Claim: Acceleration in sea level rise 'worse than we thought'

However, other analyses show the opposite

Correcting estimates of sea level rise

Acceleration in sea level rise far larger than initially thought

From Harvard University, where you can’t tell them much…

The acceleration in global sea level from the 20th century to the last two decades has been significantly larger than scientists previously thought, according to a new Harvard study.

The study, co-authored by Carling Hay, a post-doctoral fellow in the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences (EPS), and Eric Morrow, a recent PhD graduate of EPS, shows that previous estimates of global sea-level rise from 1900-1990 had been over-estimated by as much as 30 percent. The report, however, confirms previous estimates of sea-level change since 1990, suggesting that the rate of sea-level change is increasing more quickly than previously believed. The new work is described in a January 14 paper published in Nature.

“What this paper shows is that sea-level acceleration over the past century has been greater than had been estimated by others,” Morrow said. “It’s a larger problem than we initially thought.”

“Scientists now believe that most of the world’s ice sheets and mountain glaciers are melting in response to rising temperatures.” Hay added. “Melting ice sheets cause global mean sea level to rise. Understanding this contribution is critical in a warming world.”

Previous estimates had placed sea-level rise at between 1.5 and 1.8 millimeters annually over the 20th century. Hay and Morrow, however, suggest that from 1901 until 1990, the figure was closer to 1.2 millimeters per year. But everyone agrees that global sea level has risen by about 3 millimeters annually since that time, and so the new study points to a larger acceleration in global sea level.

“Another concern with this is that many efforts to project sea-level change into the future use estimates of sea level over the time period from 1900 to 1990,” Morrow said. “If we’ve been over-estimating the sea-level change during that period, it means that these models are not calibrated appropriately, and that calls into question the accuracy of projections out to the end of the 21st century.”

To obtain their improved estimate of 20th century global sea level, Hay and Morrow approached the challenge of estimating sea-level rise from a completely new perspective.

Typically, Hay said, estimates of sea-level rise are created by dividing the world’s oceans into sub-regions, and gathering records from tide gauges – essentially yard-sticks used to measure ocean tides – from each area. Using records that contain the most complete data, researchers average them together to create estimates of sea level for each region, then average those rates together to create a global estimate.

“But these simple averages aren’t representative of a true global mean value” Hay explained. “Tide gauges are located along coasts, therefore large areas of the ocean aren’t being included in these estimates. And the records that do exist commonly have large gaps.”

“Part of the problem is related to the sparsity of these records, even along the coastlines,” Morrow said. “It wasn’t until the 1950s that there began to be more global coverage of these observations, and earlier estimates of global mean sea-level change across the 20th century were biased by that sparsity.”

“We know the sea level is changing for a variety of reasons,” Hay said. “There are ongoing effects due to the last ice age, heating and expansion of the ocean due to global warming, changes in ocean circulation, and present-day melting of land-ice, all of which result in unique patterns of sea-level change. These processes combine to produce the observed global mean sea-level rise.”

The new estimates developed by Hay and Morrow grew out of a separate project aimed at modeling the physics that underpin sea-level “fingerprints” – explainer from previous story.

“What we were interested in – and remain interested in – was whether we can detect the sea-level fingerprints we predicted in our computer simulations in sea-level records,” Morrow said. “Using a global set of observations, our goal has been to infer how individual ice sheets are contributing to global sea-level rise.”

The challenge, Hay said, is that doing so requires working with a “very noisy, sparse records.”

“We have to account for ice age signals, and we have to understand how ocean circulation patterns are changing and how thermal expansion is contributing to both regional patterns and the global mean,” she explained. “We try to correct for all those signals using our simulations and statistical methods, then look at what’s left and see if it fits with the patterns we expect to see from different ice sheets.”

“We are looking at all the available sea-level records and trying to say that Greenland has been melting at this rate, the Arctic at this rate, the Antarctic at this rate, etc.” she continued. “We then sum these contributions and add in the rate that the oceans are changing due to thermal expansion to estimate a rate of global mean sea-level change.”

To their surprise, Hay said, it quickly became clear that previous estimates of sea-level rise over most of the 20th century were too high.

“We expected that we would estimate the individual contributions, and that their sum would get us back to the 1.5 to 1.8 mm per year that other people had predicted,” Hay said. “But the math doesn’t work out that way. Unfortunately, our new lower rate of sea-level rise prior to 1990 means that the sea-level acceleration that resulted in higher rates over the last 20 years is really much larger than anyone thought.”

###

[UPDATE] My sub-oceanic source has sent me a copy of the actual study. Here is the abstract:

Estimating and accounting for twentieth-century global mean sealevel (GMSL) rise is critical to characterizing current and future human-induced sea-level change. Several previous analyses of tide gauge records1–6—employing different methods to accommodate the spatial sparsity and temporal incompleteness of the data and to constrain the geometry of long-term sea-level change—have concluded that GMSL rose over the twentieth century at a mean rate of 1.6 to 1.9 millimetres per year. Efforts to account for this rate by summing estimates of individual contributions from glacier and ice-sheet mass loss, ocean thermal expansion, and changes in land water storage fall significantly short in the period before 19907. The failure to close the budget of GMSL during this period has led to suggestions that several contributions may have been systematically underestimated8. However, the extent to which the limitations of tide gauge analyses have affected estimates of the GMSL rate of change is unclear. Here we revisit estimates of twentieth-centuryGMSL rise using probabilistic techniques9,10 and find a rate of GMSL rise from1901 to 1990 of 1.260.2 millimetres per year (90% confidence interval). Based on individual contributions tabulated in the Fifth Assessment Report7 of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, this estimate closes the twentieth-century sea-level budget. Our analysis, which combines tide gauge records with physics-based and model-derived geometries of the various contributing signals, also indicates that GMSL rose at a rate of 3.060.7 millimetres per year between 1993 and 2010, consistent with prior estimates from tide gauge records4. The increase in rate relative to the 1901–90 trend is accordingly larger than previously thought; this revision may affect some projections11 of future sea-level rise.

Regards to all,

w.

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January 14, 2015 12:12 pm

So not only cooling the past, scientists are now lowering the past!

Hugh
Reply to  David Johnson
January 14, 2015 12:22 pm

It is really, really difficult to measure, but I think we got it now right. And the results are really, really alarming.
Like, I can’t see the rising in this noisy data, but if I manage to prove it, I’m really alarmed of the rising I could not first see.
Sigh. And really, they re-measure the old height so that the new height woukd be more alarming.

george e. smith
Reply to  Hugh
January 14, 2015 1:35 pm

So it is so small you can’t even measure it, but it is much greater than the previous also totally negligible rates ??
Got it ! I think.

PiperPaul
Reply to  Hugh
January 14, 2015 2:21 pm

I say that 97 angels can fit on the head of a pin.

Bert Walker
Reply to  Hugh
January 14, 2015 4:37 pm

Piper Paul, yes but that level is rising due to human induced climate change, our computer models show that in the past prior to 1998 only 96.96 +/- 2.3 angles were on top of that pin.

commieBob
Reply to  Hugh
January 14, 2015 6:51 pm

PiperPaul says:
January 14, 2015 at 2:21 pm
I say that 97 angels can fit on the head of a pin.

Would that be cherubim or seraphim?

Jimbo
Reply to  Hugh
January 15, 2015 7:38 am

Here is the abstract LINK with graphics
Probabilistic reanalysis of twentieth-century sea-level rise
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nature14093.html
Extended data figures and tables
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nature14093.html#extended-data

highflight56433
Reply to  Hugh
January 15, 2015 11:31 am

Some pinheads are larger than other pinheads…97% consensus, 90% confidence, 100% ego… lol

Robert of Ottawa
Reply to  David Johnson
January 14, 2015 3:59 pm

That was my thought too.
Several previous analyses of tide gauge records employing different methods to accommodate the spatial sparsity and temporal incompleteness of the data … AKA making stuff up
Here we revisit estimates of twentieth-century GMSL rise using probabilistic techniques … AKA making more stuff up.
There was an obvious agenda here to prove that the sea level is rising more rapidly now than before. This is politically driven science, Lysenkoism.

Blunderbunny
Reply to  Robert of Ottawa
January 15, 2015 2:09 am

Actually they’re not Cherubim or Seraphim, they’re Ophanim and our estimates show that they are all getting alarmingly TALLER…. Soon pin heads everywhere will be hidden under hordes/choirs of very tall angels.
The clothing industry will collapse and people living in the colder regions of the world will freeze to death due to a lack of clothing…..
It’s worse than we thought 😉

Jimbo
Reply to  David Johnson
January 15, 2015 1:20 am

David Johnson
January 14, 2015 at 12:12 pm
So not only cooling the past, scientists are now lowering the past!

B I N G O! This really is climate comedy gold.

Abstract – 23 February 2011
Sea-level acceleration based on US tide gauges and extensions of previous global-gauge analyses
It is essential that investigations continue to address why this worldwide-temperature increase has not produced acceleration of global sea level over the past 100 years, and indeed why global sea level has possibly decelerated for at least the last 80 years.
http://www.jcronline.org/doi/abs/10.2112/JCOASTRES-D-10-00157.1
http://www.eike-klima-energie.eu/fileadmin/user_upload/Bilder_Dateien/Puls_Rahmstorf_Mann_Meerespiegel_2000/MSp.J.Coast.Res.2011May.pdf
==================
Abstract – July 2013
Twentieth-Century Global-Mean Sea Level Rise: Is the Whole Greater than the Sum of the Parts?
………..The reconstructions account for the observation that the rate of GMSLR was not much larger during the last 50 years than during the twentieth century as a whole, despite the increasing anthropogenic forcing. Semiempirical methods for projecting GMSLR depend on the existence of a relationship between global climate change and the rate of GMSLR, but the implication of the authors’ closure of the budget is that such a relationship is weak or absent during the twentieth century.
American Meteorological Society – Volume 26, Issue 13
http://dx.doi.org/10.1175/JCLI-D-12-00319.1
==================
Abstract – January 2014
Global sea level trend during 1993–2012
[Highlights
GMSL started decelerated rising since 2004 with rising rate 1.8 ± 0.9 mm/yr in 2012.
Deceleration is due to slowdown of ocean thermal expansion during last decade.
• Recent ENSO events introduce large uncertainty of long-term trend estimation.]
… It is found that the GMSL rises with the rate of 3.2 ± 0.4 mm/yr during 1993–2003 and started decelerating since 2004 to a rate of 1.8 ± 0.9 mm/yr in 2012. This deceleration is mainly due to the slowdown of ocean thermal expansion in the Pacific during the last decade, as a part of the Pacific decadal-scale variability, while the land-ice melting is accelerating the rise of the global ocean mass-equivalent sea level….
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0921818113002397

Jimbo
Reply to  Jimbo
January 15, 2015 5:20 am

We have this from almost a year ago. I think I will go with the consensus. 😉

Letter To Nature – 23 March 2014
The rate of sea-level rise
Present-day sea-level rise is a major indicator of climate change1. Since the early 1990s, sea level rose at a mean rate of ~3.1 mm yr-1 (refs 2, 3). However, over the last decade a slowdown of this rate, of about 30%, has been recorded4, 5, 6, 7, 8. It coincides with a plateau in Earth’s mean surface temperature evolution, known as the recent pause in warming1, 9, 10, 11, 12……
http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/v4/n5/full/nclimate2159.html

Jimbo
Reply to  David Johnson
January 15, 2015 1:32 am

We must act now on ground water extraction. It’s all for the children. [October 2010] Groundwater abstraction is about “one fourth of the current rate of sea level rise of 3.3 mm per year.”
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2010GL044571/abstract

[International Groundwater Resources Assessment Centre (IGRAC) – an initiative of UNESCO and WMO]
2010
Global groundwater depletion leads to sea level rise
Large-scale abstraction of groundwater for irrigation of crops leads to a sea level rise of 0.8 mm per year, which is about one fourth of the current rate of sea level rise of 3.3 mm per year.
http://www.un-igrac.org/publications/422

Reply to  Jimbo
January 15, 2015 6:34 am

Errr, no..
Groundwater depletion leads to subsidence..
For instance………http://ucwosl.rebo.uu.nl/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/Koop.pdf

Jimbo
Reply to  Jimbo
January 15, 2015 7:10 am

GregK January 15, 2015 at 6:34 am
Errr, no..
Groundwater depletion leads to subsidence..

Errr, yes. It also contributes to sea level rise. It goes into rivers and into the oceans. The issue has been covered by WUWT before and partly counters the position that sea level rise is only being caused by melting ice and thermal expansion.

WUWT – September 29, 2010
Pielke on ground water extraction causing sea level rise
…..
http://www.eos.ubc.ca/courses/images/course/eosc431.jpg
[“Where does the groundwater eventually end up? In the sea of course! Image: Department of Earth and Ocean Sciences, University of British Columbia.”]
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/09/29/pielke-on-ground-water-extraction-causing-sea-level-rise/

davidswuk
Reply to  David Johnson
January 15, 2015 2:38 pm

“So not only cooling the past, scientists are now lowering the past!”
No.Raising it surely.

Editor
January 14, 2015 12:13 pm

Cooling the past, and now lowering the seas!
Meanwhile tidal gauges all round the world show sea level rise has declined since the mid 20thC

Reply to  Paul Homewood
January 14, 2015 4:52 pm

Parting them comes next.

Ed
Reply to  philjourdan
January 15, 2015 12:44 pm

Coffee expectorated onto keyboard!!

Owen in GA
Reply to  Paul Homewood
January 15, 2015 5:40 am

The the president did say that now is the time we begin to lower the seas…he just didn’t tell us that it was the past level of the seas that he meant…pesky details!

Jimbo
Reply to  Paul Homewood
January 15, 2015 11:11 am

By lowering the past she claims an acceleration in the rate of sea level rise – despite a bunch of papers saying the opposite (see my above references).

….”We’re seeing a significant acceleration in the past few decades,” said study lead author Carling Hay, a geophysical researcher at Harvard University. “It’s concerning for cities along the U.S. East Coast” where water levels are rising even faster than the world average.
“It’s definitely something that can’t be ignored,” Hay said…..
http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/wireStory/study-sea-level-rise-accelerating-thought-28223869

Editor
Reply to  Jimbo
January 15, 2015 11:41 am

AQccording to the real experts who looked at sea levels on the East Coast
Temporal comparisons at five bay stations over two periods, 1944-1975 and 1976-2007, suggest that, while RSL continues to rise at some of the highest rates found along the U.S. Atlantic coast, there is presently no evidence of a statistically significant increase marking an acceleration in RSL rise at any of the five bay stations.
Present evidence suggests an ASL rise rate of about 1.8 mm/yr in Chesapeake Bay over the 1976-2007 period.

It is of course rising faster than the world average because of subsidence.
Subsidence, or the downward movement of the earth’s crust relative to the earth’s center, is particularly evident in the mid-Atlantic section of the U.S. east coast. Engelhart et al. (2009)
used a geological database of late Holocene sea level indices to estimate subsidence rates of <0.8 mm/yr in Maine increasing to 1.7 mm/yr in Delaware before returning to rates <0.9 mm/yr in the Carolinas.

https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2014/07/29/sea-level-rise-on-the-eastern-seaboard/

Bob Diaz
January 14, 2015 12:14 pm

It so bad the data doesn’t show it!!! ;-))

Sir Harry Flashman
January 14, 2015 12:17 pm

I look forward to the standard WUWT protocol:
1. Respected scientists publish peer-reviewed paper(s) following years of pain-staking fieldwork, research and analysis.
2. Someone writes contradictory post on WUWT using data culled from the internet and and graphed in home office.
3. All commenters chime in to engage in mutual congratulation on how much smarter they are than everyone else.

Reply to  Sir Harry Flashman
January 14, 2015 12:25 pm

Your assumption (1) is faulty. Most often, it is more accurately described as a climate scientists manipulates models until the cry uncle in order to prove his or her pet theory, and gets it pal reviewed into a climate journal. Your (2) is correct, because typically the real world assumptions made in (1) are so obviously wrong any semi-educated high schooler can identify the problem.

Joel O’Bryan
Reply to  dbakerber
January 14, 2015 1:02 pm

Usually its 1. torture the input data by carefully applying some nice cherry picks along with infilling and homogenization pre-processing, run some samples, tune the models to expectation, and then run the models on said “dataset”. And then scream Fire at the output garbage.

BFL
Reply to  dbakerber
January 14, 2015 4:33 pm

Are you saying Sir Harry only has the logic capabilities of a grade schooler??

Don K
Reply to  dbakerber
January 14, 2015 4:49 pm

More like, young researchers with little experience in the field construct computer model and use it to “prove” that previous work of respected scientists was wrong. In fairness, the tidal gauge data really is pretty bad. It has poor coverage. And, it lacks reliable estimates of how fast the gauges themselves are rising and sinking due to tectonic forces. But a fair number of people have tried to extract meaningful estimates from what data there is and I see no reason to believe that these guys have a better estimate. I think that the quality of their effort might be greatly improved by changing every “is” and “are” to “might be”. Maybe in a couple of decades we’ll know if their work has merit.

Janice Moore
Reply to  Sir Harry Flashman
January 14, 2015 12:25 pm

See below: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/01/14/claim-acceleration-in-sea-level-rise-worse-than-we-thought/#comment-1835607
(Hay and Morrow are the “respected scientists” you refer to, above fyi)

elftone
Reply to  Sir Harry Flashman
January 14, 2015 12:26 pm

1. One post-doctoral fellow and a recent PhD graduate. And it’s “pains-taking”.
2. Or the Colorado University Sea Level Research Group, and using their graphics from their data.
3. Which is what you’ve just tried to do…

Lawrie Ayres
Reply to  elftone
January 14, 2015 6:36 pm

Who funded the research? Unlikely to be paid for results that contradict the pronouncements of dear leader.

Reply to  elftone
January 14, 2015 6:53 pm

L. Ayres says:
Who funded the research?
That is always an interesting question, isn’t it?
That info should be on the front page, above the fold. Every time.
Money keeps the ‘runaway global warming’ scare alive. Because it certainly isn’t science!

Phil.
Reply to  elftone
January 15, 2015 6:25 am

Well the original post leaves off two of the authors, here’s the full list:
Carling C. Hay, Eric Morrow, Robert E. Kopp & Jerry X. Mitrovica
JXM – Professor of Physics (Geophysics);
Director & Fellow, Earth Systems Evolution Program, Canadian Institute for Advanced Research
Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences
Also the source of funding is given in the paper’s Acknowledgment section as normal, here it is:
“Tide gauge data were provided by PMSL (www.psmsl.org). This work was supported by US National Science Foundation grants ARC-1203414 and ARC-1203415, the New Jersey Sea Grant Consortium and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NJSGC project 6410-0012), Rutgers University (R.E.K., C.C.H.), and Harvard University (J.X.M., C.C.H. and E.M.). We thank P. Woodworth for comments on earlier versions of this manuscript.”

Editor
Reply to  Sir Harry Flashman
January 14, 2015 12:27 pm

Sir Harry – This isn’t one of those. There’s no fieldwork, no research and no analysis. Come to think of it, there never has been “one of those”.

Hugh
Reply to  Sir Harry Flashman
January 14, 2015 12:30 pm

Point taken, but still, we are talking about very typical alarmism here. It is worse than thought, the results are really difficult to see and yet the ocean is about to inundate Mexico City any second now etc.

Reply to  Sir Harry Flashman
January 14, 2015 12:30 pm

Sir Harry – where exactly have you seen any actual rise? In areas where there are ferry terminals or areas built close to the oceans, where has the flooding occurred and where have they had to build new ferry terminals? And why are places like the Maldives building spanking new airports close to the ocean if they were worried about the seas rising? The ice is in fine shape and increasing so the models – once again – are wrong. If there was any “painstaking fieldwork” they would have seen that the “rising” was actually subsidence.

Sir Harry Flashman
Reply to  colinpratt
January 14, 2015 1:01 pm
TC in the OC
Reply to  colinpratt
January 14, 2015 1:04 pm

The weld boathouse has been used by the Harvard crew since 1906. A question for all the Harvard and MIT grads…have the docks been raised to account for all the sea level rise in the last 118 years?

Joel O’Bryan
Reply to  colinpratt
January 14, 2015 1:06 pm

Wording quoted directly from the NOAA graphic that Flashman linked to:

“The variations in sea level trends seen here primarily reflect differences in rates and sources of vertical land motion. “

Sir Harry Flashman
Reply to  Joel O’Bryan
January 14, 2015 1:10 pm

” including stations consistent with average global sea level rise rate of 1.7-1.8 mm/yr.”

Sir Harry Flashman
Reply to  Joel O’Bryan
January 14, 2015 1:14 pm

Also: “Since 1992, new methods of satellite altimetry (the measurement of elevation or altitude) indicate a rate of rise of 0.12 inches (approx 3mm) per year.
This is a significantly larger rate than the sea-level rise averaged over the last several thousand years. ”
http://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/sealevel.html

GaealnClark
Reply to  colinpratt
January 14, 2015 1:46 pm

Oh Harry….Sir…..Harry…..
From your link….”Stations illustrated with positive sea level trends (yellow-to-red) are experiencing both global sea level rise, and lowering or sinking of the local land, causing an apparently exaggerated rate of relative sea level rise.”
“sinking of the local land”!!!!!!!! WOW, who woulda thunk it?!?!

Jake
Reply to  colinpratt
January 14, 2015 2:09 pm

Sir Harry, this has been discussed here before. Good god, you cannot use brand new measuring techniques from 1992 and compare it to data “from the last several thousand years”!! What type of accurate data do we have from 5000 b.c.e.? HOW?
And as a side note, if the NOAA continues to screw with the temperature record, I’m not so sure how much of their information is suitable in the first place.

Paul
Reply to  colinpratt
January 14, 2015 2:14 pm

“Since 1992, new methods of satellite altimetry …indicate a rate of rise of 0.12 inches (approx 3mm) per year.”
From NOAA: Satellite altimeter radar measurements can be combined with precisely known spacecraft orbits to measure sea level on a global basis with unprecedented accuracy. A series of satellite missions that started with TOPEX/Poseidon (T/P) in 1992 and continued with Jason-1 (2001–2013) and Jason-2 (2008–present) estimate global mean sea level every 10 days with an uncertainty of 3–4 mm.
http://www.star.nesdis.noaa.gov/sod/lsa/SeaLevelRise/
Is that really a better way to measure SLR?

PiperPaul
Reply to  colinpratt
January 14, 2015 2:26 pm

Gilligan’s Island.

Bunker Hill Jim
Reply to  colinpratt
January 14, 2015 2:36 pm

And, why were Billion$ spent on protecting New Orleans ?

RACookPE1978
Editor
Reply to  Bunker Hill Jim
January 14, 2015 4:17 pm

Bunker Hill Jim
And, why were Billion$ spent on protecting New Orleans ?

Well, over the years since the disastrous 1927 flood, hundreds of millions were spent on lower Mississippi River levees and flood control. But flood control has been used down there since it was first settled. What WAS different was the utter fraud and utter disregard for the people’s lives and property BY the corrupt democrat local and state officials. THEY misused and corrupted the money that was to be used to repair and upgrade the New Orleans levees and then blamed the Washington (Bush republicans) for THEIR OWN corruption and waste. With the deliberate aid and cooperation of the Washington ABCNNBCBS news media.

John M
Reply to  colinpratt
January 14, 2015 2:58 pm

Sir Harry http://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/01/14/claim-acceleration-in-sea-level-rise-worse-than-we-thought/#comment-1835674
Did you actually look at any of the data in your link? If you had (and understood it), you would know that the vast majority of US sites show a linear rise of sea level since the early 20th century. Were you trying to use it as “proof” of “acceleration” in sea level rise?
I hope not.

maccassar
Reply to  colinpratt
January 14, 2015 6:07 pm

Harry
Take a breath, stand back and think a minute about what the paper said. They looked at someone else’s SWAG and inserted their own SWAG. Sorry, but there is no there, there. Let’s be honest, Harry, the kid from Harvard was a legacy admittance and could not tell Daddy he spent all that time on the shores of the Charles River without some accomplishments. Now he can go to Wall Street, work in his Dad’s office and make millions doing what he did for the last few years at Harvard. He will just be substituting financial models for climate models whistling all the way to the bank.

eyesonu
Reply to  colinpratt
January 14, 2015 9:01 pm

Harry,
Could you please tell us the instruments used to measure sea level rise several thousand years ago. Maybe even explain just who even cared before the rise of the alarmist “cause”.
Don’t even try a ‘cubit’.

RACookPE1978
Editor
Reply to  eyesonu
January 14, 2015 9:15 pm

eyesonu
Maybe even explain just who even cared before the rise of the alarmist “cause”.
Don’t even try a ‘cubit’.

Relax. Noah was promised that a flood would never again threaten all of humanity. Then again, he got no promises about a “big rock falling from above” nor “a big blast from a nova.” But a flood? Not going to happen on this earth. 8<)

Tim
Reply to  colinpratt
January 15, 2015 4:45 am

What type of accurate data do we have from 5000 b.c.e.? HOW?
Jake; it was passed down through the descendants of that 32,757 year old survey participant in Lewandowsky’s paper of course.
Do try and keep up.

AndyG55
Reply to  colinpratt
January 15, 2015 10:58 am

Here is the Topex/Posiden data before it is adjusted using a subsiding reference point.
http://jonova.s3.amazonaws.com/graphs/sea-level/axel-morner/satellite-altimetry-se-level-topex-poseidon-500.gif

Pat
Reply to  Sir Harry Flashman
January 14, 2015 12:38 pm

Is it really worse than:
respected scientist picks up hypothesis
Spends years of pain staking effort filtering data and fabricating models that proves hypothesis in a computer.
Publishes “study”
Calls it science.

Robert of Ottawa
Reply to  Pat
January 14, 2015 4:06 pm

… and picks up grant

Reply to  Sir Harry Flashman
January 14, 2015 12:41 pm

harry, my dog is smater than you. He sniffs the post before he pees on it.

ferd berple
Reply to  Sir Harry Flashman
January 14, 2015 12:43 pm

you have it wrong. the years of painstaking fieldwork were done by the people that collected the tidal data. they set up the stations, maintained them, and carefully recorded the data.
then along comes someone with zero invested in the data, hungery to get their name published (publish or perish), and low and behold they say “look, all that data you collected, it is wrong and needs to be adjusted”.
so they add in an adjustment to the past, that just happens to not only be larger than the signal they are looking for, it co-incidentally confirms what they were looking for. then they anounce a huge press release with lots of publicity like they discovered the cure for cancer, to tell us all that we are all going to die. as if we will live forever if we just stop driving around in cars. and then they call this science.
the reality, when folks start looking into the papers, there are almost universally worse than we thought. almost without exception the results have not been reproduced, and until they are the papers have little or no scientific value.

Reply to  ferd berple
January 14, 2015 1:55 pm

” … hen along comes someone with zero invested in the data, hungery to get their name published (publish or perish), and low and behold they say “look, all that data you collected, it is wrong and needs to be adjusted …” ~ ferd berple
Now there is the god’s honest truth. We have fraudsters lapping up government funding hollering that the data collected before the CO2 hysteria all needs to be “adjusted”. (fudged in other words)

mpainter
Reply to  Sir Harry Flashman
January 14, 2015 12:43 pm

You have made a no worthwhile contribution with such a comment. You are nothing but a sneering troll, Flash man.

Reply to  Sir Harry Flashman
January 14, 2015 12:44 pm

SHF,
That is what some folks say when they have no evidence to support their Belief.

Reply to  Sir Harry Flashman
January 14, 2015 12:44 pm

Oh go away you troll, you are boring.

Somebody
Reply to  Sir Harry Flashman
January 14, 2015 12:54 pm

1. It doesn’t matter who you are. Respected or not (by the way, I don’t respect such ‘scientists’, not a little bit, I despise them). The scientific method does not care how beautiful or respected you are. Nor does it care how much time did you put into your crackpot theory. If it contradicts reality, it is wrong. No amount of respect can change that, even if you worked a million years for that bogus theory of yours.
2. Actually, it can be even simpler than that. Just show a fallacy in the ‘years of research’, or a contradiction and that’s it. You don’t even need to show that reality is denied. Technically, you don’t even need to use data (culled from internet or not). In this particular case, they used a model which they failed to show it is correct. To show it is correct it would require that time machine I will tell you about later. Google ‘ex falso, quodlibet’ to figure out why I don’t respect such ‘scientists’.
3. See point one. It doesn’t even matter how smart you are. If it’s wrong, it’s wrong and one’s IQ won’t bend reality to make it right.
Instead of ‘looking forward’ maybe you should question your pseudo scientists:
– How do they know that? Did they measure it, or did they actually applied some numerology on some scarce data to show a confirmation bias driven result?
– If their theory is false, how could you check that? Does it require you to invent a time machine, go back in time and make measurements in the points there aren’t any but they made the numerological guesstimates? Or a simple guesstimate as theirs that show otherwise would suffice?

Reply to  Sir Harry Flashman
January 14, 2015 1:03 pm

And your pre-emptive and presumptive post is for what reason?
Did you bring us intelligence? Or did you bring nonsense to make everyone here feel more intelligent?
The you trot out the typical, not to forget ‘frequent’, troll claims regarding simple troll beliefs about what occurs here on WUWT or Climate Audit or JoNova or Bishop Hill or… yes, the list goes on for sites that you fail to understand.
Respected scientists? Can you supply direct references for this respect to the alleged scientists?

“…Carling Hay, a post-doctoral fellow in the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences (EPS), and Eric Morrow, a recent PhD graduate of EPS…”

One a post-doc and the other a recent PHD graduate, both with current and future careers in their fields and so desperate to not offend the alarmist persecutors of those who question science as science should be questioned.
Did you notice where the abstract describes the ‘respected’ as averaging cherry picked regions and then averaging their results together again? Anytime anyone averages averages, especially into a global average, something is wrong.
Did you also notice that the ‘respected’ never mentioned the adjustments added yearly to the sea level rise, so we must assume they never thought to correct for adjustments. That current 3mm per year sea level rise sounds to me that they’ve mistaken the adjustments for actual data.
One must also wonder why with advanced radar, laser and satellite telemetry, why they had to bother with averaging averages from their odd cherry picked regional tables? I certainly do.
I was amused the other day. While perusing the current issue of Gray’s Sporting Journal, I read an article where the author used the name ‘Sir Harry P. Flashman’; i.e. he named his dog ‘Sir Harry P. Flashman’.

Billy Liar
Reply to  ATheoK
January 14, 2015 2:03 pm

Everyone knows Sir Harry Flashman was “a scoundrel, a liar, a cheat, a thief, a coward—and oh yes, a toady.” (G M Fraser 1969)

Rud Istvan
Reply to  Sir Harry Flashman
January 14, 2015 1:09 pm

Sir, you would benefit from reading essay Pseudo Precision in ebook Blowing Smoke. Only official government plus peer reviewed stuff (some of which is nonsense, just like this new Harvard model using sparse noisy data to rewrite the past observational record). Therein you will learn about the closure problem. (SLR does not equal the sum of ice mass loss plus thermosteric rise.) This new study would make that problem even worse than it already is. Which means the Harvard authors are either undereducated in the topic of SLR, or produced more CAGW alarm overlooking that their model conclusions do not recomcile to the rest of the SLR literature.

Alan Robertson
Reply to  Sir Harry Flashman
January 14, 2015 1:34 pm

Gone back on your word, have you Harry? You recently and clearly stated that you would cease and desist with your posts and churlish troll behavior on this site.

george e. smith
Reply to  Sir Harry Flashman
January 14, 2015 1:40 pm

“””””…..
Sir Harry Flashman
January 14, 2015 at 12:17 pm
I look forward to the standard WUWT protocol:
1. Respected scientists publish peer-reviewed paper(s) following years of pain-staking fieldwork, research and analysis……”””””
People with the usual grasp of the English language prefer to say ” pains taking”.
But maybe you really are referring some other kind of field work and analysis; like Vampire eradication.

Grant
Reply to  Sir Harry Flashman
January 14, 2015 2:00 pm

….. “following years of pain-staking fieldwork, research and analysis.”
Where have you been, Flashy?

Robert B
Reply to  Sir Harry Flashman
January 14, 2015 2:34 pm

Flashman – Getting through the peer-review process does not make a paper correct.
Anthony supplied the results of work from academics that were used by the young scientists Hay and Morrow. It does not contradict what they said in regards to how much the sea level is rising since 1992. It shows that the most accurate data has no acceleration signal in it at all.
Their argument is that that the previous measures, that were not accurate, could be lower so they are sure that it has accelerated. Their conclusion that the difference between the recalculated pre-992 data and now can be interpreted as acceleration is increasing is debatable.

Robert B
Reply to  Robert B
January 14, 2015 6:23 pm

And why the acceleration in rate of sea level rise should be observable in the satellite data.
“The study also shows that the combined rate of ice sheet melting has increased over time and, altogether, Greenland and Antarctica are now losing more than three times as much ice (equivalent to 0.95 mm of sea level rise per year) as they were in the 1990s (equivalent to 0.27 mm of sea level rise per year).”

Chip Javert
Reply to  Sir Harry Flashman
January 14, 2015 2:43 pm

Dear Harry:
Seems like I remember you getting your head handed to you in WUWT posts a week or so ago. (Sigh) Here we go again.
So you start off by insulting the entire community.
Considering warmest claim this “stuff” is all settled science, and no further discussion will be tolerated, it’s amusing to see how frequently prior data has to be “corrected” – 20th century temperatures appear to move down…sea level appears to move down…little ice age disappears. And not by trivial amounts, mind you.
And you wonder why so many are skeptical. Put simply, we don’t trust you.

Curious George
Reply to  Sir Harry Flashman
January 14, 2015 2:45 pm

Estimating the first derivative of a noisy data is always difficult and the result is uncertain. The contribution of esteemed researchers is to build a model, fit it to data, and estimate the derivative from the model. Long live science!

Reply to  Sir Harry Flashman
January 14, 2015 2:56 pm

I see you’re observing the standard alarmist WUWT comment protocol:
1) When any research emerges to support alarm, no matter how speculative or shoddy, rush to defend it
2) Fail to read actual WUWT post, never mind study itself
3) Make unscientific ad hom arguments having little to nothing to do with study
4) Preen at how much smarter you are than everyone at WUWT

Reg Nelson
Reply to  Sir Harry Flashman
January 14, 2015 2:57 pm

1. What fieldwork did they do? I saw no mention of that. Instead, they took actual fieldwork done by others and revised it to fit their narrative, using computer models and techniques they invented.
This is my biggest problem with the state of Climate Science. No one wants to do the comprehensive fieldwork over timescales that are meaningful. Instead their is a rush to judgement to push a political agenda.

Steve from Rockwood
Reply to  Sir Harry Flashman
January 14, 2015 3:23 pm

It may be hard for you to comprehend but not everyone wants to be reinserted into the Matrix.

lee
Reply to  Sir Harry Flashman
January 14, 2015 5:14 pm

Where is the fieldwork on subsidence? Tide gauges only show a presumed increase in sea level.

D.I.
Reply to  Sir Harry Flashman
January 14, 2015 5:17 pm

Sir Harry Flashman,you quote,”Respected scientists publish peer-reviewed paper(s) following years of pain-staking fieldwork, research and analysis”.and then they come up with this,

Measurments to the nearest metre.

Reply to  Sir Harry Flashman
January 14, 2015 5:32 pm

They do drive by comments on papers they didn’t read.
Then they whine if you return the favor and do drive by comments on their drive by comments.

Curious George
Reply to  Steven Mosher
January 14, 2015 6:00 pm

Steven – have you found a beginner’s stuff, or not yet? ERL – Effective Radiative Level. How high is it in Berkeley now? Does it change with the time of day? With seasons? With a location? What is the temperature there? Can your equations predict the ERL temperature?
I have been looking forward to your reply since January 5.

maccassar
Reply to  Steven Mosher
January 14, 2015 6:15 pm

Mosher
I can’t believe you can’t see the shallowness of this study. What they said is that they added 2 + 2 and it came up with 5 which they didn’t like, so they just inserted 6 and called it a model with probabilistic dimensions.

Reply to  Steven Mosher
January 14, 2015 11:36 pm

Steven – have you found a beginner’s stuff, or not yet? ERL – Effective Radiative Level. How high is it in Berkeley now?
It’s at the height such that the opacity to IR above it is low enough that LWIR escapes to space.
Does it change with the time of day?
yes.
With seasons?
yes
With a location?
Yes.
What is the temperature there?
depends on the height silly
Can your equations predict the ERL temperature?
yes.
I have been looking forward to your reply since January 5.
read more comment less. Talk to a optics expert is you are really interested.

Reply to  Steven Mosher
January 14, 2015 11:38 pm

“Mosher
I can’t believe you can’t see the shallowness of this study. What they said is that they added 2 + 2 and it came up with 5 which they didn’t like, so they just inserted 6 and called it a model with probabilistic dimensions.”
1. Dont comment on papers unless you read them
2. Then read the papers in the bibliography.
3. Then see if you can reproduce the results.
4. Then provide an argument why the approach they use to estimate is worse than other approaches
do some work.

mpainter
Reply to  Steven Mosher
January 15, 2015 5:00 am

Don’t need to to do all of that, Mosher. I have done my own research in the matter. Its quite simple: consult the data that is genuine and unadulterated.
In this case it is tidal gauge data. Study this from the stable coasts and you will see that sea level rise is a myth.
So you see, no need to waste time on junk science when one knows better.
Some scientist suffer from a chronic inability to reject models that are refuted by the simplest of observations.They never make very good scientists nor teachers.

Curious George
Reply to  Steven Mosher
January 15, 2015 9:29 am

Steven – thank you very much for spending your valuable time to answer beginner’s questions. I am aware of the definition of ERL, which you quote. But you don’t tell me what that basic height central to your theory is. As you know, it is usually said to be 8-10 km. What is the temperature there? Mosher: Depends on the height, silly. I asked you about the height, Steven.
So you don’t know. Welcome to the club. Beginner’s stuff.

Bill Illis
Reply to  Sir Harry Flashman
January 14, 2015 5:42 pm

I have no idea why we are wasting all those society’s dollars maintaining the 4,000 tide gauges and 1,000 GPS stations.
The data is effectively useless. It must be adjusted to include an upward trend.
And it is the same with all those 15,000 temperature monitoring stations. The data needs to be corrected with an upward trend.
Who do you believe? 20,000 data collectors or 2 global warming promoters (and a Flashman).
So we got three choices. Quit wasting society’s resources on measuring stations, climate science adjustments or just waste even more of society’s resources by continuing both.
If we choose Flashman for President, then all would be solved since we would not have any resources to waste in the first place.

Jimbo
Reply to  Sir Harry Flashman
January 15, 2015 1:49 am

Sir Harry Flashman
January 14, 2015 at 12:17 pm
I look forward to the standard WUWT protocol:
1. Respected scientists publish peer-reviewed paper(s) following years of pain-staking fieldwork, research and analysis.
2…………

I have adhered only to number 1 – here and here.
It looks like “Carling Hay, a post-doctoral fellow in the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences (EPS), and Eric Morrow, a recent PhD graduate” have a very slim publications list. But I could be wrong so please Sir Harry give me their publications list from the peer review. I looked hard for Carling Hay but very little. Maybe it’s because she got her PHD in 2012!

Phil.
Reply to  Jimbo
January 15, 2015 6:56 am

Well Jimbo, clearly you didn’t even take the trouble to read the abstract of the paper, sloppy work on your part!
As I posted above the original post leaves off two of the authors, here’s the full list:
Carling C. Hay, Eric Morrow, Robert E. Kopp & Jerry X. Mitrovica
JXM – Professor of Physics (Geophysics);
Director & Fellow, Earth Systems Evolution Program, Canadian Institute for Advanced Research
Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences

Jimbo
Reply to  Jimbo
January 15, 2015 7:24 am

Phil,
I still want the publications list for Carling Hay and Eric Morrow. Was she the lead author?

Letter To Nature
Probabilistic reanalysis of twentieth-century sea-level rise
Carling C. Hay, Eric Morrow, Robert E. Kopp, & Jerry X. Mitrovica
………..
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nature14093.html

Phil.
Reply to  Jimbo
January 15, 2015 8:02 am

It’s typical to put the junior authors first and the faculty advisor last.
Try Google scholar, JXM about 138 entries, REK about 290, CCH 10 entries, EM doesn’t work well because it’s not a unique entry.

Jimbo
Reply to  Jimbo
January 15, 2015 11:18 am

Phil
It’s typical to put the junior authors first and the faculty advisor last.

The Associated Press (AP) describes Carling Hay as the lead author. If they are correct then you too are getting sloppy.

….”We’re seeing a significant acceleration in the past few decades,” said study lead author Carling Hay, a geophysical researcher at Harvard University. “It’s concerning for cities along the U.S. East Coast” where water levels are rising even faster than the world average.
“It’s definitely something that can’t be ignored,” Hay said…..
Source

She sees an acceleration AFTER adjusting the past with her model. It’s worse than we thought!

Paul Mackey
Reply to  Sir Harry Flashman
January 15, 2015 4:06 am

Frankly, like a global average temperature, I don’t think a global average sea-rise figure is a meaningful thing to calculate.
I also would like to see a proper error bar quoted rather than a “90%” confidence level.

Alx
Reply to  Sir Harry Flashman
January 15, 2015 8:02 am

To Mr Sir Harry Flashman the esteemed
Perhaps Mr Sir Harry Flashman the esteemed could take the time to respond to individual criticisms of the paper, instead of using an appeal to authority argument, which is no argument at all. In the meantime I will respond to Mr Sir Harry Flashman the esteemed adhominems for no good reason.
“1. Respected scientists publish peer-reviewed paper(s) following years of pain-staking fieldwork, research and analysis.”
In one statement you traverse lack of foundation and end up in absurdity. Respected by whom? Years of pain-staking fieldwork? Does field work now include typing on a keyboard?
“2. Someone writes contradictory post on WUWT using data culled from the internet and and graphed in home office.”
So? Is Mr Sir Harry Flashman just recently becoming aware of the internet and how it works? Is this something new to him, collaboration and sharing of ideas and data? If so, it is unfortunate.
“3. All commenters chime in to engage in mutual congratulation on how much smarter they are than everyone else.”
It’s all relative, anyone standing next to Mr Sir Harry Flashman suddenly looks like a genius.

Phil.
Reply to  Alx
January 15, 2015 9:33 am

Alx January 15, 2015 at 8:02 am
To Mr Sir Harry Flashman the esteemed
Perhaps Mr Sir Harry Flashman the esteemed could take the time to respond to individual criticisms of the paper,

Perhaps those critics could actually read the paper? Or even the abstract, and get the author list correct.

Reply to  Sir Harry Flashman
January 15, 2015 8:39 am

“Fieldwork”? There’s no fieldwork in it at all. It’s massaging data with computer models, to get the desired “worse than we thought” result.

Alan
January 14, 2015 12:19 pm

I think I understand this
The records for the 20th century are really bad, so we have made up a number that is lower than everyone else’s
We deducted this from a total we grabbed out of thin air (based on the bad records) and the bit left over was greater than other studies, but fit exactly with the teory we had when we asked for money to do this.
Please send more study money and we will gaze into the future with it

Nick Stokes
Reply to  Alan
January 14, 2015 1:34 pm

They aren’t saying the records are bad. They are saying they are sparse. The oceans are huge, and tidal records are at a few coastal locations, subject to movement. Everything else has to be estimated to get a global record.
So the primitive estimate is to say, well, it’s all the same. That’s an assumption, the old one. H&M are saying, we can do better. Based on the observations.

Rud Istvan
Reply to  Nick Stokes
January 14, 2015 1:59 pm

Observations? Nick, they infered this result from a model that they themselves says was built for a different purpose, that they themselves said was fed sparse noisy data im order to makemthe model extrapolations. At least read the post and the paper abstract before making such silly disprovable assertions.

Chip Javert
Reply to  Nick Stokes
January 14, 2015 2:51 pm

Gee thanks Nick.
So no we know you can clean up “sparse data” with nifty computer models.
Probably easier than cherry picking tree rings.

D.J. Hawkins
Reply to  Nick Stokes
January 14, 2015 3:04 pm

Rud, speaking of reading the paper, I can’t find it in the current weekly issue (Jan 15) of Nature. Am I looking in the wrong place? Was it a full blown article?

mpainter
Reply to  Nick Stokes
January 14, 2015 3:26 pm

Nick,
You only need one tidal gauge if it is on a stable coast. That’s all; just one.

ferd berple
Reply to  Nick Stokes
January 14, 2015 3:56 pm

You only need one tidal gauge if it is on a stable coast. That’s all; just one.
================
Here you are. The highest tide in Vancouver was 47 years ago. The water hasn’t been higher since that day. ANd since record low water occurred 20 years later, this suggests ocean levels are falling.
VANCOUVER, B.C. 49° 17′ 14″ N 123° 06′ 36″ W
Historical Extreme High Water in metres(05 December 1967) =5.64
Historical Extreme Low Water in metres (13 December 1985) =-0.30
or how about this. Again oceans are falling. (lowest in 2008)
TOFINO, B.C. 49° 09′ 13″ N 125° 54′ 45″ W
Historical Extreme High Water in metres(30 November 1951) =4.75
Historical Extreme Low Water in metres (07 May 2008) =-0.32
or this. again oceans are falling.
QUEEN CHARLOTTE, B.C. 53° 15′ 7″ N 132° 04′ 18″ W
Historical Extreme High Water in metres(11 December 1973) =8.15
Historical Extreme Low Water in metres (27 May 1998) =-0.51

mem
Reply to  Nick Stokes
January 14, 2015 4:05 pm

Surely the big new headline to emerge from this “study” is that the researchers have asserted that sea level data gathered to date cannot be relied on to make long term detailed predictions for the future? Ok they then went ahead and made up some figures based on models but don’t all climate scientists do this?.

ferd berple
Reply to  Nick Stokes
January 14, 2015 4:10 pm

You only need one tidal gauge if it is on a stable coast. That’s all; just one.
================
here is what the US government says about sea level change in Vancouver.
The mean sea level trend is 0.37 millimeters/year with a 95% confidence
interval of +/- 0.23 mm/yr based on monthly mean sea level data from
1910 to 2011 which is equivalent to a change of 0.12 feet in 100 years.
0.12 feet in 100 years = 1.5 inches in 100 years.
1.5 inches in 100 years!! ITS WORSE THAN WE THOUGHT!! At this rate we will be underwater in a couple of million years. whatever will we do? where will we go? please send money to help the sea level refugees in canada, payable to ferdberple scam industries inc.
http://tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/sltrends/sltrends_global_station.htm?stnid=822-071

Nick Stokes
Reply to  Nick Stokes
January 14, 2015 6:24 pm

“Observations? Nick, they infered this result from a model that they themselves says was built for a different purpose, that they themselves said was fed sparse noisy data im order to make the model extrapolations.”
They fitted a model to observations.
“Our analysis, which combines tide gauge records with physics-based and model-derived geometries of the various contributing signals…”
There is no other way to get a global sea level average. There is a huge area of sea, with a few tide gauges on the periphery, which are not consistent. Some estimate has to be made of that vast interior. It was estimated before, it is estimated again. But better.

talldave2
Reply to  Nick Stokes
January 15, 2015 1:42 am

They’re claiming they can do better than sparse measurements, based on a computer model of other processes that are even more sparsely measured.
It’s an interesting attempt, but I don’t know why anyone would believe this claim, except ideological convenience. If they had claimed to find less recent acceleration, would anyone be discussing this? Or would the climate mafia have given this study cement boots by now?
Also, as was pointed out elsewhere, no one gives a rat’s ass what happens to the sea level in the middle of the ocean. Tide gauges have policy implications. This is true even where local subsidence is a known problem.

mpainter
Reply to  Nick Stokes
January 15, 2015 1:53 am

Think again, Nick. The only place where sea level change is of conseguence is at the _coast_ and it matters not a whit whether SL fluctuates by a few mm at some place 1267 km NE of PangoPango.

Janice Moore
January 14, 2015 12:19 pm

In a Nutshell (for those with little time for recreational reading)
“Typically, Hay said, estimates of sea-level rise are created by … gathering {data}.”
***
“The new estimates developed by Hay and Morrow grew out … computer simulations.”
The End.

thinair
January 14, 2015 12:20 pm

Please Harvard. What new data is used? – Thank you. MIT.

spetzer86
Reply to  thinair
January 14, 2015 12:32 pm

Harvard – because not everyone can go to MIT

Retired Engineer
Reply to  spetzer86
January 14, 2015 12:40 pm

As a graduate of The Great Eastern Technological Institute Upon the Banks of the Charles, I appreciate the comment. However, there are many fine people who’ve graduated from Harvard – I even count some as friends.

Rud Istvan
Reply to  spetzer86
January 14, 2015 1:12 pm

Just not in climate science, where classes are taught by the likes of Naomi Oreskes.

Crispin in Waterloo but really in Ulaanbaatar
Reply to  spetzer86
January 14, 2015 10:19 pm

Fight fiercely Harvard! Fight! Fight! Fight.
Show them our prowess and skill!…
…Hurl that spheroid down the field and fight, fight, fight!
– Tom L

Larry Butler
Reply to  spetzer86
January 20, 2015 4:42 pm

Harvard lost all credibility when the MIT hackers “remodeled” the football field by -10% by completely redrawing everything to 100 marks in 90 yards….and noone noticed. It was one of the finest hacks MIT ever pulled.

Chris Hebert
January 14, 2015 12:22 pm

What about subsidence in many developing areas giving the mistaken impression of sea level rise?

Editor
January 14, 2015 12:23 pm

This is another of the new science memes: present day data is “better” than older data, therefore we adjust data from the past to match our favored present day hypothesis.
It is hard for an old-school disinterested “just give me the data” scientist to see the wisdom of this approach.
This is done daily with surface temperatures as well — see https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/research/ushcn/ — “The full period of record monthly values are re-homogenized whenever the raw database is re-constructed (usually once per day)”.

Rud Istvan
Reply to  Kip Hansen
January 14, 2015 1:14 pm

Kip it is worse than that. See numerous vivid examples in essay When Data Isn’t in Blowing Smoke.

Reply to  Rud Istvan
January 14, 2015 5:14 pm

After searching for this ‘essay’–thinking the essay was something weirdly entitled “When Data Isn’t in Blowing Smoke”–I realized it was Rud Istvan’s book, “Blowing Smoke,” available as an e-book on Amazon. I’ve been plowing through some of the essays over the last two hours. Great stuff there for non-scientists like me. Highly recommended for all the lurkers here who are trying to get their bearings on the issues accurately. Judith Curry wrote the intro. She writes

Istvan’s insightful and incisive writing in “Blowing Smoke” tackles a diverse array of topics related to climate and energy that are highly relevant to the current public debate. His writing is accessible to a public who may not have the inclination, the time, or the ability to dig deep into the literature and emerge with a simple factual ‘big picture’.

Dead on. You’re being too modest not underscoring what Blowing Smoke is, Mr. Istvan. Not to mention the time lost trying to figure out what the hell you were talking about in your response to Kip Hansen.

Rud Istvan
Reply to  Rud Istvan
January 14, 2015 6:01 pm

Sorry about the time lost. Trying not to be commercial, as AW isn’t either.

bones
Reply to  Rud Istvan
January 14, 2015 7:15 pm

Rud, Rip Van Bones just woke up and took a look at Blowing Smoke. Great book! Thanks

Reply to  Rud Istvan
January 14, 2015 7:36 pm

I was razzing you about the time. There was no edit button to add a 😉 which I forgot so it sounded harsh. This is a really good book. I’m going through the Reykjavik stuff right now. I remember when Steve Goddard was first making his claims two years ago about changes to the USHCN data, and I actually wrote the MSM journalist who had reported it insinuating that Goddard was a conspiracy theorist (can’t remember who, or the org). I asked him why he wasn’t taking Goddard’s claim seriously. The reporter got in touch with Judith Curry and maybe Homewood, but he didn’t contact Goddard. Effing typical. Now, reading your book, I am seeing the extent of what the NCDC did. Changing the global record!
The NYT should have had a reporter in every state talking to every state meteorologist examining those records. There’s no other word for it: fraud.

Ren Babcock
January 14, 2015 12:24 pm

I have to admit, these grant writers are the most creative bunch around !!
So I’m guessing they are sitting at a bar one night and one of these has an epiphany on how to make a straight line turn into a hockey stick. A $1M grant later and bingo, they did it.
Even though their own commentary indicates there is no real, comprehensive, (believable) data to do it, they plowed on nevertheless and are accurate evidently to the width of a human hair, more or less.

maccassar
Reply to  Ren Babcock
January 14, 2015 6:21 pm

They did do one thing right. At the end of their press release they inserted this obligatory phrase “…….is really much larger than anyone thought.” Rumor has it that grant agencies reward 5 Gold Stars and a Milky Way if that phrase is found somewhere in their work.

George Tetley
January 14, 2015 12:24 pm

Ah ah, have we have been playing with the King Knut factor again?

Scott
January 14, 2015 12:25 pm

Something to do with the older tidal gauges under-measuring, as well the measurement was done at noon and not in the morning, Just because the satellites dont agree doesn’t mean they are right

Cam_S
January 14, 2015 12:25 pm

From just a few day ago…
Models overestimate melting. Models vs observations.
Efficient meltwater drainage through supraglacial streams and rivers on the southwest Greenland ice sheet
http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2015/01/07/1413024112.abstract

AndyZ
Reply to  Cam_S
January 14, 2015 1:07 pm

We all know by now to trust the models over the data…

jabre
January 14, 2015 12:26 pm

Flashman == comic
Flashman: ‘following years of pain-staking fieldwork, research and analysis.’
Paper: “modeling the physics that underpin sea-level “fingerprints”

Janice Moore
Reply to  jabre
January 14, 2015 12:33 pm

No doubt! If intending to amuse, great wit! {and no “sarc” tag needed, really, I’m serious — too funny}
I suspect it was unintentional, however… likely just copied/pasted Response #10.

highflight56433
Reply to  jabre
January 15, 2015 11:44 am

Thousads are flocking to beaches world wide to observe catestophic sea level rise… Cheers and Beers
https://www.google.com/search?site=&tbm=isch&source=hp&biw=1280&bih=633&q=crowded+beaches&oq=crowded+beaches&gs_l=img.3..0l4j0i5l2j0i24l2.3303.6543.0.6881.15.13.0.2.2.0.220.1681.0j9j1.10.0.msedr…0…1ac.1.61.img..3.12.1689.YjtNMKlVNFU

January 14, 2015 12:36 pm

“Unfortunately, our new lower rate of sea-level rise prior to 1990 means that the sea-level acceleration that resulted in higher rates over the last 20 years is really much larger than anyone thought.”
Liars! No other word for it. These people can model and weasel anything and everything.
Three comments:
1. Harvard University: A once prestigious organization, now a pathetic anti-human, anti-American wasteland.
2. Carling Hay is a liar.
3. Eric Morrow is a liar.
They know that what they have done is dishonest. They know they have distorted the truth. They know they are liars. They have made their bed and now the world knows the kind of twisted leftists they are. (I would have said leftist liars, but that’s repititious.)

Lance Wallace
January 14, 2015 12:36 pm

The graph shown here (going back only to 1992) with a rise of 3 mm/decade does not disagree with the Hay and Morrow study, which finds the same rise post-1990. Even if you accept the latter “half-curve” slope of 2.5 mm/decade (probably not a good way to treat the data, with an artificial division into two slopes), that is still twice the rate found by Hay and Morrow for the pre-1990 values. I’m not in any way accepting their results, just saying that if you want to audit their work, you will need to focus on their pre-1990 estimates.

Robert B
Reply to  Lance Wallace
January 14, 2015 2:46 pm

No. 20 years is long enough to spot acceleration if the measurements are as precise as indicated. It could have only started accelerating 10 years earlier due to fossil fuel use.

Greg Woods
January 14, 2015 12:42 pm

“It’s a larger problem than we initially thought.” How much did they initially think they thought – did their thoughts come in waves, or just little ripples?

Janice Moore
Reply to  Greg Woods
January 14, 2015 12:54 pm

Well, since, despite increasing human CO2 emissions, there has been NO “global warming” of any significance since he was about 6 years old, “recent graduate” Morrow’s brain appears to still be at ebb (in mid-June in the northern hemisphere, to boot)…. which, given the free flow of information during his lifetime, indicates that there is a very thick seawall blocking the tide from advancing up the beach… .

Phlogiston
January 14, 2015 12:45 pm

This is pure fraud.

January 14, 2015 12:48 pm

Brace yourself for this big reveal! We just created a model and now realize that all the warming since the last Ice Age occurred in the last ten minutes. I would have shared our model with the world, but my Mom flushed it before I could take a picture.
Sincerely – carling hay & eric morrow

Jimbo
Reply to  Eric Sincere
January 15, 2015 2:48 am

This is not Carling’s first model adjustment.

Abstract – 19 Jun 2014
The sea-level fingerprints of ice-sheet collapse during interglacial periods
Studies of sea level during previous interglacials provide insight into the stability of polar ice sheets in the face of global climate change. Commonly, these studies correct ancient sea-level highstands for the contaminating effect of isostatic adjustment associated with past ice age cycles, and interpret the residuals as being equivalent to the peak eustatic sea level associated with excess melting, relative to present day, of ancient polar ice sheets. However, the collapse of polar ice sheets produces a distinct geometry, or fingerprint, of sea-level change, which must be accounted for to accurately infer peak eustatic sea level from site-specific residual highstands. To explore this issue, we compute fingerprints associated with the collapse of the Greenland Ice Sheet, West Antarctic Ice Sheet, and marine sectors of the East Antarctic Ice Sheet in order to isolate regions that would have been subject to greater-than-eustatic sea-level change for all three cases. These fingerprints are more robust than those associated with modern melting events, when applied to infer eustatic sea level, because: (1) a significant collapse of polar ice sheets reduces the sensitivity of the computed fingerprints to uncertainties in the geometry of the melt regions; and (2) the sea-level signal associated with the collapse will dominate the signal from steric effects. We evaluate these fingerprints at a suite of sites where sea-level records from interglacial marine isotopes stages (MIS) 5e and 11 have been obtained. Using these results, we demonstrate that previously discrepant estimates of peak eustatic sea level during MIS5e based on sea-level markers in Australia and the Seychelles are brought into closer accord.
http://authors.library.caltech.edu/46354/

DHR
January 14, 2015 12:48 pm

The satellite record shows a quite steady rise of 3 mm/yr from about 1993 through August 2014. Tide gauge records show a quite steady rise of about 1.6 mm/yr since the mid 1800’s continuing through the 20th century up to recent times. I know of no reconciliations of the difference between these records.

Rud Istvan
Reply to  DHR
January 14, 2015 1:19 pm

Even NOAA disagrees with your tide gauge assertion about the pre-satellite SLR. Look up their estimates. You can even get their plotted rates.

Janice Moore
Reply to  Rud Istvan
January 14, 2015 1:45 pm

Re: “even NOAA”
1. The Data Twisting NOAA
“For the new ERSST.v4 data, NOAA severely limited the warming from the early-1910s until the mid-1930s and then added an unusual sudden warming.”
Bob Tisdale author of e book Climate Models Fail
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/01/01/has-noaa-once-again-tried-to-adjust-data-to-match-climate-models/
2. The Human CO2 Propaganda (here, aimed at school children) NOAA
“Climate change mitigation generally involves engaging in activities that reduce the production of human generated greenhouse gas emissions… .”
http://oceanservice.noaa.gov/education/climate-stewards/

AndyG55
Reply to  DHR
January 15, 2015 11:12 am

NO, the raw Topex data is shown here
http://jonova.s3.amazonaws.com/graphs/sea-level/axel-morner/satellite-altimetry-se-level-topex-poseidon-500.gif
It gives a rate of 1mm/year.
Its only after someone “adjusts” it using a reference point that is sinking at 2.3mm/year is added to the result. that a rate od approx. 3mm/year is produced.

Roger
Reply to  DHR
January 15, 2015 12:27 pm

The logical inference would be that the land is simultaneously rising at 1.4 mm/year, no? I.e. there is a land rise of 1.4 mm/year and a sea level rise of 1.6 mm year, which, from a satellite, gives the ocean the appearance of rising 3.0 mm/year. But since the water is carried up by the rising crust, it only shows 1.6 mm on tide gauges. I have heard that the satellites are calibrated somehow based on the tide gauges, though, so there may be other explanations.

Larry Butler
Reply to  DHR
January 20, 2015 4:47 pm

There is no tide guage on Earth where the tide guage’s reference can come anywhere near stability that can be used to measure 3 mm over the course of 12 months. What nonsense!

mpainter
January 14, 2015 12:50 pm

NOAA tidal gages on the west, Gulf, and East coasts show no sea level rise for the past 15-20 years, except where other is local subsidence, as in the Chesapeake Bay area.
None of these studies pay any attention to such data. Instead, they fabricate a sea level rise via modeling or ” adjusting” satellite altimetry data.
People like Flash man are deceived by the rent-seekers.

Sir Harry Flashman
Reply to  mpainter
January 14, 2015 12:58 pm

This link from NOAA shows sea level rising in every part of the US except areas of the Alaskan coast. In some cases, the trend is towards a substantial rise. Where is your information coming from?
http://tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/sltrends/slrmap.htm

Reply to  Sir Harry Flashman
January 14, 2015 1:21 pm

Harry
Did you bother to check that link and the supposed sea level rises?
New Orleans is going to flood anytime soon. Just like it has been for over a century.
The light green and blue dots represent less than 3mm/year, the dark blue ones show sea levels receding at -6 to -12 mm per year.
The yellow dots predominate around the mid-Atlantic where NOAA adjusts sea level rise for land rebound.
Now have you got any evidence that your respected post doc fellow and recent PHD data torturers are in any way possibly correct??

Sir Harry Flashman
Reply to  ATheoK
January 14, 2015 1:28 pm

I was responding to a specific assertion that “NOAA tidal gages (sic) on the west, Gulf, and East coasts show no sea level rise for the past 15-20 years,except where other is local subsidence, as in the Chesapeake Bay area.” This is demonstrably false.
I acknowledge that it’s a little confusing, because elsewhere NOAA says sea level rise globally is about 3 mm annually. http://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/sealevel.html
“Now have you got any evidence that your respected post doc fellow and recent PHD data torturers are in any way possibly correct??”
The paper is the evidence, though I freely admit insufficient expertise to judge. Have you got proof that’s it’s wrong?

Janice Moore
Reply to  Sir Harry Flashman
January 14, 2015 1:50 pm

SHF (today at 1:28pm): “This is demonstrably false… .”
Demonstrate it.
So far, you have provided no evidence, just words which, so far, have proven to be empty of any significant meaning.

Theyouk
Reply to  Sir Harry Flashman
January 14, 2015 4:32 pm

Harry–Have you looked at the actual specific trendlines for each of the locations on NOAA’s site? Let’s take something close to my home, as one example…San Francisco Bay at Alameda. It’s adjacent to a body of water that comprises, well, a fairly substantial portion of all the water on Earth (the Pacific). Here’s a link to the trendline: http://tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/sltrends/sltrends_station.shtml?stnid=9414750 Not only does it show ZERO acceleration in the ‘been happening since the Ice Age’ ongoing rise in sea level (whether you drive an SUV or not), but it’s lower today than the 1940 peak and shows no sign of anything catastrophic happening. The northern sites in North America still have glacial rebound and other tectonic influences that are contributing to a ‘relative’ fall in sea levels (see Alaska and Hudson Bay); the Gulf Coast and Chesapeake have major subsidence happening. Please–take a step back and look at the big picture. Look at a bunch of sites. Where is the predicted acceleration? The Hay & Morrow report simply makes me shake my head (and make me sick).

BFL
Reply to  Sir Harry Flashman
January 14, 2015 4:54 pm
Bob Boder
Reply to  Sir Harry Flashman
January 15, 2015 1:35 pm

Funny I thought Alaska had as much coastline as the rest of the US put together, so its going up in some places and down in others, how horrible.

mpainter
Reply to  mpainter
January 14, 2015 3:34 pm

Flash man
This is a prime example of lying by a government agency. My comment referred to specific gauges, of which there are several score on the various coasts. You must read each gauge to see the truth of my assertion.
The NOAA is now a political instrument, but for the real tidal data you have to dig deep for each gauge station. I have done this and I know whereof I speak.

mpainter
Reply to  mpainter
January 14, 2015 3:42 pm

To reiterate,
NOAA tide guages show no rise in sea level for the last 15-20 years on stable coasts where there is no subsidence.
This is shown by individual gauge data.
Do _not_ rely on charts and figures presented by the NOAA, or you will be deceived.Look at each individual tidal gauge data.

Reply to  mpainter
January 14, 2015 4:43 pm

Agreed, and I am surprised that NOAA still have this data available (the site-specific trendlines). It looks like they’re trying to get site visitors to accept the oh-so-scary upward arrows ‘at first glance’ and not encourage any deep-diving into the data.
“You know, I spent 6 hours at the Bay of Fundy one afternoon…saw the sea level drop over 50 feet…Figured the oceans would be empty by now…”

Janice Moore
Reply to  mpainter
January 14, 2015 6:12 pm

@ the U K, oh, I mean you, ‘k (smile), re: 4:43pm today — LOL, ME TOO!
(o_o)

Steve Case
January 14, 2015 12:52 pm

Follow this link to the HockeySchick where I was quoted:
http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.com/2013/10/satellite-sea-level-data-has-been.html
I’d do a better job posting this but I’m on an Apple product today, and it is extremely user hostile.

ferd berple
January 14, 2015 12:55 pm

Here is what the canadian west coast tidal records show. The highest tide in Vancouver was 47 years ago.
VANCOUVER, B.C. 49° 17′ 14″ N 123° 06′ 36″ W
Historical Extreme High Water in metres(05 December 1967) =5.64
Historical Extreme Low Water in metres (13 December 1985) =-0.30

January 14, 2015 12:56 pm

You’re all not addressing the main point which is that sea levels are definitely rising due to warming , but what would scientists know ?

Janice Moore
Reply to  Frank
January 14, 2015 1:09 pm

Frank, a little help to get you back on track:
The “main point” of this thread is:
data versus
computer simulations;
for example, NOAA tide gauges versus
no-skill model “trends”.

Reply to  Janice Moore
January 14, 2015 11:44 pm

OK, so you agree that sea levels are rising due to warming, good.

Janice Moore
Reply to  Janice Moore
January 15, 2015 6:50 am

No, Frank. I do not.

Janice Moore
Reply to  Frank
January 14, 2015 1:18 pm

So nicely stated and, if you are a sincere truth seeker Frank, exactly what you are looking for, that I repeat:
The main point is:

Harvard model using sparse noisy data to rewrite the past observational record… .

Rud Istvan today at 1:09pm

Rud Istvan
Reply to  Janice Moore
January 14, 2015 2:19 pm

Janice, TY. Hope you like the ebook Blowing Smoke: essays on energy and climate. Foreword from Prof. Judith Curry. There is much in it that suits your style.

Janice Moore
Reply to  Janice Moore
January 14, 2015 3:05 pm

Thanks, Rud — I plan to read your “Blowing Smoke” — my budget is a bit restricted while I am “between jobs,” but, at $9.99 it is a good deal!
http://www.amazon.com/Blowing-Smoke-Essays-Energy-Climate-ebook/dp/B00OJSOCNK/ref=sr_1_4?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1414877191&sr=1-4&keywords=Rud+Istvan
#(:))

Reply to  Frank
January 14, 2015 1:29 pm

Sea levels have been rising since the last ice age.
Old news, bad presentation, horrible math skills, worse data analysis skills. Absolutely nothing is different this century than the last several centuries regarding sea level rise.
They followed the favored climate team member’s methods; decide results, torture data, graph then torture data and re-graph till desired results appear.
When data refuses to collaborate there are a raft of terrible climate models that can be used fill out the desired graph with faux data.

Editor
Reply to  ATheoK
January 15, 2015 1:14 am

Since the last glacial, the average rate of sea level rise is 5.7mm pa (IPCC). So an acceleration up to half that is inconsequential.

jl
Reply to  Frank
January 14, 2015 5:53 pm

Frank- And you’re missing the even bigger point that even if sea levels are rising at whatever rate, that by no means proves it’s due to AGW.

Old Man of the Forest
Reply to  Frank
January 15, 2015 5:07 am

They are claiming an _acceleration_ of see level rise based on numbers that have been adjusted. The _acceleration_ doesn’t seem present in the raw measurements. Therefore the most obvious conclusion _acceleration_ seems to be an artefact of the adjustments.
Even NOAA accepts that some of the red dots on their maps are due to subsidence. Good luck addressing that by reducing CO2.

Steve Case
January 14, 2015 12:59 pm

In addition to my post above, here’s a little graph I ginned up that illustrates what Colorado University has done with the rate of satellite generated sea level rise over the last ten years or so.
http://oi59.tinypic.com/24e8482.jpg

MCourtney
January 14, 2015 1:03 pm

“What this paper shows is that sea-level acceleration over the past century has been greater than had been estimated by others,”

Maybe. Maybe not. This minority opinion isn’t necessarily right or wrong. All it means is that the science is not settled.

“It’s a larger problem than we initially thought.”

Ah, now that’s certainly wrong.
If it was a problem we would have noticed. As we didn’t notice any particular problem with sea-level rise (our infrastructure adapted without any extra expense save routine renewal)…
Well, it still isn’t a problem, is it?

Ryan
January 14, 2015 1:03 pm

So let me get this straight. The hard data, the observational data was not sufficient enough to create an accurate historical record of sea level rise. So instead, they created “fingerprints” in models built for other purposes, then used those model created “fingerprints” to infer how ice sheets are affecting sea level rise. These values are added together with thermal expansion numbers gleaned from other models, and then an estimate is made. I love new science! No more tedious observations having to be made. Just ask a computer to create the values for you.

Paul
Reply to  Ryan
January 14, 2015 5:00 pm

” I love new science! …Just ask a computer to create the values for you.”
Hey, it gets the grants and that’s the name of the game.
And when the “data” is proven wrong, get another grant to study it further.

Steve Case
January 14, 2015 1:04 pm

BTW, everybody knows that from 1992 thru 2003 the current data says the rate of rise was 3.5 mm/yr and from 2004 up to today that rate is only 2.9 mm/yr. Everybody knows that right?

Rud Istvan
Reply to  Steve Case
January 14, 2015 1:34 pm

Foots loosely with the pause. There are several papers even worse than this new Harvard one (simply laughable) that tried to explain the recent SLR ‘slowdown’ as not pause related. Those were the main objects of derision in essay Pseudo Precision, since they posited things that are utterly impossible after a few moments thought. Fine examples of the corruption of climate science and the failure of ‘pal’ review.

Steve Case
January 14, 2015 1:05 pm

Uh current data from CU’s Sea Level Research Group

Curt
January 14, 2015 1:08 pm

“But everyone agrees that global sea level has risen by about 3 millimeters annually since that time, and so the new study points to a larger acceleration in global sea level.”
No, everyone doesn’t agree! The tide gauges that showed less than 2 mm/year prior to the satellites still showed less than 2 mm/year during the satellite era. The apples-to-oranges comparisons of the two different methods while hiding this fact was one key thing that convinced me that the “climate establishment” could not be trusted.
Anyone who thinks we know the altitude of these satellites to within a mm/year so that we can rely on them over the best tide gauges has to be smoking something…

Rud Istvan
Reply to  Curt
January 14, 2015 1:24 pm

The satellite altimetry problem is worse than you portray. The newest, Jason 2, has a design spec local geographic precision of 3.5 cm, and a design instrument drift of 1mm/year. Details and references in essay Pseudo Precision.

Janice Moore
Reply to  Rud Istvan
January 14, 2015 2:37 pm

And furthermore… #(:))
“The difference between tide gauge data and space based data is over 100% in the left graph, 1.5 mm/yr versus 3.2mm/yr. Of course those who claim that sea level rise is accelerating accept this data without question, but obviously one of the two data sets (or possibly both) is not representative of reality, and {NASA} JPL’s GRASP team aims to fix this problem they have identified:

TRF {Terrestrial Reference Frame} errors readily manifest as spurious sea level rise accelerations

…”
AND
“The uncertainty is quite clear in Table 1, which has error ranges larger than the data in some cases: {Table 1}”
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/12/03/why-ice-loss-and-sea-level-measurements-via-satellite-and-the-new-shepard-et-al-paper-are-highly-uncertain-at-the-moment/

Rud Istvan
Reply to  Rud Istvan
January 14, 2015 3:22 pm

Janice, +10 at least.
Tide gauges have been (in some, not all) cases corrected for rebound/subsidence (land moves also) by differential GPS, supposedly good to within a mm. (Supposedly.) The land elevation change corrected tide gauges do reconcile to satellite altimetry to within the error of estimate. Which is large in context of this discussion. To the extent that NOAA can be trusted ( which is not very much on temperature records) they have all this out there in the public domain. Just takes effort to find, which I expended writing Pseudo Precision.

PeterK
Reply to  Curt
January 14, 2015 4:14 pm

Curt: And this article shows how well instrumentation currently works.
http://notrickszone.com/#sthash.Oz2WUoBn.dpbs

markopanama
Reply to  Curt
January 14, 2015 5:35 pm

Even JPL, who built the satellites, knows they are showing spurious SLR acceleration. Reported right here Oct. 2012. http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/10/30/finally-jpl-intends-to-get-a-grasp-on-accurate-sea-level-and-ice-measurements/

Roger
Reply to  markopanama
January 15, 2015 4:52 pm

“but obviously one of the two data sets (or possibly both) is not representative of reality,” –JPL
Is it obvious? The tide gauges and the satellites are not measuring the same thing. As I’ve said elsewhere, the missing factor is vertical crustal displacement. Be very careful before trying to “correct” data that is “obviously” wrong. It may be that one of your underlying presumptions is what is actually in error. The discrepancy between the tide and satellite data is very intriguing and may ultimately turn out to be highly consequential for geology as well as climatology — unfortunately, for the time being I think the significance has been missed due to the uncritical acceptance of the satellite data as superseding, rather than contrasting with, the tide gauge readings.

john cooknell
January 14, 2015 1:10 pm

Scientific Speculation

wpdelange
January 14, 2015 1:13 pm

Note that the revised long-term estimate of sea level rise estimated from a selected set of tide gauge stations, while lower than the IPCC approved estimates, is within the range of previously published estimates. It also happens to be approximately half of the “official: rate when I first had to give expert evidence on sea level rise in 1984.
The recent “acceleration” is a consequence of a step change that occurs with the introduction of satellite altimetry data into the analysis be the use of reconstructed GMSL data. Without a reconciliation of the results produced by the different techniques the highlight interpretation is not reliable. The few published and unpublished attempts to better match satellite and tide gauge data produce a lower rate post 1993 than used by this paper.
It is also well known that there are decadal scale fluctuations in the rate of sea level rise (which vary between the different ocean basins), and that comparison of a short term trend (60 years) is misleading. Particularly at present with good evidence that both satellite and tide gauge rates of sea level rise are decreasing.
My personal view is that a heavily smoothed global sea level record doesn’t tell us much of practical value for coastal management issues

Joel O’Bryan
January 14, 2015 1:14 pm

Well how could those young scientists have ever hope to get a tenure track appointment if they tried to publish a study that concluded SLR was effectively near zero and lost in the tidal data with their statistical methods? Seriously.
They could have published in the Journal of Null Results. And then gone looking for new employment at McDonald’s. Until the incentive system changes, we will continue to get these kinds of “new age science.”

Reply to  Joel O’Bryan
January 14, 2015 1:55 pm

sad but true

Leonard Lane
Reply to  Joel O’Bryan
January 14, 2015 4:23 pm

But, given their lack of ethics, could you trust them to serve food without doctoring it? Seeking tenure is no justification for being dishonest.

Alan Robertson
January 14, 2015 1:30 pm

Harvard is the ne plus ultra training ground of upper level managers in the US Gov’t bureaucracy. Their efforts are directed at maintaining and increasing the power of the Federal Gov’t,, while buttressing their own personal wealth and power- nothing more and nothing less.

timc
January 14, 2015 1:32 pm

Just like any experiment that adds heat in we should add all the heat derived by burning fossil fuel to the supposed base temp and look at the result. We also might try to calculate cubic meters of water extracted from the ground and add it to a base sea level, ya probably not much but it could explain some of the possible rise.

Stephen Richards
January 14, 2015 1:33 pm

TC in the OC
January 14, 2015 at 1:04 pm
The weld boathouse has been used by the Harvard crew since 1906. A question for all the Harvard and MIT grads…have the docks been raised to account for all the sea level rise in the last 118 years?
This is the test that even a simpleton like Frank can do. Allez-y Frank. We expect the answer tomorrow.

Retired Engineer
Reply to  Stephen Richards
January 14, 2015 1:44 pm

There is a damn and lock between the MIT boathouse on the Charles and the harbor – SLR wouldn’t effect the boathouse unless it got REALLY large.

Rud Istvan
Reply to  Stephen Richards
January 14, 2015 1:45 pm

The Charles has locks between itself and Boston Harbor to prevent flooding on spring tides. The 1912 lock was replaced in 1978, but not because of SLR. Rowed out of Weld, know these things.

Phil.
Reply to  Stephen Richards
January 15, 2015 7:40 am

Nice ‘own goal’, by a ‘simpleton’ who couldn’t be bothered to adequately research the subject!

jmorpuss
January 14, 2015 1:33 pm

How much ocean rise is due to silting and volcanos , man mad objects and structures and garbage in or floating on the oceans?

Rud Istvan
Reply to  jmorpuss
January 14, 2015 1:51 pm

The big things are plate techtonics and isostatic rebound. U. Colorado models the so called GIA adjustment as +0.3mm/yr. So the oft talked about sayellite era 3.1mm/yr is really only 2.8+/- 0.4 from the perspecive of actual coastlines and tide guages. Details and references in essay Pseudo Precision.

Roger
Reply to  Rud Istvan
January 15, 2015 5:30 pm

Do the satellite altimeters also measure land level rise/fall? If not why not? I have seen measurements of change in glacial height, but rarely of land height itself. The global isostatic adjustment stuff seems to be more theoretical than empirical.
[The only claimed (widely publicized) isostatic adjustments to date have been under-ice land height adjustments needed to justify the final assumed glacier melt rates. .mod]

Reply to  jmorpuss
January 14, 2015 3:17 pm

not much

Ursus Augustus
January 14, 2015 1:45 pm

When made aware of these latest revelations from “science”, Ms H Penny was observed to suddenly run down the street, crossing repeatedly back and forth across a busy road shouting ” THE SEA IS RISING, THE SEA IS RISING!”

xplod
January 14, 2015 1:49 pm

To repeat someone (I forget who, but Josh drew a wonderful cartoon), from a couple of years or so ago – the water’s still only halfway up the duck!

Jim
January 14, 2015 1:50 pm

I would think rising temps would increase rainfall from increased evaporation of the oceans and much of that would become groundwater never to be seen again. This would far outweigh the water from a few glaciers especially when they are good and gone. I for one am sick and tired of hearing about glaciers.

Reply to  Jim
January 14, 2015 2:00 pm

Bad news, we’re in an interglacial of our current ice age.
If glaciers go it’s likely no more ice age.
Last time that happened it got real hot.

Janice Moore
Reply to  Jim
January 14, 2015 2:07 pm

Nice point, Jim (and I agree)!

Rud Istvan
Reply to  Janice Moore
January 14, 2015 2:29 pm

Jim and Janice, you would enjoy essay Pseudo Precision. The groundwater thingy was used in three papers to explain the ‘SLR slowdown’ as not pause related. Doesn’t wash (pun intended). But reveals much about the increasingly desparate state of ‘climate science’ and pal review.
Jim’s groundwater hypothesis over the long haul, don’t know. This was very short haul stuff trying to explain a SLR slowdown that quite likely was just instrument error needing no ridiculous explanations in the first place. Hence the essay title.

Janice Moore
Reply to  Janice Moore
January 14, 2015 2:56 pm
Rud Istvan
Reply to  Janice Moore
January 14, 2015 3:43 pm

No, in my own newest book Blowing Smoke: essays on energy and climate. Foreward only is by Judith. You reference her new $90 textbook on the microphysics of clouds. WAY beyond my pay grade. My much simpler and illustrated for non-academic laypersons (like me) book is available iBooks, Amazon Kindle, BN Nook, KoBo… And is cheap -$9.99.
Regards.

Janice Moore
Reply to  Janice Moore
January 14, 2015 4:53 pm
jayhd
January 14, 2015 2:00 pm

If the sea level rise is approx. 3 mm a year, that means a little over an inch every nine years, or less than a foot in a century. What exactly is the big deal? Even if no more sediment comes down from Pennsylvania, I still won’t be able to take my boat across the Susquehanna Flats at low tide.

Marcos
January 14, 2015 2:03 pm

its not too well known but Colorado University states that their global mean sea level numbers (GMSL) are for purposes of measuring ocean volume and not relative sea levels at the coast…
“The global mean sea level (GMSL) we estimate is an average over the oceans (limited by the satellite inclination to ± 66 degrees latitude), and it cannot be used to predict relative sea level changes along the coasts”
“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. This is what is needed for comparisons to global climate models, for example, and other oceanographic datasets.”
http://sealevel.colorado.edu/content/what-glacial-isostatic-adjustment-gia-and-why-do-you-correct-it

talldave2
Reply to  Marcos
January 14, 2015 3:08 pm

That lets them claim a bigger number due to basin expansion (ocean volume is increasing faster than sea level rise because of the basin increase).
Why anyone would care about ocean volume increase more than sea level rise is one of those questions that is discouraged.

tty
Reply to  talldave2
January 14, 2015 3:40 pm

The basin expansion is very questionable in any case. The GIA correction is based on the ICE-5G model which is known to be grossly inaccurate for the most important area, Antarctica.

talldave2
Reply to  talldave2
January 15, 2015 1:27 am

Good point.
Shockingly, they didn’t actually measure the basin expansion. But they have a model! So never mind your tide gauge measurements.

January 14, 2015 2:14 pm

Funny how she hastily mumbles something about tide gauges being along coastlines, then runs away….from the obvious fact that if sea level rise were to become a problem, it would be along those same coastlines…and that the tide gauges show no alarming rate. Funny, huh?

Janice Moore
Reply to  Mike Bromley the Kurd
January 14, 2015 4:57 pm

Hilarious — not!
(but, your witty writing about your good point made me chuckle)
So! Had any good arguments with AGWers down at the gym lately?
Go, (genuine) Meteorologist MacGuire!

Janice Moore
Reply to  Janice Moore
January 14, 2015 5:00 pm

I mean (oh BROTHER!)!! Mike BROMLEY (not Mike M.)! Stay safe, over there.
Yes, I will try to be more careful from now on.

January 14, 2015 2:20 pm

I have searched specifically and methodically for an increase in the sea level rise rate in the last 20 years. I can’t find good evidence for it. Got kind of bored looking for it.
See “The Search For Acceleration”
https://climatesanity.wordpress.com/the-search-for-acceleration/

talldave2
Reply to  Tom Moriarty
January 14, 2015 3:15 pm

A piece in Nature concluded there was no detectable acceleration trend since 1930.
http://www.nature.com/ncomms/2014/140414/ncomms4635/full/ncomms4635.html
For the period 1930–2009, none of the 12 records has an acceleration significantly different from zero (except Brest), in general agreement with results from the controversial study of Houston and Dean21. The acceleration at Brest is different from Newlyn, despite their close proximity, and may appear significantly different from zero because of a data gap in the 1940s

AJ
Reply to  talldave2
January 15, 2015 7:17 am

There was nothing “controversial” about Houston and Dean, except that it offended the biases of a few alarmists. Objectively it was a rock solid study.

Sir Harry Flashman
Reply to  talldave2
January 15, 2015 9:40 am

Nice. You quote one line from the Nature piece you link to, relevant to a specific technique only and against which they offer a strict caveat in the next paragrapah. In fact, their conclusion is precisely the opposite of what you claim:
“there is substantial evidence, in both GMSL data sets2, 24 and coastal averaged sea level time series (corrected for internal variability27), for the existence and significance of a sustained increase in the rate of sea level rise over the 20th century and early part of the 21st century. In addition, the magnitude of the acceleration currently being observed is consistent with the latest understanding of sea level budgets45 and since about 1990 cannot be explained solely as part of internal variability44.”

talldave2
Reply to  talldave2
January 15, 2015 11:51 am

Harry — Of course they say that, they don’t want to be blacklisted. But no acceleration since 1930 is problematic for alarmists irrespective of any caveats.
The caveats are sort of pointless anyway, since even their analysis says statistically significant accelerations irrespective of chosen start dates won’t even be detectable until the 2020s.

talldave2
Reply to  talldave2
January 15, 2015 11:56 am

Note the part of the summary you left off:
“The public and policy makers might prefer to see evidence of a significant acceleration in their local tide gauge records. However, our results clearly show that it could be several decades before the acceleration detection methods considered here reveal (in a statistically significant sense to 95% confidence) such a discernable acceleration in individual tide gauge records. This is due mainly to the considerable interannual to multidecadal variability evident in sea level at a local scale, and our inability to account fully for all of it at present. Our results imply that if/when the currently understood components of the variability in the records are removed, then accelerations significantly different from zero are likely to become detectable in individual tide gauge records later this decade or early next decade, using the methods considered here.”
So, in other words, we really have no idea whether GMSL is accelerating, and won’t for some time. But the current IPCC models can’t be ruled out (shockingly).

sinewave
January 14, 2015 2:21 pm

I wonder how this discussion would look if the whole “CO2 is pollution vs CO2 is not a big problem” unspoken agenda was gone.

Reply to  sinewave
January 14, 2015 2:39 pm

Me too, but global warming has left the building and CO2 is up 10% over The Pause with no discernible radiative forcing, and we have daily infusions of crap science making it into the popular press so, I’m hypothesizing it is not about science, good or bad, at all. It is fodder and I’m pretty sure I don’t even have to bother testing that hypothesis – hey they don’t.

talldave2
Reply to  sinewave
January 14, 2015 3:05 pm

With much less grant money.

JohnWho
Reply to  sinewave
January 14, 2015 4:29 pm

Yes, because without the implied link to “it is our fault because we emit so much CO2” it is doubtful things like this would garner much attention at all.

January 14, 2015 2:25 pm

If you are not completely sick of this bogus SLR and feel the need to torture yourself further, you may read about it all over again here: (not recommending that, but rather a frosty beside the fire)
http://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-climate-sea-level-20150113-story.html

usurbrain
January 14, 2015 2:28 pm

How much would the level increase be from JUST the depletion/use of the water stored in the various continental aquifers, e.g., the Ogallala Aquifer in the Western US and the Florida peninsula which have dropped hundreds of feet and tens of feet respectively?

Rud Istvan
Reply to  usurbrain
January 14, 2015 3:08 pm

Globally negligible. World is a big place. Land Aquifers hundreds of feet deep have little impact on oceans miles deep covering 79% of the planet.
97% of the world’s water is the oceans. 2% is icecaps and glaciers. Everything else, rivers, lakes, aquifers is 1% (well actually according to USGS just 0.9%). See my ebook Gaia’s Limits for explanations of the profound consequences, including specific discussion of the Ogallala and South Florida aquifers.
See essay Pseudo Precision in ebook Blowing Smoke for a debunking of the groundwater storage idea used by ‘climate scientists’ to explain the recent possible ‘SLR slowdown’.
Regards to someone who is thinking.

Rod
Reply to  Rud Istvan
January 21, 2015 1:09 pm

But surely the ground water goes right on top. Where it would be most obvious!!!***!!!

Ivor Ward
January 14, 2015 2:36 pm

“”“We are looking at all the available sea-level records and trying to say that Greenland has been melting at this rate, the Arctic at this rate, the Antarctic at this rate, etc.” she continued. “We then sum these contributions and add in the rate that the oceans are changing due to thermal expansion to estimate a rate of global mean sea-level change.””
So we have no data on the thickness of any of the ice sheets before 1990 that is of much use. We have no empirical measurements of any rates of melt before 1990 so we take this almost complete lack of data and put it into a model and it does not come out to the same as the tide gauge data. We therefore throw up our arms in amazement and declare that the work of all previous scientists is completely wrong and we have to rush out and buy waders before 2150 or we will all get cold knees. Where do they get these twits from. Is there some kind of Harvard selection process that only scouts the local pig farms?

Sweet Old Bob
Reply to  Ivor Ward
January 14, 2015 3:14 pm

Nah, the pigs are smarter than that. Harvard must really have to work hard to find this “depth of dumbness”

Rud Istvan
Reply to  Sweet Old Bob
January 14, 2015 4:05 pm

Ouch. Oink.
Some of us survived the brainwashing. So are doubly dangerous.

vounaki
January 14, 2015 2:37 pm

Excess phlogiston spells global doom.

phlogiston
Reply to  vounaki
January 15, 2015 12:47 am

hehe

edk
January 14, 2015 2:43 pm

boston sea level has dropped in last 5 years

MattN
January 14, 2015 2:48 pm

Have they EVER said “this is less than we thought and not as big a problem as we thought”?
Of course not. There’s no grant money for anything like that.

richard stout
January 14, 2015 2:58 pm

I’m still trying to understand why a sea level rise of less than one foot per century is considered a problem, yet alone a “bigger problem than we thought”. Can anyone explain?

Owen in GA
Reply to  richard stout
January 15, 2015 6:20 am

Because if you aren’t kept in a constant state of alarm about the monster under the bed, you won’t clamor for government to do something about it and willingly give up your freedoms.

James at 48
January 14, 2015 3:01 pm

Darned oceans! They are not rising fast enough, based on direct measurements. Therefore, we will TELL those pesky oceans they are rising at the politically correct rate.

talldave2
January 14, 2015 3:04 pm

I’m not sure why anyone would think it’s easier or more accurate to use the sparse tide gauge measurements than the nonexistent ice sheet melting measurements.
Oh wait, you have a computer model for that. Please continue while I stick my fingers in my ears and yell obscenities for unrelated reasons (sorry, it’s a programmer thing).

Janice Moore
Reply to  talldave2
January 14, 2015 5:08 pm

No need to apologize!
We understand!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
(If it weren’t that my two German Shepherds take EVERY-thing to heart and make it deeply personal, I would, too!)

Why.It's.Not.C02
January 14, 2015 3:05 pm

You’ll be surprised to learn that sea level could be determined by planetary orbits …
A plot of the scalar sum of the angular momentum of the Sun and all the planets is shown here.
In the above linked website that plot is derived solely from planetary orbits. There is a very strong correlation between world temperature data and the 934-year and superimposed 60-year cycles in this plot. I postulate that magnetic fields from the planets affect the Sun and cosmic ray intensities, and the latter can affect cloud formation and thus climate on Earth.
The whole debate lies firmly within the science of physics in which I am well versed. Most people don’t understand thermodynamics, let alone radiative heat transfers. I have written about the latter in my paper “Radiated Energy and the Second Law of Thermodynamics” published on several websites in March 2012 and easily found with Google. That paper demolishes the false conjecture by James Hansen that back radiation can be added to solar radiation when calculating surface temperatures using the Stefan Boltzmann equation. All it can do is slow that portion of surface cooling which is itself by radiation, whilst having no effect on most of the cooling, which is not by radiation.
But the more important issue is the physics (based on the Second Law of Thermodynamics) which does explain all temperature data in tropospheres, surfaces, crusts, mantles and cores of all planets and satellite moons, and also explains the required energy flows to maintain the existing temperatures. Very, very few are aware of this physics, yet it is valid and correctly derived from the laws of physics which have stood the test of time.
Unless we attack the false physics in the greenhouse conjecture and present valid physics that does gel with reality, we don’t have a hope of quashing the hoax.
I believe we can present the correct physics, and such is in my book “Why It’s Not Carbon Dioxide After All” available from Amazon. If we don’t satisfy the world that the physics in the GH conjecture is false, and that other correct physics does explain everything, then there will be more of the same when the 60 year cycle rises again between about 2028 and 2059.
Hopefully Australia can lead the world, for I believe there could be a class-action sponsored by major companies against the Government for all the costs which such companies incur because of the false claims regarding carbon dioxide. If the Government lost such a case they would be forced to act and take notice of the correct science, and it would get global attention. I am confident that I could defeat any scientist the Government might use as a witness in such a case. Many of you will know that I have argued with hundreds on climate blogs and never been proven wrong regarding the content of my book. I’ve even offered $5,000 if proven wrong.
So, if anyone has any suggestions, or knows someone in an Australian law firm who may wish to take this on, let me know.

Janice Moore
Reply to  Why.It's.Not.C02
January 14, 2015 7:42 pm

Hey, Anthony, would you look who came to dinner? lol … It’s….. Mister Cotton!

Jimbo
Reply to  Why.It's.Not.C02
January 15, 2015 6:49 am

Why.It’s.Not.C02 January 14, 2015 at 3:05 pm ……….
You’ll be surprised to learn that sea level could be determined by planetary orbits …
A plot of the scalar sum of the angular momentum of the Sun and all the planets is shown here.

You need to stay off substances.

alias eruption
January 14, 2015 3:09 pm

I suggest you all google Sir Harry Flashman. If you have not read the books, please do so. Witty stuff.

Ivor Ward
January 14, 2015 3:32 pm

“”Mike Bromley the Kurd
January 14, 2015 at 2:14 pm
Funny how she hastily mumbles something about tide gauges being along coastlines, then runs away….from the obvious fact that if sea level rise were to become a problem, it would be along those same coastlines…””
She probably reckons that if the sea level in the Ocean rises far enough it will come further up the sides of the ships and eventually pour in and sink them…….

Janice Moore
Reply to  Ivor Ward
January 14, 2015 5:11 pm

lol. (GRIN — no grin) You’re right. Mm, hm. She worked it all out in the bathtub with a model.

January 14, 2015 3:33 pm

Obscene. Evil. This has nothing to do with global warming; the enemy is truth.

bw
January 14, 2015 3:36 pm

Complete NOAA analysis of all available data from 2005 to 2012 shows 1 mm per year.
http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.com/2012/12/noaa-2012-report-finds-sea-levels.html
has link to NOAA paper published in 2012.
Reading the full paper shows SLR from 2005 to 2012 measured by GRACE and JASON satellites at 1 mm per year. The amount of error in the analysis is about +/- 1 mm per year.
Plenty of photos from 19th century of the Statue of Liberty or foundations of the Brooklyn bridge. Compare those photos with the same view today and I can see no SLR. Even if the average SLR were 2 mm per year, the total SLR in the last 150 years amounts to 300 mm. Thats 1 foot. Tides in NY harbor have a typical full range of 5 feet on any given day. I doubt anyone looking at NY harbor will notice.

Reg Nelson
Reply to  bw
January 14, 2015 4:00 pm

Great point, bw.
There are far more damaging storms on the horizon — Social Security, Public Pensions, Medicare, Medicaid, College Loan Default, Spiralling National Debt, etc. These events are real, not modeled, and unavoidable. They will impact future generations far more than a few millimeters of sea level rise.

Paul
Reply to  Reg Nelson
January 14, 2015 5:13 pm

“There are far more damaging storms on the horizon ”
Like O’s third term?
Martial law is the trump card, and who are his pals? Just sayin’

Reg Nelson
Reply to  Reg Nelson
January 14, 2015 5:33 pm

Paul January 14, 2015 at 5:13 pm
“There are far more damaging storms on the horizon ”
Like O’s third term?
Martial law is the trump card, and who are his pals? Just sayin’

I never mentioned any of those things. Hyperbole much? Ridiculous? Strawman?
I never mentioned Obama, his pals, or an Obama third therm.
You are delusional.

Phil.
Reply to  bw
January 15, 2015 8:42 am

I take it you’re unaware of this event:
“Both Liberty and Ellis Islands were largely submerged by the storm surge from Hurricane Sandy, which made landfall on the evening of October 28, 2012. Liberty Island reopened on July 4, 2013. The Ellis Island Immigration Museum reopened on October 28, 2013, although it remains a work in progress. Elevator access is available to the Great Hall on the second floor and the exhibit spaces on the third floor. Because of the storm, most of the museum collection is currently stored in a climate-controlled facility in Maryland.”
http://www.nps.gov/stli/after-hurricane-sandy.htm

mpainter
Reply to  Phil.
January 15, 2015 11:45 am

No secret that NYC harbor and area are subsiding, Phil. Have been ever since when. And so are we to be alarmed about sea level rise because of this?
Or perhaps you mean that we should be alarmed over tropical storms.
Please clarify.

Arno Arrak
January 14, 2015 4:05 pm

Highly interesting. In 2008 Chao, Yu, and Li reported in Science (April 11th) that sea level rise had been linear for the previous 80 years and the slope of the rise was 2.46 millimeters per year. Their value was corrected for water held in storage by all reservoirs built since 1900. I of course sent an article in correcting Gore’s 20 foot rise prediction, both to Science and to Nature, and got thrown out without even a pretense at peer review. You report an overall trend of 3.0 +/- 0.04 millimeters a year which is very close to the value these guys reported in 2008, seven years ago. I am not sure how much difference correction for water held in storage would amount to. But as I said then, something that has been linear for 80 years is not about to change anytime soon.And that is basically what these data show.

Rud Istvan
Reply to  Arno Arrak
January 14, 2015 4:38 pm

Arno, the Colorado/ NOAA number 3.1 contains a 0.3 GIA model adjustment. The actual NOAA shoreline rise is 2.8+/- 0.4. In other words, agreement with you and your cited paper within error of estimate.

Editor
Reply to  Rud Istvan
January 15, 2015 1:47 am

Interesting that the Hay paper takes no account of GIA. It boggles the mind that they think a rough and sloppy estimate can be taken as gospel while actual measurements are dismissed.

Larry Hamlin
January 14, 2015 4:13 pm

Claims of sea level rise acceleration in the last 30 years are simply not supported by actual empirical data and thus the product of ideologically driven climate alarmism.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/07/16/latest-noaa-mean-sea-level-trend-data-through-2013-confirms-lack-of-sea-level-rise-acceleration-2/

maccassar
Reply to  Larry Hamlin
January 14, 2015 6:32 pm

Somehow I missed this one when it came out. Great post!