SeaLevel.info

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Noteworthy papers -- topics:

 

Sea-level rise acceleration?

Sydney, Australia tide gauge record Although many climate models predict that rising CO2 levels should cause accelerated sea level rise, sea level measurements show that, thus far, in response to roughly 3/4 century of substantial anthropogenically-driven CO2 increases, there has been no detectable acceleration in the rate of sea level rise. In fact, some studies have detected small a deceleration (slowing). Here are some papers which have reported the lack of acceleration in rate of sea level rise (h/t to Alberto Boretti, Robert Dean & Doug Lord):

  1. Douglas B (1992). Global Sea Level Acceleration. J. Geophysical Research, Vol. 97, No. C8, pp. 12,699-12,706, 1992. doi:10.1029/92JC01133
  2. Douglas B and Peltier W R (2002). The Puzzle of Global Sea-Level Rise. Physics Today 55(3):35-40.
  3. Daly J (2003). Tasmanian Sea Levels: The 'Isle of the Dead' Revisited. [Internet].
  4. Daly J (2004). Testing the Waters: A Report on Sea Levels for the Greening Earth Society. [Internet].
  5. Jevrejeva S, et al (2006). Nonlinear trends and multiyear cycles in sea level records. J. Geophysical Research, 111, C09012, 2006. doi:10.1029/2005JC003229. (data)
  6. Holgate SJ (2007). On the decadal rates of sea level change during the twentieth century. Geophysical Research Letters. 34, L01602.
  7. Wunsch R, Ponte R and Heimbach P (2007). Decadal trends in sea level patterns: 1993-2004. Journal of Climatology. 5889-5911.
  8. Woodworth P, et al (2009). Evidence for the accelerations of sea level on multi-decade and century timescales. International Journal of Climatology, Volume 29, Issue 6, pages 777-789, May 2009. doi:10.1002/joc.1771
  9. You ZJ, Lord DB, and Watson PJ (2009). Estimation of Relative Mean Sea Level Rise From Fort Denison Tide Gauge Data. Proceedings of the 19th Australasian Coastal and Ocean Engineering Conference, Wellington, NZ, September 2009.
  10. Wenzel M and Schröter J (2010). Reconstruction of regional mean sea level anomalies from tide gauges using neural networks. Journal of Geophysical Research - Oceans. 115:C08013.
  11. Mörner N-A (2010a). Sea level changes in Bangladesh new observational facts. (Reprinted here.) Energy and Environment. 21(3):235-249.
  12. Mörner N-A (2010b). Some problems in the reconstruction of mean sea level and its changes with time. Quaternary International. 221(1-2):3-8.
  13. Mörner N-A (2010c). There Is No Alarming Sea Level Rise! 21st Century Science & Technology. Fall 2010:7-17.
  14. Houston JR and Dean RG (2011a). Sea-Level Acceleration Based on U.S. Tide Gauges and Extensions of Previous Global-Gauge Analyses. Journal of Coastal Research. 27:409-417.
  15. Houston JR and Dean RG (2011b). J. R. Houston and R. G. Dean (2011) Reply to: Rahmstorf, S. and Vermeer, M., 2011. Discussion of: Houston, J.R. and Dean, R.G., 2011. Sea-Level Acceleration Based on U.S. Tide Gauges and Extensions of Previous Global-Gauge Analyses. Journal of Coastal Research. Volume 27, Issue 4: pp. 788-790. doi:10.2112/JCOASTRES-D-11A-00008.1
  16. Watson PJ (2011). Is There Evidence Yet of Acceleration in Mean Sea Level Rise around Mainland Australia? Journal of Coastal Research. 27:368-377.
  17. Modra B and Hesse S (2011), NSW Ocean Water Level. 21st NSW Coastal Conference. (or here)
  18. Mörner N-A, (2011a). Setting the frames of expected future sea level changes by exploring past geological sea level records. Chapter 6 of book, D Easterbrook, Evidence-Based Climate Science, 2011 Elsevier B.V. ISBN: 978-0-12-385956-3.
  19. Mörner N-A, (2011b). The Maldives: A measure of sea level changes and sea level ethics. Chapter 7 of book, D Easterbrook, Evidence-Based Climate Science, 2011 Elsevier B.V. ISBN: 978-0-12-385956-3.
  20. Boretti A (2012a). Short Term Comparison of Climate Model Predictions and Satellite Altimeter Measurements of Sea Levels. Coastal Engineering, 60, pp. 319-322. doi:10.1016/j.coastaleng.2011.10.005. (Also, an article about this paper.)
  21. Boretti A (2012b). Is there any support in the long term tide gauge data to the claims that parts of Sydney will be swamped by rising sea levels? Coastal Engineering, 64, pp. 161-167. doi:10.1016/j.coastaleng.2012.01.006
  22. Hughes W (2012), Continued existence of Maori canals near Blenheim in New Zealand indicates a stable relative sea level over 200 years. [Internet].
  23. Boretti A and Watson T (2012). The inconvenient truth: Ocean Levels are not accelerating in Australia. Energy & Environment. doi:10.1260/0958-305X.23.5.801
  24. Burton D (2012). Comments on “Assessing future risk: quantifying the effects of sea level rise on storm surge risk for the southern shores of Long Island, New York,” by Shepard, et al. Natural Hazards. doi:10.1007/s11069-012-0159-8
  25. Lüning S and Vahrenholt F (2012). Fallstudien aus aller Welt belegen: Keine Beschleunigung des Meeresspiegelanstiegs während der letzten 30 Jahre. (Case studies from around the world: no evidence of accelerating sea level rise over the last 30 years - English translation.)
  26. Homewood P (2012). Is Sea Level Rise Accelerating? [Internet].
  27. Schmith T, et al (2012), Statistical analysis of global surface temperature and sea level using cointegration methods. Journal of Climate, 2012, American Meteorological Society. doi:10.1175/JCLI-D-11-00598.1 (or draft)
  28. Mörner N-A and Parker A (2013). Present-to-future sea level changes: The Australian case, Environmental Science, An Indian Journal, ESAIJ, 8(2), 2013 [43-51]
  29. Scafetta, N (2013a). Discussion on common errors in analyzing sea level accelerations, solar trends and global warming. Pattern Recognition in Physics. 1, 37-57, 2013. doi:10.5194/prp-1-37-2013.
  30. Gregory, White, Church, et al (2014). Twentieth-Century Global-Mean Sea Level Rise: Is the Whole Greater than the Sum of the Parts? American Meteorological Society, Volume 26 Issue 13 (July 2013). (See abstract: “...a relationship between global climate change and the rate of [Global Mean Sea Level Rise]... is weak or absent during the twentieth century.”) doi:10.1175/JCLI-D-12-00319.1
  31. Scafetta N (2014). Multi-scale dynamical analysis (MSDA) of sea level records versus PDO, AMO, and NAO indexes. Climate Dynamics, 43:175-192. doi:10.1007/s00382-013-1771-3. (Preprint here.)
  32. Plus, according to news reports, several papers suppressed by the New South Wales, Australia government. [1] [2&2b]  (Plus commentary here and here.)

Here's another list of peer-reviewed papers reporting the lack of measurable acceleration in rate of sea level rise:
http://www.populartechnology.net/2009/10/peer-reviewed-papers-supporting.html#Sea

Note: Among the most extreme predictions of accelerated sea level rise are those from German climatologist Stefan Rahmstorf.

 

How long should an LTT† sea level record be?

AMO index showing 60-year periodicity Multidecadal oscillations in regional sea levels mean that at least 50-60 years of sea level data is required to establish a robust  †Long Term Trend (LTT). See:

  1. Schlesinger, M. & Ramankutty, N. (1994), An oscillation in the global climate system of period 65-70 years. Nature, Vol. 367, pp. 723-726 (24 February 1994), doi:10.1038/367723a0 (p.1 is here)
  2. Douglas, B. (1995). Global sea level change: Determination and interpretation. Reviews of Geophysics 33(S1): doi:10.1029/95RG00355. issn: 8755-1209.
  3. Douglas B (1997). Global Sea Rise: a Redetermination, Surveys in Geophysics, Vol. 18, No. 2-3 (1997), 279-292, doi:10.1023/A:1006544227856
  4. Mitchell W, Chittleborough J, Ronai B, and Lennon G W (2000), Sea Level Rise in Australia and the Pacific, in the Proceedings of the Pacific Islands Conference on Climate Change, Climate Variability and Sea Level Rise, Australian National Tidal Facility (NTF), 3-7 April 2000. (See p.2.)
  5. Klyashtorin, L. (2001), UN FAO Fisheries Technical Paper 410: Climate Change and Long-Term Fluctuations of Commercial Catches - The Possibility of Forecasting, ISBN 92‑5‑104695‑6, ISSN 0429‑9345, 86 pp. (see p. 5)
  6. AMSAT Pacific Country Report on Sea Level & Climate: Their Present State, Kiribati, June 2002, National Tidal Facility - Australia. See especially p.8. See also Willis Eschenbach's related analysis (of Tuvalu) here or here.
  7. Klyashtorin, L., and Lyubushin, A. (2007), Cyclic Climate Changes and Fish Productivity, VNIRO Publishing, 2007. 224 p. ISBN 978-5-85382-339-6.
  8. Jevrejeva, S., J. C. Moore, A. Grinsted, and P. L. Woodworth (2008), Recent global sea level acceleration started over 200 years ago? Geophys. Res. Lett., 35, L08715, doi:10.1029/2008GL033611 (see p. 3).
  9. Zervas, C. (2009), NOAA Technical Report NOS CO-OPS 053, Sea Level Variations of the United States, 1854 - 2006 (see p. xiii). This report is also a great resource with in-depth information about determination of sea-level trends from tide gauge measurement records.
  10. Frolov, I., et al (2010), Climate Change in Eurasian Arctic Shelf Seas: Centennial Ice Cover Observations. Springer Science & Business Media, 2010. ISBN: 354085875X, 9783540858751. (The abstract notes an evident 60 year cycle, and Section 2.4 discusses it.)
  11. Scafetta, N. (2012), "...an interval of just 30 years is the worst that can be chosen because it is half 60-year cycle, and it happened that for SLR the period 1975-2005 had this 60-year cycle during its warming phase (the temperature warming phase was about 1970-2000). So, if you fit the last 30-40 years you get an overestimation of the real trend." [private communication]
  12. Chambers, D., M.A. Merrifield, and R. S. Nerem (2012). Is there a 60-year oscillation in global mean sea level? Geophys. Res. Lett., doi:10.1029/2012GL052885 (and two related articles)
  13. Fedor Baart, Pieter H. A. J. M. van Gelder, John de Ronde, Mark van Koningsveld, and Bert Wouters (2012). The Effect of the 18.6-Year Lunar Nodal Cycle on Regional Sea-Level Rise Estimates. Journal of Coastal Research Volume 28, Issue 2: pp. 511-516. doi: 10.2112/JCOASTRES-D-11-00169.1.
  14. Lüdecke H-J, Hempelmann A, & Weiss C O (2013). Multi-periodic climate dynamics: spectral analysis of long-term instrumental and proxy temperature records, Clim. Past, 9, 447-452, 2013, doi:10.5194/cp-9-447-2013, and related article.
  15. Scafetta, N (2013b). Discussion on climate oscillations: CMIP5 general circulation models versus a semi-empirical harmonic model based on astronomical cycles. Earth-Science Reviews. 126, 321-357. (pdf) doi:10.1016/j.earscirev.2013.08.008.
  16. Scafetta, N (2013c). Solar and planetary oscillation control on climate change: hind-cast, forecast and a comparison with the CMIP5 GCMs. Energy & Environment. 24(3-4), 455-496. (pdf) doi:10.1260/0958-305X.24.3-4.455.
  17. Wenzel & Schröter (2014). Global and regional sea level change during the 20th century. J. Geophys. Res. Oceans. (See the Concluding remarks.) doi:10.1002/2014JC009900.
  18. Also, Scafetta N (2014), above.
  19. Gervais, F. (2016). Anthropogenic CO2 warming challenged by 60-year cycle. Earth-Science Reviews, Volume 155, April 2016, 129-135. doi:10.1016/j.earscirev.2016.02.005.

Also, Alan Cheetham has an informative web page about various apparent climate-related cycles of approx. 55 to 65 years duration.

 

Science

“What passes for science includes opinion, arguments-from-authority, dramatic press releases, and fuzzy notions of consensus generated by preselected groups. This is not science.”  Climatologist John Christy, Sept. 20, 2012

photo of cherries being picked What a mess!

 

The Scientific Method is what distinguishes “science” from other types of study. It is an algorithm or process for investigating the physical world. Here's how it is supposed to work, in seven steps:

  1. The scientist observes the available data.
  2. He formulates an hypothesis to explain the observations.
  3. He derives testable predictions from the hypothesis.
  4. He devises experiments or observations to test the predictions.
  5. He does the experiments or makes the observations.
  6. If the test results match the predictions, he cries “eureka!” and publishes. He can now properly call his hypothesis a scientific theory or theoretical model. He publishes it along with his data and detailed calculations, so that other scientists can reproduce and verify his work.
  7. If the test results fail to match the predictions, the theory is said to be “falsified,” so he discards or revises it and starts over at step 2, with the new observations or experimental results added to the body of available data.

 

Step 7 is the test of a scientist's integrity. If, instead of discarding or revising falsified theories or models, a disappointed researcher revises the data, to make it fit his predictions, he's no scientist worthy of the name.


“It doesn't matter how beautiful your theory is, it doesn't matter how smart you are. If it disagrees with experiment [or nature, or experience, or observation], it's wrong. In that simple statement is the key to science.”
- Richard Feynman (1964)

Unfortunately, much of what passes for “science” these days fails that test. Here is some recommended reading:

  1. What is Science?, by Richard Feynman, 1966.
  2. Cargo Cult Science, by Richard Feynman, 1974. (This part is especially relevant to climatology.) (h/t Simon)
  3. Getting Along Without Doomsday, by Bryan Magee, 1975. (h/t Prof. Thayer Watkins)
  4. Dickersin K, et al (1987) found that pharmaceutical trials with positive results were more likely to be published than trials with negative results. That's just one example of a much broader “publication bias” problem: when researchers find the results they're hoping for, they publish; otherwise, they often don't. For example, when climatologists Church & White examined three sets of tide-gauge records of sea-level measurements for evidence of acceleration (2006, 2009 & 2011), they found evidence of slight post-1900 acceleration in two of them (2006 & 2011), but slight deceleration in the third (2009). Guess which one did not have a paper published about it?
  5. Aliens Cause Global Warming, by Michael Crichton, 2003.
  6. The Peer Review System: Is Climate Science Politically Corrupt? by John L. Daly, 2004.
  7. Why Most Published Research Findings Are False, by John P. A. Ioannidis, 2005. PLoS Med 2(8): e124. doi:10.1371/journal.pmed.0020124.
  8. A Junk Science Christmas Carol, Steven Milloy, Fox News, 22 December 2005.
  9. The Wegman Report, 2006, highlights, and an article.
  10. Cereal-induced gender selection? Most likely a multiple testing false positive, by Stan Young, Heejung Bang & Kutluk Oktay, 2008.
  11. A Dirty Dozen: Twelve P-Value Misconceptions, by Steven Goodman, Seminars in Hematology, 2008 Jul;45(3):135-140. doi:10.1053/j.seminhematol.2008.04.003. Erratum in Semin Hematol 2011 Oct;48(4):302.
  12. Tricking Yourself Into Cherry-Picking, by Lucia Liljegren, 2009.
  13. How Science Will Get Rid Of The AGW Dogma, by Maurizio Morabito, 2009.
  14. Climate Science: Is it Currently Designed to Answer Questions? by Prof. Richard S. Lindzen, Global Research, 30 November, 2009.
  15. Deming, data and observational studies: A process out of control and needing fixing, by Stan Young & Alan Karr, 2011.
  16. Scientific Heresy, RSA 2011 Angus Millar lecture, by Matt Ridley.
  17. Trust Your Science? Open Your Data and Code, Victoria Stodden, Amstat News, American Statistical Association, July 2011 (or pdf).
  18. Science publishing: The trouble with retractions, Nature 478, 26-28 (2011), doi:10.1038/478026a (or pdf), and blog discussion.
  19. What doctors don't know about the drugs they prescribe, a TED Talk by Dr. Ben Goldacre, April 2012.
  20. Replication studies: Bad copy, Ed Yong, Nature Vol. 485, pp. 298-300 (17 May 2012), doi:10.1038/485298a. This was one of the articles featured in Nature's 2013 Special Report: Challenges in Irreproducible Research.
  21. Open Your Minds and Share Your Results (editorial), Nature 486, 441 (28 June 2012) doi:10.1038/486441a, and discussion.
  22. Trust-me science, by Stan Young, 2012.
  23. A textbook example of groupthink, by Paul MacRae, 2012.
  24. Statistical Follies and Epidemiology, a lecture by William Matthew ("Matt") Briggs, Ph.D., 2012.
  25. How a scientist becomes a con man, by Yudhijit Bhattacharjee, NY Times Magazine, 2013, and commentary by Bruce Webster, Geoff Brown, and Janet Stemwedel (and part two).
  26. Redefine misconduct as distorted reporting (how to cope with an epidemic of scientific misconduct), Daniele Fanelli, Nature Vol. 494, p. 149 (14 February 2013), doi:10.1038/494149a.
  27. Opinion: A Wolf in Sheeps Clothing, Edward Archer, The Scientist, Oct. 22, 2013. (Discussion here.)
  28. Revised standards for statistical evidence, Valen E. Johnson, Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA, Oct. 9, 2013 (print Nov. 11, 2013), doi:10.1073/pnas.1313476110. (See also the discussion at WUWT, esp. Prof. Robert G. Brown's comment here, and the article in Nature here.)
  29. Unreliable research: Trouble at the lab, The Economist, Oct. 19, 2013 (or here).
  30. Scientific Groupthink and Gay Parenting, Richard E. Redding, adapted from Politicized Science, Society, Vol. 50, Issue 5, pp. 439-446 (October 2013), doi:10.1007/s12115-013-9686-5.
  31. The Availability of Research Data Declines Rapidly with Article Age, Timothy H. Vines, et al, Current Biology, Dec. 19, 2013, doi:10.1016/j.cub.2013.11.014. Discussions here and here.
  32. The British amateur who debunked the mathematics of happiness, The Guardian, 18 January, 2014.
  33. A Finger On the Scales, by Kevin W. Glass, Townhall.com, Jan. 25, 2014.
  34. Modelling the effects of subjective and objective decision making in scientific peer review, Park, Peacey & Munafò, Nature Vol. 506, pp. 93-96 (6 February 2014), doi:10.1038/nature12786. The paper is paywalled, but I contacted one of the authors, and he kindly sent me a copy. Here are a few quotes.
  35. To make science better, watch out for statistical flaws, by Tom Siegfried, ScienceNews, 7 February 2014. (See also the discussion at WUWT.)
  36. Scientific method: Statistical errors, Regina Nuzzo, Nature Vol. 506, pp. 150-152 (13 February 2014), doi:10.1038/506150a. "P values, the 'gold standard' of statistical validity, are not as reliable as many scientists assume."
  37. AAAS on reproducibility — 'a cornerstone of science', by Anthony Watts, WattsUpWithThat blog, 10 June, 2014
  38. Not all science is created equal, by John Ioannidis, Chemistry World, 16 October 2014.
  39. Offline: What is medicine's 5 sigma? by Richard Horton, The Lancet, Volume 385, No. 9976, p.1380, 11 April 2015. doi:10.1016/S0140-6736(15)60696-1. “Much of the scientific literature, perhaps half, may simply be untrue. Afflicted by studies with small sample sizes, tiny effects, invalid exploratory analyses, and flagrant conflicts of interest, together with an obsession for pursuing fashionable trends of dubious importance, science has taken a turn towards darkness.”
  40. Science is often flawed; It's time we embraced that, by Julia Belluz and Steven Hoffman, Vox, 13 May 2015. (See also a related story about how the biggest news in Social Science in 2014 turned out to be fraudulent.)
  41. Science publication is hopelessly compromised, say journal editors, American Council on Science and Health, 19 May 2015, and related video.
  42. I Fooled Millions Into Thinking Chocolate Helps Weight Loss. Here's How. by John Bohannon, io9, 27 May, 2015. There's some discussion and background information on WUWT here & here, and on RetractionWatch here & here.
  43. Peer Review: Definitive Truth or Suboptimal Standard? Four Views. By Tom Birkland, Barbara Oakley, Joann Keyton and John Staddon, Pope Center Commentaries, 29 July, 2015.
  44. Registered clinical trials make positive findings vanish, by Chris Woolston, Nature 524, 269 (20 August 2015), doi:10.1038/524269f. “The launch of the clinicaltrials.gov registry in 2000 seems to have had a striking impact on reported trial results, according to a PLoS ONE study…” [doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0132382, 5 August 2015].
  45. Let's just try that again, The Economist, 6 February 2016. “Reproducibility should be at science's heart. It isnt. But that may soon change.”
  46. Cleaning up bad science, The National, CBC News, April 18, 2016 (13:20 news documentary). “Beall's List” of apparently predatory scholarly journals and publishers (mentioned in the documentary) is here: https://scholarlyoa.com/publishers/
  47. Scientific Regress, by William A. Wilson, First Things, May 2016.
  48. Presenting One of the Most Humiliating Academic Mistakes Ever, by David French, National Review, 9 June, 2016. Also, Epic Correction of the Decade, by Steven Hayward, PowerLine Blog, 8 June, 2016. Their topic is this erratum: doi:10.1111/ajps.12216 in the American Journal of Political Science.
  49. Science in the age of selfies, by Donald & Stuart Geman, PNAS, 23 August 2016, Vol. 113, No. 34, 9384-9387. doi:10.1073/pnas.1609793113
  50. From the August 2016 University of Virginia Board of Visitors Retreat comes The 7 biggest problems facing science, according to 270 scientists, by Julia Belluz, Brad Plumer, and Brian Resnick, 14 July 2016.
  51. Beware of spurious correlations, such as the Secret of Climate.
  52. RetractionWatch.com has a seemingly endless stream of cautionary tales about science gone wrong.
“The most elementary and valuable statement in science, the beginning of wisdom, is, 'I do not know.'”  Jack B. Sowards (screenwriter), voiced by Lt Cdr Data (Brent Spiner).

Here's another excellent list of articles about the troubled state of what passes for "science" these days: http://skepticalswedishscientists.wordpress.com/scientific-method/

Cartoon by Hilda Bastian

 

Other

  1. U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works Republican Staff has issued several very informative Reports on Climate Change, the Climategate scandal, and related topics.
  2. Memorandum submitted by the Institute of Physics to the UK Parliament. The IOP concluded that the Climategate emails "provide prima facie evidence of determined and co-ordinated refusals to comply with honourable scientific traditions and freedom of information law."
  3. GAO Report: Climate Monitoring - NOAA Can Improve Management of the U.S. Historical Climatology Network, GAO-11-800, Aug. 2011 (or here)
  4. Why has there been no global warming for the past decade? - a lecture by Princeton Prof. Wm Happer at UNC, Chapel Hill, NC, Sept. 8, 2014, about the physics of atmospheric greenhouse warming from carbon dioxide (slides, audio recording & supplemental information).
  5. Measurement of sea-level by satellite altimetry is unreliable. Physicist Willie Soon explains the problems starting at 17:37 in this very informative hour-long lecture.
  6. The "97% consensus" myth: Do 97% of experts really agree with the IPCC that human CO2 emissions are causing dangerous global warming? (Not even close!)
  7. Andrew at PopularTechnology.net has compiled a list of over 1300 peer-reviewed papers supporting skeptic arguments against climate alarmism.
  8. For information on the 2010-2012 North Carolina Sea-Level Rise political fight, see the sealevel.info Resources page.

 

 

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