Ian Bradford: Large sea level rises? No. Just more scaremongering.

Isn’t sea level rise a matter of common sense?  How any reading this article can say they have seen significant sea level rise in their lifetime?  I know of three beaches that are actually building out. I’m sure there are others.

Let’s begin with a UN headline from 1989. 

UN predicts disaster if global warming not checked. 

This is from reporter James Spielmann June 30^th 1989

UNITED NATIONS (AP). A senior environmental official says entire nations could be wiped off the face of the Earth by rising sea levels if the global warming trend is not reversed by the year 2000  (YES THE YEAR 2000) !

Coastal flooding and crop failures would create an exodus of “eco refugees” threatening political chaos, said Noel brown, director of the New York Office of the UN Environmental Programme ( UNEP).

He said governments had a 10 year window of opportunity to solve the greenhouse effect before it goes out of control.  ( YES that still by the year 2000)!

As the warming melts polar ice caps (that’s both ice caps), ocean levels will rise up to 3 feet (that’s nearly  a metre), enough to cover the Maldives and other flat Island nations, Brown told The Associated Press in an interview. 

Coastal regions will be inundated, one sixth of Bangladesh will be flooded, displacing a quarter of its 90 million people. A fifth of Egypt’s arable land in the NIle Delta will be flooded, cutting off its food supply, according to a joint UNEP and US Environmental Protection Agency study. Ecological refugees will become a major concern. 

So here we are in 2024.  Did any of this happen? NO.  It was scaremongering of the first order.         

There’s a belief that increasing levels of Carbon Dioxide in our atmosphere could result in catastrophic sea level rise. There is no evidence to support this fear.  Tax monies spent to try and solve this problem are a complete waste. 

Sea levels around the world vary considerably, typically by several centimetres. The National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) of the United States, updated its coastal sea level tidal gauge data in 2016 at the request of the previous administration. These measurements continue to show no evidence of accelerating sea level rise.  The measurements include tide data at coastal locations along the West Coast, East Coast, Pacific Ocean, Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf of Mexico, as well as seven Pacific Island groups and six Atlantic Ocean groups comprising more than 200 measurement stations.

The longest running NOAA tide gauge record of coastal sea level in the US is in New York City at Battery Park.  It’s 160 year old record shows a steady sea level rise of 11 inches or 25 cm per century. A few km away at Kings Point, New York, is a station whose 80 year old record shows about the same.  Both locations show a steady, unchanging, sea level rise rate whether the temperature of the Earth has been rising or falling. They show also the same rate of sea level rise well before the existence of coal fired power stations and SUV’s as today. 

The IPCC and its supporters are not able to provide convincing evidence to support concerns about dangerous warming-driven sea level rise, as rising temperatures have rarely pushed sea level rise beyond 30cm per century.   (That’s 30/100 or 3mm per year.)

Current sea level rise trends have stayed essentially constant over the past 90 years. despite the rise of atmospheric CO₂ levels of about 300ppm (parts per million), as the Little Ice Age ended and the modern industrial age era began to today’s 420ppm.   

The black curve is the average of all the readings listed. Sea level was 120m lower than at present during the last glaciation.  Note how the graph has levelled out up to the present. 

In Cueta , Spain, data shows  a nearly flat trend . The data shows no correlation between CO₂ concentration and sea level rise. If the current trend continues for the next century, the sea level rise in Ceuta will be only 3 inches or 7cm. This is in sharp contrast to the 10 foot (3metre), global rise in sea levels recently projected by former NASA scientist James Hanson. 

Honolulu in Hawaii, has seen an average sea level rise of only 5.6 inches since 1900. The sea level around Honolulu is projected to rise a mere 5.6 inches in the next 100 years with again no correlation with CO₂levels.   

In contrast, the sea level trend in Sitka, Alaska, has been downward, not upward. This could be due to rising landmasses.  If this trend continues, sea level will appear to fall 9 inches (23cm), in the next 100 years. If melting glaciers were causing sea levels to rise, one would expect to see it in Alaska. 

So sea levels have been rising at a steady rate of between 0.7mm and 2mm per year, depending on where you are,  regardless of ocean temperature. The sea level rose when ocean temperatures increased by 0.5 Deg C between 1920 and 1940, but rose at the same constant rate when ocean temperatures fell between 1945 and 1975. The sea level did not accelerate or decelerate, as one might expect, meaning that the rise in sea level does not depend on ocean temperature , much less on the atmospheric Carbon Dioxide level.   

From this we get that the rise or fall of sea level does not depend on ocean temperature nor on the atmospheric Carbon Dioxide level.

 Scientist Fred Singer believes the expansion of sea water with temperature is balanced out by evaporation. I.e. more evaporation from warmer water. The evaporated water causes an increase in precipitation which turns to snow and ice over the poles. We must not forget the ocean floor also. The heavier the water is above, the more the ocean floor will sink. It is warmer now than it was 12,000 years ago at the end of the most recent glaciation. There is nothing we can do to stop this slow melting. The sea level will continue to rise at the same rate no matter what we do. 

Al Gore, former vice President says that because of global warming, melting ice would cause the sea level to rise 6 metres! Together with Michael Mann and James Hansen, who also preach large sea level rise, their forlorn hope is that restrictions on fossil fuel burning will slow down a rising sea. Untold billions of dollars have been wasted, especially in Europe, following up this false belief.

The Maldives were mentioned by Noel Brown as by now being well under water. 

Here are some extracts from an article by  Michael Bastasch  writing in the Daily Caller, News Foundation in 2018. Here is the headline:

Thirty years ago officials predicted the Maldives would be swallowed up by the sea. It didn’t happen. 

The Indian Ocean did not swallow up the Maldive Island chain as predicted by government officials in the 1980’s. 

In September  1988, the Agence France Press reported a gradual rise in sea level is threatening to completely cover this small Indian Ocean nation of 1200 small islands within the next 30 years based on predictions made by government officials. The article went on to suggest the Maldives along with its 200,000 inhabitants, could end sooner than expected if drinking water supplies dry up by 1992 as predicted . Today more than 417,000 people live in the Maldives.

New Zealand researchers published a study in 2018. Based on Aerial photos and satellite images of Pacific Islands over the last four decades they found that most atolls they examined were increasing in size. Study lead author and scientist Paul Kench told the New Scientist the  Maldives seem to be showing  a similar effect.      

Time to introduce Nils Morner.  Nils did his PhD on sea levels. He has recently retired as director of the Paleogeophysics and Geodynamics Department of Stockholm University. For 45 years he has specialised in sea level research. He is a sea level specialist and has studied sea levels worldwide. 

Clear observational measurements in the field indicate that sea level is not rising in the Maldives, Bangladesh, Tuvalu, Vanuatu, and French Guyana ( Morner, 2007-2010). All these places are key sites in the sea level debate, where the IPCC and its ideological associates have predicted terrible flooding scenarios. The reality is totally different from what the IPCC claim.

 

The graph shows prediction using models and how these differ from what is actually observed.

In Tuvalu, the President continues to claim that they are in the process of being flooded. Yet the tide-gauge data provide clear indication of stability over the last 30 years (Morner 2007-2010).  In Vanuatu, the tide-gauge indicates a stable sea level rise over the last 14 years (Morner, 2007). 

The Topex/Poseidon  and later Jason missions recorded the variation of the ocean surface with high resolution . Having applied all technical corrections needed, Menard and Aviso (2000),  presented a first sea level graph from 1992 to 2000.  The trend is between 0.0mm per year, and 1mm per year.  This is ignoring the ENSO event 175-200.  

The graph shows sea level measured by satellite (topex/poseidon), from October 1992 to April 2000. The blip is an ENSO event and is ignored. The graph shows almost no sea level rise. 

When the satellite altimetry group realised that the 1997 rise was an ENSO signal, they extended the trend up to 2003, they seemed to have faced a problem. There was no sea level rise visible and therefore a “reinterpretation” needed to be undertaken!  Nils Morner was present at the Russian Academy Global Warming meeting in Moscow in 2005 when this was announced.  It was never made clear what sort of “corrections” were made and why. 

In 2003 the satellite altimetry record suddenly took on a new tilt. What lies flat in the above graph now takes on an upward tilt. 

Same graph but tilted upward to now show a new sea level rise rate of 2.3mm

Nils Morner criticised the “correction” at the Moscow meeting. One of the persons in the British IPCC delegation said :  “We had to do so otherwise there would be no trend.”

In a later booklet produced my Nils Morner, he tilted the graph back to its original position.

I have several examples of graphs that have been modified mostly to show warming when in fact the true graph showed a cooling, but it is difficult to show the authenticity of the modification. In this case, with Nils Morner present, when the change was announced there can be no doubt about this modification to fit the sea level rise narrative. 

A word about ice melting

Now the climate alarmists claim that because of global warming, the Greenland ice sheet is melting and putting fresh water into the ocean in the northern latitudes.   The Greenland ice sheet is indeed melting, but not from global warming, but from underneath. Japanese researchers under Dr. Genti Toyokini of Tohuku University recently discovered a flow of molten rocks known as a mantle plume rising up beneath the island. It melts Greenland’s ice from below. The plume has two branches and the second one arises under Iceland and is responsible for the active volcano in recent times there. At this stage, it doesn’t appear to be raising sea level.

Arctic:  The Arctic is simply a mass of floating ice. Any ice that is floating and melts does not raise the sea level. That includes all floating ice such as ice shelves and icebergs.  

Antarctic:  Despite rises in carbon Dioxide levels the Antarctic region has recorded no average temperature rise in the last 70 years, and in 2021 saw its coldest 6 month winter since records began in the 1950’s. It is possible the lack of warming extended back much further. This lack of warming over a significant portion of the Earth, undermines the unproven hypothesis that the Carbon Dioxide humans are putting into the atmosphere is the main determinant of global climate.  In 2021 the Antarctic had the coldest winter since records began in 1957, a fact largely ignored by the media. Two climate scientists Singh, and Polvani, have noted that the Antarctic sea ice has modestly expanded, and warming has been nearly non-existent over much of the ice sheet.  

A NASA study has found that the mass gains of the Antarctic ice sheet are greater than the losses. This contrasts with the IPCC reports which say that overall the Antarctic is losing ice. The extra snowfall that began 10,000 years ago has been slowly accumulating on the ice sheet compacting into ice over millennia, thickening the ice in East Antarctica and the interior of West Antarctic by an average of 1.7cm per year. This small thickening sustained over thousands of years and spread over vast areas corresponds to a very large gain in ice, enough to outweigh the losses from the fast flowing glaciers in other parts of the continent. The good news is that Antarctica is not currently contributing to sea level rise, but is taking 0.23 mm per year away. Contrast this to what the IPCC say : Antarctica is contributing 0.27mm per year to sea level rise .

Summary 

Observational facts indicate that sea level is NOT in rapidly rising mode but rather quite stable.

 Satellite altimetry gives trends in the order of 3mm per year to represent “interpretational records”, after the application of “personal calibrations”. These cannot be substantiated by observational facts. 

Rates of Sea level rise in the order of 0.0mm/year to a maximum of 0.7mm/year seem realistic. This fits well with values proposed for the year 2100 by INQUA (2000) and Morner (2004) but differ significantly from the values proposed by the IPCC (2001) and (2007). 

There has been no acceleration of sea level rise for at least the last 50 years. The small rise has been steady, unaffected by temperature changes in the Earth.  

No Pacific Islands have been flooded. In fact most are building out by as much as 30% per century. The growth is due to a combination of coral debris build-up, land reclamation, and sedimentation. 

It is important not to confuse land sinking with sea level rise. This is happening in Florida for example.  Coastal erosion is not an indication of sea level rise. 

There has been no dramatic sea level rise in the past century and evidence based projections show no significant or dangerous rise is likely to occur in the coming century. 

There is no correlation between atmospheric CO­₂ concentrations and sea level rise. The steady but very modest rise in sea level pre-dated coal power plants SUV’s etc and has continued at the same pace even as atmospheric CO₂ concentrations rose from 280ppm to 420ppm. 

The poles are not contributing to sea level rise. 

Claims about dangerously rising sea levels and island nations being submerged by them as  a result of fossil fuel use and man-made global warming are nothing more than  a clever ruse designed to frighten people into demanding or accepting terrible energy policies. 

Ian Bradford, a science graduate, is a former teacher, lawyer, farmer and keen sportsman, who is writing a book about the fraud of anthropogenic climate change.