A key fact is that the basic honest (one hopes and strives for) of the scientific endeavor is sometimes going to come out with odd sequences of events like this. They had data, they had an analysis, they had results. More than once. the idea that results from within an overlapping team can contradict one another is more likely when the results are close, as is the case here. You don’t “sign on” to a paper because it fits or does not fit other findings. Etc.

You’re tired? I’d love to grab you by the scruff of the neck, drag you to a blackboard, and force you to write 100 times: “THE CONSENSUS ON GLOBAL WARMING IS NOT BASED ON COMPUTER MODELS.”

That still wouldn’t equal the number of times I’ve heard this drivel from Denialists.

The starting date for both papers was 1992. The Shepherd et al paper included European Remote-Sensing (ERS-1 and ERS-2), which spanned from May 1992 to September 2010. The Zwally et al 2015 paper also included those data, but only included data from 1992 up to 2001. The Shepherd et al 2012 paper also included Envisat data, the Zwally et al paper did not. Both studies included ICESat data from 2003 to 2008. The Shepherd et al study also included GRACE data. So the Shepherd ensemble of data sets was definitely more inclusive, both in terms of data and the time interval covered.

The Shepherd et al study found that Antarctica as a whole, lost 1350 ± 1010 Gt of ice, whereas Zwally et al show an average gain of 82 ± 25 Gt per year from ICESat data (2003-2008), and an average gain of 112 ± 61 Gt per year from ERS data. The Shepherd et al interpretation of the data show an annual contribution to SLR from Antarctica from 1992 to 2011, but the Zwally et al interpretation of the data, which is a subset of the Shepherd data set ensemble, show an annual reduction in sea level from Antarctica from 1992 to 2008.

During the last interglacial (Eemian ~130 – 115ka BP) mean sea level peaked at >6m above present values. The Eemian was, on average, 1 – 2C warmer than the present.

1/ Why was sea level >6m higher than the present?

2/ Where did the water come from?

http://rightwingnews.com/climate-change/take-that-global-alarmists-according-to-a-nasa-study-antarctica-is-growing-not-shrinking/

The first two sentences: “NASA is having to eat its own words. They’ve come up with satellite data that shows the arctic ice is growing, not shrinking.”

Heh. I don’t recall Arctic ice being mentioned in the study. No where is the phrase “global alarmists” defined.

John Russell: “… accepting with open arms every new study they think* supports their denial cause and ….”

Denialists also love to insist computer models are utterly worthless, always wrong, and unreliable… until they discover a computer model that they believe supports their politics.