![Monster_from_the_Ocean_Floor_FilmPoster[1]](http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2014/05/monster_from_the_ocean_floor_filmposter1.jpeg?w=300&resize=300%2C234)
By Christopher Monckton of Brenchley
Willie Soon sends me a fascinating paper by Beenstock et al. on sea-level rise. Beenstock, famous for taking a down-to-earth approach to climate issues, asked the question how much warming the tide gauges show if one does not tamper with them.
The official sea level data are fiddled by an artifice known as the “global isostatic adjustment”. The inconvenient truth that sea level is not changing much must be concealed, so an enormous, bogus addition to the actual trend is made.
The excuse for this overblown addition, which accounts for a very large fraction of the difference between the satellite and tide-gauge records, is that the land is still rising and the sea sinking because of the transfer of miles-thick ice from the land to the oceans that ended 9000 years ago. Therefore, the story goes, sea level would be falling were it not for global warming.
Hey presto! Sea level rise is instantly made to accelerate.
Niklas Mörner calls these tamperings “personal calibrations” – a polite form for what is in essence fiction. After all, in the century to 1950, we could not have had any significant influence on climate or on sea level. Yet sea level rose.
In the past decade or two sea level has not really been rising much, as the Envisat and then the Grace satellites confirmed, suggesting that all of the major global temperature records are correct in showing that global temperature has not been rising recently.
So there is no particular anthropogenic reason for ocean heat content to rise appreciably. Those who say, with the relentlessly wrong-about-everything Kevin Trenberth, that “the ocean ate my global warming” are simply wrong.
Meanwhile, the Pause continues. The RSS satellite data for April 2014 are now available. The updated graph shows no global warming for 17 years 9 months.
Enjoy The Pause while it lasts. A Kelvin wave is galloping across the Pacific, and the usual suspects would be praying for a super El Niño if they had the sense to credit the Old Religion rather than the New Superstition. Already the well-paid extremists are predicting a new record annual mean surface temperature either in 2014 or in 2015.
Their prediction for 2014 will probably not come true. Four months without any warming make it difficult to imagine that this will be a record year for global temperature, though it is barely possible.
The notion of a new record temperature next year is less implausible, particularly if there is a strong or prolonged el Niño followed by a weak la Niña. As Roy Spencer points out on his hard-headed and ever-sensible blog, all things being equal one would expect temperature records to be broken from time to time, for CO2 is accumulating in the atmosphere and some warming – eventually – is to be expected.
However, as the also hard-headed Dick Lindzen points out, the new record, when it happens, will be hundredths of a degree above the old, and it will be well within the natural variability of the climate. When warming eventually resumes, probably towards the end of this year, for El Niño is a seasonal event, it will probably not be much to write home about. And the following La Niña may cancel much of it. But that will not prevent the usual suspects from screeching that It’s Worse Than We Ever Thought.
Beenstock knocks that one on the head. Here is his conclusion about the rate of sea level rise: “Consensus estimates of recent GMSL rise are about 2mm/year. Our estimate is 1mm/year. We suggest that the difference between the two estimates is induced by the widespread use of data reconstructions which inform the consensus estimates.”
In short, They made stuff up. Again. And neither the politicians nor the journalists asked any of the right questions.
When Niklas Mörner was invited a couple of years ago to give a presentation on sea-level rise at an international climate conference in Cambridge, he arranged for a copy of a paper by him for the layman to be circulated. The organizers agreed, but the moment they saw the title, Sea Level Is Not Rising, they not only refused to allow the paper to be circulated – without actually reading it – but went round collecting the few samizdat copies that had already reached the delegates.
This offensive and now routine intolerance of what is now daily being confirmed as the objective truth should not be tolerated for a moment longer.
Crispin in Yogyakarta says: May 4, 2014 at 4:00 am
“But science is calling and they want their metric back. They need it to report Sea Level.”
I’m curious – how would you define “Sea Level”? How should they measure it? Remember, all land is moving up and down in different ways.
But it must be hard to work up this indignation over a correction of 0.3mm/year, with a well-defined basis, that isn’t likely to change.
If you believe in the “global isostatic adjustment” you have to believe that the Earth is growing.
The usual stunningly ignorant cult of warming cult members defending their theology with troll posts. Please highlight using real science, how the 5 % emission by humans of the 400 ppm Co2 trace chemical impacts sea levels ? Like Galileo they will tell me that tides are caused by the earth’s rotation… I have not met a cult of warm troll who can a) explain why the oceans are salty b) explain why and how the planet is 70% water covered or c) explain why Ephesus an important port is now 7 miles inland….In other words they know 0 about oceans/water/sea level history. Anthony has an article here debunking Co2=sea rise b.s. http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/12/02/history-falsifies-climate-alarmist-sea-level-claims/
Nick Stokes says:
May 4, 2014 at 12:54 am
Isostatic rebound doesn’t change the volume of the Earth. If land rises, magma moves in (underneath) from elsewhere. The solid surface has to drop somewhere else.
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since most of the planet is ocean, the drop will mostly take place under the ocean, lowering the level of the oceans. thus the correction for isostatic rebound should be negative, not positive.
the problem is that climate science does not adjust for the movement of material from under the oceans to the land. they only consider the land, likely because in this fashion the “correction” exaggerates sea level rise.
In any case, the ice age largely only affected the northern half of the northern hemisphere. If a correction was to be applied, it would need to be applied selectively to only those ports. Not to the global average. Or are we now suggesting that Africa and Australia was under a mile of ice 20 thousand years ago?
Nick Stokes says:
May 4, 2014 at 4:21 am
a correction of 0.3mm/year, with a well-defined basis
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it isn’t well defined:
1. Rebound is not global, it is regional.
2. if the land is rising the the sea beds (thus oceans) must be sinking due to mantle plasticity.
3. 0.3mm/year is an exaggeration of 24% of the 1.25mm/year calculated by Kear.
The rebound correction is a nonsense correction. If the land is rising due to rebound, say at 1 foot per day to make things obvious, and your tidal gauge is only a 6 inches of drop per day, you could argue that without rebound the oceans would in fact be rising 6 inches per day without rebound.
But why make a correction? In fact at your location sea level is dropping 6 inches per day, and at another location without rebound the tide is showing a rise of 6 inches per day. These two figures already correctly account for what is happening with sea levels, and account for any change in mantle volume under the land and oceans.
To turn around and apply a correction is meaningless of say 1 inch per day is both meaningless and incorrect. It would change the observed tide at your location for dropping 6 inches per day to dropping 5 inches, and the observed tide at another location for rising 6 inches to rising 7 inches. Both of the adjusted figures would then be misleading for planning purposes.
What you have here with this rebound adjustment is nothing short of fruitcake science.
“personal calibrations” Nice one.
My favorite
http://talesfromtheclearancebin.files.wordpress.com/2012/02/creature1.jpg
Nick Stokes says:
May 4, 2014 at 2:14 am
“We apply a correction for GIA because we want our sea level time series to reflect purely oceanographic phenomena. In essence, we would like our GMSL time series to be a proxy for ocean water volume changes.”
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then the time series should be called “sea volume” not “sea level”.
honest science begins by applying the correct labels. dishonesty in climate science began with the relabeling of Global Warming as Climate Change.
I’m curious as to why sedimentation is never mentioned as another cause of sea level rise….
I mean if you can claim that the rains/floods in Australia put so much water on land…that sea levels fell….
or adjust .3 for whatever
Mississippi, Amazon, Congo, Orinoco, Yangtze…etc etc
Why aren’t all those rivers and dead zones contributing to sedimentation which is also causing sea levels to rise?…I mean they are pumping massive amounts of sediments into the oceans every minute…..
Steve Case says: May 4, 2014 at 4:37 am
“If you believe in the “global isostatic adjustment” you have to believe that the Earth is growing.”
No, the isostatic correction restores to the constant volume Earth/ocean.
ferdberple says:May 4, 2014 at 4:44 am
“since most of the planet is ocean, the drop will mostly take place under the ocean, lowering the level of the oceans. thus the correction for isostatic rebound should be negative, not positive.”
The first part is right. But the intent of the correction is to restore to the case where a constant volume ocean shows constant GMSL. A positive correction brings change to zero.
“If a correction was to be applied, it would need to be applied selectively to only those ports. Not to the global average. “
No. The sea levels out the effect of volume change.
‘then the time series should be called “sea volume” not “sea level”’
OK, how do you think GMSL should be defined?
In essence, we would like our GMSL time series to be a proxy for ocean water volume changes.
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this is a nonsense ambition. the volume of the oceans makes no sense for planning purposes. you want to know if sea levels are going up or down at your location, not if the volume is changing.
sedimentation and plate tectonics tells us that the volume of the ocean basins themselves is not constant. much of this is unmeasured and unknown. what is the correction for sea floor spreading or subduction? How much water is carried into the earth along with the sub-ducting sea floor? How much does the spreading raise the bottom of the newly created oceans relative to old oceans? How much does continental rebound cause the ocean floor to sink (to maintain constant volume of mantle/core)?
Nick Stokes says:
May 4, 2014 at 5:42 am
OK, how do you think GMSL should be defined?
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GMSL stand for what? Global Means Sea Level. It should be defined as what it says. The average Level of the oceans globally (using WGS84 as the reference metric).
if someone wants to create a new measure for ocean volume, no problem. That should be called GMSV – Global Mean Sea Volume.
The problem is the use of the wrong terms to define what we are talking about. Why do we call Global Warming “Climate Change”? Why do we call Sea Volume “Sea Level”?. We don’t do that in any other branch of science because we know it will lead to confusion and wrong decisions.
The obvious reference for Sea Level is with respect to WGS84, which is the basis for GPS and Nautical Charts. We have high quality nautical charts of the world going back 200+ years. It is quite a straight forward matter from these to determine if there has in fact been any sea level rise. We need not rely on a few spotty tidal gauges.
ferdberple says: May 4, 2014 at 5:45 am
“this is a nonsense ambition. the volume of the oceans makes no sense for planning purposes. you want to know if sea levels are going up or down at your location, not if the volume is changing.”
For planning you need to know:
1. How fast the land is rising or falling just where you are
2. How fast the volume of water in the ocean is changing
3. How fast the volume capacity of the ocean is changing.
1. is often at present most important, but won’t change in the medium term
3. is very small and also won’t change. That’s the GIA component. Forget it.
2. is the one that has been changing as the ocean warms, and may change faster if the land ice melts rapidly. It’s the one to focus on. And the GIA helps, in a very small way, to do that.
@Nick….
Again… the data shows what it shows. The fact that it shows 1mm a year…. shows just that.
just like in temperature measurements, there isn’t really the case for adjusting the data.
For example… the temperature adjustments happen to “Cool” the past and warm the present.
the Sea Level adjustments have the addition of making an almost insignificant rise into a significan’t rise.
Without adjusting the temperature, using Post hoc selection of proxies, adding adjustments to sea level rise.. the data wouldn’t show anything alarmist at all.
Skeptics don’t see a conspiracy in climate science.. they see shoddy work and crap science harming human civilisation.
If there were no adjustments to temperature data or sea level data, climate alarmism would be a busted flush as a science.
There just isn’t the evidence for worry at all in any temperature records, any rainfall records, any drought records, any hurricane records any tornado records.
In fact there isn’t a single piece of credible data showing we have anything to worry about.
the rebound from the little ice age at plus or minus about 0.1 degrees per decade has been going on since about 1880….
Nothing scary in that either
All of the tide gauges are now having GPS stations co-located with them. It will only be a year or two when we can directly measure how 400 tide gauges are changing compared to local land uplift/subsidence.
Then we can directly measure the glacial isostatic adjustment with very high precision. Again, it is not how much sea level is rising, it is actually the opposite. It is how much sea level would be rising if there was not a glacial isostatic adjustment.
Just noting that ocean bedrock is sinking in places which had no glaciers. There is now 150 metres of ocean on the continental shelves which is pushing them down and causing the near-by land to rise. It is a smaller number but even countries like Australia have this adjustment.
Nick Stokes says:
May 4, 2014 at 6:07 am
2. is the one that has been changing as the ocean warms
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warming is only part of the story. it ignores the effects of ground water pumping for agriculture and human consumption.
the only metric that make sense is the net change in sea level with respect to an agreed, international reference point. WGS84 defines the agreed reference.
in any case there is no global warming, it is now called climate change. which means it may be warming or it may be cooling. if it is truly was global warming the name would have stuck. it didn’t, so we can thus be confident global warming no longer exists.
Bill Illis says:
May 4, 2014 at 6:10 am
Again, it is not how much sea level is rising, it is actually the opposite. It is how much sea level would be rising if there was not a glacial isostatic adjustment.
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If the ocean is rising a 12 inches a year, and the land on which I’m located is rising 5 inches a year, then the net rise at my location if 7 inches per year. My planning needs to be for 7 inches a year, not for 12 inches a year.
Thus adding a rebound adjustment of 5 inches to the 7 inches recorded at my location makes no sense. I end up planning for 12 inches of sea level rise, when in fact what I will see is only 7 inches. I end up wasting money needlessly.
By all means measure sea level. Don’t measure sea volume and call it sea level.
What warming,
a list of headlines for April1st – May 3rd.
April-May3rd –
May 3rd- Cars rescued from heavy snow in Argentina
May 3rd – Ice piled 12-feet deep on shores of Lake Superior
May 3rd – Snowfall warnings continue – and expand – in British Columbia
Romania – “It’s as if we were preparing for Christmas – not Easter”
“This year is maybe a record-breaking year,” says expert on Great Lakes ice.
As of May 1st, ships were still being escorted with ice breakers on Lake Superior, says the Duluth News Tribune.
Unexpected snowfall destroys 2,000 hectares of crops in Adjara
Snowfall warnings for Banff and southward
Snowfall to hit Petrozavodsk
Antarctic Sea Ice 50% Above Previous Record
Gangtok, India – Army rescues 2,000 stranded by snowfall
Blizzard paralyzes daily life in many parts of Russia’s Urals region
Heavy Snowfall in the Alps
Snow and Wind Hit Los Alamos, NM
Up to 14 inches of snow for Colorado
China – Xinjiang hit hard by blizzard
8 to 11 inches of snow forecast for Minnesota
Rhinelander – Hasn’t snowed this much in 106 years
Record low temperatures across Manitoba – 17 Apr
Record Mid-April Hard Freezes Kill Great Plains Wheat
Back-to-back record lows in Marquette
Winnipeg water pipes could stay frozen until July
Heavy snowfall blocks roads in Afghanistan
Snowfall warnings for Banff and southward
Gangtok, India – Army rescues 2,000 stranded by snowfall
Global Warming is “Nonsense,” says former NASA scientist
Another big winter storm for Thunder Bay
Russia’s Urals – Most severe springtime snowstorm in 123 years
Snowfall in the Urals leaves 70,000 without power
Snow and Wind Hit Los Alamos, NM
Up to 14 inches of snow for Colorado
Too Much Spring Ice Threatens Alaskan Polar Bears
Heavy snowfall for parts of Ontario and NW Lake Superior
Ice Moves Bridge In New Brunswick
8 to 11 inches of snow forecast for Minnesota
Snowfall warnings for northeastern British Columbia
Most Atlantic ice in decades, warns Coast Guard
More than a foot of new snowfall in Minnesota and Wisconsin
Record low temperatures across Manitoba – 17 Apr
More than 40 ships lined up waiting to get through Soo Locks due to ice.
Another record low obliterated Pellston, Michigan, shatters its old low temp record by 16 degrees!
Great Lakes ice coverage FAR exceeds anything since satellite monitoring began
Detroit – Snowiest winter on record – Hundreds of thousands lose power
Record lows in Wyoming shatter last year’s record lows on same date
Mackinac Island ferries delayed – Too much ice on Great Lakes
Up to 16 inches (40 cm) of snow in Wyoming 14 April
Nine blue whales “probably crushed to death by ice”
Nova Scotia – Snowmobilers beware! Snow almost to the tops of power poles
US Steel idles mill due to “unprecedented ice conditions on the Great Lakes”
Early April Snowstorm Buries Wisconisn and Minnesota
Coldest winter in Winnipeg since 1898
Record snowfall in Nebraska
Record snowfall in Grand Forks, North Dakota
Ice breakers “challenged” on Lake Superior
Record snowfall in Ontario
Billings, Montana, breaks all-time snowfall record
Armenia – Heavy snowfall kills up to 95% of apricot harvest
Chicago – Coldest Four-Month Period In City History
Doğubayazıt, Turkey – 900 sheep perish in snowstorm
Record snowfall paralyzes Moscow
Interesting about Broome. Given it’s regularly at 40C I don’t think it was troubled by a lot of glaciation in the most recent ice age (don’t recall seeing a lot of fjords in the North-west Shelf). So I don’t think they have the excuse that the land is rebounding without the weight of ice sheets.
My standing question to the warmies is, if the HEAT is hiding in the ocean, and the CO2 is hiding there (causing “acidification”) then why is the atmosphere allegedly warming if you look back far enough? Surely even Magicgas can’t fulfill all 3 roles?
ferdberple says: May 4, 2014 at 6:17 am
“the only metric that make sense is the net change in sea level with respect to an agreed, international reference point. WGS84 defines the agreed reference.”
WGS84 isn’t a point. It’s a geoid. And everything is moving relative to it. Why do you think it’s a better principle than ocean water volume?
Nick Stokes says:
May 4, 2014 at 6:42 am
WGS84 isn’t a point. It’s a geoid. And everything is moving relative to it. Why do you think it’s a better principle than ocean water volume?
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because WGS84 is a fixed, agreed, international reference used by GPS and nautical charts. And nautical charts show where the land and oceans meet, worldwide.
By all means, if you want to measure ocean volume, that is fine. But call it Sea Volume, don’t call it Sea Level. Volume is a cubic measure, Sea Level is a linear measure.
note: While Nautical Charts show a datum correction for WGS84, the reader may be interested to know that Nautical Charts do not show a datum correction for “sea level rise”. These charts are used by shipping worldwide with billions of dollars of commerce and thousands of lives dependent on their accuracy. A change in sea levels of 1 foot would have huge implications for worldwide commerce in areas like the Malacca Straights, so if it was truly happening in a measurable fashion, the charts would show it. They don’t.
Nick Stokes says:
May 4, 2014 at 6:42 am
WGS84 isn’t a point. It’s a geoid.
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WGS84 uses the earth’s center of mass as its point of origin. From this the height of any point can be determined, relative to the geoid at that specific latitude and longitude. If the land or sea is is rising or falling at any given point, WGS84 provides a fixed point of references for this measurement. The point of reference is the intersection of latitude, longitude and the WGS geoid.
Nick Stokes says:
May 4, 2014 at 6:07 am
3. How fast the volume capacity of the ocean is changing.
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this in itself is a nonsense concept. the oceans are not like a swimming pool, where there is some sort of “container” around them. The oceans sit on top of the hot interior of the earth, held up by the steam pressure of water boiling under high pressure within the earth. If the earth had a cold core the water would have long ago migrated from the surface towards the interior, to fill the minute cracks in the rocks.
Held up by the heat of the earth’s interior, the water spreads out around the globe, under the sea beds and under the continents. What we perceive as the oceans is simply where the height of this water is higher than the bottom of the ocean floor. To think of the ocean basins as containers is incorrect. They do not “contain” the oceans. The ocean basis and the continent are porous to water. The heat of the earth’s interior causes the oceans to “float” above the hot rock, held in place by high pressure steam.
But ferdbrple, the center of mass of the earth is not stationary with relation to the surface. Or do you think it is?
All of the tide gauges are now having GPS stations co-located with them.
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It is beyond me why we would rely on tidal gauges to measure sea level if accuracy is the issue. There are thousands and thousands of rocks charted worldwide. Their height relative to sea level is charted, along with the year they were surveyed. A systematic survey of these rocks would conclusively show what has happened in the past 200 years. Of course it would involve going out in the field. Much simpler to download tidal data from a tidal gauge.
The problem for climate science is that the charts don’t support global sea level rise. If the charts show a rock awash at MLLW from a survey 200 years ago, that pesky rock is still awash today. You would think with all that sea level rise the rock should be covered at low tide. But there it remains, a thorn in the side of climate science. High tide, the rock is gone. Low tide the rock is back. 200 years. Over and over again as you sail the globe, rock after rock.
j ferguson says:
May 4, 2014 at 7:26 am
But ferdbrple, the center of mass of the earth is not stationary with relation to the surface. Or do you think it is?
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If the dimensions of a sphere were estimated to encompass the center of mass of the earth, what would be the radius of that sphere?