Over at Joe Romm’s blog ‘TP’, they’ve been working themselves up into a froth over Tropical Storm Sandy. So I offered some wisdom to pour oil on troubled waters counter their drivel. It was a pretty innocuous comment I thought, but it has been censored anyway. Here are the before and after screenshots.
Odd really, since Joe has allowed ‘Trucker Mark’ to mention hurricane Hazel
TruckerMark says:
Here is a record of a much more powerful late-season storm that hit the same general area of the US in mid-October of 1954, Hurricane Hazel, which was a strong Category III storm:
http://www4.ncsu.edu/~nwsfo/storage/cases/19541015/
Must be that Joe doesn’t like the idea that the Moon’s spring tide was more of a factor than sea level rise in the Sandy flooding. Right on cue, Anthony Watts has just posted an article about JPL finally admitting the satellite altimetry data ain’t very good:
I added this comment:
tallbloke says:
Your comment is awaiting moderation.
Cracking post Anthony. John Daly was saying this 16 years ago. The error range was +/- 75mm at best. That’s twice the sea level rise since 1993. Signal lost in noise indeed. I don’t see how this new gizmo is going to recover those data though. Changes in orbits due to solar wind variation etc are not steady or regular in magnitude.
There is also the human factor:
“In 2003 the satellite altimetry record was mysteriously tilted upwards to imply a sudden sea level rise rate of 2.3mm per year. When I criticised this dishonest adjustment at a global warming conference in Moscow, a British member of the IPCC delegation admitted in public the reason for this new calibration: ‘We had to do so, otherwise there would be no trend.’”
-Nils -Axel Morner-
https://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2011/12/02/sea-level-scare-stories-simply-scandalous/
I hope JPL will be telling us a lot more about their methodology than the article reveals so far. Well done for flagging up this important measurement issue.
No worries about this one making it through moderation, WUWT is open for debate.
Tallbloke's Talkshop 
When Hazel struck on Oct 15, 1954, it was just 3 days after full moon. Perhaps a follow up comment to TruckerMark? 😉
TB (+Tim if reading) re: comment on WUWT;
” Berényi Péter says:
It is not only the missing heat they should look for now, but the missing water as well.
Talbloke says:
Lolz, good one.I think most of it ended up in the water table in Yorkshire, judging by the amount of rain we got this ‘summer’.”
I noted a ‘dry’ (average) patch amongst the deluge in SE England this year. In 1882 – venus transit – kew recorded an average year amongst the deluge.
Should be reasonable records then v now to see a poss. signature?
So they would deny Spring and Neap Tides?
That’s ironic- you’re turfed out after replying to a comment that laments “the suppression of the truth”.
When we were talking to Prof Julian Dowdswell at the Scott Polar Research Institute a few weeks ago, Roger, we talked about altimetry, if you remember, and I asked whether the data were compared to anything “real”. I was quite surprised to hear the answer was no. So the data is just compared to itself and over time and that involves subjective “interpretation” as far as I can see. Hence the recent halving of the supposed ice-mass loss in Antarctica revealed by the Grace satellites when someone obviously “changed their mind”!
Let’s hope this new system is not just a more sophisticated means of attempting to hoodwink us. Or perhaps, as instanced by the “no more on-shore wind farms” announcement, and the Japanese Nuclear power stations deal just announced, the worm is finally starting to turn and we may be seeing the beginning of the end of this gigantic AGW scam. I do hope so!
Dave N: give it a try. 😉
Craig M: Interesting observation = ‘jet stream latitudes influenced by Venus’ hmmmm?
caz: It seems the effects of gravity are denied on both sides of the climate divide.
https://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2012/10/30/2012/02/09/nikolov-zeller-reply-eschenbach/
Scute: Romm thinks irony is dirty stuff made with coaly.
Rosa: Yes, the Altimetry has been calibrated to theory, rather than anything measurable. The co2 ‘must’ have warmed the oceans and ice, so they ‘must have’ expanded at rate x…
How odd. Tidal range at Manhattan, NYC, Battery Park is something like 5 feet. Sandy (a.k.a. Frankenstorm) brought a storm surge of some 13 feet there (more than 2 feet over the subway system’s safety limit). On the other hand, the Norfolk and Long Island hurricane of 1821, which struck at low tide “produced a storm surge of 13 feet in only one hour at Battery Park”, remarkably close.
Had it come at high tide, like Sandy, just imagine what a 18 feet high rise could have done to the city.
New York obviously needs some storm surge protection (and needed it a long time ago), like the Thames Barrier of London, built after the North Sea flood of 1953 (over 18 feet).
Not because of global warming, but because there is a goddamn ocean nearby a huge city with lots of vital infrastructure and even more people to be protected.
Peter, spot on. You can be sure the storm will be measured in dollars rather than feet by the politicians.
I assume it isn’t matter of global warming but how the North Atlantic accumulated cyclone energy (ACE) is dissipated during the hurricane season. Current total ACE number is 121 (just above normal) of which Sandy 12.5 (Nadine =25), from which one could conclude that global warming may not be the main contributing factor. (WUWT, Climate etc.)
Just heard an American get air time on Sky to basically say they have been caught out pushing their luck too far by building ever closer and closer to the Ocean.
Could not agree more. Building on barrier Islands is a recipe for disaster (there is a reason for the name barrier) as is building NYC and its subway on land only a few feet above mean sea level.
Censorship! Never! I think we should start a blog where everytime a post gets deleted or account disabled (1, 2, …99) we can post the screenshot.
Just to show them how “free” their “free-speech” really is…