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Sea Level Expert Rips Study Claiming Fastest Rise in 2800 years: Study ‘full of very bad violations of observational facts’

But Professor Dr. Nils-Axel Morner, a leading world authority on sea levels and coastal erosion who headed the Department of Paleogeophysics & Geodynamics at Stockholm University calls the new study and the media spin surrounding it “demagogic.”
“The PNAS paper is another sad contribution to the demagogic anti-science campaign for AGW. It is at odds with observational facts and ethical principles,” Morner wrote to Climate Depot. “The paper is full of very bad violations of observational facts,” Morner explained.
Few scientists have published as much on the subject of sea level rise as Dr. Mörner. He is also a co-founder of the Prague-based Independent Committee on Geoethics.
Morner noted:
– global tide gauges show moderate mean rates
– many key sites and test sites show little or no rise at all
– nowhere do we find records of true “acceleration”
– satellite altimetry show a mean rise of 0.5 ±0.1 mm/yr after back-callibration
– past sea level oscillations have been faster & steeper that in the last century
Morner explained: “The paper is full of very bad violations of observational facts.”
Just one first example:
This is their graph of sea level change at Christmas Island , Kiribati
This is the tide gauge record from Christmas Island
Morner asked: “How can anyone find a rapidly rising trend in this tide gauge record? It is flat or rather slowly falling – but in no way rising.”
So they work – with no respect to observational facts. A true case for Fraud Investigation,” Morner added.
Climatologist Dr. Judith Curry, Former Chair of School of Earth & Atmospheric Sciences at Georgia Institute of Technology also weighed in on the studies. “So, what to make of all this?” Curry wrote on her blog on Feb. 23, 2016.
Curry: “At a presentation that I made earlier this year to CEOs of small electric cooperatives, one participant was surprised by what I had to say about sea level rise – he hadn’t realized that there had been sea level rise prior to 1950.  I.e., like ‘climate change’, all sea level rise has been sold as caused by humans.
Sea level has overall been rising for thousands of years; however, as the Kopp et al. paper points out, there have been century scale periods of lowering sea level in the recent millennia.  It is not clear from my cursory reading as to whether meaningful decadal and multi-decadal variations in sea level can be discerned from their data.

The key issue is whether the sea level rise during the past 50 years reflect an acceleration in sea level rise.  The IPCC figure 3.14 suggests that there is no acceleration, given the large rates of sea level rise in the first half of the 20th century.  Until we have an understanding of variations in decadal and multi-decadal sea level rise, we can’t make a convincing argument as to acceleration.

With regards to coastal planning, I absolutely agree with the paper linked to above.  Locations where sea level rise is a problem invariably have rates of sea level rise that are much greater than even the altimeter values of 3.2 mm/yr are caused by local geologic processes, land use, and or coastal/river engineering.  Global values of sea level rise have essentially no use in coastal planning; rather they seem mainly relevant in terms of motivating ‘action’ on carbon mitigation policy.

Sea level will continue to rise, no matter what we do about CO2 emissions.  We need creative solutions – one of my favorites remains the garbage solution.

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More analysis of new sea level rise study: The article was based on some very complex statistical work and in that context we note that the authors describe their work as “semi-empirical”.  What does that mean?  It simply means that their results come partly from  guesswork.  And seeing the authors are keen Warmists we can be sure in which direction their guesses tended. And, with the complex nature of their analyses, guesses at various points could make a big difference to the final outcome.  To believe their conclusions would therefore require an act of faith.”
Another analysis:  “HH Lamb also provides strong evidence that sea levels were at least as high, and probably higher, back in the Middle Ages, and also around 400 AD. In between, sea levels fell, so we know that sea levels have never been the sort of constant thing often portrayed. For instance, he talks of sea levels dropping by 2 meters between 2000 and 500 BC, a rate of 1.33mm/year. As I think it is safe to assume that this was not a steady rate throughout, it seems reasonable to assume that for much of this period the fall was much greater.”
Meteorologist Tom Wysmuller told Climate Depot on Feburary 24: ‘For the past 130 years there has been ZERO acceleration in sea-level rise as directly measured by tide gauges in tectonically inert areas (land neither moving up nor down), even as CO2 has risen almost 40% in the same period.’ Also see: Meteorologist Tom Wysmuller: ‘There is no measurable linkage between Sea Level and CO2!’ – ‘The Inconvenient CO2/Sea Level Non-Linka
Related Links:
Past Sea Level Rise Data ‘Adjusted’ Upward: NASA has ‘more than tripled sea level rise by simply altering the data’ – In 1982, NASA showed 1 mm/year.  Now they claim 3.3 mm/year. They have more than tripled sea level rise by simply altering the data.

New paper finds sea level rise has decelerated 44% since 2004 to only 7 inches per century – Published in Global and Planetary Change – According to the authors, global mean sea level rise from 1993-2003 was at the rate of 3.2 mm/yr, but sea level rise ‘started decelerating since 2004 to a rate of 1.8 ± 0.9 mm/yr in 2012.’ – ‘The authors also find “This deceleration is mainly due to the slowdown of ocean thermal expansion in the Pacific during last decade,” which is in direct opposition to claims that the oceans “ate the global warming.” This finding debunks alarmist claims that ocean heat uptake has increased over the past decade, demonstrating instead that ocean heat uptake has decreased during the global warming pause since 2004, and has gone negative since 2007′

New paper finds global sea levels will rise only about 5 inches by 2100 — A new peer-reviewed paper by sea level expert Dr. Nils-Axel Morner – Study ‘concludes that Australian government claims of a 1 meter sea level rise by 2100 are greatly exaggerated, finding instead that sea levels are rising around Australia and globally at a rate of only 1.5 mm/year. This would imply a sea level change of only 0.13 meters or 5 inches by 2100. Dr. Morner also finds no evidence of any acceleration in sea level rise around Australia or globally’

Flashback 1987: ‘Global Warming’ Causes Sea Levels to Fall — 2016: ‘Global Warming’ Causes Slowdown In Sea Level Rise – Climate Depot’s Marc Morano: “Before ‘global warming’ caused sea level INCREASES, ‘global warming’ caused sea level DECREASES in 1987. Now in 2016, a NASA study is claiming ‘global warming’ is causing a slowdown in sea level rise.”

Drowning in Sea Level Nonsense: ‘ The notion of the seas rising, swamping coastal cities, and creating havoc is the stuff of science fiction, not science’

Geologist Dr. Don Easterbrook debunks ‘absurd’ new warmist study claiming 1,700 U.S. cities will be below sea level by 2100 — Easterbrook: ‘The rate used by [Lead Author] Strauss for his predictions is more than 10 times the rate over the past century!’

Geologist Dr. Don Easterbrook debunks ‘absurd’ new warmist study claiming 1,700 U.S. cities will be below sea level by 2100 — Easterbrook: ‘The rate used by [Lead Author] Strauss for his predictions is more than 10 times the rate over the past century!’ – Easterbrook: ‘The accelerated rise is based on postulated accelerated warming but there has been no warming in the past 15 years and, in fact, the climate has cooled during that time. So no climatic warming means no accelerated sea level rise as postulated by Strauss…the huge rise of sea level rates proposed by Strauss are absurd and that the maximum sea level rise by 2100 will be less than one foot’

New Study sea level expert Prof. Morner: ‘At most, global average sea level is rising at a rate equivalent to 2-3 inches per century. It is probably not rising at all’ – Sea level is not rising at all in the Maldives, the Laccadives, Tuvalu, India, Bangladesh, French Guyana, Venice, Cuxhaven, Korsør, Saint Paul Island, Qatar, etc.– ‘Modelling is not a suitable method of determining global sea-level changes, since a proper evaluation depends upon detailed research in multiple locations with widely-differing characteristics. The true facts are to be found in nature itself’

Are sea-levels rising? Nils Axel-Morner documents a decided lack of rising seas – Sea level scares are, ‘as it turns out, one interpretation of some highly adjusted, carefully selected data, all possibly ‘corrected’ by one outlying tide gauge in Hong Kong. Nils Axel-Morner is here to point out that the raw satellite data shows barely any rise, and furthermore, the observations from places all over, like the Maldives, Suriname, Tuvalu, India, Bangladesh, Venice, and Germany show not much either. It’s close enough to zero to call it ‘nothing’

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