Gavin's borehole logic

How can one argue sea level rise is accelerating without at least noting the recent decline. Why would anyone post a topic about accelerating sea level rise when it is actually falling now. Only if one wanted to keep people mis-informed.
The Envisat, Jason 1 and Jason 2 satellites are all showing a substantial decline in sea level over the past 18 months and Envisat even has no sea level increase over the last 7 years.
http://www.aviso.oceanobs.com/fileadmin/images/news/indic/msl/MSL_Serie_ALL_Global_IB_RWT_NoGIA_Adjust.png
You can’t have an increasing acceleration in the trend when the data is falling substantially and it obviously does not show an acceleration.
That is propaganda-astroturf-type-science versus realclimate science.
One poster also linked to the actual global sea level gauge site …
http://tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/sltrends/sltrends.html
… which someone named “Gavin” also pointed me to on another board discussing this exact same topic some time ago. I had to tear him down afterward and say it was ridiculous to point to a website which contains nothing but data showing no acceleration in sea level anywhere going back to 1880 and earlier. Did he think I wouldn’t actually look. Well, I think that is what RealClimate is all about. You are not supposed to look at the actual evidence, just accept the insinuation given.

Wucash questions the statement that “I bet they know that the sea level rise rate is going down, and fast”, and adds that “From what I’ve seen so far the sea level rise seems to be leveling off.” The two statements are actually compatible. Several have commented on this, but to add to their comments: the first statement means that the *slope* is lowering, i.e. the first derivative. If the sea level rise rate went to zero, this would mean the sea level was unchanging = leveling off. (And if the rise rate went below zero, it would mean the sea level was dropping.)
Reminds me of a common statement that someone “took off at a high rate of speed.” That should mean that the someone was accelerating, although it’s usually used to mean they’re speeding (and may not be continuing to accelerate at all). Confusing language, this English.

I’ve given up on Gavin. He’s a lost cause.
I send comments now just to annoy him.
I did notice that while he was away, that one of his ‘tools’
let me leave a comment on the post about Willie Soon.
I also noticed that soon after that, comments to the post were disabled.
Funny stuff.

Wucash Looking at the whole of sea level change over the recent past, you cannot say that the last 4 years is significant. That’s the kind of feeling I sometimes get reading these articles, a certain amount of clutching at straws. There is no real reason as of yet to believe that the sea level won’t continue to rise, the change in increase rate also doesn’t matter if you look at the long term.
I didn’t say it was significant. I said that you were confusing “sea level rise rate” with “sea level.” It’s possible I misunderstood you, though.

Ian, your numbers are very telling. I would expect the early trends, since when first started there would be a lot of good debate, before the censorship kicked in. But the latter is the most telling. Many people (using myself as an example) do not bother to post on a site that is heavily censored, so the scores should be improving. However, they seem to be getting worse (and no I have not returned to the site to get censored). That would indicate that one of 2 things are occurring – 1: more people are getting interested in the subject (fresh blood to delete), or – 2: more people are starting to question the inconsistencies. Either way, it does not bode well for the alarmist dogma.

> > The “10 or 11%” number is incorrect. Excluding spam, WUWT moderators
> snip well under 1% of comments […]
I understand that the Tips & Notes Page accounts for a lot of deleted comments (perhaps 1000 per month), since it’s cleared on a regular basis. I’m now doing a similar analysis of WUWT, at Anthony’s request, but do any of you mods know exactly when the Tips & Notes Page was created, so I can make take some account of T&N deletions? Thanks.
[Reply: I recommend asking Anthony that question in the Tips & Notes page, which he reads regularly. Also, there are regular requests from readers to delete the T&N comments when they become too numerous, and slow down the page loading. Deleting old T&N comments to speed up loading should not be conflated with the deliberate censoring of comments the way RealClimate and other blogs delete opposing points of view. ~dbs, mod.]

Richard, here’s a little more support for my theory: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2007/07/04/the-climatic-blog-war-of-2007/
A blog war like that means that lots of foot soldiers go to realclimate, start reading their one-sided post on surface stations, and fire off an angry response. Gavin couldn’t do much except keep hitting the delete key. In fact, being pressed for time, he probably just deleted everyone but posters that he recognizes like Mosher. Gavin, especially at that point, was maintaining the mantra that GAT science is settled, and that any deviations from the GISStemp results would be minor (measurement errors would have a rough balance of positive and negative).

If Realclimate deletes a higher percentage of posts than WUWT, perhaps it is because the site is more concerned with having a thoughtful discussion on scientific issues instead of countless posts containing theories involving communists trying to take over the world.