Guest post by David Archibald
The background to this is that, in 2009, evil environmentalists in the New South Wales Government made a regulation that councils in that state would have to base their building permits on an expected sea level rise of 900 mm by 2100. This had the effect of wiping billions of dollars off the value of coastal properties, as well as ruining peoples’ lives etc. By comparison, sea level rose 200 mm in the 20th Century.
The NSW Govt. regulation was gleefully enforced by Lake Macquarie Council to the detriment of its residents. Lake Macquarie is 140 km north of Sydney. In response, a local property developer, Mr Jeff McCloy, organised a public meeting at which Professor Ian Plimer, Professor Bob Carter and myself spoke. 400 people attended on four days’ notice. The subject of the public meeting was sea level rise.
Before we go on to the oceans, let’s start with a smaller body of water first – Lake Victoria in East Africa. It was known back in the 1920s that the level of Lake Victoria went up and down with the solar cycle. This is the data on the level of Lake Victoria from 1896 to 2005:
The relationship with solar activity broke down in the 1930’s and resumed in the 1970’s. There was also a very rapid rise in the 1960’s. Taking out the period of the solar relationship breakdown and detrending the data from 1968, this is what the relationship looks like (data courtesy of Dr Peter Mason):
There is no doubt about the relationship between solar activity and the level of Lake Victoria, which also means that East Africa has about 30 years of drought ahead of it based on what is going to happen to solar activity.
Some may remember this post from 2009: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/04/07/archibald-on-sea-level-rise-and-solar-cycles/
which contained this graph:
That has now been updated as:
The good correlation between sea level rise and solar activity is evident. What is very interesting is that during four solar minima over the 20th Century, sea level fell during those minima. That means that during prolonged low solar activity, sea level can be expected to continue falling. That relationship is quantified in this graph:
Using the period of best fit from 1948 to 1987, the relationship between solar activity and sea level is found to be 0.045 mm per unit of sunspot number. The threshold between rising and falling seal level is a sunspot amplitude of 40. Below 40, sea level falls. Above that, it rises. We can now combine that with Livingston and Penn’s estimate of Solar Cycle 25 amplitude of 7 to derive this graph of seal level rise from 1870 with a projection to 2040:
Sea level has a few more mm of rise to the maximum of Solar Cycle 24 in 2013 and then will fall 40 mm to 2040 taking us back to levels of the early 1990s.
Now back to the subject of Lake Macquarie: the nearest high quality sea level data is from Fort Denison in Sydney Harbour. This is the record from 1915 to 2009:
The rise over the 20th Century has been slight, so slight that it can be compared to human hair which on average is 0.1 mm thick. The rise has been an average of 5 human hair widths per annum, with most of that over 60 years ago. Let’s compare that with what the NSW Govt and Lake Macquarie Council are projecting for the 21st Century:
I have called sea level rise the second last refuge of the global warming scoundrel, with ocean acidification being the last refuge. It no longer provides any refuge now that the relationship with solar activity has been quantified.
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Based on the last chart it looks like another hockey stick to me.
If you have a few decades to wait for a return on your investment, you may want to buy up some of that land whose value has been artificially deflated by these govt. regulations. If the sea level does not rise, the govt. will eventually have to admit they’re wrong, and change the law, at which time the land will increase in value.
The “dying coral reefs” scare has just been knocked on the head, “warming over past 100 years has been good for coral reefs – study finds”
http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/more-news/century-of-ocean-warming-good-for-corals-research-shows/story-fn7x8me2-1226261714210
Somebody took the time to actually gather empirical evidence and “whaddayaknow” NO CAGW effect on reefs
Yes. Well. The Lake Macquarie Council has looked at the Sun and found it to be irrelevant.
One wonders if any Council members or their associates have been kind enough to help out the soon-to-be victims by purchasing their properties at a discount, knowing how worthless they will most certainly be. Such acts of supreme generosity and altruism are well known among the “climate concerned community.” They are very special, and very caring.
I like the thrust of the article.
However, I wish that scientists on either side of the debate would not use expressions like “There is no doubt about the relationship…” It is far better to use expressions like “The good correlation between…” suggests that it is likely that…’
There are diverse pieces of evidence for a “great climate shift” of 1970. One piece could be in the Lake Victoria levels, but it is in many places. It’s in the land temperature record of Australia.
So, why is the tide gauge record around Australia not showing it, when Lake Victoria is?
Discovering the reason why would provide valuable input into processes, be threy global or regional – or artefacts.
No wonder both Combet, the Minister for Climate Change …snort snort… and the raving looney Commisioner for Climate Change Tim Flannery, have in quite recent times bought properties at or near sea level.
Combet near Nobbys Light house in Newcastle and Flannery in Sydney harbour
And they wonder why people have no faith in Goverments
A. Opinion says:
February 3, 2012 at 3:53 pm
If you have a few decades to wait for a return on your investment, you may want to buy up some of that land whose value has been artificially deflated by these govt. regulations. If the sea level does not rise, the govt. will eventually have to admit they’re wrong, and change the law, at which time the land will increase in value.
No, no they won’t. Government never ‘gives’ anything up. I hope you are exhibiting sarcasm.
Surely there must be a possible legal case here – class action of some sort.
Any legal offices reading this, I’d be happy to be a witness in such a case.
Doug Cotton
http://climate-change-theory.com
Sydney
“seal level”, are you sure?
Thanks for an enlightenig k post and , alas, another depressing news about the usual suspects mischiefs.
arthur gevart , France
as in :”this graph of seal level rise from 1870 “
In California, there is a long history of bureaucracies devaluing private property in order to enlarge public lands. Another trick is to force land acquisitions in exchange for the right to do something requiring a permit on your own property. The poorly defined “stakeholder” interest is one of the regulator’s main tools, a sledgehammer to destroy property rights.
Impressive correlation with little discernable lag until solar cycle 22, where sea level change follows solar activity a few years later. How to square this mostly contemporaneous correlation with the 7 to 15 year lags that many other researchers have found between solar activity and temperature?
Could make sense under the GCR-cloud theory, where solar activity reduces the formation of sun blocking clouds. That would allow more direct solar melting of ice and snow, having a particulary immediate effect on sea level, while temperature effects could somehow take longer to show up.
Immediate melting effects might even explain WHY temperature effects take longer to show up, if the melted snow and ice have the effect of cooling the ocean surface. Freshwater is less dense, correct? So does it spread out on the ocean surface? The question then would be whether it is actually colder than the salt ocean water, which has a lower freezing point, and hence COULD be colder than the melt water in northern climes. Melting glaciers that outflow at lower latitudes would certainly cool the ocean.
Anyone familiar with the relevant details?
If a government is worried about excessive sea level rise, it should limit itself to refusing public flood insurance to properties in the affected areas (come to think of it, government has no business in the flood insurance business anyway). If a disaster follows, too bad, no bailout.
Buyers can then decide for themselves whether to take a chance on beachfront property.
I your post you state that the “correlation between sea level rise and solar activity” graph from 2009 has now been updated.
In what way?
Where is the last 11 years of data in the second graph?
Can you describe the physical mechanism by which solar activity causes Lake Victoria’s level to vary? Is the same behaviour seen on other African Great Lakes? What made the hypothesised solar mechanism stop working for 30 years? Why does your supposedly “updated” graph stop in 1999?
I see Alec made an attempt as to why this happens but has there been any papers written about the ‘why’ of this relationship?
The climate change doctrine will be replaced by “sustinability” and the agenda will continue.
Hang the money wasters (other people’s money) out to dry.
How can you say that “There is no doubt about the relationship between solar activity and the level of Lake Victoria” if you have to cut off almost 40 years of data to get somekind of fit?
Why is the “updated” graph the same as the old graph?
Why no data after 1999 in the updated graph?
As a post this would have been OK if you had just included the last graph and leaving out of that graph your green line “What is likely to happen”. The rest is just BS.
Sea levels have risen in the past, they might rise again. If your house is in a risky zone, you should make other safe investment instead of spending everything in short-term luxuries. There is no economic difference between spending in luxuries and spending to rebuild your house or move it. A rise of 1 meter could generate absolutely no lose if people are aware of it and compensate with other safe investments like an insurance and some placements. Political groups like to interpret economy in the way they want. I you are aware of the risk, it is not a lost. If you pay 10 000$ extra for a car, you are guarantied to lose it within 20 years because cars are not eternal. If you buy a house on the sea side, you have a risk of not loosing it if sea level does not rise.
“If you have a few decades to wait for a return on your investment, you may want to buy up some of that land whose value has been artificially deflated by these govt. regulations. If the sea level does not rise, the govt. will eventually have to admit they’re wrong, and change the law, at which time the land will increase in value”
You’ll doubtless have to take your place at the back of the queue…..with government officials and prominent greens in front of you.
“There is no doubt about the relationship between solar activity and the level of Lake Victoria, which also means that East Africa has about 30 years of drought ahead of it based on what is going to happen to solar activity. ”
Wow this is horrible. Cherry picked, detrended wiggle matching used to prove there’s a sun correlation and then you top it off with complete SWAG on future sun conditions to drive home the catastrophic prediction.
If the prophets of CAGW used this line of reasoning to bolster one of their arguments this website would rightly tear them a new one. BTW my money is on splitting the predicted CAGW sea level rise and the anti-CAGW predicted fall almost dead in between.
You picked the “period of best fit from 1948 to 1987” which is 39 years of data out of 90 years of data. Then you state that “The threshold between rising and falling seal level is a sunspot amplitude of 40. Below 40, sea level falls. Above that, it rises.”
This is complete rubbish. Even your “period of best fit” has eight data points with sunspot numbers below 40 and rising sea levels and seven data points with numbers below 40 and sea levels falling.
With the trend of 3.1 mm/year there would be about 28 cm sea level rise if the trend continues. That is a fact. Whether the trend continues or not nobody knows.
A. Opinion says: “If you have a few decades to wait for a return on your investment, you may want to buy up some of that land whose value has been artificially deflated by these govt. regulations.”
You’re probably too late. Why do you think they drove the price down in the first place?
Actually the last graph would prove the point nicely without the solar connection. Just from looking at the graph and knowing that Nature runs in cycles, the only rational prediction would be a very slight upward trend for the next decade, then slightly down for a few decades. The wild upward line predicted by the government is obviously wrong by any standard. “Straight up forever” is always wrong in Nature.