Request for Assistance In Assessing an Important Sea Level Study

John, the very first thing is establish that the land is not sinking or eroding………

Thanks for your name Mr. Droz. I will take steps to ensure your views are not represented in the upcoming debate.

John seems to say he is an old fashioned scientist who relies on empirical evidence, but then says “The brief story is that North Carolina is attempting to be the first state in the nation to impose rather comprehensive and consequential (i.e. expensive) rules and regulations on its coastal communities. This is based on projected substantially increased sea levels, due to the assumed effects of AGW.
But it’s worse than that. The basis for these changes is a 2010 NC Sea Level Assessment Report“, which gives the impression that he has “done an alarmist” i.e. decided on the conclusion and is now working out how to adjust the data.
Perhaps my initial read through is wrong, but let’s gather data first and then talk about the conclusion. If the conclusion agrees with the IPCC then so be it.
/Mango

I have read phd. written papers of sea level heights during the Aurginacian Oscillation time period. They stated the sea levels were 120 feet above what they are today in Northern Europe. What imposition of increased tax levels or other ‘solutions’ are going to change a natural process? Do you need more research money? Get it from Al Gore. He has been able to fleece honest people for a while now. He has perfected the art.

We compiled a list of multiple sea-level studies, including a variety of predictions. The list can be found here:
http://www.c3headlines.com/2010/11/memo-to-incoming-republicans-climate-scientists-are-full-of-sea-lies-crazy-ass-predicitions.html
At the bottom of the posting are source url’s for each study. Hope this helps.
C3

The Earth turns, and things change, beyond any control of humans. Wealthy people build grand houses on oceans edges, subject to severe erosion, then expect much less wealthy taxpayers to pay for projects to prevent and reverse the effects of erosion.
It is no more than a scam that CO2 has any signifiicant effect on temperature or climate.
I do know that back in the 1

I’d start with the satellite record at http://sealevel.colorado.edu/.
It has the advantage, I think, of eliminating land subsidence issues. Also note that, contrary to predictions of accelerating sea level rise, the overall average rate since satellites began recording has declined from 3.2 mm per year to 3.1 mm per year. Note also that almost no readings have been recorded above the 3.1 mm trend line since the beginning of 2010.

A bunch of comments. First, sea level has been rising since the LIA. Temperatures have been rising since the LIA. That’s the “correlation” that’s shown. It would have been nice if they’d color coded their dots to show time rather than having them all be red. You get no sense from their figure of whether or not the relationship between T and dH seems to be coherently changing with time or not. For example, there used to be more surface area with glaciers during the LIA, so one might expect that sea level would be more sensitive to T back then. Second, actual sea level measurements from satellite altimetry seem to show a recent slowdown in sea level rise rather than an acceleration. This is consistent with measurements from the recent Argos network. There is the built in assumption in the above work that temperatures will continue to rise following IPCC scenarios and therefore sea level rise should accelerate if anything. Third, any change in sea level would not be uniform globally. NC is on the shelf side of the Gulf Stream and would be influenced by changes in Gulf Stream transport among other things. Are there any GPS grounded sea level measurements along the NC coast? I think NOAA might have done some surveying for various projects. If the surveys have been repeated, which should be likely, then you can separate actual sea level change from changes in the elevation of the coast. The rates at which the coast is rising or sinking should be relatively constant as long as there’s been no significant ground water depletion or oil extraction from pumping. So you could potentially come up with measurements of NC sea level change to use. Local use of altimetry is limited by ground track resolution (and shifting by +/- 1 km over which the geoid can vary significantly) plus land contamination when the satellite is too close to shore.
The biggest assumption, is the high assumed sensitivity of the atmosphere to CO2. Without this assumption, the future projected temperature rises don’t happen and of course the resulting sea level rises don’t happen either. There are a number of threads about this which have appeared on WUWT from time to time.
Hope this helps.

I would suggest that a professional chemical engineer, one who knows about the specific heat capacity of gases, be consulted as to the effects CO2 has on atmospheric temperature.
I know that back in the 1940s, 90 bushels of corn per acre was considered to be a bumper crop, and that 60 bushels per acre was a good crop. As a result of the increased CO2 levels since then, 140 bushels of corn per acre is common as of now.
As for the measurement of sea levels, the problem is that there is no fixed benchmark from which to measure diffences in elevation.

Rahmstorf’s forecast is just a statistical extrapolation of past trends, and its reception in scientific circles (including those most enthusiastic about predictions of rapid sea level rise) was not of wholehearted approval. Most people (including Rahmstorf) have not insisted with that exercise.
IPCC projections are based on a variety of sources and models and are on the whole more credible, although quite uncertain in a number of respects.
Recent work on the various aspects of the matter have not produced projections very different from IPCC scenarios. If anything, observed sea level rise as measured from satellites appears to have decelerated in the 2000s (especially since 2003) relative to the years before (since satellite measurements started in late 1992). At any rate, satellite measurements give a trend of about 30cm per century for the world average.
On the other hand, all this refers to eustatic or equilibrium average sea level, not to the relative level of sea water relative to the features of a particular coast, which is also affected by land uplifting or subsidence, and by deposition or removal of sediment.