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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.
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Here is what I am trying to understand. We have been told that without a doubt that Greenland is losing ice very badly, the glaciers are melting very badly, mass balance is terrible in Antarctica, the hottest decade on the record has just been crossed, the heat went deep sea diving, thermal expansion is certain, water abstraction is underway AND YET there is no credible evidence of an acceleration in the rate of sea level rise. Is it possible that the con is about to be exposed? The rate of sea level rise is one of our other kinds of thermometer.
This isn’t bogus either. See my referenced paper on water abstraction contributing a quarter to the rate of sea level rise.
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2010GL044571/abstract
Nick Stokes is fighting desperately to keep the great scare alive. Sea level rise is the LEAST worrying climate sign of the lot. Even less worrying that the temperature standstill. Find some other scare old boy.
This interesting discussion reveals how little awareness there is of just how large are the “personal calibrations” and satellite intercalibration anomalies in the sea level data. I shall work on this with Willie Soon, and shall hope to report back before too long. But one or two pointers may be useful.
First, one should not be disingenuous enough to think that the global isostatic adjustment is merely an adjustment in the reference frame that makes no difference to the rates of change in sea level. For the “adjustment” was introduced just at the moment that the satellite altimetry data were about to show sea level rising at less than 3 mm/year. Bingo – up went the headline rate of sea-level rise.
Secondly, there is a very clear discrepancy, underlined by the Beenstock paper, between the tide-gauge record (1 mm/year) and the satellite record (3 mm/year). Envisat, though, agreed more closely with the tide-gauge record, and GRACE actually showed sea-level dropping in the years preceding 2009. Both these records, however, were subject to some very startling “personal calibrations”, which wrenched these inconvenient satellites into line with the alarmist official satellite record (Jason/Topex/Poseidon).
The “personal calibrations” – which were additional to the relatively small and purely technical adjustments that were made before the raw data were published – were very considerably greater than the 0.3 mm/year for the global isostatic adjustment alone.
And if anyone tries to tell you his hydrometer tells him sea level is rising, remind him of the logical fallacy of inappropriate argument from the particular to the general, and demand a sufficiently-resolved global sea-level dataset free of “personal calibrations”. None such exists.
In the meantime, enjoy the fact that the RSS data show no global warming at all for 17 years 9 months. Inexorably, the temperature record fails to perform as ordered, and it is that record – now far less easier to fiddle than the sea-level record – that will gradually bring the scam down.
This isn’t bogus either. See my referenced paper on water abstraction contributing a quarter to the rate of sea level rise.
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2010GL044571/abstract
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Jimbo, have you seen anything on coastal erosion, sedimentation from rivers, subsidence, etc?
If just pumping water is adding almost a mm a year to sea level rise…..the rest of it is adding a lot more………
In answer to RoHa, I was present at the conference in Cambridge, organized by the Howard Foundation at Downing College. I had arranged for Professor Moerner, and one or two other distinguished speakers, to attend the conference, and he had specifically requested that his paper for the layman should be circulated to all the delegates to assist them in understanding his talk. The organizers agreed. But then, when the saw the title of the paper, they forbade its circulation.
I had already given out several copies to delegates and had a bunch of the papers in my hand when I was approached by the organizers, who said they needed a few copies. They thus prevented those copies from being distributed, and spirited away the box of 1000 copies that were available, only giving them back to the Professor at the end of the conference.
Professor Moerner was rightly furious. I would not have invited him if I had thought for a moment that, as an invited speaker, he would be treated in so insultingly dishonest a fashion. But that is global-warming extremism for you – viciously intolerant of any viewpoint but its own.
Moral: have nothing whatever to do with the Howard Foundation.
rgbatduke
plainly speaking what is your opinion of this?
“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”
a physicist and an honest man.
If your students said such a thing what would say?
directly,
pull no punches.
@Tom Harley:
Chinatown, Broome was built 100 years ago at the high tide mark to service the pearling fleet. If the seas were rising even 2mm a year, this business centre of the town would be underwater at every high spring tide.
—————————-
No isostatic rebound here – not for any of the many glaciations of the last 10 million years. Are some tide gauges better than others in recording a non-glacial affected record?
Australian mainland was joined to PNG and Tasmania during the last glacial period. I asked a geologist at UNE was there any glaciers. He said No, only in Tasmania. Maybe some on the higher peaks, as the tree line was much lower than today, and little rain forests. The tree cover increased gradually until Europeans started cutting the trees down.
Where is this paper by Beenstock et.al. ?
A link would be useful, as would some actual numbers.
jimmi_the_dalek says: May 4, 2014 at 6:06 pm
“Where is this paper by Beenstock et.al. ?”
It’s not a Journal publication. They have it on their website, marked in bold: “Preliminary draft. Please do not distribute.”
OK, I only linked.
Nick Stokes quotes Colorado: 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.”
What proxy is used for changes in the deeper 50 % of the global oceans which are so undermapped that a variable heat source worth considering could exist?
It’s school level physics that if you want to understand the thermal expansion of a liquid body by measuring surface level change, you have to consider the whole body, not just the 50% about which you have more data.
All of these estimates are junk science unless they have an explicit caveat that notes the lack of data in the lower 50%. There is a probability that no expansion processes exist there, but if that is an assumption, it should be noted prominently.
As I’ve said elsewhere, long ago, even my old Mum used to stir her cup of soup so she would eliminate the surprise of an unwanted hot spot at the bottom.
It’s best to disregard all these papers linking ghg global warming to sea level change until we can comprehend the lower 50% of the oceans, n’est ce pas?
It may be of interest, but several years ago, after tim flannery started spouting about sea level rises encroaching on valuable water front homes, although he lives on the Hawkesbury River himself. That the BOM replied to my MP, that sea levels around Australia would only increase by 177 mm by 2050. Not CM! That’s around 6 inches.
Geoff Sherrington says: May 4, 2014 at 7:01 pm
“even my old Mum used to stir her cup of soup”
The GIA correction is about capacity, not volume of water. If your Mum’s cup expanded in the heat, the level would go down. But she would know, by applying a GIA, that she still had the same amount of soup.
Thank you , Lord Monckton.
Nick Stokes says:
May 4, 2014 at 7:09 pm
Geoff Sherrington says: May 4, 2014 at 7:01 pm
“even my old Mum used to stir her cup of soup”
The GIA correction is about capacity, not volume of water. If your Mum’s cup expanded in the heat, the level would go down. But she would know, by applying a GIA, that she still had the same amount of soup.
———————————
No she wouldn’t, because it would take someone like you to go round to Geoff’s Mum’s house and explain to her the soup level and GIA in her flexible cup, and she would look at you like you were a f-kin idiot.
Streetcred said:
“Is he not entitled to be addressed according to his title? It may be an English thing but so what. Funny though, I read your name as “dumbphil” … blame it on the ADD.”
Well, let me know when the people who call Christopher “Lord”, start calling Nick Stokes “Doctor”.
At least that title is relevant to his scientific expertise.
philincalifornia said:
“No she wouldn’t, because it would take someone like you to go round to Geoff’s Mum’s house and explain to her the soup level and GIA in her flexible cup, and she would look at you like you were a f-kin idiot.”
Translation: You are correct, but I’m going to find a way to have a go at you anyway”
Well, IMHO, we have about as much ‘clue’ about sea level change as we have about land temperatures in the GHCN:
https://chiefio.wordpress.com/2014/02/15/gee-siting-problems-and-intrument-error-in-sea-level-gauges/
But then again, what is “mean sea level” anyway? Nothing but a fictional construct:
https://chiefio.wordpress.com/2013/01/29/is-there-a-sea-level/
The crust moves so much, and the ocean floor too, that any supposed “isostatic adjustment” is just a flat out fudge factor. New Zealand was once ocean bottom. In California you find shark teeth at high elevation in the mountains. Heck, even the Himalaya have sea salt deposits and sea shells in them. It is the notion that the land and ocean floor are predictable and in some sense stable that is bogus. A several hundred mile chunk of sea floor moved up several feet in one go in the Indonesia quake a few years back. Then we have the fact that the entire Grand Canon got dumped into the ocean. Think that had any effect?
https://chiefio.wordpress.com/2011/04/01/where-did-the-grand-canyon-go/
All you can really measure is where the water touches the land at a place. Averaging many of those together may be amusing, but not very useful. Trying to guess ocean volume-rise composites from fudging that gives a useless number.
In many ways the most useful thing to realize is that Arctic ice is just not relevant since it floats on the water. Northern Hemisphere land ice is not relevant since it sits on land, and has little volume anyway (and little change too). Greenland did not melt in the last interglacial, nor in this one even though it was much warmer 7000 years ago; so it isn’t going to melt now. That leaves Antarctica, where the ice is building up. Everything else is hand waving.
Sea Level Change was a big risk and issue 12000 years ago. That all ended about 7000 years ago. Since then it’s been a big “nothing” in terms of impact on humanity. It will continue to be “nothing of interest” until the next glacial makes sea level drop an issue due to the ice covering the northern hemisphere down to Denmark and New Amsterdam (New York).
https://chiefio.wordpress.com/2014/05/04/arctic-flushing-and-interglacial-melt-pulses/
Has a wiki graph in it of sea level rise down at the bottom. It shows the “issue” ends about 7,000 years BP. The present rate of change is not different from the last 7000 years, and we did OK then…
Now if the sea level starts to FALL, and the Arctic stays iced over in summer, that’s when you have a major problem. When that happens, you are in the entry to the next glacial (ice age) and there is no turning back. The only ‘tipping point’ is to the downside. We already had the warm ‘tip’ 12000 years ago and it has run its course. (Really. Milankovitch found that only when specific conditions happen that cause the Arctic to melt do we have an interglacial. When it stops melting, we go back into the freezer. Folks who wail for a ‘multi year ice cap’ in the Arctic have no idea what they are wishing to get. It’s the signal for the plunge into frozen for 100,000 years… )
Streetcred and drumphil, Sorry for waving the Union Jack but English protocol extends outside UK, One wouldn’t call Queen Elizabeth 11, ‘Liz’. I am sure some have done, mind you! Sir Christopher would be acceptable. But if Nick has a doctorate, or Ph.D, usually that address is not used outside the university. It is often not used in scientific essays published in some form of professional paper, as some just put a Ph.D., behind the name. One usually maintains some decorum and respect for rank in public. Unless he/she is a medical physician to Address a doctorate is a bit over the top. Because most of us who address a person as Doctor, we think they are medical practitioners or MD’s not Ph.D’s.
E.M.Smith said:
” Northern Hemisphere land ice is not relevant since it sits on land, and has little volume anyway (and little change too). Greenland did not melt in the last interglacial, nor in this one even though it was much warmer 7000 years ago; so it isn’t going to melt now. That leaves Antarctica, where the ice is building up. Everything else is hand waving.”
Where does the Antarctic land ice volume fit into that? What has been happening there? As you point out, it is the land ice that is important for sea level, so how it is that you don’t include that in your reasoning?
“The letter, sent by David Beamish, clerk of the parliaments, to Monckton last Friday and now published on the Lords’ website, states: “You are not and have never been a member of the House of Lords. Your assertion that you are a member, but without the right to sit or vote, is a contradiction in terms. No one denies that you are, by virtue of your letters patent, a peer. That is an entirely separate issue to membership of the House. This is borne out by the recent judgement in Baron Mereworth v Ministry of Justice (Crown Office).”
Membership was once a birthright of hereditary peers, but that is no longer the case, and Christopher is not a Lord. Why do you think he had to change his emblem, or coat of arms, or whatever it was called?
Anyway, this is suppose to be a scientific discussion, and the title Doctor is much more relevant in this environment than “Lord”.
“Buckingham Palace was drawn into the dispute when it was revealed that Pownall had sought advice from the Lord Chamberlain, a key officer in the royal household, on the potential misuse of the portcullis emblem due to it being the property of the Queen. The Buckingham Palace website states that any misuse of the emblem is prohibited by the Trade Marks Act 1994, meaning Monckton could potentially be liable for fines and a six-month prison term if the palace pursues the matter and successfully prosecutes him.”
“Monckton has since been using a slightly altered portcullis emblem on his lecture slides. The two chains hanging either side of portcullis are now kinked instead of straight. It is not known whether the Lord Chamberlain is content with the change. A spokesperson told the Guardian that the palace was “aware of the issue”, but it had a policy of not commenting on private correspondence between it and an individual.”
Well the Arctic North Pole has no land, the Arctic circle has, and lower daylight hours part of the year. They measure when there is a king, spring or Ebb tide? LOL. My insurance company wanted to put my insurance up by hundreds one year. I rang up and told I was covered for flood, bush fires and tsunamis. I don’t mind paying a bush fire levy. Even though the house is not in the bush but a kerb and guttered middle class area. But I objected for to a flood and tsunami levy. Let those building on flood plains pay extra. I told the lady, ‘Hey I don’t live near a river, only a creek and that’s 3 km away down the hill. But tsunami!
I live 200 kms from the sea, and 3,500 ft absl. Unless a huge Asteroid splashed down in the Tasman sea, well we wouldn’t need any insurance if it got this high, we’d be dead. She hung up.
I complained and the insurance was reduced.
Translation: You are correct, but I’m going to find a way to have a go at you anyway.
=============================================================
Nick is plain silly. SL is just that, an effort to determine how much the mean top of the oceans are changing.. Do you really want me to link 100 alarmist scare stories from MSM folk quoting already failed predictions of SL rise? CAGW is all about the “C”. CATASTOROPHY in AGW. (By the way, the CGW are all currently MIA.) Because the veracity of the C is dependent on how much the oceans are rising, you do not add in fudge factors that have nothing to do with the sea level.
As noted many times, this is just one of the questionable ad-hoc SL adjustments. It is a desperate attempt to keep the failing narrative alive. Sea Level, means just that, the mean elevation of the oceans? Sea Volume is something else entirely. If they were honest they would do two charts. One would be SL, the other SV., and they would put error bars on their charts, with a detailed explanation.
Hell scientist, in a less politicized field, have been arguing for decades about the level of a desert. That’s right; Google “Palmdale Bulge” So you see, and we are debating a sily MM per year, other scientist are debating inches and feet in a desert which clearly should be far easier to determi
Viscount is technically correct, although also completely irrelevant for scientific discussion.