Now deal with rising doublespeak
Pretending rising sea levels are only recurrent flooding does not make it so.
Euphemisms usually fail in politics. The public is smart enough to see through the trick when advocates rename something to make it more palatable. Pro-life is still anti-choice. Revenue enhancers are still new taxes. Regulatory easing is still lifting environmental and workplace protections.
Politicos play the game anyway, and occasionally a linguistic back flip helps legislation pass. Consider a case from the General Assembly this year.
June 18, 2012 - 6:12 AM
So a bill in North Carolina “would mandate that formal consideration of rising sea levels be based on old data and linear trends, not modern data that show sea levels rising faster in the future.”
Modern data that shows sea levels rising faster? What data? There is no such data, unless somebody has invented a time machine to allow for actual physical measurements of sea level in the future. All we have are predictions, which is not the same!! The RTEB is engaging in a little “scientific” doublespeak of their own.
And those predictions? Well, they’re all over the map. For a thorough summary, see this write-up from MIT: http://web.mit.edu/12.000/www/m2010/finalwebsite/background/globalwarming/sealevelrise.html. Key quote:
“Sixteen different sources of sea level rise predictions a hundred years from now or 2100 were compiled. Primary sources included reports from the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and NOAA. The data ranged from extremes of 0.02 meters of sea level rise (Walsh, 2002) to 6 meters (AGI, 1994).”
Any “science” that yields predictions that vary by a factor of 300 (2.5 orders of magnitude) is NOT mature enough to be used as the basis for policy decisions.
Brian – from my reading (and I have no cites) the problem seems to be that the data coming in appears to be agreeing with the most drastic predictions of sea level rise and not the lower predictions. That is why it is becoming so scary.
To #2 (Richard): One can safely assume that all of the predictions listed in the MIT report looked at past data. And yet they still vary enormously in their predictions.
As for recent trends, there’s a growing body of evidence that that sea level rises may be tapering off instead of accelerating. A sampling:
http://www.climatecentral.org/news/ice-is-flowing-slower-on-greenland-than-many-feared-study-says/
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/sea-level-rises-are-slowing-tidal-gauge-records-show/story-fn59niix-1226099350056
http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2011/07/22/3276012.htm
http://co2science.org/articles/V15/N17/C1.php
http://www.worldclimatereport.com/index.php/2011/04/07/sea-level-rise-still-slowing-down/
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2012/06/what-makes-sea-level-rise/
The Virginia Institute of Marine Science has their work cut out for them, dealing with this extreme level of uncertainty in their study of potential mitigation strategies.
.. Brian – I did not see a date on your first cite. These later cites run over several years. The most recent seems to indicate that while the ice flow is slowing, the melting continues unabated. Their conclusion again is the sea is rising but they are not sure how fast; but it may indeed be faster than originally projected. The ground water question is indeed interesting.
Any way you go, it looks like the oceans are rising.
“Doublespeak” is a concept I have been keen on for a long time. Along with “newspeak” & “thoughtcrime”. Orwell foresaw the use of the conceptual blurring of language in order to control thought and behavior.
1984 was the anti-utopian depiction of totalitarianism by force. The future is a boot in the human face.
Earlier, Huxley, Brave New World painted the same end, but the means a bit more “sophisticated”. State control of procreation, behavioral psychology (Skinner, Beyond Freedom & Dignity and drugs (soma).
Today we see an alarming manifestation of such blurring of language, thus conceptual discrimination. Many do not deal with the underlying concepts of issues, but with emotionally charged slogans & buzz-words. The inability to separate the clear fundamental principles differentiating the public & private economies, arguing instead social, political platitudes is a timely example.
I saw a commercial recently. Young woman who had served in the Army. Later, lost her legs by a drunk driver, not militarily related. She now plays volleyball on a paraplegic team. She states, paraphrasing; I once served, wore my country’s uniform, now I serve, wear my country’s uniform in a different way, or something to that effect.
Now….thank you for your service. And, I am very glad resources & care are available after your tragic accident. But how does the later relate to wearing the uniform & serving her country. It’s just the opposite, she is being served, and I’m glad she is. But the attempt to equate the two, through emotional “doublespeak” does nothing except belittle both.
This may seem a trite & cold example. But I think apropos.
To #4 (Richard): Yes, it’s rising right now. But the “acceleration” vs. “deceleration” aspect is key. An “accelerating” rise implies that the problem will get worse more rapidly in the future, potentially causing problems. A “decelerating” rise implies that the rate of rise is falling, and that the rise will eventually stop. If we only pick up another inch or two of total rise before that stop occurs, nobody’s even going to notice.
Fortunately, recent sea-level data suggests deceleration. This is consistent with recent behavior see in glaciers and ice sheets. Things may simply be moving about instead of all melting into the oceans:
http://en.mercopress.com/2012/03/31/height-of-antarctica-ice-sheet-increasing
http://www.nature.com/news/renegade-glaciers-gain-ice-1.10448
http://www.scienceagogo.com/news/20050425095213data_trunc_sys.shtml
http://missoulian.com/news/state-and-regional/some-glaciers-snowfields-in-rockies-see-gains/article_78a58458-04dc-11e1-adc6-001cc4c03286.html
http://www.backpacker.com/blogs/504
6. Brian – Let us hope this is a trend and not an anomaly. Even a one inch rise in the ocean level causes huge problems on the east coast. But the overall indications are the earth had its warmest year on record this past year and the ice is still melting. Hopefully Mother Earth has its own means of self-correcting through more storms, more cloud cover, etc.