Although many
climate models predict that rising CO2 levels should cause accelerated sea
level rise, sea level measurements show that, thus far, in response to roughly 3/4 century
of substantial anthropogenically-driven CO2 increases, there has been no
detectable acceleration in the rate of sea level rise. In fact, some studies have detected small
a deceleration (slowing). Here are some papers which have
reported the lack of acceleration in rate of sea level rise (h/t to Alberto
Boretti, Robert Dean & Doug Lord):
Douglas B (1992).
Global Sea Level Acceleration. J. Geophysical Research, Vol. 97, No. C8, pp. 12,699-12,706, 1992.
doi:10.1029/92JC01133
Holgate SJ
(2007). On the decadal rates of sea level change during the twentieth
century. Geophysical Research Letters. 34, L01602. doi:10.1029/2006GL028492.
(Discussion here.)
Woodworth P, et al (2009).
Evidence for the accelerations of sea level on multi-decade and century timescales.
International Journal of Climatology, Volume 29, Issue 6, pages 777-789, May 2009.
doi:10.1002/joc.1771
Wenzel M and Schröter J (2010). Reconstruction of regional mean
sea level anomalies from tide gauges using neural networks. Journal
of Geophysical Research - Oceans. 115:C08013.
Mörner N-A (2010a). Sea level changes in Bangladesh
new observational facts. (Reprinted here.) Energy and Environment. 21(3):235-249.
Mörner N-A (2010b). Some problems in the
reconstruction of mean sea level and its changes with time.
Quaternary International. 221(1-2):3-8.
Mörner N-A (2010c). There Is No Alarming Sea Level
Rise! 21st Century Science & Technology. Fall 2010:7-17.
Houston
JR and Dean RG (2011a). Sea-Level Acceleration Based on U.S. Tide
Gauges and Extensions of Previous Global-Gauge Analyses. Journal of
Coastal Research. 27:409-417. doi:10.2112/JCOASTRES-D-10-00157.1
Houston
JR and Dean RG (2011b). J. R. Houston and R. G. Dean (2011) Reply to: Rahmstorf, S. and Vermeer, M., 2011. Discussion of: Houston, J.R. and
Dean, R.G., 2011. Sea-Level Acceleration Based on U.S. Tide
Gauges and Extensions of Previous Global-Gauge Analyses.
Journal of Coastal Research. Volume 27, Issue 4: pp. 788-790.
doi:10.2112/JCOASTRES-D-11A-00008.1
Watson
PJ (2011). Is There Evidence Yet of
Acceleration in Mean Sea Level Rise around Mainland Australia? Journal
of Coastal Research. 27:368-377.
Mörner N-A, (2011a). Setting the frames of
expected future sea level changes by exploring past geological sea
level records. Chapter 6 of book, D Easterbrook, Evidence-Based
Climate Science, 2011 Elsevier B.V. ISBN: 978-0-12-385956-3.
Mörner N-A, (2011b). The Maldives:
A measure of sea level changes and sea level ethics. Chapter 7 of book, D
Easterbrook, Evidence-Based Climate Science, 2011 Elsevier B.V. ISBN:
978-0-12-385956-3.
Boretti A (2012a). Short Term Comparison of
Climate Model Predictions and Satellite Altimeter Measurements of Sea
Levels. Coastal Engineering, 60, pp. 319-322. doi:10.1016/j.coastaleng.2011.10.005.
(Also, an article
about this paper.)
Boretti A (2012b). Is there any support in the
long term tide gauge data to the claims that parts of Sydney will be swamped by rising
sea levels? Coastal Engineering, 64, pp. 161-167.
doi:10.1016/j.coastaleng.2012.01.006.
Hughes W (2012),
Continued existence of Maori canals near Blenheim
in New Zealand indicates a stable relative sea level over 200
years. [Internet].
Burton D
(2012). Comments on “Assessing future risk: quantifying the effects of
sea level rise on storm surge risk for the southern shores of Long Island,
New York,” by Shepard, et al. Natural
Hazards. doi:10.1007/s11069-012-0159-8.
Lüning
S and Vahrenholt F (2012). Fallstudien aus aller Welt belegen: Keine Beschleunigung des Meeresspiegelanstiegs
während der letzten 30 Jahre. (Case
studies from around the world: no evidence of accelerating sea level rise
over the last 30 years - English
translation.)
Schmith T, et al (2012),
Statistical analysis of global surface temperature and sea level using cointegration methods.
Journal of Climate, 2012, American Meteorological Society. doi:10.1175/JCLI-D-11-00598.1
(or draft)
Beenstock, Reingewertz & Paldor (2012).
Polynomial cointegration tests of anthropogenic impact on global warming,
Earth Syst Dynam, 3, 173-188, 2012.
(Earlier draft here,
and discussion here.)
Note: this paper is not about sea-level, but it is included in this list because it provides
some context for Beenstock (2014).
doi:10.5194/esd-3-173-2012. ↑
Mörner N-A and
Parker A (2013). Present-to-future sea level changes: The Australian case,
Environmental Science, An Indian Journal, ESAIJ, 8(2), 2013 [43-51]
Scafetta, N (2013a).
Discussion on common errors in analyzing sea level accelerations, solar trends and global warming,
Pattern Recognition in Physics. 1, 37-57, 2013.
doi:10.5194/prp-1-37-2013.
Gregory, White, Church, et al (2013).
Twentieth-Century Global-Mean Sea Level Rise: Is the Whole Greater than the Sum of the Parts?
American Meteorological Society , Volume 26 Issue 13 (July 2013).
(See abstract: “...a
relationship between global climate change and the rate of [Global Mean
Sea Level Rise]... is weak or absent during the twentieth century.”)
doi:10.1175/JCLI-D-12-00319.1.
Scafetta N (2014).
Multi-scale dynamical analysis (MSDA) of sea level records versus PDO, AMO, and NAO indexes. Climate Dynamics,
43:175-192. doi:10.1007/s00382-013-1771-3.
(Preprint here.)
Kemp et al (2015).
Relative sea-level change in Connecticut (USA) during the last 2200 yrs, Earth and Planetary Science Letters,
Volume 428, 15 Oct. 2015, Pages 217-229. doi:10.1016/j.epsl.2015.07.034.
Excerpt from the abstract: "Change point analysis identified that modern rates of rise in Connecticut began at 1850-1886CE.
This timing is synchronous with changes recorded at other sites on the U.S. Atlantic coast and is likely the local expression
of a global sea-level change."
Note: Among the most extreme predictions of accelerated
sea level rise are those from German climatologist
Stefan Rahmstorf.
How long should an LTT† sea level record be?
Multidecadal oscillations in regional sea levels mean that a minimum of 50-60 years
of sea level data is required to establish a robust
†Long Term Trend (LTT). See:
Schlesinger, M. & Ramankutty, N. (1994), An oscillation in the global climate system of period 65-70 years.
Nature, Vol. 367, pp. 723-726 (24 February 1994),
doi:10.1038/367723a0
(p.1 is here)
Douglas, B. (1995). Global sea level change: Determination and interpretation.
Reviews of Geophysics 33(S1): doi:10.1029/95RG00355. issn: 8755-1209.
Douglas B (1997).
Global Sea Rise: a Redetermination, Surveys in Geophysics,
Vol. 18, No. 2-3 (1997), 279-292,
doi:10.1023/A:1006544227856.
Excerpt: "It is well established that sea level trends obtained from tide gauge records shorter than
about 50-60 years are corrupted by interdecadal sea level variation..."
Mitchell W, Chittleborough J,
Ronai B, and Lennon G W (2000), Sea
Level Rise in Australia and the Pacific, in the Proceedings of the Pacific Islands Conference on Climate
Change, Climate Variability and Sea Level Rise, Australian National Tidal Facility (NTF), 3-7 April 2000.
(See p.2; excerpt: "...it is scientifically unreasonable to consider
historic records less than several decades to yield realistic estimates of sea level trends.")
Klyashtorin, L. (2001), UN FAO Fisheries Technical Paper 410: Climate Change and Long-Term Fluctuations
of Commercial Catches - The Possibility of Forecasting,
ISBN 92‑5‑104695‑6, ISSN 0429‑9345, 86 pp.
(see p. 5)
Jevrejeva, S., J. C. Moore, A. Grinsted, and P. L. Woodworth (2008), Recent global sea level
acceleration started over 200 years ago? Geophys. Res. Lett., 35, L08715, doi:10.1029/2008GL033611 (see p. 3).
Zervas, C. (2009), NOAA Technical Report NOS CO-OPS 053,
Sea Level Variations of the United States, 1854 - 2006 (see p. xiii).
This report is also a great resource with in-depth information about determination of sea-level trends from
tide gauge measurement records.
Knudsen,
N.F., et al (2011), Tracking the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation through the last 8,000 years.
Nature Communications 2, Article number: 178 (2011),doi: 10.1038/ncomms1186.
Scafetta, N. (2012), "...an interval of just 30 years is the worst that can be chosen because it
is half 60-year cycle, and it happened that for SLR the period 1975-2005 had this 60-year cycle during its
warming phase (the temperature warming phase was about 1970-2000). So, if you fit the last 30-40 years you
get an overestimation of the real trend." [private communication]
Chambers, D., Merrifield, M.A., and Nerem, R.S. (2012). Is there a 60-year oscillation in global
mean sea level? Geophys. Res. Lett., doi:10.1029/2012GL052885
(and two
related articles)
Baart, F., et al (2012).
The Effect of the 18.6-Year Lunar Nodal Cycle on Regional Sea-Level Rise Estimates.
Journal of Coastal Research Volume 28, Issue 2: pp. 511-516.
doi: 10.2112/JCOASTRES-D-11-00169.1.
Woodworth, P.L. (2012).
A Note on the Nodal Tide in Sea Level Records. Journal of Coastal Research Volume 28, Issue 2: pp. 316-323.
doi: 10.2112/JCOASTRES-D-11A-00023.1.
Scafetta, N (2013b).
Discussion on climate oscillations: CMIP5 general circulation models versus a semi-empirical harmonic model based on astronomical cycles.
Earth-Science Reviews. 126, 321-357. (pdf)
doi:10.1016/j.earscirev.2013.08.008.
Scafetta, N (2013c).
Solar and planetary oscillation control on climate change: hind-cast, forecast and a comparison with the CMIP5 GCMs.
Energy & Environment. 24(3-4), 455-496. (pdf)
doi:10.1260/0958-305X.24.3-4.455.
IPCC AR5 Chapter 3 (2013), Rhein, M., et al:
Observations: Ocean. In: Climate Change 2013: The Physical Science Basis. Contribution of Working Group I to the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change. Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1017/CBO9781107415324.010.
Excerpt (3.7.4): "A long time-scale is needed
because significant multi-decadal variability appears in numerous tide gauge records during the 20th century.
The multidecadal variability is marked by an increasing trend starting in 1910-1920, a downward trend (i.e., leveling of sea level if a
long-term trend is not removed) starting around 1950, and an increasing trend starting around 1980."
Parker, A (2014).
Minimum 60 years of recording are needed to compute the sea level rate of rise in the Western South Pacific.
Nonlinear Engineering, ISSN (Online) 2192-8010, ISSN (Print) 2192-8029, doi:10.1515/nleng-2013-0011.
Also,
Alan Cheetham has an informative web page about
various apparent climate-related cycles of approx. 55 to 65 years duration.
Science
“What
passes for science includes opinion, arguments-from-authority, dramatic press releases, and fuzzy notions of consensus generated by preselected groups. This is not science.”Climatologist John Christy, Sept. 20, 2012
What a mess!
The Scientific Method is
what distinguishes “science” from other types of study. It is an algorithm or process
for investigating the physical world. Here's how it is supposed to work, in seven steps:↑
The scientist observes the available data.
He or she formulates a hypothesis (or perhaps several plausible
tentative hypotheses) to explain the observations.
He derives testable predictions from the hypothesis.
He devises experiments or observations to test the predictions.
He does the experiments or makes the observations.
If the test results match the predictions, he cries “eureka!” and
publishes. He can now properly call his hypothesis a scientific theory or theoretical model.
He publishes it along with his data and detailed calculations, so that other
scientists can reproduce and verify his work.
If
the test results fail to match the predictions, the hypothesis is said to be
“falsified,” so he discards or revises it and starts over at step 2,
with the new observations or experimental results added to the body of available data.
Step 7 is a test
of a scientist's integrity. If, instead of discarding or revising falsified
theories or models, a disappointed researcher revises the data, to make it
fit his predictions, or if he skips testing his hypothesis altogether, he's no scientist worthy of the name.
“It doesn't matter how beautiful your theory is, it doesn't matter how smart you are.
If it disagrees with experiment [or nature, or experience, or observation], it's wrong.
In that simple statement is the key to science.” - Richard Feynman (1964)
Unfortunately, much of what
passes for “science” these days fails that test. Here is some recommended reading:
Dickersin K, et al (1987)
found that pharmaceutical trials with positive results were more likely to be published
than trials with negative results. That's just one example of a much broader “publication
bias” problem: when researchers find the results they're hoping for, they publish;
otherwise, they often don't. For example, when climatologists Church & White examined
three sets of tide-gauge records of sea-level measurements for evidence of acceleration
(2006, 2009 & 2011), they found evidence of slight post-1900 acceleration in two of
them (2006
& 2011),
but slight deceleration in the third (2009).
Guess which one did not have a paper published about it?
Scientific method: Statistical errors,
Regina Nuzzo, Nature Vol. 506, pp. 150-152 (13 February 2014), doi:10.1038/506150a.
"P values, the 'gold standard' of statistical validity, are not as reliable as many scientists assume."
Offline: What is medicine's 5 sigma?
by Richard Horton, The Lancet, Volume 385, No. 9976, p.1380, 11 April 2015.
doi:10.1016/S0140-6736(15)60696-1.
“Much of the scientific literature, perhaps half, may simply be untrue.
Afflicted by studies with small sample sizes, tiny effects, invalid exploratory
analyses, and flagrant conflicts of interest, together with an obsession for
pursuing fashionable trends of dubious importance, science has taken a turn
towards darkness.”
Let's
just try that again, The Economist, 6 February 2016.
“Reproducibility should be at science's heart. It isn't. But that may soon change.”
Cleaning up bad science, The National, CBC News, April 18, 2016 (13:20
news documentary). “Beall's List” of apparently predatory scholarly journals
and publishers (mentioned in the documentary) is here:
https://scholarlyoa.com/publishers/
RetractionWatch.com has a seemingly endless stream
of cautionary tales about science gone wrong.
Australians
Jo Diong and Marty Héroux have created (in 2016) a useful web site called
ScientificallySound.org, with resources
for scientists interested in doing scientifically sound research.
“When it comes to scientific truths, even in top journals like Science and Nature, the
more wrong it is, the more it gets cited. Even after other researchers have failed to repeat it, and been published saying
so, the citations dont slow down. Almost 9 out of 10 of the new citations keep citing it as if it were still correct.
Who said science was self-correcting?
“It's so bad that the junkier articles in Nature and Science that couldn't be replicated were cited 300 times
as often as the more boring papers that could be replicated. In other words, the supposedly best two science journals, and
the industry that reads them, have become a filter for eye-candy-science-junk.
“And it was all so predictable — with the fixation on ‘counting citations’ as an inane substitute for analysis:
we got what we didn't think about. The drive to get citations and media headlines means the modern industry of science has
become a filter to amplify sensationalism, not science. ...
The more interesting and surprising a science paper is, the more it is likely to be published and cited.
[But] the more likely it is that no one will be able to replicate the results [and it] is often political
activism.”
“The
most elementary and valuable statement in science, the beginning of wisdom, is, 'I do not know.'”Jack B. Sowards (screenwriter), voiced by Lt Cdr Data (Brent Spiner).
U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public
Works Republican Staff has issued several very
informative Reports on Climate Change, the Climategate scandal, and related topics.
Memorandum
submitted by the Institute of Physics to the UK Parliament. The IOP
concluded that the Climategate emails "provide prima facie evidence of
determined and co-ordinated refusals to comply with honourable scientific
traditions and freedom of information law."
GAO Report: Climate Monitoring - NOAA Can
Improve Management of the U.S. Historical Climatology Network,GAO-11-800,
Aug. 2011 (or here)
Why has there been no global warming for the past decade?
- a lecture by Princeton Prof. Wm Happer at UNC, Chapel Hill, NC, Sept. 8, 2014, about the physics of atmospheric
greenhouse warming from carbon dioxide (slides, audio recording & supplemental information).
Measurement of sea-level by satellite altimetry is unreliable. Physicist Willie Soon explains the problems
starting at 17:37 in this very informative
hour-long lecture.
The "97% consensus" myth: Do 97% of experts really agree with the IPCC
that human CO2 emissions are causing dangerous global warming? (Not even close!)
Pierre Gosselin at the
“No Tricks Zone” blog, and Kenneth Richard, have compiled lists totaling
1526 peer-reviewed “skeptical” climate papers published in
2014,
2015,
2016 & 2017
(parts 1,
2 &
3), plus many in 2018
(parts 1,
2 &
3).
For information on the 2010-2012 North Carolina Sea-Level
Rise political fight, see the sealevel.info Resources page.
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