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Why Groundwater Use May Not Explain Half of Sea-Level Rise

Posted by Soulskill on from the science-is-complicated dept.

New submitter Sir Realist writes "A recent Slashdot scoop pointed us at a scientific study that claimed 42% of global sea-level rises could be due to groundwater use. It was a good story. But as is often the way with science, there are folks who interpret the data differently. Scott Johnson at Ars Technica has a good writeup which includes two recent studies that came to remarkably different conclusions from mostly the same data, and an explanation of the assumptions the authors were making that led to those differences. Essentially, there is some reason to think that the groundwater estimates used in the first study were too high. However, that's still under debate, so it's worth reading the whole argument. Scientific review in action!"

26 of 244 comments (clear)

  1. Scientific review by x0 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    So, we can review groundwater/sea-level scientific studies, but 'Climate Change' is a done deal.

    Got it...

    m

    --
    In the immortal words of Socrates, who said; 'I drank what?'
    1. Re:Scientific review by wisnoskij · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Or maybe it is simply that all peered reviewed papers get reviewed. And it is simply that climate change is a fact and it is happening ~ like we believe it is so all reviews of those papers turn up no problems.

      --
      Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
    2. Re:Scientific review by girlintraining · · Score: 4, Insightful

      So, we can review groundwater/sea-level scientific studies, but 'Climate Change' is a done deal.

      It's a scientific fact that global warming is real. There is no debate, and no controversy, there. We've got too many satellites confirming it, along with thousands of ground stations and the upward trend is undeniable.

      It's still up for discussion why it's happening or what it will eventually mean for us. Ethical scientists generally take the side of "Until we can predict with some confidence what will happen, we should do what we can to limit the impact," similar to the ideal behind the Hippocratic oath. Our present models, understanding, and theories point to rising sea levels, melting ice caps, and heating to the point where much of the ariable land along the equator will no longer be able to sustain industrial farming.

      We're already seeing some of the effects of this rapid heating (in geological terms); In Japan, native moss is no longer used at several Zen shrines because it's become too warm for them to survive. Coral reefs are undergoing a mass-extinction event, and we are seeing weather patterns which roughly correspond to modelling predictions for a warmer Earth. If these trends continue, life will become increasingly inhospitable to humans. While long-term predictions aren't reliable, it is almost certain the Earth of 200 years from now will have a radically different climate than the Earth of today; We are directly responsible for this planet entering a new geological age with as much speed and force as the Cretaceousâ"Paleogene extinction event.

      The debate really doesn't center on whether or not these things happen; The choice faced by our generation is not whether or not life after climate change is possible, but what kind of life it will be.

      --
      #fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
    3. Re:Scientific review by Ginger+Unicorn · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Any individual study can be reviewed at any time. This rarely has any significant impact on the consensus formed by the weight of all other existing related studies. If there are two interpretations of a study based on two different sets of assumptions, the question can be resolved by testing the assumptions. The fact that a single study is ambiguous does nothing to cast doubt on the remaining vast preponderance of scientific studies which unambiguously indicate that climate change is both real and man made.

      'Climate Change' is a done deal

      The scientific community has overwhelmingly agreed that Climate Change is occuring, and that there is a greater than 90% chance it is man-made.

      That this is the consensus is a cold, hard, unambiguous fact. If you want to believe that climate change is not real, or not man-made, the only remaining avenue of rationalisation is that the scientific community a wrong or lying for some reason. This puts climate change deniers on the same ground as creationists.

      --
      (1.21 gigawatts) / (88 miles per hour) = 30 757 874 newtons
    4. Re:Scientific review by C_amiga_fan · · Score: 3, Insightful

      >>>It's a scientific fact that global warming is real. There is no debate, and no controversy

      How come it's getting colder over the last decade with record levels of snowfall and cooler-than-normal summers? (I had heard by 2010 we wouldn't even know what snow is in Great Britain.)

      --
      FREE magazine : http://clarkesworldmagazine.com/prior/
    5. Re:Scientific review by Bigby · · Score: 5, Interesting

      I followed and agreed with your first two paragraphs. Even the first couple sentences of the 3rd paragraph. Then you went crazy.

      Inhospitable? You know the earth has been much warmer with humans living on it? Earth had a radically different climate 200 years ago, and 200 years before that, and 200 years before that. Define "radical" please.

      Then you finish with "we are directly responsible". That is the part being questioned. Not that the earth is warming, but the cause. You conveniently failed to bring that part up in your first two paragraphs. You even say "it's still up for discussion why it's happening". Did you come to the conclusion while writing the paragraphs in between?

      Then you finish by saying earth will not be inhospitable. What is your opinion here???

    6. Re:Scientific review by Gaygirlie · · Score: 3, Informative

      >>>It's a scientific fact that global warming is real. There is no debate, and no controversy

      How come it's getting colder over the last decade with record levels of snowfall and cooler-than-normal summers? (I had heard by 2010 we wouldn't even know what snow is in Great Britain.)

      Over here in Finland it is actually getting a lot warmer than it used to. For several years now the temperature can be above zero even in January, but when I was a child that would have been totally unheard of; back then the temperature could drop as low as -35 degrees Celsius where I lived in.

    7. Re:Scientific review by andy16666 · · Score: 3, Informative

      >>>It's a scientific fact that global warming is real. There is no debate, and no controversy

      How come it's getting colder over the last decade with record levels of snowfall and cooler-than-normal summers? (I had heard by 2010 we wouldn't even know what snow is in Great Britain.)

      They don't. Global temperatures continue to show a rise, despite certain local climate variations.

    8. Re:Scientific review by MozeeToby · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Define "radical" please.

      The rate of change is important. Toss me a baseball and I'll catch it, whip it at my head and I probably won't.

      We generally don't know the rate of change that previous global climate changes had, but the rates that we're seeing today would be equivilent to the ice age ending in a matter of decades or at most a couple centuries. 1.5 degrees so far might not sound like much but when look at the global scale that is a big change.

    9. Re:Scientific review by Mindcontrolled · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Well, within a period of 120 years, no one has brought up sufficient empirical data to challenge the hypothesis that the radiative balance of Earth deviates from the expected blackbody values due to greenhouse gases, as put forth by Arrhenius - it gets "touchable" once you provide data instead of talking points.

      --
      Ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.
    10. Re:Scientific review by Grayhand · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Wow. That Kool-aid must taste great.

      It's the other side that is chugging Kool-Aide. On one side you have climatologist and environmental scientists that have all agreed for a decade or more that we are seeing a major shift in the climate and we are the cause. On the other side are pundits that have an agenda to avoid changes that will affect lifestyle or corporate profits that have no formal education in climate science that say we can't affect weather no matter what we do to the Earth. Now which side sounds like the Kool-aide drinkers, the scientists or corporate America who are making a fortune off releasing CO2? I've heard claims all my life that we can't seriously affect the environment yet I've seen a massive change in the world over the last 50 years. Cities themselves cause heating because of all the dark roofs and roads so it's obvious we are having an affect on the environment. FYI the pundits are lying about all the experts that deny climate change. There was even a major study by a climate change denial group that had the same results as the climate scientist. Their reaction was to say that there is change but we can't be the cause. There was no proof that we weren't the cause it was their opinion. The carbon we are releasing predates the dinosaurs so it's insane to assume that it can't affect the environment. It took tens of millions of years to store it and we're releasing it in a couple of hundred years. To put it into perspective imagine a 1,000 years worth of your trash, you know those bags you leave out front for the garbage man. Now pile that thousand years of trash bags around your house. The pile would be hundreds of feet high. That's what we are doing when we release 400 million year old stored carbon. Think that ridiculous? Imagine ten million years of your garbage and you are getting closer to the truth. It's not the same thing obviously but it illustrates how extreme the release of CO2 has been over the last 200 years.

    11. Re:Scientific review by Ironchew · · Score: 4, Informative

      So where are the reviews that actually challenge the hypothesis - or is that untouchable?

      Reviews don't do that; competing hypotheses do. In the world of science, a competing hypothesis overtakes the consensus if and only if it explains everything the old system could and more that it couldn't. Science demands alternative explanations that solve inconsistencies; finding a problem with the consensus is only the first step, and denialists are stuck there.

    12. Re:Scientific review by icensnow · · Score: 4, Informative

      The idea that light was a wave moving through the ether was consistent with all available data, especially given the limitations of 19th century measurement, until the Michelson-Morley experiments. Maxwell's equations are still consistent with pre-relativity understanding, and I certainly had to learn how to work with them. The old way of thinking is not so much wrong as limited to a certain level of measurement, just as with Newton's laws and pretty much everything else before relativity and quantum mechanics. The old ways of thinking are still useful and generally correct within their assumptions. I begin to think that we need some kind of Godwin's Law against bringing up Kuhn and paradigms in an actual scientific discussion -- it seldom leads anywhere useful but usually is used just like this post to say "just because everyone who knows something thinks so doesn't mean it's right."

    13. Re:Scientific review by Mindcontrolled · · Score: 5, Informative

      "if the quantity of carbonic acid increases in geometric progression, the augmentation of the temperature will increase nearly in arithmetic progression."

      See also: Svante Arrhenius, On the Influence of Carbonic Acid in the Air upon the Temperature of the Ground, Svante Arrhenius, Philosophical Magazine and Journal of Science, Series 5, Volume 41, April 1896, pages 237-276.

      Now, if you clean up your act and stop simply spouting lies, we might have a discussion.

      --
      Ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.
    14. Re:Scientific review by Ironchew · · Score: 3, Insightful

      These points have been refuted so many times that it honestly isn't worth listing them again.

      I sure as hell hope that no scientist has to work under these ludicrous standards you demand of the climatology field. They've demonstrated on several occasions that they have nothing to hide, and denialists just keep piling on them with more cherry-picked quotes. It's sickening to watch.

    15. Re:Scientific review by Lisias · · Score: 3, Insightful

      It's a scientific fact that global warming is real.

      As the Earth being the center of the Universe was, once, another scientific fact.

      Every single scientific fact is prone to scrutiny and refutal. Every single one.

      We can assume that some scientific facts are insanely unlikely to be refuted (Gravity Law, for the sake of my balls and despair of my girlfriend's boobies, are one of them). But never, ever, assume any "scientific fact" above any controversy or debate.

      Dogmas have no place here.

      --
      Lisias@Earth.SolarSystem.OrionArm.MilkyWay.Local.Virgo.Universe.org
    16. Re:Scientific review by Doc+Ruby · · Score: 3, Interesting

      No, the geocentric theory was not science the way we practice it today. It was biblical theology, dressed up to look like what passed for science before science was science.

      Yes, in the future we'll have even better science about climate. It will be more precise, but the accuracy of current climate science saying "human pollution is increasing the Greenhouse Effect, overall warming the Earth and changing the climate" will not be changed. Because current science is good enough to state facts, even if their precision can always be improved. We can tell the difference between -1, 0 and +1, even if we can't always tell the difference between +1 and +1.1 .

      Of course we should also debate and challenge the science, especially science this important. That's how we make both the facts more precise and the science itself better at investigating. But there's not going to be any disproof of climate change science. This isn't 1955, when the science wasn't based in enough data and repeated studies to be reliable. It's reliable.

      Saying that there shouldn't be controversy about whether humans are changing the climate with our pollution isn't dogma. It's merely recognizing scientific fact. And defending it from the people who will say anything to undermine it, though they can't say anything scientific.

      --

      --
      make install -not war

    17. Re:Scientific review by riverat1 · · Score: 3, Interesting

      The Bering Strait had a record amount of ice still in the ocean well into April, the longest it has ever been present. If this ice was present in December, your argument may be valid. April is not winter, and the ice should not have been there.

      And across the Arctic in the Barents and Kara Seas the ice levels have been extraordinarily low this year. Overall the level of ice in the Arctic has been slightly below average for this time of year. I have my doubts that "the longest it has ever been present." is accurate too.

      Worth noting that theory of evolution was formed about 160 years ago, physics has been evolving for thousands of years, and tectonic plate theory is about 100 years old. Thirty years old for a scientific THEORY is nothing. And with people like you shooting down any critical review, of course there will be no peer review.

      Fourier first noted that carbonic acid gas (CO2) absorbed infrared radiation in the 1820's. Tyndall quantified the effect in the 1850's. Arrhenius stated "if the quantity of carbonic acid increases in geometric progression, the augmentation of the temperature will increase nearly in arithmetic progression." in the 1890's. Ever since then we're just filling in the details.

    18. Re:Scientific review by Chris+Burke · · Score: 3, Informative

      How come it's getting colder over the last decade

      Whoever told you that was lying to you. They cherry-picked the year 1998 for a two-point comparison because it was anomalously high. If you picked 1997 instead you'd see warming way above predictions. But that would also be a lie. That's why climate scientists don't do that, and instead use rolling averages to find the underlying trends.

      --

      The enemies of Democracy are
    19. Re:Scientific review by rockout · · Score: 3, Informative

      Your understanding of the word "theory" in the scientific world gives away your uneducated born-again leanings.

      --
      I've learned that they're worthless, so I don't read AC comments anymore.
  2. Good, let the scientists hash it out by sandytaru · · Score: 5, Funny

    As soon as a politician with no scientific qualifications weighs in, however, I reserve the right to be annoyed.

    --
    Occasionally living proof of the Ballmer peak.
  3. Interesting Theory by Ferretman · · Score: 3, Insightful

    We certainly HAVE pumped a lot of groundwater out and I presume most of it ends up in the atmosphere or the oceans one way or the other.

    Glad to see REAL scientists questioning AGW tenets.

    Ferret

    --
    Sic gorgiamus allos subjectatos nunc
    1. Re:Interesting Theory by bbecker23 · · Score: 4, Informative

      The issue is actually pretty similar to that with declining returns in oil production. Groundwater replenishment is certainly still happening. Similarly, the processes which produce oil are still occurring. The issue is that we are consuming much faster than we are replenishing. Groundwater, depending on the depth of the aquifer and the material in which it exists, can take years to thousands of years to be replenished. Oil takes millions.

      The reason that ocean levels might rise from groundwater is that we are bringing it up faster than it can go back down. All that water has to go somewhere.

      --
      cat /dev/random > sig.txt
  4. Comment removed by account_deleted · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  5. That's one of the problems with many proponents by Sycraft-fu · · Score: 4, Interesting

    They start with the statement of "It is a scientific fact that global warming is happening," which is true. That the Earth is getting warmer outside of known cycles is a claim of fact, something you can measure, and measurements show it is indeed correct. No problems there.

    However the problem then starts that they make a bunch of other claims, such as that if the warming continues Earth will be inhospitable, and so on, and want to claim that is all scientific fact too. No, not so much. That things will get worse would be an assertion or judgement call that would be based on a bunch of theories and hypothesis about what will happen if the warming continues. It is the kind of thing that is actually up for a lot of debate since you have to evaluate all the different theories of what might happen, how well supported they are, and then pass a judgement call as to if it would be better or worse.

    Thing is, they present it as just something you have to accept part and parcel. A situation of "If you deny any of this, you are denying the facts." No, not really. Anyone who says the Earth isn't warming is denying facts, unless they can show how the measurements that we use to reach that conclusion are flawed (given the measurements are world wide and spanning a century, it is possible, though unlikely, the conclusion is incorrect). However from that it does not automatically follow that things will be horrible.

  6. Re:Cause by sexconker · · Score: 3, Funny

    My home town nearly went to zero Kevins back in 1978.

    It was a particularly cold winter, and we were already down to 3 Kevins (due to their low popularity at the time).

    Kevin Thomas had flown out to be with his son's family for a wedding and got stuck in Boston for a whole week due to the weather. 2 Kevins left.

    Kevin Lemmer was rushed to the hospital during my shift. I still remember the call from the EMTs as the ambulance was rushing toward us. "It's Lemmer. He's in bad shape. Drove right into the fucking ditch." We called the time of death at 6:15 PM.

    At 6:16, all eyes turned to room 2217. Kevin Spencer was 82 and on his death bed with leukemia. His family being Catholic, he had already been given his last writes. If he couldn't hold out until Kevin Thomas returned, we would be at zero Kevins. Sure, we had 4 perfectly healthy Calvins, but they're just not the same.

    It was 7:15 when Carla Brooks and her husband James burst through the main entrance. "She's not due for 2 weeks!", James exclaimed. As the staff bustled around getting the Brookses settled, they exchanged darting glances with each other. This was their first child, and they wanted to keep the baby's sex a secret. Of course, in a small town, secrets don't get kept. Nearly all of the hospital staff new that the child about to rip open Mrs. Brooks was indeed a boy.

    The delivery was routine, and Kevin Brooks was born healthy, if a tad underweight, at 10:52 PM. Kevin Spencer was pronounced dead at 10:54.

    It was, as they say, a close one. Kevin Thomas arrived two days later, the weather having finally cleared up. To this day, we still rib him about it.

    Cedar Falls is currently at 5 Kevins.