Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach (@weschenbach on X, my personal blog is here)
I came across a most interesting study about the claimed acceleration in sea levels. For fifty years, we’ve been told that global warming would cause the rate of sea level rise to accelerate. The theory was that increasing temperatures would both cause the ocean water to expand and would also melt land ice and glaciers. Both of these would combine to cause acceleration in the rate of sea level rise.
The study in the Journal of Marine Science and Engineering is entitled A Global Perspective on Local Sea Level Changes.
From the abstract (emphasis mine):
We used two datasets with local sea level information all over the globe. In both datasets, we found approximately 15% of the available sets suitable to establish the rate of rise in 2020.
Geographic coverage of the suitable locations is poor, with the majority of suitable locations in the Northern Hemisphere. Latin America and Africa are severely under-represented. Statistical tests were run on all selected datasets, taking acceleration of sea level rise as a hypothesis.
In both datasets, approximately 95% of the suitable locations show no statistically significant acceleration of the rate of sea level rise. The investigation suggests that local, non-climatic phenomena are a plausible cause of the accelerated sea level rise observed at the remaining 5% of the suitable locations.
I laughed out loud when I read this. Why? Because for the last fifteen years, I’ve been saying the same thing. Here are my past posts on the subject, along with an AI summary of each one. When I collected them all up, I was surprised at how many analyses I’d written on the question
2011‑01‑08: Uses long tide‑gauge records to show that strong claimed acceleration in sea‑level rise is not evident in the observational data.
2017‑07‑19: Fits quadratics to PSMSL tide gauges and reports that average acceleration is effectively zero, contradicting high‑end alarmist claims.
2017‑07‑30: Extends the “brakes” analysis to satellite altimetry, arguing that purported acceleration is not robust.
2018‑12‑17: Dissects how processing choices and model assumptions manufacture an apparent acceleration in sea‑level records.
2019‑02‑20: Discusses model fitting and effective degrees of freedom, concluding that any fitted acceleration in sea‑level series is statistically weak.
2020‑03‑08: Re‑examines tide‑gauge records and reiterates that global data do not support a strong, coherent acceleration signal.
2021‑02‑21: Shows that NOAA’s splicing of TOPEX/Jason records creates an artificial acceleration that largely disappears with consistent treatment.
2021‑03‑02: Uses long UK tide‑gauge series to show modest, nearly linear rise with no policy‑relevant acceleration.
2022-03-02: Argues that tide-gauge and satellite data show no consistent long‑term acceleration in global sea‑level rise, undermining claims of a looming sea‑level “climate emergency.”
2022‑12‑29: Highlights a high‑profile reanalysis that, consistent with your earlier work, finds little or no acceleration once TOPEX issues are corrected.
2024‑05‑05: Reviews spatial tide‑gauge trends and notes that dramatic CO₂‑driven acceleration still fails to appear in the observational data.
2025-05-05: Compares NASA/JPL and NOAA/Colorado satellite series, arguing the supposed acceleration is an artifact of an improper splice and inconsistent processing.
So … can we put this question to bed? There is no evidence of acceleration in the actual tide gauge sea level data, and the apparent acceleration in the satellite data is merely an artifact of splicing disparate satellite records.
Further deponent saith not.
Tonight here on the forested hillside, rain, blessed rain here in drought-prone California. The plants are rejoicing.
My very best to all, with wishes for good times with your families, laughter with your friends, and sunlight far-reaching on the sea …
w.
AS USUAL, I ask that if you disagree with anything I wrote, please QUOTE THE EXACT WORDS and SHOW us (not just claim) why it is wrong. Avoids endless unnecessary disputes.
Great article from American thinker confirming that CO2 isn’t even a GHS in the first place
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2026/02/there_s_only_one_greenhouse_gas_and_it_isn_t_co2.html
from that article
“If all that CO2 were gathered together, its footprint on your iPhone 16 Pro Max screen would be about the same size as an emoji.”
That’s the phone I bought a year ago at well over a thousand bucks- finally paid it off today. Why get one so expensive? Well, I wanted a new camera too- so went for the best- my first smart phone. All set in case any UFOs fly over me. 🙂
but, that article was interesting- I wonder what others here think of it- it will be claimed by critics that the author is a physician not a “climate scientist”- what he says makes sense to me, but I’m no expert
That was actually a great plan to protect you from aliens.
Everyone knows that aliens, Big Foots, Nessie, etc. only approach people without cameras, or rarely, a few people with decrepit lenses and decayed film.
I’ve got one of those excellent t-shirts showing a silhouette of Bigfoot against the moon and trees. It says “Undefeated Hide and Seek Champion”
🙂
Probably black bears, who can walk erect more than people think.
There’s a correlation between sightings and local bear population, except in Texas.
Especially big foots. Spent 50 years in the forests and never saw one- or anything weird out there.
They are smart enough to stay hidden so you don’t bother them. :-o)
I probably would have frightened them. I usually was out there crashing around wearing grubby clothes and looking like a crazy redneck. A few years ago I saw a black bear in a forest- down a hillside from me. I growled at him like a wild dog and it ran like hell away from me. 🙂
If the distance from Los Angeles to New York city (2445 miles) represented the atmospheric composition, the distance equivalent to each atmospheric gas concentration (excluding water vapor) would be: Nitrogen – 1907 miles, Oxygen – 512 miles, Argon – 24.45 miles, Carbon Dioxide – 5104 feet. So, if you were flying from LA to NY you’d reach the end of the CO2 at the end of the runway in LA.
Actually, well before the end of the runway.
You used 395 ppm for [CO2]. Using 430 ppm, Mauna Loa’s measurement this week to 2 significant figures, one would get just over a mile.
Oh, the horror! /sarc
I once shocked a friend of mine who was convinced by the CAGW scam. I stretched out a 10m long strip of white tape to represent the atmosphere, and asked him to mark the length corresponding to 0.04% CO2. He was flabbergasted to discover that CO2 was only 4mm.
Probably wouldn’t reach the runway from the terminal. 😄
Carbon dioxide is just as important as water with regard to life on Earth.
Carbon dioxide plus water & sunshine yield carbohydrates and oxygen.
6CO₂ + 6H₂O => C₆H₁₂O₆ + 6O₂
That’s the equation in the lower left of an image I frequently post : WaterWorldCoSyLIFEeq
Lasers work by stimulated emission. So, the analogy to the behavior of atmospheric CO2 is misguided.
In his mirror analogy, Dr. Ted also conflates water vapor and clouds, The former is a gas, the latter a condensate.
Dr. Ted also wrongly supposed that vibrationally excited atmospheric CO₂ (CO₂*) returns to its ground state by emitting a 15μ photon. Atmospheric CO₂* overwhelmingly decays by collision, transferring vibrational energy to (mostly) N₂ & O₂, where it becomes kinetic energy. Water vapor does similarly.
The K.E. is thermalized, meaning distributed in a Gaussian sort of way throughout the atmosphere. All through collisions.
Heat is radiated away to space mostly in water bands. Condensation of WV in cloud formation (at ~3-5 km) produces radiative loss of latent heat.
In the WV and CO₂ atmospheric windows, the surface radiates directly to space.
So Trenberth’s famous chart showing 333 w/m² of back radiation
and all 333 w/m² of it being absorbed by the surface is partially
true or a total fiction?
There is no such process as back radiation. I live in Canada which has long and snowy winters. In winter CO2 and H2O hibernate.
The definition of back radiation is electromagnetic energy on a vector directly to the source. Note, the newer version of this flat earth model now call it downwelling radiation.
true or a total fiction?
It is a fiction. Planck proved that a volume large enough to have sufficient radiators could be assumed to be a radiator that radiates the same amount in all directions. If a 1 m³ volume contains sufficient Greenhouse Gas radiators, and if Greenhouse Gases can radiate 333 downward, then that volume will also radiate 333 up and sideways again being absorbed by other Greenhouse molecules.
Additionally, If 333 is absorbed again by the surface, your Greenhouse Gas theory implies that the surface will warm beyond where started, that is, its temperature will increase. Guess what? That higher temperature will radiate more that will be absorbed by the Greenhouse Gases raising that temperature too. Then the process starts over in the next iteration and temperatures go higher and higher. Please explain what stops this progressive increase.
No it doesn’t. Your statement of “Greenhouse Gas Theory” doesn’t say anything about the simultaneous radiation away from the surface. If you think downward atmospheric radiation is all there is and no upward radiation from the surface then you either dont understand or are wilfully mischaracterising it.
The fact is the downward radiation from the atmosphere is almost always less than the upwards surface radiation and the net effect is cooling of the surface.
Then the sun warms the surface during the day and depending on whether or not the sun’s energy plus the downward radiation over time is greater than upward radiation from the surface over that time, determines whether there is net warming or not.
Describing it the way you did does a disservice to any arguments skeptics make because its so obviously biased toward “fiction”.
I think you need to reread the post! The Greenhouse Theory *does* state that the temperature of the Earth will go up from the “back radiation”. This *is* a statement of positive feedback causing an ever rising temperature. As Jim says, “where does this stop”?
You *did* hit the real problem when you use the words “over time”. The graph in Steve Case’s post is not “over time”. It’s a snapshot in time.
In addition, it uses values with dimensions of W/m^2. This is a *rate*, and not a total over time. It is actually joules/sec-m^2. What determines the actual heat gain and heat loss is the integral of the rate over time. That gives you the joules in and the joules out. Joules is heat, temperature is not heat.
Nor can you use simple additive values of rates to determine balance. Radiation rate out is related to T^4 as opposed to temperature being T^1. You can’t just “average” temperature, T^1, and use that to determine average radiation rate out.
It’s almost like climate science doesn’t understand that the Earth actually loses more heat during the day than it does at night!
You can and they have. Its supposed to be an indicative, simplified, time independent summary of what they believe is happening. But as you point out, reality is much, much more complicated.
Yes, you can put the number in a calculator and get a number in response.
However, take 2 and 4 and sum them in a calculator, divide by 2 and you get 3. Now take 2⁴ and 4⁴ and sum them, then divide by 2.
In the first case you get 3. In the second case you get 136. Big difference. Even 3⁴ is only 81. Ignoring the effects of an exponential of the 4th power can’t be ignored
That argument is relevant at any particular location on earth with a specific temperature and energy flow but you can do the calculation for all points on the earth and average them giving you Trenberth’s diagram.
“but you can do the calculation for all points on the earth and average them giving you Trenberth’s diagram.”
No, you can’t do this, not if you are interested in actual heat loss/gain.
The *average* rate would be the integral of the diurnal rate curve divided by the time interval. Since the rate curve is related to T^4 the integral would be T^5/5. Thus the *average* rate is related to an even larger exponential than the instantaneous rate.
It’s truly enough to make a thinking man wonder just how much physical science and calculus climate science PhD’s actually study!
You CAN do that, but it won’t give you a correct answer. Not even close.
You cannot average the base of an exponential term and raise that term to the exponential value and obtain a correct answer.
This whole simple arithmetic process of averaging is an attempt to derive a “state variable value” at an infitesimally small instant in time.
With an ideal sphere with the sun over the equator, every point on earth receives a sinusoidal distribution of insolation over 12 hours with an absorption factor based on a cosine function. Likewise, every point on earth experiences an exponential distribution of cooling for 12 hours. Averaging these over 24 hours is just inaccurate and gives an incorrect answer.
Actually, you get an exponential decay representing cooling even during the day. There *is* a reason why the daytime temperature starts its way down (i.e. a negative slope) *before* sunset!
Yes, you *can* do the average. And you *can* use it in other calculations. That does *NOT* make doing so physically meaningful. It’s like assuming the mid-point between Tmax and Tmin is the “average” daily temperature – garbage in/garbage out.
Heat loss from the Earth at Tmax is *much* greater due to the T^4 factor than it is at the mid-point temperature. This much increased heat loss factor is totally missed by climate science when it uses the mid-point temperature in its calculations.
W/m^2 is not rate, it is power density or some would call it flux.
You are edging closer to the point that EM travels at c but thermal energy travels at less than 0.5 speed of sound (average).
Joules/sec *is* a RATE. Just like miles/hr is a rate.
You have to integrate the miles/hr rate curve over time in order to find out the number of miles actually covered. You have to integrate the joules/sec rate curve over time to get the number of joules actually provided by the radiation.
Don’t let the m^2 term confuse you. If you look at an infinitesimally small point being impinged upon by the radiation (think dA), that point will *still* see “x” joules/sec passing through it – i.e. a *rate*.
The integral is actually ∫∫ W/m^2 cos(θ) dt dA
You misunderstood what I was saying. The diagram needs to show 333 up, down, and sideways.
The way it is drawn leads to the conclusion that 333 > 161 thus the surface warms from the “back” radiation. Not likely!
This is true of the surface.
This is the mistake that CAGW makes. These do not add. If you define 3 bodies, sun, Earth’s surface, the whole atmospheres. Then,
Planck tells us that (absent conduction and convection) a cool body can not warm an already hotter body.
As rays from “back” radiation are absorbed, new rays are being radiated. Thus cooling is maintained.
Don’t confuse a momentary condition of state with a dynamic process. Set up a scenario where 333 increases the temp of the earth which radiates more and greenhouse gases then reradiates more back that then warms the earth more so it then radiates more and greenhouse gases radiate more back, and on and on.
Entropy is real. It is the base of the second law of themodynamics. The sun, earth, atmosphere system can be replaced by putting a heat source inside the earth that accomplishes the same temperature of the earth as the sun. You now have a two body system.
Can the greenhouse gases ever warm the earth in this scenario? And, by warm, I mean reach a higher temperature.
It shows 333 down and 396 up for the LWR. Sideways isn’t relevant.
And its not. There is net upwards radiation resulting in cooling of the surface and that’s completely in line with thermodynamics.
No. And nobody (who knew what they were talking about) ever said they could.
To reach the higher temperature requires the sun and time.
Sideways is relevant. That energy exits the planet energy system.
Sideways is relevant. It can leave the system entirely without interacting with the earth. The radiation can also encounter a nearby CO2 molecule that can absorb it thereby letting IR from the earth go by.
Here is a question for you to ponder. The largest part of the atmosphere is warmed by CO2 through conduction. The mass of CO2 is very, very small compared to the rest of the atmosphere. Think of a small pencil soldering iron heating a large radiator. How long does it take? What happens to radiation in the mean time? Radiation is only part of the solution.
Being biased toward the truth(fiction). What a horror.
You have defined the so called “run away greenhouse effect” that was debunked decades ago.
Yes. That is what happens when you add the sun and “back radiation” together. Energy is created out of nothing. Entropy is real.
“Energy is created out of nothing.”
Seems that concept violated Kirchhoff’s Law.
Not greenhouse gas theory, black body ideal model, a hypothesis that has proven in some applications to be useful.
Black body ideal is ok to start analyzing a system but one must be prepared to add real world phenomena hinto the analysis.
Correct. I was narrowly alluding to energy equilibrium, which is fundamental to the ideal black body model.
When doing thermal analysis for systems, T^4 is used, but it is not the be all and end all of the analysis. Convection. Conduction. Thermal resistance. The whole tool kit is needed.
Fiction. So-called ‘back radiation’ has never been measured, because, quite frankly (pun intended), no instrument capable of doing so exists:
“Unfortunately, none of the instruments that have ever been used in the disciplines of atmospheric radiation and remote sensing can, strictly speaking, be considered a Poynting-meter. Despite the wide variety of specific designs and the alleged ability to quantify the electro-magnetic energy flow, the actual physical nature of the measurements afforded by these instruments has remained poorly understood and has rarely been formulated in the context of advanced theories of light–matter interactions. Furthermore, it is hardly recognized that the physical meaning of the signal generated by these instruments depends critically on the very nature of the electromagnetic field transporting radiative energy and hence on the object creating the electromagnetic field.”
https://ntrs.nasa.gov/api/citations/20140016779/downloads/20140016779.pdf
The above, of course, is in addition to all other issues nicely referenced above by Pat Frank. Basically, it’s high time to acknowledge that the Earth’s atmospheric is not composed of condensed matter, and therefore doesn’t radiate thermal energy in the manner of a black body.
Yes! A Poynting vector measuring device is needed to determine the actual vector quantities being measured.
Imagine two EM waves with the same magnitude but in exactly opposite directions. The Poynting vector would be zero. That is a standing wave that can do no work. Is that equilibrium?
Thanks. I have to grudgingly admire NASA-GISS for supporting the late Michael Mishchenko, given that much of his work stands in stark contrast to the phenomenological physics employed by their climate modelers.
I’ll be honest, I had to investigate the term “phenomenological physics”. That seems to imply the process of subjectivity rather than evidence and facts. Sounds like climate modelers for sure.
‘…I had to investigate the term “phenomenological physics”.’
Me, too. According to Mishchenko, the term has been floating around this area of physics for over a century. I think of it as a scientific explanation, i.e., a paradigm, that is conveniently used to describe an effect of nature that, while perhaps initially plausible, turns out to be incorrect. Usually, for most of us, this results in ‘no harm, no foul’ in our day-to-day lives.
Unfortunately, the problem with the application of the radiant transfer theory paradigm within ‘cli-sci’ is that it falsely attributes the so-called GHE to the spontaneous emission and absorbtion of particle-like ‘photons’ in the troposphere by GHGs. And, as we well know, one of these GHGs, i.e., CO2, has been glommed on to by the Left as their weapon of choice to control human activity.
I relate it to the meme of “the earth is the center of the solar system”. It’s a case of “phenomenological physics” used to explain the movement of the sun and planets. You can *make* it work with enough effort and “faith”. But it is incorrect.
Same with “back radiation” causing “global warming”.
For most folks, there would have been FA difference between the Ptolemaic and heliocentric models. Their ecclesiastical and secular elites, of course, would have preferred the implicit ‘order’ of the former model, hence there was a bit of a dust-up when these same elites took issue with uppity churchmen around the same time inquisitive people were looking at planets through tubes to which they had affixed lenses.
As far as I know, the specific radiation of the CO2 increase 2000-2010 was measured at two stations and did show about 0,2 W/m2 increase from 22 ppmv increase of CO2:
https://escholarship.org/content/qt3428v1r6/qt3428v1r6.pdf
The fact that they could measure the quite large seasonal CO2 changes, due to vegetation in de NH, gives confidence that the measurements were right,
The instrument used was a kind of photovoltaic cell, specific working at a wide range of IR, cooled to near zero K to avoid interference from the rest of the equipment.
Calibration was by two black-bodies at ambient and specif temperatures and the whole IR range is split into small parts to get the specific wavelengths of water, CO2 and other GHGs:
https://new.abb.com/products/measurement-products/analytical/space-defense-systems/atmospheric-emitted-radiance-interferometer-aeri
The interesting part is that the increase of 0.2 W/m2/decade in downwelling W/m2 from CO2 is only 10% of the total 2.0-2.2 W/m2/decade increase in total downwelling, as measured/calculated by other methods. That the extra CO2 has triggered this factor 10 increase is simply impossible, the more that in the past period 1946-1975, the earth was slightly cooling with increased CO2…
If you take ocean heat content increase as a good proxy/measure for downwelling radiation increase then its considerably less than 2.0-2.2 W/m2/decade and much closer to the 0.2 W/m2/decade we might expect (ie no massive multiplier). Where did you get that figure from?
For example, from the NOAA website we had
The heat content change of the oceans is a matter of both incoming and outgoing energy (SW and LW), the measurements by instruments are one-way SW or LW or both incoming or outgoing over land…
Observations of incoming energy:
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/01431160802036508 LW, 1.7 W/m2/decade 1964-1990
https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2008GL034842 SW + LW, 2 W/m2/decade 1986-2000
https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2009JD011800 LW, 2.2 W/m2/decade 1973-2008
The spectral analyses of Feldman etal. specific for CO2 were 0.2 W/decade for an increase of 22 ppmv CO2 in the period 2000-2010
In the period 1946-1975 there was a small dip in global (and SST) temperatures (the “new ice age panic”) with increasing CO2 (~10 ppmv over that period), thus no “fortifying factor” at all…
With a factor 10, we should have had the climate of Venus in several periods of the earth’s history… Not seen at all, thus simply impossible.
Well yes, and the first paper, for example, states
and
Well the water vapor near the surface might seem like a positive feedback via any DLR surface measurement but then that increased water vapor transfers its energy high into the atmosphere as a strong negative feedback offsetting most of any increased DLR bringing the retained figure back to about 0.2 W/m2/decade as evidenced by the measured OHC increase.
‘As far as I know, the specific radiation of the CO2 increase 2000-2010 was measured at two stations and did show about 0,2 W/m2 increase from 22 ppmv increase of CO2’
Per the Mishchenko reference I provided, above, they didn’t ‘measure’ back radiation. No one else has, either, since the appropriate instrumentation doesn’t exist.
‘The instrument used was a kind of photovoltaic cell, specific working at a wide range of IR, cooled to near zero K to avoid interference from the rest of the equipment.’
How could they possibly have made a meaningful measurement of energy flow using an instrument cooled down to zero K? Is this the Feldman et al nonsense that has been repeatedly debunked here at WUWT?
So the atmosphere has an isotropic IR radiation field. Why should that be a surprise?
That’s only half the story.
Its true that the net effect of GHGs is to “capture” radiative energy and transfer it to the rest of the atmosphere but that’s only the case in the lower atmosphere where the collisions are most frequent and the energy capture happens within a short distance.
In the upper atmosphere, radiative energy is emitted from GHGs and is increasingly radiated to space. Its how the earth cools.
Agreed. Thanks.for completing the picture.
Pat,
I worked for 2 years with high power CO2 lasers if ever you wish to swap notes. It is fascinating to see a beam of invisible light cutting its way through several inches of steel at a fast, useful speed. Also interesting to see the size of cables delivering electricity. Thickest I have seen indoors was for a Kaman Fast Neutron Generator that I bought years ago.
I agree with you comment that the analogy is misguided.
Geoff S
William Howard,
In my home GHS stands for Geoffrey Harold Sherrington.
Thus, there is a GHS who is quite close to being in the first place with the topic of false global warming science arising from poor science.
A new article was emailed to Chas the Mod today. I hope that he likes it.
Geoff S
Dummies think if something is rising- it’s accelerating, even if it’s not. Sounds scarier.
NOAA says sea level is rising about ~1.75 mm/yr. Let’s see if I can find the link for that:
The graphs give an indication of the differing rates of vertical land motion, given that
the absolute global sea level rise is believed to be 1.7-1.8 millimeters/year. NOAA
“ Because for the last fifteen years, I’ve been saying the same thing”
I knew someone recently passed, born two years shy of a century ago and raised on the central Texas coast. Served in Korea, became a successful civil engineer. Even in the last century he sometimes asked why the bay road he lived on and grew up near where they predicted would be covered in a decade or so didn’t show much. Argument was that they had to rebuilt it NOW. They are still building public and private structures not much higher than the road. Texas tides are messy, but he could stomach a couple of millimeters a year rise, maybe. Didn’t take a paper with lots of inadequate x’s with the usual regression statistics to prove it and it was probably subsidence.
Central Texas coast has a bigger serious freshwater problem from not following the decades old water plans. It used to be that engineers like that flunked out of college. Current Texas State Meteorologist has often been mentioned here, best I recall not kindly. I once missed his seminar on climate.
Dummies think if something is rising- it’s accelerating, even if it’s not.
You just hit upon a major problem with time series if proper attention is not paid to things like inconsistent means and standard deviation, auto-correlation, and seasonality. Those things create what is known as non-stationary time series.
In order to have a proper time series to begin with the means and standard deviation of the base data must remain constant throughout the series. There are mathematical constructs to make time series stationary. The most common one is first differencing. This also helps with removing auto-correlation. What is auto-correlation? It is the fact that you can predict today is similar to yesterday and tomorrow will be similar to today. This then leads into seasonality which occurs in opposite fasion in each hemisphere.
The upshot is to provide a statistically stable time series to which various factors can be applied to determine if a chosen model can predict accurate results.
Whoops! That would mean we need a hypothesis based on mathematical evidence of causal factors. Climate science can’t do that, so instead, just makes up some theories that sound plausible and beats them to death in the media.
Exponentially scarier.
Who you gonna believe, our climate models or the evidence of your lyin’ eyes?
If you want to keep that grant money coming…nice little scam you got here, sure be a shame if the truth came along and ruined it!
“When I collected them all up, I was surprised at how many analyses I’d written on the question”
And how many others’ works have you cancelled.
“In both datasets, approximately 95% of the suitable locations show
no statistically significant acceleration of the rate of sea level rise.”
_______________________________________________________
Most people here at WUWT would probably agree 0.01mm/yr² isn’t
anything to get excited about.
What time period(s) did you evaluate?
Debbie Downers with no responses. Must’ve hit a nerve….
You expect an answer in one hour of you posting, who do you think you are?
And posts like this helped you earn the reputation as a troll.
The entire record of each of the 67 tide gauges evaluated. The goal was 100 or more
Thanks Steve. I knew you meant more years. I’m guessing that you also nixed stations without recent data. Good first steps..
I’m guessing that you also nixed stations without recent data. Good first steps..
Omitting stations without recent data would actually increase the acceleration, not decrease it.
It must be so galling for you to see the lack of acceleration. Too bad.
Yours is a neutral question, and thus fair.
Unfortunately your reputation as a troll precedes you.
“Most people here at WUWT would probably agree 0.01mm/yr² isn’t
anything to get excited about.”
That’s terrifying !!
It means I could drown in my bed in about 400,000 years; perhaps I should move uphill soon ??
Can you hold your breath that long?
OT, but Many Happy Returns of tomorrow, Willis, 25 years old with 54 years experience.
You told them so Willis, thank you 🙂 Truth is coming out of the woodwork now that Trump said the King had no clothes on. Everyone can see the damage done by the scam and realize it was politically and not scientifically motivated. I don’t believe AGW has a chance of resurrection and I hope my belief is not premature.
November 2009 the so- called main stream media claimed to debunk “The Climategate emails and has thoroughly ignored them since.
Interpolate at will. Extrapolate at your own peril.
W. E. wrote: “I was surprised at how many analyses …”
Wow! And I think I’ve read everyone of them, while thinking
as did Albert E. that one should have been enough.
Further, way back when, I wrote “the easy ice has already melted”
This morning, on my non-forested slope, it is snowing briskly.
[9mi. North of I-90 near Ellensburg, WA]
I, too, have always looked forward to Ellis’s research and commentary – including the personal anecdotes.
And finally, near Reno, a little above 5700′, it has started to snow hard – first real snowstorm of the season, I hope. I may get to get my snowblower out! I love playing in the snow. I may get to make a snow fort. I may be 72, but I’m still 12 at heart!
Ellis?
Typo
autocorrect?
Milwaukee winters for the last 2-3 decades have been warmer (personal observation) than the ’60s & ’70s December 2025 was kinda cold but it’s 62F & sunny coming up on 3:00 PM Snow is mostly gone, but small ponds still have ice. KMWC doesn’t support the 62F that my ‘puter & stick on the window says.
Hmm, sea level has risen 125,000 millimeters in the last 18,000 years of this interglacial. That’s an average of 6.94 mm per year; more than double the current rate and with no acceleration evident. It appears that getting agitated over sea level rise would be like getting wound up over a rising tide!!!
To put another nail in the ‘SLR acceleration’ coffin, NASA’s claimed satellite altimeter measured acceleration is fundamentally false for two reasons.
How do they find a sea surface with waves under 4 cm (1.6 inch)?
When I went through the processes several years ago, I found that individual measurements could have an uncertainty of several 10/s of cm due to orbit fluctuations. Two orders of magnitude in resolution was claimed by using averaging and dividing by the √n over a months time.
I’m glad these folks and climate scientists don’t work at NIST. Our measurement calibrations would be worthless.
So they claim to have measured the SAME thing every time? I bet that doesn’t hold any better than station averages do on the statistical logic front. The sea isn’t the same, the sensor isn’t in the same place, the environment isn’t consistent…many more rebuttals of the square root of N starting assumptions.
sqrt(N) is a measure of sampling uncertainty. It is an *additive* factor to measurement uncertainty. Of course, climate science always assumes measurement uncertainty is zero thus leaving only sampling uncertainty.
But but… AVERAGES!
/s
Further analysis is definitely not what the climate crusades industrial complex and affiliated political parties want to hear, see, or smell. Add this to the growing list of litmus test kits for the meme media types.
Good job Willis. All of this information needs to be presented to the guys who watch the news, they are the ones who need to be convinced.
Now do Presidio gauge @ur momisugly San Francisco gauge also measured other phenomena — such as the effect of the El Niño condition on water levels.
The<b> highest tide ever recorded was on Jan. 27, 1983</b>, when the surface of the water at the Golden Gate reached 8.78 feet above mean sea level, or zero. The lowest tide was on Dec. 17, 1933, with minus 2.9 feet. The 1983 high tide accompanied a downpour associated with the El Niño condition; the lowest accompanied a period of the exact opposite condition.
The normal tidal range is about 5.8 feet, more when the moon is full. The tide also affects the currents in the bay, which are strongest in the Golden Gate, and in the San Pablo and Carquinez straits.</i>
http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/SAN-FRANCISCO-TIDES-OF-HISTORY-Presidio-gauge-2745805.php
What does Presidio tell us about sea level from a gage situated on a landplate mostly sliding horizontally?
From June 30, 1854 to Dec, 1932 the level was going down and before Dec. 17, 1933 there was NO rise. Since Jan. 27, 1983, levels have all been lower, or no rise.
Total average gain is 8 inches total, while the twice daily Range is over 5 ft – 9 inches
An El Niño, i.e. when that 1 meter higher sea level by Japan sloshed back to the west & a lot of rain runoff caused the RECORD HIGHEST and not CO2.
Perhaps the most amazing thing is that this is entirely normal, for the whole Earth system. Clear back in the ’70’s, Bilal Haq and his team put together a Phanerozoic sea level curve; eventually, the science of Sequence Stratigraphy was born. I have two volumes on the subject: Siliciclastic Sequence Stratigraphy and Carbonate Sequence Stratigraphy.
Hey, Warmunistas! Sea level changing is the norm, not the exception. As a friend of mine so eloquently states, “The seas came in; the seas went out.”
Right. Like temperature and glaciers, sea levels are always rising or falling, nothing is static. No matter what changes, for some it will be a boon, for others a bane.
There have been studies of sea level changes over the more distant past based on basel peat deposits and sediments. Larsen and Clark of USGS summarized these studies in “A Search for Scale in Sea Level Studies”, Journal of Coastal Research, July, 2006. The concluded that sea level has been rising at around 1 or 2 mm/year for the past 6,000 years.
The rate at which sea level rises is directly proportional to the amount of energy the earth retains due to the radiative imbalance due to the GHG effect in the atmosphere. The oceans warm and the ice melts and both happen at the rate of energy retained.
If the rate of sea level rise was accelerating, then the rate at which the radiative imbalance was increasing must also be accelerating.
And its not.
For that to happen in the AGW world, we’d have to be accelerating our fossil fuel usage and we’re not. Increasing slowly perhaps, but arguably not even that, and at any rate, not accelerating.
Nor are we expected to do so, so the whole thing is based on a false premise with no scientifically justifiable basis. Its purely a scare tactic.
Tim,
Your claim is only correct if you assume that the volume of the ocean basins is constant over time. We know that there are perturbations like sea floor spreading, creation of new islands, islands increasing in area over time, delta sedimentation. You then have to show that these effects are so small that they can be ignored in sea level studies. I have yet to find a paper that measures these basin volume changes. Do you have any links? Geoff S
No I dont but that’s not the point of the argument. In practice, I agree sea level rise is more complicated than simply warming the ocean and melting ice. But my argument puts a limit on the rate of sea level rise as relates to AGW theory and their argument that its “accelerating” doesn’t, well, hold water on energy grounds.
You are the first I have seen making this valid point.
I’ve made the point a number of times over the years but nobody seems to understand the argument, or if they do, they never comment until yours just now.
If I’m right, you wont see any claims of sea level rise accelerating based on GCM results (ie models that conserve energy), they’ll all be from curve fitting on observations or models that dont conserve energy.
I’ve not done extensive research to prove that but my experience so far is that all the claims I’ve seen have been based on projections based on the observations.
I suppose I can use AI to help so here is the question I posed to ChatGPT without any preamble and as a new topic.
which, if any, scientific papers determine sea level rise acceleration from global climate models that conserve energy?
And the result of that was relatively extensive but ended with
So I asked a further question
I’m only interested in papers that explicitly derive accelerating sea level change from the GCM output. Are there any?
As far as I’m concerned, that’s the nail in the “sea level rise accelerating” coffin.
What are the limits of expansion for oceans vs seas? Does CO2 control the Ocean Heat Content (OHC) of both oceans and seas? Is it appropriate to “average” sea level rise of the two?
It should be noted, since it wasn’t mentioned, that the paper cited is currently the subject of “An expression of concern” to the publisher and a call for a retraction by several scientists:
You mean like MBH 98?
That’s the standard of ‘analysis unable to support the conclusions of their paper’ that was never set.
And remains to this day as the standard that was never set.
Yet the says nothing except that “they don’t like the answer”.
Well, marine fossils are found above 8000 m. So sea levels have dropped by at least 8000 m. Oil deposits are found at depths of more than 3000 m. So sea levels have risen by 3000 m (assuming “fossil fuels” were formed from land flora).
So no need for sea level panic just yet.
Only if you can prove that orogeny doesn’t take place.
I’m not sure you are being serious or merely facetious, but the marine fossils at 8000m got there by orogeny or mountain-building, not sea level rise.
Serious. Sea level is measured relative to land. Land rises, sea level falls. Marine fossils at 8000 m show sea level was at least 8000 m lower in the past.
Same with fossil fuel deposits presently some thousands of meters below current “sea levels”. Orogeny simply means that mass uplift somewhere has to be compensated by equivalent mass depression (relative to the center of the Earth).
The upshot is that sea levels are constantly varying, as the dimensions of the basins which contain the oceans change – quite apart from liquid water which is sequestered in the form of land ice.
The poor dear is feeling threatened!
Without satellite acceleration he (Robert E.Kopp) has zero point zero. He will need to try harder!! Lol. As will you!
Thanks, TFN. Here is an AI analysis of the expression of concern.
I would note that all of the authors of the expression of concern are caught in what I call the “Sinclair Trap”, expressed by Upton Sinclair as:
“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.”
The analysis is too long for WordPress, so I’ve put it online here as a Word document. These are the conclusions:
===
Conclusions
The EoC contains a kernel of legitimate statistical criticism — the Bonferroni correction is too conservative for spatially correlated data, the model is over-parameterized, and the F-test is technically invalid for changepoint models. These are real issues that deserve serious discussion.
But the document wraps these valid points in:
1. Rhetorical excess — a combative title presupposing its own conclusion
2. Procedural misconduct — public release during a confidential editorial process
3. Appeal to authority — 16 credentialed names displayed as a show of force
4. Double standards — criticizing Voortman’s statistics while holding up Wang et al. (which a co-signer calls statistically incompetent) as the gold standard
5. Selective engagement — ignoring the broader body of work reaching identical conclusions through independent methods
6. Disproportionate remedy — demanding retraction for issues that warrant a comment
7. Mixed motives — admitted by a co-signer to be partly driven by concern over media coverage
The journal reached the right decision: no retraction, with an invitation for the critics to submit their concerns through normal peer review. The EoC is a cautionary example of how legitimate scientific disagreement can be weaponized when a result threatens established narratives.
===
Regards,
w.
Can you please include your prompt to make it obvious there is no bias being introduced with it? AI can be coaxed to say pretty much whatever you want with the right prompt.
I know you have an extensive preamble to your prompts, just the main one and any changes you’ve made to the preamble since you last posted it would be appreciated.
Your link is basically a strongly worded complaint – not properly peer-reviewed. The authors are upset because the peer-reviewed published paper goes against the usual narrative that sea level rise is speeding up.
It may make a big splash (pun intended) in climate debates and get attention, but it doesn’t go deep enough with new proof, fresh analysis, or solid details to really count as strong scientific pushback by itself.
So, it’s more like a loud protest than real, reliable evidence to dismiss the original paper.
Only a true believer would accept a non-peer reviewed Mr Angry letter over a peer-reviewed paper.
The sea level paper written by Hessel Voortman and Rob de Vos was indeed challenged by prof. Kopp and friends in the form of a “request for retraction”. That this was not mentioned in the commentaries is probably due to the fact that the request had been rejected by the Editorial Board on 18 December 2025. The Editorial Board has concluded that the published paper did not require any corrections.
That’s right, Willis, you did a lot of work on this matter. The sea level publication by Voortman and De Vos is the first to have appeared in a peer-reviewed scientific journal. It shows that of the 204 long-term tidal stations, 195 exhibit no acceleration. Of the 9 stations that do show acceleration, it is made plausible that this was caused by local factors.
That it was a bull’s-eye became evident when, shortly after publication, 16 scientists, led by Prof. Kopp, requested that the journal retract the paper. After careful deliberation, the editorial board decided not to comply. Unfortunately, this tactic—seeking to force journals to withdraw an unwelcome paper without engaging in scientific debate—is occurring more and more frequently.
I had hoped we were passed that nonsense after climategate revealed the practice. Congratulations for succeeding in getting the paper published.
For an historical and global perspective, see a posting I did a few years ago: https://wattsupwiththat.com/2023/02/21/further-exploration-of-historical-sea-level-rise-acceleration/
Thank you, Willis!
Yes, a web site that collates government tide gage data – PSMSL.org – shows tectonic plate subsidence and tilting is a large factor.
Data for SW BC and NW WA show probable tilting of relatively small plates in the region, compare data for New Westminster BC and the northwest corner of the Olympic Peninsula for example.
Thankyou Willis and Anthony.