Pacific Tide Gauge Charts Show No Acceleration in Sea Level Rise

Californians are constantly bombarded with apocalyptic articles on sea level rise. A reporter, Sarah J. Black, for our local weekly newspaper, the Independent Coast Observer, had a very long article, "Studies show climate change could transform Mendonoma (Mendocino and Sonoma counties)," in their June 9, 2017 issue. In a section on sea levels, the ICO averred that: "The 20th Century saw sea levels rise at 1.2 to 1.7 mm per year, and those rates doubled after 1990, 'and the rise continues to accelerate,' researchers found."

"Currently rates are at 3.4 mm per year,' greater than anytime over the past thousand years,' the report reads."

Concerning the 3.4mm/year,  I had previously looked at 108 tide gauge records worldwide, and found a mean of 0.9mm/year and median of 1.1mm/year. Seventy-three of the records were at 1.8mm/year or less, and only 10 at 3.4mm/year or more. The average length of each tide gauge record was 90 years.

Besides my study using readily available resources open to all on the internet, a Hebrew University of Jerusalem study (https://tinyurl.com/y8u9983s) found mean sea levels rising by 1mm/year. For 35 percent of tide gauges, sea levels rose on average by 3.8mm/year. However, sea levels were stable for 61 percent of tide gauges, and fell on average by almost 6mm/year for 4 percent of tide gauges.

NOAA keeps records on 199 tide gauges which have been active this century. The average sea level rise rate is 1.08 mm/year for that set of gauges – one third of the claimed University of Colorado 3.2mm/year trend. Eighty-six percent of the tide gauges show sea level rise slower than 3.2mm/year.

Sea level, according to the GRACE gravitational anomaly satellites, has been falling (Peltier et al., 2009). During the eight years of ENVISAT’s operation, from 2004-2012, sea level rose at a not very scary 1.3 inches per century, or 0.33 mm/year.

Nicola Scafetta of Duke University found that sea level is subject to 60-year cycles and concludes that the human impact on sea level is too small and is statistically insignificant.

Another study found primarily that unsustainable groundwater use contributed a sea-level rise of about 0.77mm /year between 1961 and 2003.

Armed with all these studies, including the US government NOAA one, showing sea level rise at a rate less than a third of the rate posited in the ICO, I then decided to look for signs of acceleration in rates. Again, the NOAA provided convincing proof that they were not in the form of tide gauge graphs for cities worldwide. I selected twenty-five tide gauges scattered over the pacific, and found only two that had rates higher than 3.4mm/year. 

I have posted all twenty-five charts below for two purposes. One: each chart shows the rate of sea level rise in mm per year for its location. Two: you can visually determine for each chart if there is a doubling of the rate after 1990, as claimed in the report cited by the ICO. There is none. If you doubt this, look closely at each straight line fitted to the observations. A doubling after 1990 would appear as a cluster of observations above the line, not as observations both above and below the line.

The San Francisco chart below is interesting at several levels. It is the longest tide gauge record in the Western Hemisphere, began in 1854. Its highest level was third-four years ago in 1983, over two inches higher than in 2015, and 2016 is lower than 2015. Does it look like the rate of sea level rise doubled after 1990? 

Chicken Little is a Dumb Cluck

The upcoming release of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Fifth Assessment Report (IPCC AR5) has unleashed Chicken Littles that would have overfilled Petaluma when it was the “Chicken Capital of the World”. Editorial cartoons in both the San Francisco Chronicle and the Santa Rosa Press Democrat featured a “climate change denier” being engulfed by waves of global warming catastrophes. However, much of IPCC AR5 has already been leaked, and it is stealthily scaling back its prognostications from six years ago of the sensitivity of temperature increases to the doubling of atmospheric CO2. It now contains hints that previous certainties are now not quite so certain, inspired no doubt by the lack of significant warming for the past 17 years.

I had already analyzed in my last letter the evidence of slowing sea level rise that can be determined by looking at the 159-year San Francisco tide gauge record. At its current rate of 3.22 inches of sea level rise per century, it will take almost 11,000 years to hit the 36-inch increase that “experts” expect by 2100 (and that some expect by 2050). That would require an immediate increase from just over three inches per century to over three inches per decade. Temperature would have to increase immediately to above the highest IPCC AR5 projections not expected until after 2100.

Rolly Coombs, electrical power generation expert, noted a recent Thomas Elias ICO article where Elias mistakenly wrote that two Southern California solar installations would generate one-third of the power of a nuclear plant. Rolly observed that they would only produce 9% of Diablo Canyon’s 18,566 GwH/year, and I verified that by comparing their 642MW maximum capacity and 28% capacity factor to Diablo Canyon’s 2150MW capacity, which came out only 8%.

Is Elias stupid, or are his readers?

Both?

Corporate Personhood is Not

Last month at the Gualala Municipal Advisory Council (GMAC), I demonstrated that natural climate change has existed for the Earth’s 4.54 billion-year life. GMAC was largely unmoved by the facts, but I considered it my civic duty to update GMAC on this topic of interest. At their last meeting I documented the lack of rapid sea level rise. The 158-year San Francisco tide gauge record shows average sea level rising 3.5 inches per century, about one-quarter of the lowest estimate of global warming alarmists.

However, GMAC was impatient to address other consequential matters, such as supporting the Mendocino County Measure F advisory-only vote to abolish so-called corporate personhood.  I sensed eagerness to endorse Measure F immediately, but GMAC reluctantly placed it on their November agenda.

Measure F is nonsensical political posturing. The Supreme Court Citizens United ruling was not based on corporate personhood, but on First and Fourteenth Amendment individual rights; corporations do not forfeit rights enjoyed by other organizations.

“Corporate personhood is the legal concept that a corporation may sue and be sued in court in the same way as natural persons or unincorporated associations of persons. This doctrine in turn forms the basis for legal recognition that corporations, as groups of people, may hold and exercise certain rights under the common law and the U.S. Constitution. The doctrine does not hold that corporations are ‘people’ in the most common usage of the word, nor does it grant to corporations all of the rights of citizens.”

Corporations can enter into contracts, be taxed and regulated, hire and fire employees, buy and dispose of property, etc., but corporations cannot claim constitutional protections not otherwise available to persons acting as a group.

These inconvenient facts should prevent the irrational Measure F from passing. Unfortunately, facts always lose to uninformed opinions in Mendocino County. 

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?