Have We Been told the Truth About Sea Level?
Guest post by Gregg Thompson
Australian Flag
Living on the Gold Coast and owning a number of properties at sea level, I realized that they could be badly affected if sea level was rising, so I began to research this possibility. Several friends and business associates started asking the same questions, independently of me so we exchanged research information.
We all came to the same conclusion – namely that the real-world science actually showed there was no solid evidence that established any change in sea level despite what some alarmists were claiming based on computer modeling rather than real-world measurements. The real world evidence establishes beyond any doubt that there is no substantial change if there is any at all. Nor is it likely that there will be any change of any consequence that could inundate coastal areas over the next century.
Our research found that some sources projected a relatively minor rise in future decades while others showed no change has occurred in the past and none is expected in the future and others are now showing a drop in sea level is supposedly occurring. Such variations in the measurement of tidal gauges as well wild discrepancies in computer modeling predictions, demonstrates how unreliable measurements of sea level change are. The evidence against a change in sea level is from highly respected scientists worldwide who specialize in measuring actual sea level over long periods as opposed to alarmists who typically use modelled data to produce predetermined outcomes that support their ideology or need to secure further funding by creating doomsday fears. With computer modeling it is GIGO (Garbage In = Garbage Out).
Those wanting to support the fraud of manmade climate change produce dramatic, emotive claims based on computer simulations that are so flawed that in 25 years they have never once got a prediction right! The alarmists have not been able to provide any real-world evidence to back up their claims for impending disaster. In other words, looking backwards in time and comparing actual observed outcomes with the previously modelled predictions, they got it wrong every single time!
Like most people, I believed in manmade climate change for many years but after spending the last 8 years researching every facet of this subject, I was astounded that I was unable to find even one aspect that stands up to unbiased scientific scrutiny. I have written 2 science books and have another soon to be published as well as many articles for science magazines. Many of my colleagues doing climate research also have strong backgrounds in science and they too have come to the same conclusions. None of us have anything to gain one way or another in this debate so we consider ourselves to be unbiased. We are not on anyone’s payroll. Far too many alarmists receive considerable financial gain through research grants while others have unrealistic ideologies that cause them to bias the information they provide to governments and the public. It is they who are grossly biased. My only interest is in discovering the scientific truth.
Details of the evidence contradicting sea level rise scaremongering can be found in the following pages. It is written in non-scientific, plain English for the average person to easily understand the evidence. I have made the paper as brief as possible whilst, hopefully, providing enough evidence to make the case.
Alarmists present predictions for sea level rise as the major threat resulting from their proposed so-called manmade global warming which, over the last 100 years, has been negligible. It is beyond belief that they can seriously try to claim that an infinitesimal change of only 0.001% in CO2 could do this! And no one has ever proven this minute change is caused by humans because natural fluctuations in natural CO2 swamp this.
Given that an inaccurately theorized long term change in sea level is highly implausible because it is built only on highly flawed computer projections, it is important that this myth is debunked. The real-world measurements and science following proves beyond doubt that there is no threat from a change in sea level.
Gregg Thompson
Climate researcher
ARE THE 3 MAJOR CLAIMS OF CLIMATE DISASTER TRUE?
For decades Global Warmists have predicted 3 disasters which they claim have occurred from “Manmade Global Warming”.
Prediction 1. Average global temperatures have risen over the 20th C and will rise a further 2 to 5 degrees over the 21st C.
The Reality: Global temperature only changed over the 20thC by a fraction of a degree if at all. From the mid 90s temperature flattened and since 2006 global temperature has actually cooled! Due to this Alarmists had to ditch the term “Global Warming” and use “Climate Change” because they know that everyone agree that the climate changes naturally. Few people realize that weather forecasts show that temperature drops every night, on average, by around 10 degrees yet no one thinks this large and abrupt change is unnatural. It has long been known that the Sun provides 99.99% of Earth’s heat and this drives climate and weather. The most basic experiments prove that the trace gas C02 has no affect whatsoever on our climate.
Prediction 2. The planet would dry out. We would not see floods again and our dams would be dry by now.
The Reality: The opposite has occurred! Since 2007 there have been numerous floods worldwide and most dams and aquifers are full, all due to a cooler, wet climate prevailing. In Central Australia Lake Eyre has filled 4 times in 4 years! This wet cooler climate is now expected to dominate for the next 2-3 decades. This occurred in the past when the solar cycle became dormant as it is now. When the solar cycle moves back into an active phase we will again see droughts and warmer temperatures due to less cloud cover.
Prediction 3. – THE MOST SERIOUS! Sea level has risen and it is predicted to rise by many metres over the next 90 years. In the 80s and 90s Al Gore and other alarmists said it would be too late by 2000 to take action because coastal cites all around the globe would have subways and basements flooding and millions would have had to be relocated from places like Bangladesh and island atolls in the Pacific and Indian oceans.
The Reality: Even all these decades later not one city in the world has been affected by any change in sea level. Nor have any island atolls been affected and neither have millions been relocated as Al Gore out rightly lied about. There is no real-world evidence for sea level rise when one looks at the following facts. Predictions are meaningless because input data can be easily manipulated and falsified to get a predetermined outcome – in order to keep the fountain of grant funding flowing.
What is the real-world evidence for any change in sea level?
22 facts that prove there is no change in sea level
While some scientists say that there may be 1-3 mm per year rise in sea level i.e. a mere 100 – 300 mm per century based only on modeled data and not observed analysis of tide gauges, evidence from the real world taken from actual tidal gauge measurements, which is the only evidence worth considering, reveals that there has been none at all that can be verified and that there will not be any in the next 90 years. Here is the evidence to prove this.
1. TheSEAFRAME study (The Sea Level Fine Resolution Acoustic Measuring Equipment) funded by the Australian Science & Public Policy Institute through funding from the Australian government has monitored South Pacific islands over some 30 years found that “when localized anomalies (i.e. cyclones and El Niños) were removed, sea levels were more or less constant”.For details click here
2. THE INTERNATIONAL COMMISSION FOR SEA LEVEL CHANGE which has 4,000 scientists measuring over 4,500 ports worldwide over 80 years hasfound no change in sea level. The past President, Dr Nils Alex Mörner, has called the Alarmists’ claims of sea level rise “the greatest lie ever told”. He found that sea level has remained virtually stable for the last 40-50 years. A very informative interview with Mörner exposes how claims of sea level rise are fabricated.
3. THE QUEENSLAND GOVERNMENT’S MARITIME SAFETY prepares tide predictions for SE Queensland. It says “sea level rise is very low, averaging 0.0003 metres (0.3 mm) per annum for the Australian continent (Mitchell, 2002), the 15 to 19 years of readings available from Queensland tidal stations is not sufficient to calculate a reasonable estimate of sea level change”. Such minute changes are not measurable: they are merely statistical. Suchsmall changes are most likely due to wind across the Pacific in the El Nino years blowing waves higher on the eastern Australian Coast. For an explanation of the extraordinary high level of difficulty in measuring and predicting tides.
4. In a new paper by Alberto Boretti due to be published in the June 2012 edition of Coastal Engineering-Volume 64, Pages 161-167 titled “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? ” Boretti reports that “Houston & Dean (2011) considered 57 tide gauge records (in Australia and New Zealand) , each with a record length of 80 years, which include 25 gauges with data from 1930 to 2010 and computed no increase of sea level acceleration”. Indeed they noted a small decrease. It is claimed by some that Sydney Harbour has had 50mm rise over 100 years but this is not replicated elsewhere and it should be if it was real. These long term measurements made at Fort Denison on a small rock outcrop in the Harbour are based on primitive, inaccurate string gauge measurements. Due to the weight of rock used to build the Fort, the rock outcrop has been known to be sinking for a long time thereby giving the false impression that tide heights are rising when they are not.
5. We have asked the Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) and the National Tidal Centre (NTC) and CSIRO for evidence in the real-world that proves their claim for doomsday sea level change. They were unable to provide any real world evidence! The government provides these entities with huge levels of funding for research to prove up the government’s climate ideology and the need for a Carbon Tax so these entities have a strong incentive to use fraudulent predictions and highly biased data in order to retain their funding for their CEOs and staff. If you were a scientist in such organizations and your income depended on being deceptive in order to pay off your home mortgage and car and to be able to send your kids to private school, would you also find it necessary to bend and distort nebulous findings and to make sure that inputs to modeling will lean towards producing a pre-determined outcome? But they are not employed to deceive the taxpayer as they are doing. They are employed to tell the truth.
These government funded entities try to convince the gullible that isolated beach sand erosion here and there is evidence. But it is not because sand comes and goes naturally all the time after storm surges. They claimed that the big low pressure system in 2009 along SE Qld and Northern NSW beaches that caused strong onshore winds at the same time as a king tide was evidence of sea level change. This was NOT evidence at all as there was NO change to sea level locally let alone globally. Once the wind died down and the tidal swell receded, the sea level was back to normal levels. And furthermore, over the following couple of years, the sand returned. Such events are natural. They have always occurred and are very localized. They are not global. Pictures of the Gold Coast’s popular Greenmount-Coolangatta beach and Kirra beach taken from Kirra headland since 1900 show that sand is removed after big low pressures systems and cyclones and then it is replaced in the coming years, sometimes to a larger extent.
These entities also try to claim that because some selected tidal measurements around the Australian coast show a few millimeters per year apparent rise in sea level that this is evidence of sea level rise. This is deliberately deceptive because they only refer to a select few sites in remote regions that show rise. But it is a rise because the land there is sinking due to natural movement of the Earth’s crust. They deceive the public by not saying that there are just as many sites that show sea level is not changing while others show that it appears to be going down. However, this too is merely caused by the crust rising due to tectonic plate movement; it is not a change in sea level. Sea level change must be global by the same amount everywhere because water finds its own level. If you spill a saucepan full of water on the kitchen floor, it does not pile up in one spot: it spreads evenly across the floor. This is elementary yet CSIRO, BOM and NTC make out they do not understand this and that the public is too ignorant to realize this obvious fact.
The Woolongong City Council Coastal Zone Study “found that there is presently no evidence of long term shoreline recession or loss of beach volume” as claimed by the CSIRO.
BOM and the NTC should be well aware of such fundamentals otherwise this proves that they are far too naïve or ignorant to hold their jobs. Or, it proves that they are so ideologically biased that they cannot perform unbiased credible science in which case they should all be replaced by competent scientists who can. Many believe that government-funded bodies, like BOM, NTC and the CSIRO are prepared to blatantly lie to maintain their lucrative funding from the government. The CSIRO uses estimates even far in excess of even the IPCC (!), the leader of extreme alarmism. There are now increasing calls for jail sentences for those in such positions who deliberately exaggerate and deceive the government and the public in order to profit personally at great expense to taxpayers. The time has come for voters to demand this.
6. The Netherlands should be the nation most worried because much of this country lies below sea level so any rise would be disastrous, yet they are not concerned. The Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute wrote that “there is no need for drastic measures …. The time rate of climate change is slow compared to the lifespan of the defence structures along our coast (that) there is enough time for adaptation.” And that’s assuming there was a rise of 20 cm per century. Similarly, Hong Kong and Singapore would have disastrous problems yet they are not concerned. Venice has been slowly sinking due to the crust sinking since it was built so Venetians should be very concerned if sea levels were rising as fast as the alarmist try to proclaim, but they too are not concerned”.
7. If sea level rose it would slow the rotation of the Earth and this would be measured by satellites and atomic clocks. If there was a rise in sea level by 20 cm or more over the last few decades as claimed by alarmists, then the rotation of the planet would have slowed by billionths of a second which can be measured. But this has not been seen. Sea level would rise more at the equator slowing Earth’s spin – just as a spinning skaters slow down when they expand by opening out their arms and legs. European satellite surveys show that sea level has been static for the last 9 years. Climate model predictions using satellite measurementsby Rahmstorf (2007, 2010) showed that there has been a downward trend yet predictions are going upward! It is impossible to measure sea level to the accuracies claimed so small trends that either go up or down are to be taken with a grain of salt.
8. Even during the 10 year drought years when the temperature was a little warmer than usual, there was nowhere near enough fresh water melting from glaciers to cause any measurable rise in sea level. Melting sea ice makes no difference to sea level, as the melted ice actually fills a lesser space that the ice occupied. Alarmists are still trying to claim that there is a rise in sea level at present when snow fall and rainfall has been so heavy across much of the globe since 2006. Water on land in the form of snow, ice or water in dams and underground aquifers obviously depletes the water in the ocean so Alarmists must explain where the extra water for rising sea level could possible come from. They cannot do this.
9. Even the IPCC which had dramatic claims of many metres of rise this century has had to greatly revise their predictions downward to only 60 mm (which is still a major over exaggeration). The recent Fourth Assessment Report completely nullifies their previous specious claims. It concludes that tidal gauges have established that there is no evidence of acceleration in the rate of sea level rise in the 20th century, and that the global average remains between 1mm – 2 mm per year, as it has for the past 3,000 years! It further reports “There is decadal variability in extreme sea levels but no evidence of widespread increases in extremes other than that associated with a change in the mean.”See IPCC reports The Alarmists have been scrambling to undo that conclusion, but they cannot. The evidence speaks for itself.
10. Tim Flannery, prominent Australian alarmist, Chairman of the Copenhagen Climate Council and head of the Climate Change Institute has bought a home at sea level himself near Sydney yet he claims there will be catastrophic sea level rise and is encouraging coastal councils in Australia to forcibly move people from their homes in case of possible sea level rise in 100 years. This says how much he believes in the treat of sea level rise.
See Daily Telegraph story Flannery’s company received $94 million(!) for research into a small geothermal energy plant (technology which is well proven) yet soon after starting to spend money on this alternative energy project, he declared that it was harder than he thought to make it work. We have not been advised that he has given the balance of the money back to taxpayers.
11. Ancient ports in England and Ireland (as well as those in many other countries) that are hundreds of years old show no measureable change in sea level. British naval records reveal that there is no evidence of a rise in sea level even after the melting of ice after the Little Ice Age ended in the late 19C.
12. The road to Wyndham in Western Australia was built across the Cambridge Gulf tidal flats in 1971. In order to minimize construction costs, its surface was laid barely a few inches higher than the highest king tides. Yet even today, 40 years later, the road is not underwater even when there’s an exceptionally high king tide. This is because the tides heights have not changed. If sea level had risen, the tides would be higher and the road would flood on each king tide.
13. The Maldives government is pushing sea level rise as a problem for them so they have a better chance of getting foreign aid donations from other naive countries, and gaining easy access to visas to more prosperous countries for the “climate change refugees”. There have been fraudulent claims that the Maldives is being affected by sea level rise but this is not so. The only reason the Maldives has had sand removed from beaches at various times is because they decided to remove the coral from the reefs surrounding the islands to make cement for construction of all their new multi-billion dollar condos and hotels. This was so they didn’t have to import more expensive cement from India. Mining their reefs has allowed waves from cyclonic storm surges to travel over the denuded outer reefs and across their lagoons to affect their beaches. They are now trying to re-establish these reefs artificially. Because of this the Boxing Day tsunami was also able to affect a number of their islands. 60 Minutes produced the most disgraceful, misleading story on this trying to beat up sea level change while having no regard for the truth. The International Commission on Seal Level Change offered to give the Maldives Council a presentation on why they have nothing to fear but they refused to allow the presentation because it would nullify their moral claim on foreign aid donations if they accepted such advice.
They could not really believe that the ocean is rising because they are spending billions in building many more condos and resorts at sea level.They are also investing their huge profits into coastal land in North Qld beaches and Barrier Reef islands at sea level. If they believed the ocean was rising then they would invest in high ground; not coastal land that would flood.
14. Tuvalu claims their island atoll is slowly submerging due to sea level rise but strangely this is not happening to surrounding islands! Before white man arrived, they limited their population to 300 as this was all this small island could sustain. But with the aid of modern day ships bringing them food, they now have a population in the thousands. This has caused them to pump up their underground water so that when they have a drought the island can sink into the drying out aquifer. The sinking of the island has nothing to do with any change in sea level.
15. Japan’s largest and newest international airport, Kanzai is built on a manmade island that is just above sea level. If they believed that there would be any noteworthy change in global sea level they would have built the island higher with more landfill at enormous cost; but they didn’t. This is true for many other airports and major port developments located at sea level around the world.
16. Dubai’s artificial sand islands, Palm Island and The World, designed for very up-market residential homes at sea level, have not been made any higher to allow for the proposed increase in sea level. Similarly, many other multi-billion dollar developments at sea level in Dubai and numerous other seaside resorts elsewhere around the world have made no allowance for increasing sea levels because they cannot see any evidence that this will occur. Building the land up unnecessarily higher would be cost prohibitive and it would also make most tourist developments far less desirable.
17. The captains and first mates of ships that have travelled the world for decades say they have not seen any changes in high tide heights at any of the ports which they have docked at regularly all their working lives.
18. Senior age swimmers and fishermen who regularly use coastal beaches and tidal rivers, attest that they have seen no evidence of sea levels rising over the 60-80 years they have been using those beaches and river estuaries.
19. Photographs of old jetties and sea walls show barnacles at the same height that they were over 50 years ago so this proves sea level is not changing.
20. Many Gold Coast properties are less than a couple of metres above sea level yet over 60 years residents who have lived at sea level have not noticed any change whatsoever in tide heights. This is true for many other coastal regions around Australia and around the world. Revetment walls on tidal rivers and canals show the same tide levels over a period of 40 years.
21. The Federal Government’s Coast and Climate Change Council has distributed maps which predict major inundation of the Australian coastline by rising sea levels. This prediction is based on highly unreliable computer modelling which assumes a totally unrealistic global warming of 2–5 degrees Celsius over the next century and a consequent sea level rise of at least one metre. Real life global temperature measurements are highly unreliable to better than 1 degree for numerous reasons yet Alarmists claim an impossible one tenth of a degree accuracy. The fraction of a degree warming they claim for the 80s and 90s stopped by the 2000s and then reversed since 2006 so there is no expectation that temperatures will continue to rise. In fact, many meteorologists now expect global temperatures to keep declining for the next 25 years because during the 20thC there was a 25-30 year cooling of a fraction of a degree followed by a similar warming cycle. Temperatures dropped slightly from the late 1800s to the 1920s and again from the 1940s to the 1970s while rising between these cool decades. These cycles were driven by changes in solar activity, referred to above. As no global sea level rise has been recorded over the 20th C, there is no reason to believe any will occur during the 21stC. In fact, NASA claims to have measured a small drop in sea level in the US over recent years.
22. Climate alarmists talk about the thermal expansion of water causing sea level to rise only if the global temperature was to rise. Even if the air temperature was to rise by a full degree, this would only warm the surface waters of the oceans to 100 m by a hundredth of a degree. As water has a much higher density than air, it requires far more sustained heat energy to heat it to any depth. The air can only heat the surface water which comprises an infinitesimal percentage of the total body of sea water (which is very cold and very deep). Thermal expansion of water from 4 oC to 100 oC (i.e, from almost freezing to boiling) is a mere 4.2 x 10 -2 Thermal expansion of the surface from a full 1 degree rise would only produce a rise of 14 mm yet governments are legislating to force people who own homes by the sea and along tidal rivers and harbors to move off their properties for this meagre and totally unrealistic occurrence. Some local governments in Australia are pushing the fear of rising sea levels in the distant future to stop seaside property owners from being able to do any renovations, even internal remodelling or even a garden shed, on their properties and these laws are making it difficult, expensive or impossible for homeowners to get insurance. All this when there is no evidence for any change in sea level. Even during the 10 year world drought from the mid 90s to the mid 2000s glaciers did not melt at any unnatural rate. Nor did either the North or South ice caps melt any more than they did during warmer decades during the early 20th century. There was no measurable change in sea level from this relatively small amount of fresh water melting. Since 2006 glaciers have grown due to a series of very cold winters and heavy snow falls. So the proposed threat of glaciers and icecaps melting was as complete dramatization. For a list of growing glaciers and ice sheets See growing glaciers
Click here for US Senate report
For more on growing glaciers and thickening Arctic Ice cap Click here
UNCERTAINTIES IN SEA LEVEL RISE ADMITTED BY THE INTERGOVERNMENTAL PANEL ON CLIMATE CHANGE (IPCC)
In green are extracts from the IPCC’s last Assessment Report on projected sea level rise with comments following in black.
This statement from the IPCC’s Summary states that ‘Sea level change is highly non- uniform spatially, and in some regions, rates are up to several times the global mean rise, while in other regions sea level is falling.’ There is no overall trend towards sea level rise. Sea level change must be global. It cannot be both up and down or change drastically from one location to another.
The IPCC Report goes on to say ‘There is evidence for an increase…[but these are] related to storm surges, and variations…in regional climate.’ Storm surges are NOT evidence of global sea level rise. A storm surge is a brief temporary rise in the ocean’s surface directly under a low pressure system. The ocean rises because there is a lesser weight of air (pressure) pushing down on the ocean. Such a rise typically lasts only hours.
The Report goes on to say that ‘sea level is accompanied by considerable decadal variability.’ Decadal variability is relatively minor being only some millimeters over decades. When there are upward changes these are known to be due to El Niňo events where wind blowing westward across the Pacific causes a slight piling up of water and increased wave heights along the Eastern Australian coast. This is NOT global sea level rise as this effect disappears during La Niňa events.
In summing up the Report says‘It is unknown whether these + or – changes are due to decadal variability or an increase in the longer-term trend.’ This is saying they don’t know if there is any overall change in global sea level so how can they pretend otherwise? The Report also says, ‘There are uncertainties in the estimates of the contributions to sea level change.’This makes it even clearer that they have no evidence – despite decades of claiming otherwise. Click here to read the latest IPCC report
Note that the IPCC Assessment Reports for government decision-makers are littered throughout with provisional words (typically in italics) such as “likely,” “more likely,” “very likely,” “possibly,” “expected,” “inferred,” “may” etc. The authors know they cannot be categorical because they have no scientifically valid proof for any of their claims.
SUMMARY
1. Predicted catastrophic sea level rises are based on the discredited manmade global warming model. There is NO threat from sea level change.
2. The predictions are refuted by real life observations.
3. Ultra-Left wing and Dark Green politicians are using unjustifiable scare tactics in a vain attempt to brainwash voters into supporting their naïve ideologies. This is supported by the “climate change industry” – a very large and vocal group of politicians, scientists, bureaucrats and entrepreneurs worldwide who are enjoying the benefits of one of the largest public gravy trains in human history. These Alarmists abhor prosperity and industry yet this has greatly increased the life spans of billions of people and also improved the health and lifestyles of people across the globe. Over the last few decades, technology and industry has greatly reduced pollution across all developed countries and it will continue to do so.
johnosullivan 
Gregg,
Many thanks for this informative article. We are winning the information war. Those corruptive forces that act as gatekeepers in the mainstream journals have failed in trying to block Professor Boretti’s new paper on sea levels – it won’t be stopped. And when Boretti’s paper is published it will further expose the Big Green bias that has been corrupting Australian environment science for too long.
Hi Gregg,
This end of the summary does not make sense to me.
In line one, what does “this” refer to exactly? The phony crisis?
“These Alarmists abhor prosperity and industry yet “this” has greatly increased the life spans of billions of people and also improved the health and lifestyles of people across the globe. Over the last few decades, technology and industry has greatly reduced pollution across all developed countries and it will continue to do so.”
Pollution??? Pollution has nothing to do with green house gasses even though the false flag crisis of global warming pretends that it has to do with actual real pollution and “cleaning up the air”.
Global Warming and Pollution are two separate issues, the former being fabricated bunk.
Thanks,
Terry