Quote of the day—Dr. Jennifer Walker

The fact that we’re seeing an emergence of modern rates of rise at all of these individual study sites as well by the mid 20th century just further demonstrates the really significant influence of global sea-level rise especially in the last century. By delving into individual sites the better understanding we have of regional and local processes impacting sea-level rise will continue to improve our understanding for future impacts.

Dr. Jennifer Walker
Rutgers University professor in the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences
February 25, 2022
Burning coal has been driving sea level rise since the 19th century: study
[There are other things of interest in the article:

Utilizing a global database of geological sea level records from the past 2,000 years, the international team of researchers modeled global and site-specific sea level rise. They determined that in the United States, modern sea level rise can be discerned earliest in the Mid-Atlantic region somewhat later in the 19th century. By doing so, they hope to facilitate a better understanding of local processes driving variations in sea level changes.

This is not the first time I have seen stuff like this that I find bizarre. They appear to believe the ocean levels can change locally. Am I’m missing something? Or are they really that stupid?

How can you have local changes in the ocean level that do not become global within a day or less? There is a bulge of water than travels entirely around the globe in one day. It is due to gravity from the moon and sun. It is causes what are called tides, remember? Any local change in ocean level will spread out evenly around the entire earth, right? Why do these “scientists” claim there are local changes?—Joe]

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27 thoughts on “Quote of the day—Dr. Jennifer Walker

  1. Pure gibberish. Even better than a politician trying to dodge a question.

  2. We are a science based society not all that different from earlier societies.

    I suppose that it is possible for there to be local changes that are not normalized over a day or two, but I can’t think of an example that is not transient. Onshore wind can raise the sea level locally, but that process is transient. Another is subsidence, but I would expect that it too would only be a transient effect.

    Does gravity change enough to be an example? Since gravity is related to mass I would expect changes in land form to cause cause micro changes in local gravity. Is that enough to matter? Rivers like the Mississippi carry a lot of sediment that gets dumped in the delta.

  3. There is, or rather used to be, a place now called Doggerland. You can look it up on your little keyhole to the universe. People used to live on Doggerland, an island in what is now the North Sea. Then things changed, and now fishermen sometimes dredge up human artifacts from there in their nets. Things changed, they’re going to change, we didn’t have much to do with causing change, and we can’t do much to stop it.

  4. There are large islands 100 years ago in Chesapeake Bay that have almost disappeared under water.
    1) Did the water level rise from the sea or from runoff from the rivers that empty into the bay?
    2) Did currents change and the sub surface change as well. This moves sediment and erosion to takes place. Barrier islands on the East Coast would “move” south if not for man made stabilization. The loss of the above tide line is a natural progression.

    I don’t know the answer but it has been going on more than likely for eaons, not a few hundred years.

  5. My guess…. They are cherry picking certain data points, ignoring or falsifying data in a desperate attempt to support their premise. They are basically F’n dishonest people and I won’t degrinate those of us who are scientists to call them that.

  6. Some of them are very smart. They are paid (grant money) to produce certain result, so they do “science” to get that result, much as tobacco-company cancer researchers proved time and again that there was no connection between smoking tobacco and cancer. (Interestingly there are some things on that front indicating they may not have been entirely wrong, but it’s still very preliminary and another story.)

    So they are usually misguided, they sound important and science-y to normies watching the news headlines, nobody calling them out can’t be dismissed as partisan/biased or not an expert, and all the “experts” who can are hoping for a shot at the same grant money so they are not saying anything.

    Oh, and yes, some of them really are that stupid.

  7. sea level can change locally:
    land subsidence happens all the time. caused by ground water depletion and other factors. Then there is land that is rising after last ice age. In the middle of the ocean there is a sea level effect caused by local wind directions. When those winds persist for long periods of time hey have a measurable impact on local sea level. Then there are the coral atolls which tend to stay just above the local sea level and is driven by coral growth. Where atolls are “sinking” the culprit can usually be tied to human land use practices affecting health of the local coral.

    Of course, none of these things have aything to do with burning coal.

      • Exactly.
        Growing up in Holland (1960s) I learned that Holland is sinking slowly while Norway is rising at a similar rate. The explanation is straightforward: Norway was sitting under a mile of ice 40k years ago, while Holland was just south of the edge. So the European tectonic plate was pushed down at the north side. When the ice melted, it started to shift back to level, a process that is still underway. BTW, these things are measurable; it’s not just theory.
        To the Warmists like the one cited in that article I’ll pose the same old question: please explain to me how your theory accounts for the fact that in Caesar’s time it was about two degrees warmer than it is now, and in Leif Eriksson’s time it was about a degree warmer.

        • One degree doesn’t sound right. The Vikings had outposts on Greenland, growing crops and cattle, and found grapes growing on what is now Newfoundland. They named it Greenland to encourage settlers to go beyond Iceland.

          • Ok, but that’s what the data says that I saw. You can see for yourself, look for the GISP2 dataset, which is ancient temperature data derived from Greenland ice samples. Fascinating stuff; it goes back 50k years so it shows the most recent ice age, in which temperature fluctuations were much larger than afterwards. And it shows both the Roman and the medieval warm periods, with colder times in between. None of that obviously is anthropogenic.

          • Oh by the way, the temperatures in the GISP2 database are in celsius, so when I said one degree I meant one degree C.

    • Coral atoll sinking in the mid-Pacific is often traceable to plate suduction and/or plate movement and subsidence away from spreading centers or hot spots. There are plenty of reasons for local beaches or headlands to rise or fall due to geological processes. And sea levels globally rise and fall due to ice melt, etc. But I’d be hard pressed to think of reasons why local sea levels would change enough to register above tides, weather, or other noise.

      • The Dutch example I mentioned is a case where the change is visible in spite of the noise. It doesn’t have to be all that large an effect to be noticed; all that noise averages out well across a year or so. And the Dutch have a long history, for obvious reasons, of monitoring water levels closely. (Not quite the same thing, but I remember growing up that “today’s water levels (of the major rivers)” was on the radio every morning at 7 am or so. Important if you’re a river boatman.

  8. At which point were compelled to understand that science is about theories……Being presented as facts, engineering. Which it is not.
    As already mentioned, their studies are pure gibberish. Which someone was willing pay handsomely for.
    All that aside. Playing around the islands of So. east Alaska will give one a true study of tides. And them being different, in different places. And day to day different.
    But all one truly need look to in this matter are Obama and Pelosi. One buying property on Martha’s vineyard. And the other on the beach in Florida. They don’t seem to worried about sea levels.
    Power, money, control. Use any two. To get the third.

    • But all one truly need look to in this matter are Obama and Pelosi. One buying property on Martha’s vineyard. And the other on the beach in Florida. They don’t seem to worried about sea levels.

      “When the people who say global warming and climate change are real emergencies, begin living their lives like they are real emergencies, I’ll begin to start thinking that they might be real emergencies.”

      • Yes, but you will never see them buying property in the heartland among the deplorables.

  9. Venice comes to mind.
    It’s gradually losing the battle to remain above the surface. It’s my understanding that the sea isn’t rising. Thousands of years of tapping into the aquifer underneath that tidal basin is causing the land to settle.

    Proof of global warming to some, I’m sure.

  10. We believe that the purpose of science is to serve mankind. You, however, seem to regard science as some kind of dodge… or hustle. Your theories are the worst kind of popular tripe, your methods are sloppy, and your conclusions are highly questionable! You are a poor scientist…

    From 1984. Oh the delicious irony…!

  11. My brother, a master in physics, says it’s centripetal force that causes the tides.

    • A Ph.D. in physics might get you a university job. A BS in physics is a good base in hard science to get the sort of job that requires those skills (like software engineering — my background and my field). But as best as I have ever been able to tell, an MS in physics is utterly useless.
      I guess your bro has physics skills like Sandy Cortez has economics skills: “not”.

  12. From a newsletter that I follow comes the following, courtesy of Dr. Michael Eades. “Remember that when you mix politics and science, you get politics.”

    With as much government funding of “science” as we have today and the price (fear) for not publishing or publishing that which does not support the political narrative, should we really be surprised by the ridiculousness of what passes for science anymore?

  13. What we do know is that if solid ground were one plane. It would be covered with close to 5,000 feet of water. What little water is frozen on the surface is not going to rise sea level enough to cause any real problems.
    And if it is, we’ll just have to make room for a few extra Tonga’s, Fujites, Belizeamons. (Poor Leonardo will have to extend the piles for his thatched roof motel, the horror!)
    It’s not like they have a hard time moving millions of people from one part of the world to another already. Southern border anyone?
    I’m thinking Bezo’s just wants to have fuel for his yacht. For the next 10,000 year. And you need to starve so he can feel good about it.

    • Actually, that’s not quite true. It true for most ice; for example, all the ice on Greenland isn’t enough to make any visible difference. And of course changes in North Pole ice won’t make any difference whatsoever, see Archimedes.
      The total ice on the South pole is a different matter. If you could melt 100% of that — an iffy proposition to be sure — that would get you a rise of a bunch of feet. I did the arithmetic a while ago but forgot the answer; I think it’s more than 6 feet but less than 20-ish.
      Then again, I’ve seen reconstructions of what Holland is believed to have looked like in the days of Caesar. It wasn’t much different from what we have today, if anything a bit more land (some was lost to erosion in the middle ages). So that says that the Antarctic ice cap, back then when it was 2 degrees warmer than now, was not much different than today.

      • So, lets make it 20′. A few cities will look kind of like New Orleans?
        So what? Good investment in sheet piling?
        Ain’t nothing to quit driving your SUV’s over. And sure as hell not something to give more power, money, and control to the government over.

        • It’s clearly doable to live with your real estate being 20 feet below sea level, the Dutch show this clearly. (Rotterdam airport has a field elevation of -14, Amsterdam is -11, and I’m pretty sure there is other Dutch land a bit lower still.)
          But while it’s eminently doable if you have the skills, it isn’t cheap or easy. Think of all the US coastal cities that have “sea walls” that amount to little more than a tall curb. Or whose land is merely somewhat above high water with no barrier at all. These would need dikes, and on all the rivers you’d likewise need dikes until the adjacent land is above the new sea level. Check out the Dutch “Delta Works”, a protective effort started after the 1953 flood. While its coastal works are best known and most visible, it also included a bunch of dike building along the major rivers quite a ways inland.
          On the other hand, it’s clearly true that flyover country would be pretty much unaffected.

  14. When someone can’t form a proper sentence in a public statement, and clearly doesn’t care, then you know you’re off to a bad start if you plan to engage. You know that they’re NOT relying on their ability to reason. They’re relying on something else entirely. This time however, we already know from their generations-long history of contradictions and inconsistencies that they were off to a bad (dishonest) start back when we were children in the 1960s.

    And we may as well quote the Bible on the subject, being that most of the former Protestant churches are now siding with Rome and her Laudato Si declarations;
    “While the earth remaineth, seedtime and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease.” Genesis 8:22

    Therefore anyone allied with the climate alarmist junta is in opposition to the word of God.

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