Ian Wishart writes in Investigate Daily:
Century old map throws new doubt on climate change sea level claims
A new book on the history of New Zealand has inadvertently stirred the climate change debate by revealing a near zero sea level increase over the past century.
The book, The Great Divide, includes a 100 year old map of Cloudy Bay lagoons in New Zealand, drafted back in 1912 to show the location of 20 kilometres of canals dug with wooden spades by ancient Maori.
However, when the 1912 map is shown alongside a satellite image of the same location from Google Earth, it reveals not only the startling accuracy of the original map (drafted at a time when aerial photography did not exist) but also a stunning lack of Pacific Ocean encroachment on the narrow shoal linking the lagoons to the sea.
The shoal is comprised of rock and pebbles, making it an ideal weathervane for sea level increase as it’s less prone to erosion than shifting sands.
Even the narrowest and lowest part of the bar, marked with a black squiggle on the 1912 map, remains the same in 2012.
The Great Divide goes on sale this week, and among its revelations is confirmation that a massive comet-strike into the ocean off New Zealand’s southern coast caused a 220 metre high tsunami that may have been responsible for erasing evidence of human habitation in early New Zealand.
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This might be a good time to review my story about how easy it is to get freaked out about sea level rise.
Quite easily explained. New Zealand is a volcanic island chain and any sea level change has been masked by the islands rising at the same rate due to swelling magma chambers.
As a geologist, may I say that relative sea level is a complex issue?
May I also say that it has bugger all to do with the leevel of CO2 in the atmospnhere?
@Paul Nottingham – “Some years ago we were told that old ships logs were going to be used to determine the rate of climate change. Did anything ever come of it?”
This is an ongoing project that you can help with. It appears that, contrary to popular myth, there isn’t unlimited money for climate research, and so scientists interested in looking at past climate are looking for volunteers on the internet to transcribe the log books of naval vessels.
See http://www.oldweather.org/
The sea level has not changed in Hobson Bay Auckland NZ in nearly 100 years.
Wilson’s Beach, Auckland NZ in 1918, showing the high tide skimming underneath the Hobson Bay sewer pipe:
http://i39.tinypic.com/141nzog.jpg
High tide at the same beach in 2010, still under the same sewer pipe (in the process of being removed and there’s a new bridge in front of the pipe):
http://i42.tinypic.com/x4pvyb.jpg
Greg R. Yes I meant Yellowstone. My point was terrain doesn’t all rise at the same rate regardless the cause. If every acre of NZ all rose up together, there would be no mountains there.
Don’t you know that because of all the ice melting that the land is rising because it weighs less. So the ocenas are rising but not as fast as the land is. And don’t you know that the lighter land causes earthquakes and tsunamis. In addition, the water that should be making the oceans rise is evaporating and causing big winter snow storms on the east coast and freezing temperatures or is causing it to be too hot in March or tornados. You guys just don’t get it.
The scientific community would, one imagines, have made particularly accurate measurements of the Bikini Islands beach levels and conditions prior to the nulear tests made there in the fifties,
This book and the map further confirms my belief CAGW “scientists” do not perform any historical research before writing their pathetic BS papers.
Sorry for the typos. Oceans, tornadoes
OK, so actually looking at the site the new numbers are the ‘second’ poll to see if people changed their minds about warming, compared to the first one where a majority ‘dismissed’ AGW… I’d encourage folks to take the survey, goes fast, and I found their choice of questions interesting. You do have to provide a postal code….
Did you get a load of this? Here we learn that over decades of existence humans build things. That’s not good (!) because you’ll find this filed under ‘climate change’.
http://climate.nasa.gov/sof/#Mininggrowth_Chile1.jpg
Yellowstone lake floor has risen considerable due to magma rise in the dome directly under the lake. An old tourist steamer that sunk decades ago became visible on the surface a few years ago because the bottom of the lake had been pushed upward several feet.
Actually when I weigh “climate fears”, I worry more about eruption of the Yellowstone supervolcano than I do about the temperature rising closer to the average non-ice age temperature. It will have real and pretty harsh effects on my every day life and I live 2,000+ miles away from the thing. If people worry so much about minor temperature fluctuations during this ICE-AGE we currently are in, I can’t wait to see the panic in 10,000 years or so when we leave the ice-age and head for a real (natural) warm epoch.
Scotchman
It’s not a big surprise that there appears to have been a sea level decrease in western Scotland – that really is isostatic rebound in action. As you probably know, the UK was partly (largely) covered by glaciers during the last ice age – at furthest these got almost to the Thames valley, but in the last advance only to northern England. The weight of the glaciers pushed Scotland downwards, and subsequent melting and loss of this mass means that not only is Scotland rising slightly, but that the entire island is tilting with the south-east sinking a little (which is part of the reason for the broad and shallow estuaries from the Humber southwards).
This does make tracking sea level changes around the UK something of a difficult proposition, as there’s no good static baseline to take measurements from (and anyone who believes satellite altimetry has an accuracy in the millimetre range needs to reconsider).
Good point above also about coastal erosion being the biggest issue for much of the east coast, at least from North Yorkshire downwards (I have relatives who live close to Holbeck Hall in Scarborough – there was coastal erosion in action). I recall a few years ago writing a complaint to the BBC over a news article they did suggesting climate change and consequent bigger storms were putting coastal communities at risk (I seem to remember it was based on a coastal village in Norfolk). Typically, my complaint, which was that coastal erosion was, is and always will be a natural process on that coastline and that any putative changes to the weather were speculative and would have little or no significance to this, was given a brush off on the say-so of the climate scientist advisers, even though I have a PhD in geology and everything I said was demonstrably true. Actually, there was one part of my complaint that was upheld, which was about the use of a photograph apparently showing black smoke coming out of cooling towers – I did notice they stopped using this false image at least for a while
Whoa, let’s let this one subside, whether or not sea level is doing so. I’d like to defer to a coastal processes expert as to whether a “shoal of rocks and pebbles” is “less prone to erosion [and presumably depostion] than shifting sands.”
Grey Lensman says:
April 26, 2012 at 6:24 am
The British Admiralty has all the charts going way back past Captain Bligh.
These charts are still used today. They are the basis of most of the marine charts used by all countries of the world. Most of the areas of the world that were surveyed by Bligh and his like have NEVER been resurveyed, the costs are simply too high. What you see drawn on modern charts are copied from the BA originals. Even modern US (NOAA) charts.
I sailed for 20+ years on these charts. They are remarkably accurate, to a level of detail that is hard to imagine given the technology they had to work with. None of these charts show any appreciable sea level rise going back 300 years. The one fathom line is still where it was 300 years ago.
I’ve just noticed that there is a big change in the course of the meandering river over the years.
Again, absolutely bugger all to do with the level of CO2 in the atmosphere…
Scipio says:
April 26, 2012 at 7:17 am
Quite easily explained. New Zealand is a volcanic island chain and any sea level change has been masked by the islands rising at the same rate due to swelling magma chambers.
Volcanic islands “sink” into the ocean over time because they depress the ocean floor that supports them with their weight. This is readily seen in many island groups and is the primary mechanism that forms coral atolls.
Wow! Who’d have ever thought to look at old maps and compare them to Google Earth images when we have models! What a concept!
Living near a major river system, I always laugh at people claiming we will all drown. The old houses still stand proud, yards from the water, which they simply couldn’t if the levels had risen as much as has been claimed since 1850 ish.
(PS, follow my name link to read about the nonsense of the current UK “drought”.)
What a great map!
As a kid I used to be amazed at the accuracy of old maps like this, even when I learned how they do it. It still amazes and impresses me.
May I say,as a geologist, that I was wrong? There appears to have been very little change in the course of the meandering river over the years?: I got the scale wrong.
May I also add that this also is bugger all to do with the level of CO2 in the atmosphere? In fact, the level of CO2 in the atmosphere seems to have bugger all to do with anything of any consequence – or inconsequence – with anything whatsoever.
Joe Romm says that (Hansen says with GISTemp) that global temperatures are still rising and have not had a 15 year break, while Jones (with HadCruT) and Lovelock say that nothing much has happened for (at least) a decade. The ability to take contrary positions with the same metric is a staggering comment on the idea that the “truth” speaks for itself.
Sea-level: up, up and away, or the same? Who is doing the telling? Australia officially says the average rise is 4.1 mm/yr. Even the silly satellite stories only give 3.1, while tidal guages are 1.8 – 2.1, and places that are well-known, like New Zealand, say virtually nil. If you can’t agree on whether it is getting warmer or not, I’m not surprised you can’t decide on whether the seas are rising or not.
When you claim to measure globally, no local or regional measurement can dispute your claim. It is a brilliant position. Whatever you see or measure is always less than what the guru speaks of. He is like the woman who says that no man, not being a woman, can understand what it is like to be a woman. True enough, but in some ways, one can speak reasonably about the other without becoming one himself.
The meme protects itself as well as reproduces itself. Lord help us.
Well, there’s only one rational explanation if we’ve ruled out tectonics and isostatic lift, New Zealand is floating on the ocean like Guam and is rising with the sea level (it’s probably too big to capsize so that’s a good thing).
But what I don’t get is, it’s my understanding that Peter Jackson filmed Lord of the Rings in New Zealand – so why don’t the scientists just ask the Elves there what’s happening with climate and sea level? They live for like, thousands of years, they should know what’s going on.
Sea level rise – 4.1mm a year. I like it. How big is a wave? A ripple? Am I alone in thinking that sea level rise measured to 0.1 mm per year is just a wee bit screwy? There must be a physical law – Murphyesque perhaps – which states that the accuracy claimed in any particular metric is in direct proportion to the amount of bollocks which is being espoused to uphold it.
I’m with Jerome. Can anyone point us to a clear example of significant sea level rise over the past 100 years? I’m not talking about a couple of centimeters at the 1.0 – 3.0 mm/year run rate, which in most areas is essentially unnoticeable. I’m talking about an example of significant rise, preferably one that has had a meaningful negative impact on the habitat or living conditions of the coastal area.
From John Daly on we’ve seen many examples of significant sea level rise *not* happening. I’d like to know if anyone is aware of it actually happening. Or is significant sea level rise just a hypothetical . . .