Sea level rise was less than thought (skeptics were right)

Skeptics, and particularly Nils-Axel Mörner have been saying that sea level rise, as recorded by tide gauges has been much slower than widely advertised. They’ve also pointed out how the rates of sea-level rise have either stayed the same or slowed down. There’s been no sign of the acceleration needed for the wildly speculative hypothesis that your SUV, and China’s coal plants are warming the ocean.

This week a new Nature paper (Hay et al) shows the skeptics were right — but did that view make it to any news broadcast?

Watch the sea-level scare mutate

Even in The Australian the spin from the propaganda machine gets a running, and the previous slow rise is used to pump the scare that the modern “acceleration” is even scarier. What the Australian (and selected sea level “experts”) don’t mention is that the tide-gauges don’t show any acceleration, and nor did the raw recordings from satellites. The 3mm rising sea claims apparently come from satellites that were calibrated to one subsiding tide gauge in Hong Kong.

It’s cherry picking par excellence. We might finally accept tide gauges up to 1990, but after that the tide gauges don’t count — bring in the “adjusted” satellites.

[The Australian] SEA levels increased at a slower rate last century than previously thought, according to new ­research. A fresh analysis of tide-gauge records, published in the journal Nature, found that the sea level rose by 1.2mm a year from 1901 to 1990, compared with earlier estimates of between 1.6mm and 1.9mm a year. Researchers said this meant the acceleration in sea-level rise to 3mm a year over the past two decades was greater than previously thought.

REFERENCES

Michael Beenstock, Daniel Felsenstein,*Eyal Frank & Yaniv Reingewertz, (2014) Tide gauge location and the measurement of global sea level rise, Environmental and Ecological Statistics, May 2014 [Abstract]

Cazenave, A., Dieng, H., Meyssignac, B., von Schuckmann, K., Decharme. B., & Etienne Berthier (2014) The rate of sea-level rise, Nature Climate Change | Letter [Abstract] doi:10.1038/nclimate2159

and many more… see these posts, especially the first three here.

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