Guest essay by Larry Hamlin
NOAA year 2024 measured U.S. Station Sea Level rise data outcomes establish that alarmists 4 decades long hyped claims of high rates of accelerating sea level rise due to increasing man-made CO2 emissions have clearly failed.
In 1988 Senate hearings Democrat politicians claimed that climate model derived accelerating sea level rise future outcomes will occur because of man-made CO2 emissions as presented in their Senate testimony by “experts” as addressed in detail here in the WUWT article shown below.
At the time of these hearings in 1988 global CO2 emissions stood at about 20.85 billion metric tons and since then have climbed to about 35.13 billion metric tons by year end 2023 as documented here.
The entire increase in global CO2 emissions from 1988 to 2023 is accounted for solely by the world’s developing countries (24.02 billion metric tons in 2023 versus 9.27 billion metric tons in 1988) lead by coal fuel dominate China and India with the developed countries, including the U.S. and Europe, having CO2 emissions lower (11.11 billion metric tons in 2023 versus 11.59 billion metric tons in 1988) than year 1988 levels.
The developed countries globally irrelevant emissions outcome during this period occurred while they were wasting trillions of dollars on hugely unreliable and non-dispatchable renewable energy along with absurd net-zero pipedreams resulting in massive energy cost increases, failing and decaying reliability of their energy systems with major economically important businesses and industry suffering decline and stagnation while damaging GDP growth in the largest of these nations.
At the Democrats Senate 1988 hearing so called “experts” were paraded forward and provided testimony claiming that rising global CO2 emissions experienced to date (1988) would result in increasing sea level rise acceleration rates of 2.5 inches over the next decade (0.25 inches per year) as noted below from the hearing record as follows:
“Global mean temperature will likely rise at about 0.6 degrees F per decade and sea level at about 2.5 inches per decade.”
“These rates are about six times recent history.”
“Furthermore, as long as greenhouse gases continue to grow in the atmosphere, there is no known natural limit to the warming short of catastrophic change.”
“Because the oceans are slow to heat, there is a lag between emissions and full manifestation of corresponding warming, a lag which some estimate at 40 years.”
“The world is now 1 degree F warmer than century ago and may become another 1 degree warmer even if conditions are curtailed today.”
“Every decade of delay and implementation of greenhouse gas abatement policies ultimately adds perhaps a degree F of warming, and no policy can be fully implemented immediately in any event.”
As noted above global CO2 emissions have climbed from 20.85 billion metric tons to 35.13 billion metric tons from 1988 to 2023 driven exclusively by the developing nations.
Over this 4 decades interval of climbing CO2 emissions that, according to the 1988 Senate hearing “expert” testimony, should have resulted in huge increases in sea level rise acceleration far above the 2.5 inches per decade (0.25 inches per year) outcome hyped in the 1988 hearing.
NOAA has just released its year 2024 Relative Sea Level Rise data for its U. S. Stations. The data for the longest U.S. Station time period measurement location is at the Battery, New York (1856 to 2024) and is shown below.
The 2024 sea level trend outcome is the same as in 2023 at 2.92 +/- 0.09 mm/yr despite the usual contrived alarmists “Hottest Year on Record” claims debunked here.
Shown below is NOAA’s Battery Station relative sea level rise measured data from their report issued a decade ago for year 2014 and covering the period from 1856 to year 2014.
Note that NOAA’s 2014 report states the following regarding these mean sea level trend data measurements:
“Although the mean trend may change from year to year, there is no statistically significant difference between the calculated trends if their 95% confidence intervals overlap. Therefore, the most recent calculated trend is not necessarily more accurate than the previous trend; it is merely a little more precise.”
Therefore, since the NOAA Battery Station year 2024 relative sea level rise trend measured 95% confidence interval is from 3.01 to 2.83 mm/yr and thus overlaps the prior decade ago report year 2014 95% confidence intervals there is no statistically significant difference between the year 2014 and 2024 mean relative sea level trend measurement values.
Nor is there any statistically significant difference between the Battery Station 2014 mean sea level trend versus the 2007 or any other mean sea level year shown including the trend from 1856 to 2006.
Additionally, the difference between mean sea level rise trend values for the decade long period 2014 to 2024 (2.92 mm/yr – 2.84 mm/yr) is a mere +0.08 mm/yr (or +0.0031 inches/year or +0.031 inches/decade) versus the climate alarmists hyped 0.25 inches/yr rate from 1988 with that rate claimed to grow even higher if emissions growth weren’t immediately curtailed.
What ever happened to the “experts” 2.5 inches per decade increase in sea level rise acceleration that was claimed in the 1988 Senate Hearings based on CO2 emissions that had occurred to that time and the even further escalation in sea level rise acceleration that would clearly occur if emissions weren’t immediately curtailed (which never happened as addressed above) in the coming decades?
Provided below are NOAA’s year 2024 sea level rise trends for
a few other U.S. NOAA coastal locations all of which show the same huge disconnect between measured mean sea level rise trend rates versus the hyped claims of accelerating sea level rise from the 1988 Senate Hearings that contributed to the climate alarmists energy and economically damaging global wide emissions reduction campaign launched from those hearings.
Shown below are NOAA’s sea level rise data for Honolulu, Hawaii the birthplace of President Obama who claimed in his Democratic Party nomination speech on June 3, 2008, that we would be able to look back upon his nomination and tell our children that “this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal”.
The year 2024 NOAA Honolulu relative sea level rise data show a sea level rise of 1.56 +/- 0.20 mm/yr versus 1.54 +/-0.20 mm/yr in 2023.
Provided below is NOAA’s Honolulu Station relative sea level rise measured data from their year 2014 report again covering the period from 1856 to year 2014 a decade ago.
The NOAA Honolulu Station year 2024 relative sea level rise outcome 95% confidence interval is from 1.76 to 1.36 mm/yr thus overlapping the prior year 2014 95% confidence intervals. So there is no statistically significant difference between the decade ago year 2014 value (or any other year shown) and year 2024 mean relative sea level trend measurement value.
Additionally, the difference between mean sea level rise trend values for the decade long period 2014 to 2024 (1.56 – 1.41) is a mere +0.15 mm/yr (or +0.0059 inches/year or +0.071 inches/decade) versus the climate alarmists hyped 0.25 inches per year in 1988 with that value sure to grow even higher if emissions growth weren’t immediately curtailed – which, of course, totally failed.
Looking at NOAA’s year 2024 data for the San Diego Station location we see the 2024 mean sea level trend rate of 2.23 +/- 0.17 mm/yr which is the same as in year 2023.
Shown below is NOAA’s San Diego Station relative sea level rise measured data from their year 2014 report again covering the period from 1856 to year 2014 a decade ago.
The NOAA San Diego Station year 2024 relative sea level rise 95% confidence interval is from 2.4 to 2.06 mm/yr thus overlapping the prior year 2014 95% confidence intervals so there is no statistically significant difference between the decade ago year 2014 (or any other year shown) and year 2024 mean relative sea level trend measurement values.
Additionally, the difference between mean sea level rise trend values for the decade long period 2014 to 2024 (2.23 – 2.08) is a mere +0.15 mm/yr (or +0.0059 inches/year or +0.071 inches/decade) versus the climate alarmists hyped 0.25 inches per year in 1988 with that value sure to grow even higher if emissions growth weren’t immediately curtailed.
Looking more broadly at NOAA’s year 2024 updated data we see in the U.S. Sea Level Trend Map (shown below) that areas experiencing little-to-no change in relative sea level are illustrated in green, including stations consistent with the average global sea level rise rate of just 1.7-1.8 mm/yr (about 7 inches per century) with these “green” stations predominantly present across the coastal regions of the U.S. and Hawaii.
Areas with yellow-to-red colors are experiencing both global sea level rise and lowering and sinking of local land causing an exaggerated rate of relative sea level rise.
Areas with blue-to-purple are experiencing global sea level rise and greater vertical rise causing an apparent decrease is relative sea level rise.
NOAA’s year 2024 updated Relative Sea Level Trend data measurements continue to demonstrate that climate alarmists claim of hugely growing rates of sea level rise acceleration are completely out of touch with NOAA’s overwhelming data reflecting measured rates of relative sea level rise.
Its time to stop using 4 decades long spectacularly failed climate model hyped sea level rise schemes to mandate absurd energy policy schemes that are destroying our necessary and beneficial need for future economic growth.
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Well…..you can’t put it much clearer than that! It needs emailing to Pres Trump. Will any MSM report on this?
NOAA’s Tides & Current Page says:
“… the absolute global sea level rise is believed to be 1.7-1.8 millimeters/year. “
I’d wear thicker socks, except when I go to the beach, I don’t wear any at all.
“believed”!
Seriously?
Like believing in Santa Claus.
Datum errors for tide stations range from approximately 1 to 5 centimeters. Additionally, measurement errors for high and low water tides range from approximately 1 to 2 centimeters. Measurement errors are estimated to ensure data quality.
The +1.7 to +1.8 millimeters a year required measuring for a LONG period of time and then dividing by the total number of years to get an average rise per year.
I would bet satellite data are even less accurate as satellites rift in orbit.
There is nothing to worry about until rich folks start selling their oceanside homes at bargain prices.
Error is not uncertainty.
Believe it or not, sea level is a regional problem, not global.
Turns out the Maldives are ok, and many land areas are rising. (See the image below)
In regions where it is a problem, is it best to look for local engineering solutions, or build another wind farm in Nevada?
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/travel/travel-news/nearly-1000-disappearing-islands-in-maldives-growing-in-size-surprising-experts/articleshow/111778487.cms
Here’s the map.
https://earth.gov/sealevel/about-sea-level-change/local-sea-level-change/dive-deeper/
I don’t get it. Why is RELATIVE sea level even mentioned? Who cares what is happening at The Battery in NY other than NY’ers. The whole SLR issue should be discussed in ABSOLUTE terms.
I suppose in part it may be because NOAA has reconfigured their entire site to obscure the 1.7 to 1.8mm/yr fact. This single measurable constant and a (incredibly stupid) NPR story in 2005 is what started my interest in the much larger subject of global warming. ABSOLUTE SLR used to be a prominent graph on their main page. Since then, NOAA has done their best to hide this number behind RELATIVE SLR to promote their political agenda and, at the same time, be responsible to accurate tidewater chart data.
DOGE has a lot of dredging to clean out the woke bs in this agency.
What a long winded, tedious article by an author famous for data mining.
In this article someone anonymously named “expert” claimed a wild guess sea level prediction on some date in 1988, with some unidentified people in the audience. Of course. predictions are not science, so this article is just about someone’s sea level astrology.
All that needless reading to prove that some anonymous person made a wild guess scary prediction about the future sea level rise in 1988. Which was wrong like every other wild guess scary climate prediction.
Did the same perso claim global warming would be +0.6 degrees F. (+0.33 degrees C.) per decade?
The IPCC had just launched in 1988. There first guess about the effect of CO2 (+/- 50%) applied to the actual CO2 growth since 1975 matched the total surface temperature increase since 1975. Less than +0.2 degrees C. per decade. BASED ON THE actual CO2 GROWTH RATE since 1975, not RCP8.5
Based on averages of global tide gauges, rather than just cherry picking Manhattan, sea level rise was slightly faster after 1980 than it was in the 1940 to 1980 period.
That could be called acceleration if you wanted to exaggerate. Sea level rise was slightly faster with global warming after 1975 than it was with global cooling from 1940 to 1975. Hamlin data mines to pretend that did not happen.
Hmm. Temperature increase from 1975 to 1988 also correlates with population rise, US inflation rise and probably crop growth rise as well. Search for “spurious correlations” for more such nonsense. The issue Mr. Greene is the correlation between CO2 and temperature which was uncertain then and more uncertain now. Happer and Wijngaarden can educate you on the question.
Probably correlates with postal rates as well. And maybe the DJI.
And obesity in the western democracies.
No question about the DJI. In retrospect I wish I had borrowed up to the hilt in the 70s to buy and hold stocks long-term.
And with Aliens visiting – as Roy Spencer showed humorously:
https://www.drroyspencer.com/2014/04/do-aliens-cause-global-warming-the-data-say-yes/
Note: contains pictures of aliens 🙂
The connection between CO2 a temperature has been measured in lab and verified with accurate predictions since 1975 when there were enough CO2 emissions to make a difference.
. Happer and friend agree that CO2 causes global warming.
They have NO IDEA how much warming in the long run.
They are qualified to guess.
Their guess is at the low end of the typical range of guesses but is no more correct than guesses at the high end of the range. BECAUSE the long term effect of CO2 emissions is an unknown change of average temperature.
Since greenhouse warming is a pleasant climate change. I see no good reason to scare people with a high end ECS of CO2 guess about the future climate. That makes me comfortable with the low end ECS CO2 guesses of Happer, Lindzen and others.
By the way, all variables in a rising trend will have a positive correlation so that observation is claptrap.
“Happer and friend,” that would be Dr. William Wijngaarden of York University, Ontario, both being atmospheric radiation physics experts, have a very good idea of how much warming can be expected from CO2 increases and explain it very clearly in their work. Hint – it’s not much. Look it up. What they do not know is whether or not there will be emergent phenomena that will mitigate their prediction. They also do not know what other factors, such as reducing cloud cover or reducing atmospheric humidity (look them up) will contribute to or mitigate temperature changes though I expect, both being atmospheric radiation physics experts, they have a good idea. And please not that all variables whether rising or declining will correlate with something. Again, I refer you to “spurious correlations.”
“ What they do not know is whether or not there will be emergent phenomena that will mitigate their prediction. They also do not know ” (bolding mine, tpg)
The operative words are “do not know”. None of the so-called “lab experiments” duplicated the Earth’s atmosphere and all of its factors.
Rubbish! There’s no anonymity to the 1998 hearings and who said what. Look it up!
It is the responsibility of a competent author to define exactly when, where, who, why and what was predicted in 1988.
I should not have to look up anything.
Your commet is rubbish.
If you can’t be bothered then don’t complain when you are ignored.
As JohnT below suggests, perhaps it would bear looking up. I do not spend much time on climate myself but do occasionally look here. I too wish that this article had put in direct citations for things to make it easier to see the refs, but I was able to find the details fairly quickly. It appears the particular statement was made by Dr. Michael Oppenheimer (not related to J. Robert) and also a statement made by a Senator, whose name I did not write down. Since Oppy was testifying, presumably he was basing his claims on something in the literature, but I long ago got tired of running down climate science paper claims and counterclaims and invoking the talisman of “peer review.” All of this is to say that it is at least fair to expect a reader to look things up and check references but it is also helpful for an author to include references to make that easier.
There is one statement you make with which I do take issue, namely, “..predictions are not science.” It is virtually impossible to imagine modern science without the process of prediction. I often refer to Feynman, who besides being good at physics, was good at saying things about it that cut to the chase. He famously described science (although he often perhaps meant physics per se) as involving three essential steps 1) think of a concept that might describe nature, 2) state it mathematically so that everyone understands it and everyone can calculate non-arbitrary predictions of outcomes of future controlled experiments and 3) compare the predictions to the outcomes of such future controlled experiments. In this view, prediction is crucial to the practice of science, the only arbiter of whether a theory is wrong or not is comparison of a prediction to the outcome of a controlled experiment (which he called Nature).
One of the things that has dampened my interest in climate “science” in the past couple of decades is the unfortunate circumstance that it is one of sidebar explanatory disciplines that is simply impossible to confirm by controlled experiment (being we only have 1 earth climate and we can’t even specify its states precisely, much less control them). But that does not mean that one should cavalierly state “prediction is not science.”
“state it mathematically so that everyone understands it and everyone can calculate non-arbitrary predictions of outcomes of future controlled experiments”
Where does climate science do this? Nothing seems to be done using functional relationships that can be used to calculate mathematically non-arbitrary results. It’s mostly data matching using guesses for “parameterized” adjustments, e.g. clouds, and arbitrary “control factors” like CO2.
Concur. I wish we had a richer vocabulary for the notion of “science.” My focus has always been in so-called “basic science” or perhaps what one might call “hard-core science” in which theories are required to predict outcomes of controlled experiments to qualify, and anyone should be able to replicate both the prediction and the outcome. Currently the word “Science” (often capitalized like that) is invoked somewhat like invoking a lofty, irrefutable authority to make a claim impervious to criticism. I wish we had an easy way to distinguish the two in conversations. In my world, “science” is restricted to the hard core simplicity. That said, I don’t want get into ox-goring and try to say that climate science is not science because I could make a similar claim about a lot of things like cosmology or paleontology or psychology or even astrology for that matter. I just take umbrage at the statement that prediction is not science. Feynman again had something to say on the matter, “Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts. When someone says ‘science teaches such and such’, he is using the word incorrectly. Science doesn’t teach it; experience teaches it.”
But…but, what about Social Sciences?
The old joke: if a field has ‘Science’ in its name, you be sure it’s NOT one (a science)! And something similar re ‘Studies’ …
Like countries with the word “democratic” or “people’s” rarely are
You mean like climatology?
Re “I wish we had a richer vocabulary for the notion of ‘science.'”
A lost art:
People often say ‘prediction‘ when they should probably say ‘projection‘, meaning an extrapolation from observed / measured trends (whether linear or non-, such as cyclic / periodic).
People often say ‘experiments‘ when referring to measurement, or metrology.
People often say ‘theory‘ when what they’re talking about is just a hypothesis, or conjecture.
Please feel free to add to this list, thank you.
This would be a wonderful topic for discussion in its own right, with much more space than perhaps is warranted in the current thread. A couple of short comments might be worthwhile here.
“Projection” has a number of uses and indeed one of them, prominent in business calculations, involves things happening in the future, i.e. projections of sales for next year or years, although I suspect that usage derives more from the usual visual imagery used of a line with, as you say, an extrapolation of that line into the region on the right, which turns out to be time in the sales case. However, its usage and roots are more grounded in spatial rather than temporal extension. The word’s roots derive from the Latin prefix ‘pro-‘ which mostly means forward or forth or even for in a spatial sense. The ‘-ject’ part comes from the Latin verb iacere, with participle iactus, meaning to throw or hurl (again mostly in a spatial sense, less in the time sense). This word is one of those most who have studied Latin hear and immediately think of the famous “alia iacta est” attributed to J. Caesar at the Rubicon. Project also has a lot of use in geometric aspects of math, again largely in spatial mapping of one set of numbers to another. Psychologists also use it as many of us may be aware.
“Predict” derives from an explicitly time oriented notion, in that ‘pre-‘ derives from a root meaning before in time and of course ‘dictus’ meaning speaking, saying, etc. It is mostly used when one talks about something that will happen in the future. Statisticians often oddly use it to refer in hypothesis testing to how much of the sum of squared errors of some calculation can be attributed (ie through correlation) to each of the variables used in the calculation. But that talks more to attribution among data sets one already has, not what one expects to get in the future.
As for “experiment,” my take would be that metrology is a less general concept than that of an experiment, rather than a substitute for it, although there is a bit of room for personal preference. In my experience experimental design and conduct involve a lot more than what is usually encompassed in metrology, namely calculational techniques and definitions, particularly dealing with uncertainties. There are a lot of mundane practical, logistical things that go into an experiment in terms of defining the system, adequately synchronizing, registering and recording of data, along with later maintenance of the data and calculations both immediate and long after. Personally, I like the definition of ideal experiment set out by Feynman (no surprise there I guess) in Vol II section 1.7 (Quantum Behavior) in which he defines “..define an ‘ideal experiment’ as one in which there are no uncertain external influences, i.e., no jiggling or other things going on that we cannot take into account. We would be quite precise if we said: ‘An ideal experiment is one in which all of the initial and final conditions of the experiment are completely specified.’ What we will call ‘an event” is, in general, just a specific set of initial and final conditions.’ It is a bit geared to quantum mechanics, but the gist is that the initial conditions and final conditions should be narrowly constrained and within a set which had previously been the subject of experiments. It is also geared to the more relativistic notion of dealing with events instead of necessarily continuously varying quantities.
There has also been ongoing discussion here of “falsification,” likely going back to Popper’s work. In the restricted view of demanding controlled experiment, experiments only can falsify a prediction, never “confirm” it or prove it “true”. As someone else here said, a theory is never correct, or true, or right, it can only be said to be not shown decidedly wrong for the time being. There is a nice discussion of a more extensive view on this in a paper by Goldhaber and Nieto in RevModPhys ( paywalled but available online at https://arxiv.org/abs/0809.1003 ) in which they point out other avenues in practice including what they call observation, fecundity, and connectivity, all worthy of consideration. The paper is focused on mass limits for photons and gravitons, but the perspective is somewhat general.
Anyway, I said this could be a long discussion.
Most business projection is done using weighted data. E.g. older data gets less weight than newer data. Climate science never weights anything, not old data, not data with different variances, not data with different measurement uncertainty, etc.
Perhaps climatology data should be weighted inversely with time — that is, modern data should be viewed with greater skepticism! 🙂
The scientific method is a process which develops and progresses as follows :-
Conjecture – A scientist suggests an idea that may explain or dispel some scientific problem – it is intended to get other scientists to explore the idea and supply comments, input and observational data or logical argument for or against the idea.
Hypothesis – Conjecture starts to firm up as initial experimentation, observation, logic and testing hold up the original idea. A hypothesis must then make predictions for further discovery. It should also propose further testing that might further strengthen or falsify the hypothesis (it must do both). A single (but reproducible) failure falsifies a hypothesis or at the very least requires the hypothesis be amended.
Theory – A Hypothesis firms to an accepted theory typically only after surviving testing of all the things that could prove or disprove it – particularly the discovery of its predictions. This acceptance is typically only forthcoming over a period of decades and in most cases generations as the “old guard” die off. (“Science progresses one funeral at a time” – Max Planck.)
A theory has Axioms, postulates and formulae – which can be challenged at any future date.
Fact – (or Law of Nature) – A theory becomes generally accepted as fact only if there is no known outstanding experiment (even a theoretical one which cannot yet be performed) which might falsify the theory. The facts’ axioms, postulates and formulae have survived rigorous testing over a prolonged period. This is typically a very long process.
There is a step between hypothesis and fact – that is Theorem or a mathematically derived proof of fact.
Note: At no point are any of these steps, not even Theorems & Facts, sacrosanct – they can be disproven at any time but as you can imagine it is extremely difficult to get the establishment to accept a change in what was regarded as fact.
If you apply the scientific method you will find that the AGW Hypothesis is barely a hypothesis at all and resides in a scientific no man’s land between conjecture and hypothesis. It is certainly not a credible theory or demonstrable fact – although it is invariably presented as such.
Tim, to be fair, computer modelers attempt to develop at least pragmatic functions and extensively use partial-differential equations for much of the model, albeit they have to parameterize things like energy exchange in clouds. They are working with a handicap when the ‘field’ researchers are cavalier about the rigor of measurements and are often constrained by unstated assumptions, among which is that they have all the information that they need.
Very well said!
Thank you, especially for your additional clarifications and reference to that sorely-missed sage, Richard Feynman.
No one knows enough about the causes of climate change to make an accurate prediction.
Therefore, virtually all long term climate predictions have been wrong. They can be right ONLY by chance. because the causes of climate change are just a generic list of the usual suspects.
If someone ever discovers a regular climate related cycle, perhaps related to planetary geometry, that could be used for decent predictions. But for periods MUCH longer than 50 to 100 years.
There is ZERO evidence that any huma can make an accurate 50 to 100 year climate prediction. That means any such wrong prediction IS NOT SCIENCE. Wrong predictions are never science because they falsify a theory.
A scientific theory that we consider “correct”
has never been falsified … yet.
Many, perhaps even 50%, of scientific theories considered correct at one time will later be revised, and sometimes completely falsified.
The first failure is equating temperature to climate. If temperature wss a metric for climate then Las Vegas and Miami would have similar climates.
And iguanas would be falling out of the trees in LV. 🙂
You obviously don’t like facing factual data, do you?
But you apparently delight in “shooting the messenger”. Pity.
[snip…taunting ~ctm]
I don’t own a gun
HAMLIN TAKES A HUGE NUMBER OF WORDS TO SAY SOMEONE MADE A FOOLISH WILD GUESS ABOUT THE FUTURE SEA LEVEL BACK IN 1988 AND HE WAS WRONG.
And if he did it with less words you’d ask for more.
Thanks Warren.
You said tedious
Relative sea level at The Battery has been steadily increasing since before Abraham Lincoln was president. The rate of rise is unchanged for the entirety of the record. There is a GPS elevation gauge at that location as there are at many other tide gauge locations. While the GPS record is short (about 14 years) compared to the relative sea level rise record (about 169 years), it indicates that about half of the relative rise is due to sinking land. There is no inflection in the tide gauge record suggesting that the land has been sinking at a steady rate throughout. Inflections are visible some tide gauge records, Manila in the Philippines for example, shows a steep upward inflection of sea level beginning in 1962. This may be due to geologic phenomena. An elevation gauge at Quezon City, inland from Manila, shows a rise since the GPS gauge was installed in the late 1990s. There is a GPS elevation gauge in Manila as well but the data is erratic. Together, the Quezon City elevation gauge and the Manila tide level gauge suggest that the land is tilting, up on the west side and down on the east (Manila) side. If you are interested, go to PSMSL.com. This site shows both tide gauge and elevation gauges (where available). NOAA also maintains sea level information but does not include elevation data as does PSMSL.
I believe that the data from a portion of the measuring stations has an uncertainty in the tens of mm, e.g. an uncertainty of 1.1cm to 1.9cm. How you can calculate sea level rise out to the tenths of a mm from data with this amount of uncertainty is pure magic.
Apparently a lot of people failed one of the most basic concepts of calculus: if the second derivative of a function is zero, there is no acceleration. The data doesn’t lie, but a lot of climate scientists do.
All true, but to be fair, when linear regression analysis is used to fit a trend to data, it automatically excludes revealing a possible second-derivative function that may lay within the data set.
When trying out different models for fitting data, I find that plotting the residual between the data and the fit will give a clear indication of whether additional are needed in the fit. I don’t see much evidence for a need to add a higher order term to the fit.
‘Climate Alchemists’?
And so much for the glacial melt drama
Hamlin ==> Very nicely done, sir.
Yep, a good solid, fact based report. 🙂
As are most of Larry’s reports.
Not new news, but always worth repeating. Hansen has been wrong about this ever since 1988.
Yeah, Rud, but there is always somebody popping up that claim that if you just adjust the data he was right.
Some alarmists even labor under the misconception that his predictions were right on and are the gold standard that proves global warming, apparently ignorant of the concept of spurious correlation.
Furthermore, the alarmists don’t specify which of his scenarios are right when they can’t all be right.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2018/06/30/analysis-of-james-hansens-1988-prediction-of-global-temperatures-for-the-last-30-years/
This paper didn’t age well, at least so far.
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00139157.2025.2434494
While not addressed in the post or comments so far, it’s important to understand that without substantial sea level rise the alarmist have no coming catastrophe to flog the public with and demand decarbonization. All they have left is just blaming every severe weather event on human caused climate change. As anyone who has dug deeply enough knows the frequency and severity of weather related disasters have not changed significantly and many are less of a problem due to our ability to adapt and protect ourselves. Improved weather prediction, stronger structures, more resilient infrastructure and effective response by public services have made us safer.
The rise in CO2 concentration does not correlate with any of the alarmist’s scary narratives. It does correlate with increased population, reduced poverty, increased life expectancy, increased crop yield, greening of the earth, and the stock market. Of course correlation is not proof of causation, but it seems obvious that increasing population and global prosperity fueled by coal, oil and gas would necessarily increase CO2. It also seems logical that increased CO2 would cause more efficient plant growth and thus greening and improved crop yields. What’s not to like?
Rid: I know that you covered virtually all of this in your excellent books – “Blowing Smoke” and “Arts of Truth”. I highly recommend them to anyone who hasn’t read them yet.
TY
Fixed it for ya
How dare NOAA use linear regression analysis to curve fit a straight line (with constant slope) to 120 years worth of relative SLR data, as shown in the above article’s graphs for Honolulu (1.56 mm/year) and San Diego (2.23 mm/year)!
Why . . . if they had used a second-order polynomial fit (maybe even an exponential fit), they might have—just might have—teased out a term indicating acceleration, no matter how tiny, to “maintain the meme”.
/sarc
I saw an analysis a couple of years ago that showed that most tide data is pretty much linear, but with a slight oscillation of a couple of decades underlying that linear trend….. can’t find it now 🙁
So depending where the underlying cycle is up to, there could be a very small +ve or -ve squared term on a second order polynomial fit.
It is all a matter of scale. One can find a straight-line tangent to even wildly oscillating data.
After reading what DOGE flushed out of USAID it’s no wonder the MSM continues the narratives about AGW.
DOGE has now gone into NOAA and NASA. Fun awaits.
Come on, Larry, buy a comma.
LOL. They’re expensive. Period. End of story.
So many of these article authors don’t bother to have anyone proofread their stuff.
I kind of prefer it, to those, who liberally sprinkle, random commas, everywhere.
, , , ,,, ,,, ,,, , , , 🙂
Here’s a thing, it’s not possible to measure small levels of sea rise or fall. Air pressure alter the levels of the sea, waves make it impossible. 1.7mm cannot be measured. The Moon pulls the sea into a bulge, causing tidal levels to change. That varies daily. Tidal gauges monitored over decades show little rise at all, if any. One expert on tides thinks that the sea is no longer rising enough to measure. Another problem is the land sinking and rising in various locations.
Tide gauges are generally mounted in vertical tubes, open at the top but closed at the bottom but for a small hole. This serves to dampen oscillations caused by waves. It is not clear to me why variations in air pressure would affect sea level, water being essentially incompressible, but for the influence of air pressure variations on wind which, when sustained for hours or more, will affect measured sea level.
Not compression, but high air pressure causes displacement from one place to another. This can be demonstrated with a mug of beer with no head. I’ve verified this twice so far.
Water may well be incompressible, but it definitely moves elsewhere if pressured. Hydraulics depend on this!
So do aircraft carriers.
It’s possible, at least for small changes, to write a linear approximation for all sorts of responses to changes in forcing functions — i.e. to “climate change”. The trouble is the effects are not instantaneous. There are time constants of magnitude that are essentially guesses. It would be nice to know, for example, the impulse or step response functions to all sorts of changes to see how well our predictions over time stand a test against observations. We don’t know them.
The one exception is that a step increase in CO2 concentration produces a near instantaneous step change downward in outgoing LWIR of about
. If this is to be balanced entirely by LWIR upward from the surface to restore balance, it produces an almost instantaneous change of temperature at the surface of around 0.7C. There is a supposed feedback effect from water vapor of unknown time constant and, possibly also unknown sign if we have to include clouds in the analysis — and we must. But then there are longer term effects from CO2 and temperature changing the surface albedo.
In the context of this essay, having a time constant for the change in sea level arising from change in global energy imbalance (EEI) from two direct sources, thermal expansion of the water volume and mass balance which includes river and groundwater discharge and evaporation/precipitation over the ocean surface, would help cross check the estimate of EEI from melting of cryosphere. People claim that EEI is accelerating, but there is very poor evidence of this from atmospheric temperature trend or from sea level trend.
Trouble is, additional complications reduce the already poor resolution down to near blindness; salinity changes, the indirect effects of ocean dynamics — the necessary changes to surface elevation force by momentum change at diversions in currents combined with changes from wind-driven Ekman transport. Even the ever changing shape of the ocean basins might have some effect noticeable with a century.
Heat lost, i.e. upward LWIR, cannot heat the source to a higher temperature than it started at even with 100% reflection. The inverse square law will prevent it.
If down radiation over time goes up then the converse is that out radiation over time goes up as well.
In a closed system equilibrium temperature happens where heat in equals heat out. If the temperature in the system is going up it means heat in is greater than heat out. In the earth’s biosphere if there is a positive delta-T there is an increase of delta-T^x in out radiation. This is a negative feedback resisting the positive delta-T. I.e. out radiation goes up faster than T.
Climate science is all about the “positive feedback” of CO2 but never seems to get around to the negative feedback. Why?
I fail to see why obsessing over the attributes of an additional 0.5% of greenhouse gases is not regarded similarly to obsessing over angels dancing on pinheads.
This article on climate as published on WUWT has no credibility.
Several of the graphs shown have error bars on them. Everyone knows that you never, ever, show error bars in any climate science.
The first question I asked when I started studying climate for myself was “where are the error bars?”. I can’t remember which site banned me for asking the question, I think it was SkS.
The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in 2014 wrote:
“Impoverished Bangladesh will lose 17 per cent of its land by 2050 because of rising sea levels due to global warming. The Nobel Peace Prize-winning panel says 20 million Bangladeshis will become environmental refugees by 2050 and the country will lose 30 per cent of its food production. Former NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies Director James Hansen painted an even grimmer picture, predicting the entire country could be under water by the end of the century.”
The relevant question, however, is not the rate of sea level rise, but the balance between land and sea creation. The balance is readily measured to high accuracy and precision via satellite. In reality, Bangladesh has GAINED over 1000 km2 of land since 1973, and even with the on-going rise in sea level, will gain another 1000 km2 in the next 50 years. reference:
https://www.geospatialworld.net/news/bangladesh-gaining-land-not-losing-scientists/
Globally, over the past 30 years, 13,500 km2 of land in coastal areas has been created, reference: Nature Climate Change 6 , 810, 2016.
Sea level rise – drowning populations, and CO2 increases – boiling the planet, are misinformation designed to frighten children, not thinking adults.
It all depends on the green liturgical calendar as to what the low information Dems get exposed to. Sea level rise alarm month follows Antarctic sea ice alarm month and is not to be confused with hurricane strength month. Right now we’re in wildfire month. Contradictory follow up science on each of these alarmist claims is keep at a safe distance so as not to confuse the masses during the liturgical cycle and the advocacy messaging of the Party. It’s all communications science anyway to facilitate the money flows.
Very nice Larry.
A question for the less physics challenged:
Why does NOAA report ocean warming in terms of heat content, rather than temperatures?
Because that allows them to display bigger numbers?
There is an interesting twist to NOAA’s presentation of “Previous RSL Trends” in its yearly updates of this data for its U.S. Stations.
NOAA updates for this RSL data continued through year 2022 data with a specific link on their relative sea level page for every station that presented the RSL trends over the last 10 years or so.
Starting with the year 2023 NOAAs U.S. Station update page headings on each stations relative sea level rise data no longer include the “Previous RSL Trends” link.
So the NOAA U.S. Station updates for years 2023 and 2024 no longer have that link provided.
Why is that?
NOAA changed their tide gauge website several years ago to make it more difficult to get easy to read charts that quickly refuted the crazy sea level predictions. I was fortunate to have saved many dozens of PDFs of the older charts before they “disappeared”.
Something similar has happened with the FBI’s annual Uniform Crime Report. I found that the original website was easier to use than the current interface.
The proper way to present this in mass media: Global Warming Prevents Massive Catastrophe – Climate models prove that sea levels will rise several inches per decade, yet such a rise has been elusive. One explanation is that natural variable forces were on the verge of causing a rapid drop in sea levels. Had that happened, ports would become landlocked. Trillions of dollars in infrastructure rendered worthless, and shipping impossible. Moreover, estuaries and critical shallow water environments required for many ocean species would be destroyed. Reef systems, particularly, would be grievously harmed. Blah blah blah.
Make the other side admit the models are wrong. And THAT would be a major story!
Just noticed a simple math error on the Honolulu and San Diego 10 year sea level rise rate. NOAAs ten 10 year measured sea level rise rate should be 0.059 inches per decade on both these locations instead of 0.071 inches per decade.
Sea levels are clearly falling…