Hold that tiger! Sea level rise far under experts' predictions

San Francisco sea level rise since 1854; highest in 1983

John Wiesner again cast cherry-picking “stones” in a purportedly scientific letter remarkably devoid of science. He said I avoid “an obvious upward sea level trend line”, although in previous letters I’ve noted that San Francisco sea level has risen 4.2” since 1854. My point is simple: since 1983, with unremitting atmospheric CO2 increases, sea levels for six West Coast cities have fallen, not risen.

CO2 up, sea level down. Simple, right?

In previous letters, I've illustrated ad nauseam that sea level rose over 400 feet following the Ice Age 12,000 years ago, that sea levels were higher during the four previous warming periods of the past 10,000 years – sea levels during the Holocene Climate Optimum (8,000-4,000 years ago) were up to ten feet higher – and that current sea level rise is a natural rebound from the drop in sea level during the Little Ice Age (1450-1850AD). 

Mr. Wiesner said I refuse to fit an RMS trend line. Although I can’t find such a refusal, I wonder why Mr. Wiesner hasn’t done it himself? Anyhow, I’m pleased to comply. For San Francisco, the mean sea level trend is 2.01 millimeters/year with a 95% confidence interval of +/- 0.21 mm/yr. The other five cities’ trends are here. Projected increases per century: a modest 1.5” to 8”.

Warmists refuse to debate previous climate change with me; in fact, they seem to avoid all debate. While on our Antarctic trip, James “Chasing Ice” Balog and Dr. Bindschadler both publicly avoided debating previous climate change. You too, Mr. Wiesner?

For Brendan Mobert: I appreciate your comments (Alice agrees with you), but the “other side” owns global warming news (for instance, ICO), and mine doesn’t, so while I’m “riding the tiger”, I can’t get off even though I’ve beaten it nearly to death.

AP Report Destroys Rapid Sea Level Rise Panic

An Associated Press article about Typhoon Haiyan (Man, nature share typhoon tragedy blame  – Death toll much higher because of flimsy building, growth in vulnerable areas, by Seth Borenstein),  inadvertently let the biggest cat out of the alarmist bag concerning our California coast. “(T)he Philippines has seen its sea rise nearly half an inch in the past 20 years, about triple the global increase.” This is an increase of only 2.5 inches per century for the Philippines, and less than an inch per century globally.

These numbers are in marked contrast to the projections of 18 to 66 inches of sea level rise by 2100 made by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Even the UN’s lowest estimate hasn’t been seen since shortly after the end of the Ice Age 12,000 years ago, when sea level was over 400 feet lower and huge ice caps were melting rapidly because average global temperature was up to five degrees Fahrenheit warmer than now.

Average sea level rise for the past 120 centuries since the end of the Ice Age has been over three feet per century, but has averaged around zero per century the past 10,000 years. In the face of facts that sea level rise does not appear to be significant at the moment, and with nothing that suggests a rapid acceleration this century, San Francisco Bay Area planners are still developing plans to cope with a five-foot increase by 2100. Neither climate change history, physics, or current meteorology supports such a need. All that is fueling their actions is unwarranted alarmism.

Man-Caused Global Warming Defectors

The cataclysmic climate changers are casting handfuls of mud at the alarmist wall, hoping something will stick. They have just concluded Rio+20, agreed by one and all to have been a colossal failure. Of course they all agreed that “something must be done”, they just couldn’t agree on what to do, when to do it, and by whom.

Compounding the alarmists’ agony is the steady defection from their ranks. The latest was James Lovelock, “Gaia-ist” theorists, now says that global warming has not occurred as he and others, such as Al Gore, thought it would. In his article in The Telegraph,  Fritz Vahrenholt, one of Germany's earliest green energy investors, reports he is not convinced that humanity is causing catastrophic global warming. He was active on the UN climate change panel and found their science was wanting, cobbled together by activist organizations such as Greenpeace and World Wildlife Federation. Vahrenholt found that climate in the past 10,000 years varied greatly naturally, and that recent temperatures and weather are unremarkable in that context.

Front-page articles this week in The Chronicle and Press Democrat predicted sea-level rise of a foot by 2030, and several feet by 2100. However, the San Francisco tide gauge, the longest continuous tide record in the Western Hemisphere (since June 30, 1854), shows a steady increase of eight inches per century. Arena Cove’s record since 1978 shows a sea-level decline of an inch per century. None of the West Coast records show the acceleration necessary to raise sea level a foot in 20 years.

In the age of the internet, it is easy to find peer-reviewed science showing that our severe weather, sea levels, ocean acidity, temperature, and climate change itself are all well within historical norms.

See for yourselves (Second Thoughts of an Environmentalist ).

How High's the Water, Momma?

Letters to our local weekly newspaper, the Independent Coast Observer, disputing my position that global warming is natural often criticize me without any contradicting facts, yet I have repeatedly submitted that current warming began about 300 years ago. A clear, undisputed example can be found in Glacier Bay, Alaska, where maps from 1780 show glacier retreat of about 60 miles from 1780 to 1912, and only six miles since (almost 0.5 mile per year for the first 132 years, and only 0.06 mile per year for the last 100 years).

Melting glaciers are obviously of interest to us and other coastal dwellers, since Al Gore predicted they would cause 20 feet of sea-level rise by 2100. Luckily for us, nearby San Francisco has the oldest continually operating tide gauge in the Western Hemisphere and, since June 30, 1854, it has recorded a total increase in sea level of eight inches (0.05 inches per year). However, to satisfy Al’s prediction the rate of rise will have to immediately accelerate by a factor of 55 times from the current rate of 0.05 inches per year to 2.76 inches per year for the next 87 years. I predict Al Gore will be left with over 19 feet in his mouth.

A significant increase is unlikely, since the worldwide rate of sea-level rise has been decelerating recently to about four inches per century (0.04 inches per year). That coincides with the slight global cooling of the past 15 years. Of course, none of these scientific observations agrees with any of the climate models, so the climate modelers say the observations are erroneous (see link).

It’s like the denial by the man whose wife caught him in bed with another woman.  “Who are you going to believe, your loving husband or your lying eyes?”

The models or the facts?

Pacific Islands Cope with Sea-Level Rise

Sea levels have risen a lot in the past 12,000 years since the end of the most recent Ice Age - over 400 feet, or an average of over three feet per century. In recent centuries the rate of sea-level rise has been much lower, about six inches per century. The reasons for sea level rise and the changing rates are obvious: we're currently in an inter-glacial, the period between Ice Ages, so the melting since the last Ice Age continues; and sea-levels rose the fastest just after the end of the Ice Age because there was a lot of terrestrial ice to melt.


Now the good news about drowning islands in the South Pacific: they're not.


Readers of this and other skeptic blogs already knew (1) the rate of sea-level rise was natural and moderate, and (2) coral islands have been keeping up with rising sea levels for millions of years.


Now even New Scientist acknowledges the obvious, which you can avail by clicking the following link to New Scientist article.

I wonder what anthropogenic global warming alarmists think about fluctuating sea levels and coral? Are they aware that large changes in sea levels in a short time period - over 400 feet in 12,000 years - are natural? What do they think corals were doing when the sea levels were 420 feet lower? Or what corals did as levels rose over 400 feet? Do they think that today's Pacific atolls were just sitting there waiting for sea levels to come up and inundate them?

Do the alarmists know that coral growth kept pace with rapid sea-level rise during those thousands of years? Do they know that corals grow faster in warmer water than in colder, and have thrived for millions of years in a variety of warmer and colder sea temperatures, and in an environment when CO2 levels were 20 or more times higher?

These things are all voluminously documented and available to even a layman researcher, such as myself.

It's not brain surgery or rocket science.