Washington Times Op-Ed: Sea level claims are a product of ‘scientific groupthink’ and fudge factors
Washington Times Op-Ed: Sea level claims are a product of ‘scientific groupthink’ and fudge factors
http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.com/2013/09/washington-times-op-ed-sea-level-claims.html
“Clearly, the official three millimeter sea level rise number is a product of scientific “group think.” Not only is this number far below what can be accurately measured, but all leading organizations support this nonsense number. Could it be that our leading scientists must endorse sea-level rise to support the ideology of man-made global warming?”
Sea level rise: Climate change and an ocean of natural variability Thursday, September 19, 2013 –
Climatism: A Mad, Mad, Mad World by Steve Goreham RELATED COLUMNS: A science-based rebuttal to global warming alarmismCHICAGO, September 19, 2013 — Sea level rise is the greatest disaster predicted by Climatism, the belief in catastrophic climate change. Today, leading scientific organizations support the idea that the ocean level is rising due to man-made emissions. Further, they claim to be able to measure ocean level to a high degree of accuracy. But a look at natural ocean variation shows that official sea level measurements are nonsense.The theory of man-made climate change warns that human emissions of greenhouse gases will raise global temperatures and melt Earth’s icecaps, causing rising oceans and flooding coastal cities. Former Vice President Al Gore’s best-selling book, An Inconvenient Truth, showed simulated pictures of flooding in South Florida, the Netherlands, Bangladesh, and other world locations. Dr. James Hansen predicted an ocean rise of 75 feet during the next 100 years.The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change stated in 2007, “Global average sea level rose at an average rate of 1.8 mm per year over 1961 to 2003. The rate was faster over 1993 to 2003: about 3.1 mm per year.” This translates to a 100-year rise of only 7 inches and 12 inches, far below the dire predictions of the climate alarmists.But three millimeters is about the thickness of two dimes. Can scientists really measure a change in sea level over the course of a year, averaged across the world, which is two dimes thick?Today, sea level is measured with satellite radar altimeters. Satellites bounce radar waves off the surface of the ocean to measure the distance. Scientific organizations, such as the Sea Level Research Group at the University of Colorado (CU), use the satellite data to estimate ocean rise. The CU team estimates current ocean rise at 3.2 millimeters per year.The organizations AVISO (Archiving, Validation, and Interpretation of Satellite Oceanographic …
New paper finds sea levels rising at less than 4 inches per century, with no acceleration: Study ‘finds global mean sea levels rose at only 1 mm/year, equivalent to less than 4 inches per century, over the 203 year period from 1807-2010’ — ‘The authors also find no evidence of acceleration of sea level rise, which indicates that there is no evidence of a human influence upon sea levels’
New paper finds sea levels rising at less than 4 inches per century, with no acceleration
http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.com/2013/09/new-paper-finds-sea-levels-rising-at.html
A new paper finds global mean sea levels rose at only 1 mm/year, equivalent to less than 4 inches per century, over the 203 year period from 1807-2010. The finding is remarkably similar to the sea level rise of 1.1-1.3 mm/yr found by the NOAA 2005-2012 Sea Level Budget, the only sea level budget which reconciles both satellite [altimeters & GRACE] & ARGO float data. The authors also find no evidence of acceleration of sea level rise, which indicates that there is no evidence of a human influence upon sea levels. In addition, the authors find that sea level rise is a localized rather than global phenomenon, with 61% of tide gauge records demonstrating no change in sea levels, 4% showing a decrease, and a minority of 35% showing a rise. This implies relative sea level change is primarily related to subsidence or post-glacial rebound [land height changes] rather than melting ice or steric sea level changes [thermal expansion from warming].
Excerpts:
If SLR is accelerating, sea levels should be nonstationary in first differences, but stationary in second differences. In none of the tide gauges and segments do the Dickey-Fuller and KPSS statistics support the accelerationist hypothesis. [i.e. there was no acceleration]
The substantive contribution of the paper is concerned with recent SLR in different parts of the world. Consensus estimates of recent GMSL rise are about 2mm/year. Our estimate is 1 mm/year. We suggest that the difference between the two estimates is induced by the widespread use of data reconstructions which inform the consensus estimates. There are two types of reconstruction. The first refers to reconstructed data for tide gauges in PSMSL prior to their year of installation. The second refers to locations where there are no tide gauges at all. Since the tide gauges currently in PSMSL are a quasi-random sample, our estimate of current GMSL rise is unbiased. If this is true, reconstruction bias is approximately 1mm/year.
Sea level rise is regional rather than global and is concentrated in the southern Baltic, the Ring of Fire, and the Atlantic coast of the US. By contrast the north-west Pacific coast and north-east coast of India are characterized by sea level fall. In the minority of locations where sea levels are rising the mean increase is about 4 mm/year and in some …
New York Times: Skeptical blogs force UN IPCC to ‘pull punches’!? ‘A Climate Alarm, Too Muted for Some’
…Climatologist Dr. Pat Michaels: ‘Greenland’s Disastrous Sea Level Rise (SLR) Is SOL — ‘A collection of recent papers published in the peer-reviewed scientific literature basically dispels all myths foretelling a large sea level rise this century coming from ice loss on Greenland. Recent research on Antarctica largely does the same’
Projections of a large sea-level rise this century depend on rapid ice loss from Greenland and/or Antarctica. Yes, as ocean waters warm, they expand, but this expansion-induced rise is pretty well constrained and limited to being about 6 inches plus or minus a couple of inches by century’s end. And the contribution from melting glaciers/ice in other parts of the world (not counting Greenland and Antarctica) is even smaller, maybe 2-4 inches. So that adds up to about 8-12 inches of sea level rise by the year 2100—not much different than that which has already occurred over the past century. This is hardly catastrophic.
So getting a good handle on the contributions from Antarctica and Greenland is essential if you want to develop a reasonable expectation for the future. Lacking a good handle leads to unreasonable projections.
Here is an example of the latter.
A breathless passage from the book version of Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth:
I flew over Greenland in 2005 and saw for myself the pools of meltwater covering large expanses on top of the ice. …These pools have always been known to occur, but the difference now is that there are many more of them covering a far larger area of ice. …In Greenland, as in the Antarctic Peninsula, this meltwater is now believed to keep sinking all the way down to the bottom, cutting deep crevasses and vertical tunnels that scientists call “moulins.”
When water reaches the bottom of the ice, it lubricates the surface of the bedrock and destabilizes the ice mass, raising fears that the ice mass will slide more quickly towards the ocean.
…If Greenland melted or broke up and slipped into the sea—or if half of Greenland and half of Antarctica melted or broke up and slipped into the sea, sea levels worldwide would increase by between 18 and 20 feet.
Tony Blair’s advisor, David King, is among the scientists who have been warning about potential consequences of large changes in these ice shelves. At a 2004 conference in Berlin, he said: THE MAPS OF THE WORLD WILL HAVE TO BE REDRAWN. [all caps in original]
Gore went on to include page after page of now and then maps of the world’s major cities after a sea level rise of 20 feet (of course, assuming no adaptive measures put in place).
But Gore’s disaster mechanism has been shown to be …
Bjorn Lomborg: ‘NY Times Gillis is wrong. Claims sea level rise 3-6ft. UN 2013: 0.95-2.69ft. His ‘lowest’ higher than UN highest’
…IPCC rejects Al Gore sea-level rise hysteria — worst-case 3 feet, not 20 feet
…Claim: Global warming made sea levels FALL in 2010 and 2011
…New paper finds sea levels rose naturally to 29 feet higher than the present during last interglacial — Published in Nature Geoscience
New paper finds sea levels rose naturally to 29 feet higher than the present during last interglacial
http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.com/2013/08/new-paper-finds-sea-levels-rose.html
A new paper published in Nature Geoscience finds “sea level rose to about 9 meters [29.5 feet] above the present at the end of the last interglacial.” The authors observe fossil coral reefs in Western Australia located 9.5 meters [31 feet] above the present sea level. Prior research has demonstrated Greenland temperatures were 8C higher than the present during the last interglacial. Obviously, this dramatic climate change was entirely driven by natural variability while CO2 remained “safe.” By comparison, the warming periods of the current interglacial, including the current warm period, are entirely within natural variability, not unprecedented, and not unusual. Furthermore, there is no evidence of a runaway greenhouse effect or runaway positive-feedbacks despite a climate that was naturally much warmer during the last interglacial.
Top two lines show sea levels during the last interglacial were about 9 meters higher than the present [bottom 4 lines]
Ice sheet collapse following a prolonged period of stable sea level during the last interglacial
Michael J. O’Leary, Paul J. Hearty, William G. Thompson, Maureen E. Raymo, Jerry X. Mitrovica & Jody M. Webster
Nature Geoscience (2013) doi:10.1038/ngeo1890
Published online 28 July 2013Abstract: During the last interglacial period, 127–116 kyr ago, global mean sea level reached a peak of 5–9 m above present-day sea level. However, the exact timing and magnitude of ice sheet collapse that contributed to the sea-level highstand is unclear. Here we explore this timing using stratigraphic and geomorphic mapping and uranium-series geochronology of fossil coral reefs and geophysical modelling of sea-level records from Western Australia. We show that between 127 and 119 kyr ago, eustatic sea level remained relatively stable at about 3–4 m above present sea level. However, stratigraphically younger fossil corals with U-series ages of 118.1±1.4 kyr are observed at elevations of up to 9.5 m above present mean sea level. Accounting for glacial isostatic adjustment and localized tectonics, we conclude that eustatic sea level rose to about 9 m above present at the end of the last interglacial. We suggest that in the last few thousand years of the interglacial, a critical ice sheet stability threshold was crossed, resulting in the catastrophic collapse of polar ice sheets and substantial sea-level rise.…
Sea Level Rose Three Times Faster From 1930 To 1948: ‘According to the most bloated alarmist numbers, sea level is currently rising 3 mm/year. But from 1930 to 1948, sea level rose almost 9 mm/ year’
Sea Level Rose Three Times Faster From 1930 To 1948
http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2013/08/06/sea-level-rose-three-times-faster-from-1930-to-1948
According to the most bloated alarmist numbers, sea level is currently rising 3 mm/year. But from 1930 to 1948, sea level rose almost 9 mm/ year. New Scientist – Google Books Hansen says that temperatures were much colder then, during that time when glaciers were melting three times faster than they are now. Disclaimer : If […]…