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?