forest.. They consider it a green hell  and see forest rangers as enemies."

This is given that five of the six poorest states are located in the Brazilian Amazon according to the national statistical agency.  Such problems then are ultimately of human overpopulation and inadequate resources to support it.  Just as it is in respect of the  worsening water woes in India. Not to mention the uncontrolled land development now devouring natural regions globally at the rate of two football fields ever 3 minutes.  This according to a new UN report. So even if a lunatic like Bolsonaro didn't exist we'd still be in dire straits.

But perhaps not as quickly in the wake of "Capt. Chainsaw" having given so many subtle and overt cues to his eco-henchmen in waiting. 

 The scale of the Amazon  fires alone is such that smoke from them is ending up affecting cities more than 5,000 miles away.  Latest projections indicate that Amazon smoke will soon also cover the U.S. from LA to Detroit - which means we here in Colorado will be right smack in the middle of it.  The sheer number of fires spawned is staggering: some 72, 843 separate fires since January. This marks an 83 percent increase over last year   According to climate scientist Michael Mann:

"The impact is devastating because it's eliminating irreplaceable ecosystems and worsening climate change at the same time.. "

So it isn't for nothing the vast Amazon rainforest has been  nicknamed "the lungs of the Earth" .  This is because it has been responsible for the release of 20 percent of the world's oxygen even as it absorbs CO2 to generate that oxygen.  But as those "lungs" are destroyed the dynamic will be solely one way: no more oxygen produced, only more CO2.

Meanwhile, Africans also continue to burn wood from forests at a rate, using the material for fuel.  People and more people everywhere, too many for sure, gobbling resources at a rate as if there were no tomorrow. And there may not be at the rate they keep consuming.

In India, meanwhile, we learn,

'We Can't Waste a Drop.' India Is Running Out of Water. - WSJ

https://www.wsj.com/articles/we-cant-waste-a-drop-india-is-running-out-of-water-11566224878

"Water crises are unfolding all across India, a product of population growth, modernization, climate change, mismanagement - and the breakdown of traditional systems of distributing resources."

More worrisome:

"Nearly all of India's biggest cities ...are rapidly depleting their groundwater resrves, and 40 percent of India's people could lack drinking water by the end of the next decade."

Of course, this was predicted back in a 'State of the World' report from 2000, which estimated that 1.8 billion would face water scarcity by 2025.   The report even forecast "water wars" if the matter wasn't resolved or in some way addressed in an equitable manner.

Meanwhile,  in a piece in last Sunday's Denver Post by Bruce Finley ('Development Devours Natural Landscape At High Rat According to Study', p. A7) we learned that the conversion of natural landscapes into developed tracts is proceeding at a feverish pace, displacing habitats for thousands of species and destroying natural vegetation which serves as a carbon absorber.   As noted in the Post piece:

"A United Nations -backed biodiversity and ecosystem science panel determined that about three quarters of the land around the planet and two-thirds of marine environments have been significantly altered by human activity. An estimated 1 million plant and animal species face extinction."

What gives? Well, to put it bluntly, too many people!  Sir David Attenborough, in his BBC documentary entitled: 'How Many People Can Earth Hold?',  pulled no punches in his assessments. He observed that every current major societal, environmental problem- from clogged highways, to overflowing hospital ERs to crowded schools, as well as scarcity of commodities (reflected in their much increased prices) to fouling of our water and atmosphere, can be laid at the feet of too many people on this planet - each needing food, air, water and energy from the time it's born.

Of all the resources, the most critical is water because no one can live without it for very long. Even now, 1 billion people live in water-stressed conditions, meaning that renewable water supplies drop below 1,700 cubic meters per capita.  This is now the case with what's transpiring in India - and many other regions of the planet. 

The point is we're rapidly approaching the threshold at which there will simply be too many people to feed given existing resources- water, arable soil, fertilizers etc.. The projections now are for at least 10 billion people by 2050, and an 80 percent probability of 12.3 billion on Earth by 2100. Simply put, there simply aren't the resources to support even the lower addition. At root, the issue is sustainability - especially for water which is needed for crops. NO water, no crops to feed a growing population. The graphic below puts this into perspective;

The interpretation of the graph (upward) is simple. By June, 2030 TWO full Earths - that is the resources therein - will be needed to support the then population. Already we are at 1.5 Earths. Every year Global Footprint Network raises awareness about global ecological overshoot with its Earth Overshoot Day campaign. Earth Overshoot Day is the day on the calendar when humanity has used up the resources that it takes the planet the full year to regenerate.

A core problem is that people have a difficult time grasping any kind of exponential increase such as with population.

The late Univ. of Colorado physics professor Albert Bartlett delivered one of the best lectures  on the nature of the exponential function as it applies to  computing future population growth. It can be found at the link below :

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kZA9Hnp3aV4

Go to time index 13:04 and continue watching as he computes the global population projections at an estimated growth  rate of just 1.3 percent per year.  Within a minute or so we see the graphic appear:

Which Prof. Bartlett specifies as the full stop to further population increase, i.e.  the absolute arrival of  "zero population growth".   (Though he goes on to show that at the same assumed birth rate the mass of humans would equal the mass of the whole planet in 2400 years.)  As he notes:

"It's absolutely clear people could not live at that density on Earth. So zero population growth is going to happen!"

In other words, there exists an absolute limit to human population growth.   It cannot go on indefinitely!  Prof. Bartlett even includes a humorous cartoon to reinforce the point for any simpletons:


Why is this not possible?   Well because each human needs a defined living space to support him over a lifetime, not merely the minimal space his body may occupy. This is owing to the fact humans need resources to live which are extracted from a given land area.  This life support basis is a function of the rate of consumption of resources in this living space, and the birth rate.  The current average – when all humans are factored in – amounts to nearly 2.1 hectares per person .  This reckons in crops, lumber,  water,  meats-cattle etc.,  consumed over a life .  A square meter therefore cannot be a life support space. Only a certified moron would believe so. (Unless we are talking about immobilized humans put into a deep coma or deep freeze and remaining in stasis).

Thus, no high population density scheme that doesn’t factor in acreage impact  can be taken seriously.   Our species became a blight and cancer on the planet and to itself (bear in mind cancer occurs when cells fail to cease dividing, growing) at the instant it lost track of bio-support capacity and when we exceeded it.   The signs all around us now, from the massive Brazilian Amazon fires, to the dearth of water in India, scream in resonance of the failure of our species to control its numbers. 

As for solutions, as a recent blurb summarized them for Attenborough's BBC documentary:

"The filmmakers endorse the need for smaller families and increased access to contraceptives. Renewed investments in education are also championed in the film, particularly for women in impoverished countries, because the highly educated are less likely to have multiple children. Attenborough contends that it is only by following each of these steps that mankind can effectively limit the creation of new life and ensure a sustainable future for our species."

That sustainability is tied to the ability to reckon the bio-support capacity for the planet. How many can it support but without a total absence of life quality, only survival?

If one divides the total output of bio-productivity (determined in terms of food crops generated per hectare, water volume per hectare, etc.) and divide that by the population, one can get some idea. One expert to whom Attenborough turned calculated that based on his models - if we wanted a planet with equally shared bio-productive output - each human would get TWO hectares. If we inhabited such a world, then the planet might support 15 billion people. 

The reality is that the bio-productive output is not equal, and using a map of the world, Attenborough showed the divergences, what with the UK consuming 5.5 hectares per person, and the USA, 9.5 hectares. Thus, the average American is consuming more than four times that which is defined as a fair, equal apportioning of resources across all the numbers on the planet. According to Attenborough's expert, by this reckoning of such unequal apportioning of output, the planet can only hold 1.5 billion people.

The world then is overcrowded by roughly 6 billion humans. Sadly, it shows wherever one looks, from the massive housing shortages, to the water shortages (admittedly partly from drought) to the ever lowering GDPs of most nations.   Will we wake up in time to save some semblance of the future for our kids and grandkids?

It would be nice to believe so but with degenerates like Bolsonaro and Trump around it appears doubtful.  The clear addendum  remedy? Voters need to be intelligent enough not to vote in such unhinged, anti-environmental extremists and nationalists. Of course, this is an even more cogent reason for Millennials to get off their duffs and vote Dem in the 2020 elections. Personally, I suspect the planet cannot withstand another 4 years of Hitler Junior.
 
See also:

Thomas Neuburger

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Environmental Policy

It's Raining Plastic, From the Pyrenees to the Rockies to the Arctic

Excerpt:

 "I  often worry whether we aren't one of those species that self-eliminates, that commits "ecological suicide" as many bacteria do when they turn their environment too acid to live in. It's certain we're polluting the air with CO2 in a way that will change the climate from habitable to very inhospitable."

"Sea Is Rising, But Not From Climate Change" - Fred Singer's WSJ Op-Ed Calls Into Question His Mental Acuity

S. Fred Singer has been notorious in climate science circles for many years. Though ostensibly trained as an "atmospheric physicist" and even with some rocket science background, Singer has proven himself to be one of the most obdurate deniers of global warming.  More recently, as in a Mar. 18 WSJ op-ed ('The Sea Is Rising, but not from Climate Change') it appears he's devolved into full blown senility or maybe early onset Alzheimer's.   The touched -in- the- head simpleton writes:

"Of all known and imagined consequences of climate change, many people fear sea-level rise most. But efforts to determine what causes seas to rise are marred by poor data and disagreements about methodology. The noted oceanographer Walter Munk referred to sea-level rise as an “enigma”; it has also been called a riddle and a puzzle. 

It is generally thought that sea-level rise accelerates mainly by thermal expansion of sea water, the so-called steric component. But by studying a very short time interval, it is possible to sidestep most of the complications, like “isostatic adjustment” of the shoreline (as continents rise after the overlying ice has melted) and “subsidence” of the shoreline (as ground water and minerals are extracted). I chose to assess the sea-level trend from 1915-45, when a genuine, independently confirmed warming of approximately 0.5 degree Celsius occurred.

 I note particularly that sea-level rise is not affected by the warming; it continues at the same rate, 1.8 millimeters a year, according to a 1990 review by Andrew S. Trupin and John Wahr. I therefore conclude—contrary to the general wisdom—that the temperature of sea water has no direct effect on sea-level rise. That means neither does the atmospheric content of carbon dioxide. 

This conclusion is worth highlighting: It shows that sea-level rise does not depend on the use of fossil fuels. The evidence should allay fear that the release of additional CO2 will increase sea-level rise."

Of course, this is absolute nonsense, and the reaction- response of  (real) climate scientists to this offal was not long in coming.  Among the first to respond (WSJ letters, May 16) were Prof. Andrea L. Dutton of the University of Florida, and Prof. Michael Mann of Penn State.  They wrote, in deliberate sarcastic frame:

"Would the Journal run the op-ed 'Objects Are Falling, But Not  Because of Gravity'? That's pretty similar to climate contrarian Fred Singer saying The Sea Is Rising but not from Climate Change.

No, ice is not accumulating on Earth, it is melting. No, Antarctica isn't too cold for melting - warming oceans are eroding the ice from beneath, destabilizing the ice sheet. And no, legitimate scientific conclusions are not reached in op-ed pieces but through careful, peer-reviewed research".

Which begs the question of why Singer didn't get his major climate "find" published in a major journal. Well, most likely because after he sent it in - assuming he did - the referees were unable to stop laughing from hysterics.  That's because they'd know, as the authors write "research shows that sea levels are rising and human -caused climate change is the cause."

The best part is when they give Mr. "Rocket scientist" Singer a basic thermal physics lesson, this is after he writes "the cause of the trend is  puzzle":

"When water warms it expands. When ice warms it melts. To deny these facts is not just to deny climate change. It is deny basic physics."

Among the dumbest takes is seen at the end when Singer scribbles:

"Currently, sea level rise does not seem to depend on ocean temperatures and certainly not on CO2. We can expect the sea to continue rising at about the present rate for the foreseeable future."

To which letter writer Wendy Fleischer responds, citing NASA, via a Feb. 13 paper:

"Rising concentrations of greenhouse gases in Earth's atmosphere increase the temperature of air and water, which causes sea level to rise in two ways: first, warmer water expands, and this thermal expansion of the ocean has contributed about half of the 7 centimeters of global mean sea level rise over the last 25 years. Second, melting land ice flows into the ocean, also increasing sea level across the globe."


Which begs the 2nd question of whether we need to send Singer back to school for a remedial physcs lesson.

In a summary retort from climatefeedback.org we read:

This commentary published by The Wall Street Journal, written by Fred Singer, claims that warming (and therefore greenhouse gas emissions) has no effect on global sea level rise. Although Singer concedes the physical fact that water expands as its temperature increases, he claims that this process must be offset by growth of Antarctic ice sheets.

Scientists who reviewed this opinion piece explained that it is contradicted by a wealth of data and research. Singer bases his conclusion entirely on a cherry-picked comparison of sea level rise 1915-1945 and a single study published in 1990, claiming a lack of accelerating sea level rise despite continued warming. But in fact, modern research utilizing all available data clearly indicates that sea level rise has accelerated, and is unambiguously the result of human-caused global warming.

Since the 1990s for example, satellites have measured an acceleration in the rate of global sea level rise:

Global mean sea level (blue), after removing an estimate for the impacts of the eruption of Mount Pinatubo (red), and after also removing the influence of El Niño (green), fit with a quadratic (black). From Nerem et al. (2018)

REVIEWERS’ OVERALL FEEDBACK

These comments are the overall opinion of scientists on the article, they are substantiated by their knowledge in the field and by the content of the analysis in the annotations on the article.

Chris Roberts, Research Scientist, ECMWF/Met Office:

This article severely misrepresents the scientific understanding of the processes responsible for observed changes in global sea level. Understanding and attributing the causes of changes in global sea level is an area of active research and there are genuine uncertainties, but there is a clear consensus on the important roles for ocean thermal expansion and addition of mass to the oceans from melting glaciers and ice caps during recent decades. For example, the following paper by Church et al. (2008)* summarizes the independent lines of evidence for changes in sea level from satellite altimeter and tide gauge measurements and how these changes can be explained by a combination of thermal expansion and exchange of mass (either liquid water or ice) between the oceans and continents:

Figure – Global sea‐level budget from 1961 to 2008. (left) The observed sea level using coastal and island tide gauges (solid black line with grey shading indicating the estimated uncertainty) and using satellite altimeter data (dashed black line) with thermal expansion and glaciers melting components; terrestrial storage (e.g. dams) partially offsets other contributions to sea‐level rise. (right) The observed sea level and the sum of components.

• Church et al (2011) Revisiting the Earth’s sea‐level and energy budgets from 1961 to 2008, Geophysical Research Letters

Stefan Rahmstorf, Professor, Potsdam University:

The article has almost nothing to do with the modern state of sea-level science. The author tries to call into question that global warming causes sea-level rise, and does so by cherry-picking a short segment of data from 1915-1945, a time when data quality is poor and the warming signal small—a bizarre approach that could never pass scientific peer review and is apparently aimed at misleading a lay audience.

Keven Roy, Research Fellow, Nanyang Technological University:
This article is misleading, and presents inaccurate statements about global mean sea level rise.

Other criticisms:  On Singer's reliance on "outdated, cherry -picked data":

Benjamin Horton, Professor, Earth Observatory of Singapore:

This is a blatant case of cherry picking to confirm a Singer’s position while ignoring all other instrumental sea level data that may contradict that position. This fallacy is a major problem in public debate.

Stefan Rahmstorf, Professor, Potsdam University:

It is rather ironic that the author first complains about “poor data” and then goes on to cherry-pick a time of particularly poor data that includes the World War 2 period. Even the temperature data from this period are questionable; the sea surface temperature data show a strong warm peak at the end of WW2 (the basis of his claim of 0.5 °C warming) which is probably a data collection artefact, given that no such warming is seen in the data collected at the global network of weather stations on land. Also, in the peer-reviewed literature it has been shown that minor inaccuracies in sea-level data by just a few millimeters can lead to spurious fluctuations of sea level trends when too-short time intervals are considered*.

• Rahmstorf et al (2011) Testing the robustness of semi-empirical sea level projections, Climate Dynamicsi

So the takeaway from all these climate specialists is that Fred Singer doesn't know what the hell he's writing about. But again, bear in mind it's an op-ed in the WSJ - which as one climate scientist put it "just tells its readers what they want to hear".

With this latest load of pseudoscientific twaddle, Singer has shown himself not only an incompetent agnotologist - from the Greek agnosis, or to sow doubt- but either suffering from premature senility or.....being gracious, now one of the Climate Denier Three Stooges. That would be right along with 'Moe' and 'Larry'......errrrr… Richard Lindzen and Willie Soon.

See also:

https://andthentheresphysics.wordpress.com/2018/05/17/sea-level-rise/

And:

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2015/02/another-climate-scientist-fake-exposed.html