“Pielke on ground water extraction causing sea level rise“. Roger Pielke Dr. discovers a new excuse for why sea-level is rising – groundwater extraction! Yes, we’re sucking our way to oblivion. Groundwater extraction is causing sea-level rise! No need to turn off the power plants after-all.
A rising tide floats all boats? Source: Wikipedia.
Actually, Groundwater extraction is a well-known contributor to local subsidence. Happens over oil fields. Happens in areas of intensive irrigation by groundwater. Happens naturally in river deltas as the weight of new sediments squeezes water out of underlying sediment. Happens over underground mining operations sometimes. Is it really the cause of sea-level rise, or just a contributing factor?
I wonder what the article Pielke Sr. briefly notes and that Anthony Watts wants us to believe is YAFNCSLR (Yet Another Final Nail in the Coffin of Sea-Level Rise) really says?
“Although the role of groundwater depletion in rising sea levels had already been acknowledged, it was not addressed in the most recent IPCC report due to a lack of reliable data to illustrate the severity of the situation. Our study confirms that groundwater depletion is, in fact, a significant factor.” (italics mine)
Hmm… They suggest that about a quarter of the sea-level rise can be attributed to groundwater extraction, which of course means that Pielke and Watts are conveniently forgetting the other three-quarters. Still, that’s 7.62928887 × 1013 gallons of groundwater drawn out every year! An interesting topic, but for Pielke and Watts it’s just a useful factoid that has served the purpose of distracting their readers.
It’s tiresome to repeat these criticisms, but why does Pielke Sr. have to keep making false representations about AGW?
“This is yet another paper that shows the interconnection among the components of the climate system. The attribution of a climate effect (in this case sea level rise) to just one cause (e.g. ocean warming and glacial melt due to positive radiative forcing from anthropogenic greenhouse gases) is too narrow of a perspective.”
Show me a scientific paper that claims that modern sea-level rise is entirely due to AGW! He’s dismissing an argument that was never made. (That’s called a straw-man.)
Wott's Up With That? 
Not sure the study stacks up. Previous work has shown about 1mm/yr decrease in sea level due to new dams and associated groundwater recharge.
http://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/briefs/gornitz_06/
Perhaps one should not tell poor Roger, about the fact that man the dam builder, since the fifties has held back 30mm of sea level rise as shown here in an article by the Independent News report of March 2008 as found here http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/dams-deep-trouble-797711.html. Oops!
Roger, truly has some very creative incoherent thoughts of late.
This also ignores the fact that these current minute sea level rises are not the worry of AGW nor the main problem with extraction. Considering the last few years of ice melt research, any ground water extraction element will be pittance in a few decades. Maybe they should focus the ground water research on…ya know…the possibilities of upcoming water scarcities. Nah, we need to make sure that everyone in the year 2050 knows at least 1 inch of that approaching ocean isn’t due to CO2 emissions!
You seem to make long explicit paragraphs as if you have 10,000,000 readers like Anthony does- but the Inconvienient Truth is, is that you don’t! Great work chump, maybe if you’ll get 10 views a day on your site, then maybe we’ll have a party to celebrate.
[If I “get 10 views a day”, why do you care what I do? Surely you popularity-obsessed denialists know how to root out website statistics. – Ben]
Howdy Snowlover
Just a memo to bring you into the here and now where in July, Anthony Watts boasted that “WUWT reached a new milestone with 50 million unique hits on the WordPress hit counter.”
“10,000,000 hits” you say, Snowlover? Could this be an indication that you actually don’t read the contents of articles published by Anthony Watts?
Perhaps I too contribute to Watts’ ‘hits’ since I often advise associates to access WUWT for their daily comedy fix though I was recently chastised by a group who politely advised they were seeking peer-reviewed papers – not beer-reviewed BS.
Seems also that you are unaware that Climate Progress had 54 million valid hits this year alone, up to July 31 – more than Watts is touting for his blog’s entire existence!
Cheers and thanks to Ben’s excellent contributions for we’re finally moving forward in the land of Down Under. Could that sobbing I hear be the wailings and clacking of dentures by losers, Watts, Plimer and Monckton?
[It’s funny that Anthony wants to engage in a measurement contest but doesn’t want the audience to know that he’s reporting centimeters while Joe Romm is reporting inches… – Ben]
I heard of a recent study that looked at the effects of dam/reservoir construction. The amount of water held back in reservoirs supposedly has had a measurable impact on sea-level rise (reducing it slightly). Don’t have the details, can’t vouch for the reliability of this… but might be worth looking into…
This is a trickier issue than it sounds. The amount pumped presumably has to be adjusted using the amount of recharge (somewhat recently, it was sea water) and the changing water table level. Presumably the authors have to show that there’s been no consistent trend in what happens to the residency time of evaporated sea water after it falls as rain.
[Now don’t start thinking! – Ben]