posted June 25, 2012 01:29 PM            

Global warming creates 600-mile flood 'hot spot' along East Coast
Published: Monday, June 25, 2012, 8:07 AM
Updated: Monday, June 25, 2012, 11:10 AM

WASHINGTON — From Cape Hatteras, N.C., to just north of Boston, sea levels are rising much faster than they are around the globe, putting one of the world’s most costly coasts in danger of flooding, government researchers report.

U.S. Geological Survey scientists call the 600-mile swath a "hot spot" for climbing sea levels caused by global warming.

Along the region, the Atlantic Ocean is rising at an annual rate three to four times faster than the global average since 1990, according to the study published Sunday in the journal Nature Climate Change.

It’s not just a faster rate, but a faster pace, like a car on a highway "jamming on the accelerator," said the study’s lead author, Asbury Sallenger Jr., an oceanographer at the agency. He looked at sea levels starting in 1950 and noticed a change beginning in 1990.

... http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2012/06/global_warming_creates_600-mil.html

UPDATE: California Sea Levels Seen Rising, Causing Flooding
June 22, 2012, 6:47 p.m. ET
.

--Sea levels off California coast seen rising by 1 meter over next 100 years

--Rising ocean levels expected to cause coastal damage from storm surges, high waves

--Sea levels expected to rise more in California, less in Oregon and Washington

(Adds details throughout beginning in the 1st paragraph.)

By Cassandra Sweet SAN FRANCISCO--Tidal waters off California's coast are likely to rise by about one meter, or about 3.3 feet, over the next 100 years, causing flooding and other damage, as global warming and rising ocean temperatures cause the water to expand, according to a new scientific study released Friday.

Scientists around the world expect global sea levels to continue rising, after more than a century of going up, although levels are likely to vary widely from region to region depending on local characteristics, according to the study, by members of the National Research Council. The council is an affiliate of the National Academy of Sciences.

Rising sea levels are likely to cause flooding and other damage to California coastal areas and low-lying areas near waterways as a result of storm surges, high waves and an increase in salt water, the study predicted.

Ocean levels near San Francisco would only have to rise by 40 centimeters to flood the city's international airport and other low-lying areas near San Francisco Bay, the report predicted. Those levels could be reached in several decades, according to the study.
http://online.wsj.com/article/BT-CO-20120622-713831.html

posted July 18, 2012 10:41 PM            

ClimateGate Ocean Rise: Sea Level Rise Never Began: Scientists Withdraw Claims of Sea Levels Rising

In June 2008, a foolish and egomaniacal soon-to-be president, Barack Obama, said "This was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow...." Well, no. Climate scientists have now withdrawn their claims that sea levels are rising, were rising and will ever rise. Bottomline: There is no proof that climate change and/or global warming is causing sea levels to rise.

Ocean Rise - Sea Levels Rise: No

Scientists have found they made mistakes and have withdrawn claims. Nature Magazine has retracted an article - the first retraction in their history.

Scientists have been forced to withdraw a study on projected sea level rise due to global warming after finding mistakes that undermined the findings.

The study, published in 2009 in Nature Geoscience, one of the top journals in its field, confirmed the conclusions of the 2007 report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). It used data over the last 22,000 years to predict that sea level would rise by between 7cm and 82cm by the end of the century.
At the time, Mark Siddall, from the Earth Sciences Department at the University of Bristol, said the study "strengthens the confidence with which one may interpret the IPCC results". The IPCC said that sea level would probably rise by 18cm-59cm by 2100, though stressed this was based on incomplete information about ice sheet melting and that the true rise could be higher.

Many scientists criticised the IPCC approach as too conservative, and several papers since have suggested that sea level could rise more. Martin Vermeer of the Helsinki University of Technology, Finland and Stefan Rahmstorf of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany published a study in December that projected a rise of 0.75m to 1.9m by 2100. Siddall said that he did not know whether the retracted paper's estimate of sea level rise was an overestimate or an underestimate.

Nature Publishing Group, which publishes Nature Geoscience, said this was the first paper retracted from the journal since it was launched in 2007....

In a statement the authors of the paper said: "Since publication of our paper we have become aware of two mistakes which impact the detailed estimation of future sea level rise. This means that we can no longer draw firm conclusions regarding 21st century sea level rise from this study without further work.

posted July 18, 2012 10:54 PM            

If one thing more than any other is used to justify proposals that the world must spend tens of trillions of dollars on combating global warming, it is the belief that we face a disastrous rise in sea levels. The Antarctic and Greenland ice caps will melt, we are told, warming oceans will expand, and the result will be catastrophe.

Although the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) only predicts a sea level rise of 59cm (17 inches) by 2100, Al Gore in his Oscar-winning film An Inconvenient Truth went much further, talking of 20 feet, and showing computer graphics of cities such as Shanghai and San Francisco half under water. We all know the graphic showing central London in similar plight. As for tiny island nations such as the Maldives and Tuvalu, as Prince Charles likes to tell us and the Archbishop of Canterbury was again parroting last week, they are due to vanish.

But if there is one scientist who knows more about sea levels than anyone else in the world it is the Swedish geologist and physicist Nils-Axel Mörner, formerly chairman of the INQUA International Commission on Sea Level Change. And the uncompromising verdict of Dr Mörner, who for 35 years has been using every known scientific method to study sea levels all over the globe, is that all this talk about the sea rising is nothing but a colossal scare story.

Despite fluctuations down as well as up, "the sea is not rising," he says. "It hasn't risen in 50 years." If there is any rise this century it will "not be more than 10cm (four inches), with an uncertainty of plus or minus 10cm". And quite apart from examining the hard evidence, he says, the elementary laws of physics (latent heat needed to melt ice) tell us that the apocalypse conjured up by Al Gore and Co could not possibly come about.

The reason why Dr Mörner, formerly a Stockholm professor, is so certain that these claims about sea level rise are 100 per cent wrong is that they are all based on computer model predictions, whereas his findings are based on "going into the field to observe what is actually happening in the real world".

When running the International Commission on Sea Level Change, he launched a special project on the Maldives, whose leaders have for 20 years been calling for vast sums of international aid to stave off disaster. Six times he and his expert team visited the islands, to confirm that the sea has not risen for half a century. Before announcing his findings, he offered to show the inhabitants a film explaining why they had nothing to worry about. The government refused to let it be shown.

Similarly in Tuvalu, where local leaders have been calling for the inhabitants to be evacuated for 20 years, the sea has if anything dropped in recent decades. The only evidence the scaremongers can cite is based on the fact that extracting groundwater for pineapple growing has allowed seawater to seep in to replace it. Meanwhile, Venice has been sinking rather than the Adriatic rising, says Dr Mörner.

One of his most shocking discoveries was why the IPCC has been able to show sea levels rising by 2.3mm a year. Until 2003, even its own satellite-based evidence showed no upward trend. But suddenly the graph tilted upwards because the IPCC's favoured experts had drawn on the finding of a single tide-gauge in Hong Kong harbour showing a 2.3mm rise. The entire global sea-level projection was then adjusted upwards by a "corrective factor" of 2.3mm, because, as the IPCC scientists admitted, they "needed to show a trend".

When I spoke to Dr Mörner last week, he expressed his continuing dismay at how the IPCC has fed the scare on this crucial issue. When asked to act as an "expert reviewer" on the IPCC's last two reports, he was "astonished to find that not one of their 22 contributing authors on sea levels was a sea level specialist: not one". Yet the results of all this "deliberate ignorance" and reliance on rigged computer models have become the most powerful single driver of the entire warmist hysteria.

posted July 18, 2012 11:22 PM            

When determining the rate of global sea level rise, the best method is to conduct a tide gauge station data analysis - latest analysis reveals claims of "accelerating" sea level rise to be totally bogus
(click on images to enlarge, source of images)

Read here. Multiple "scientific" personalities seeking fame, fortune and influence (such as the likes of Hansen, Cullen and Rahmstorf) have attempted to frighten the public and policymakers by stating that global warming was causing an acceleration of global sea level rise. Depending on the given personality, they predict that recent "acceleration" will cause sea levels to increase anywhere from 4 feet to 75 feet by 2100.

Empirically speaking, these "predictions" are utter nonsense with literally no facutal basis - and, btw, that's why exceptionally lazy and/or amazingly stupid NY Times and Washington Post "journalists" just love these hysterical claims.

Per the actual tide gauge data plots shown above though, it is more than obvious that the readers of the mainstream press have been significantly mislead by the catastrophic global warming hucksters. The chart on the left represents annual sea level change since 1900. The red line is the 10-year average.

One does not have to be a climate scientist to realize that this chart unequivocally reveals a pattern of constant annual variation in sea levels with absolutely zero acceleration.

The plot on the right, examines the 10-year average in even more more detail. Since 1900, the trend of the 10-yr average actually shows a deceleration, not an acceleration of sea level rise. Using the 10-yr average at the end of 2011 as the sea rise gospel, by year 2100, sea levels would only increase by some 7 inches - not exactly the millions of "climate refugees" type of catastrophe (another spectacularly wrong AGW huckster prediction) that the MSM has been caught parroting without due diligence.

posted July 18, 2012 11:25 PM            

Alarmists have long predicted that Greenland's melting glaciers were causing an "accelerating" global sea level rise - new study confirms global warming alarmists wrong.
(image source)

Read here. The predicted "accelerating" sea level rise has been a fearmongering staple of the IPCC's global warming alarmists and the mainstream press for decades. For pure hysteria sake, nothing beats the image of flooding populous coastal areas with the intent to frighten the public.

Unfortunately for the alarmists, the empirical evidence does not support their grossly speculative predictions from discredited climate models.

Firstly, the "accelerating" global sea level rise has not taken place as multiple research studies have documented.

Secondly, the alarmist creed that the melting of Greenland's glaciers would cause devastating ocean rises has been completely debunked by a new peer reviewed study on some 200+ glaciers on the world's largest island.

"...titled “21st Century Evolution of Greenland Outlet Glacier Velocities” [Moon et al.] examined the flow characteristics from nearly 200 glaciers across Greenland for the period 2000-2010 as analyzed using synthetic aperture radar data collected from various satellites...And what they found...was that the patterns of flow rate changes across Greenland were complex, both in space and time. Glaciers that were accelerating during a few years were found to be decelerating in others. Some accelerating glaciers were found in close proximity to other glaciers that were decelerating..."Finally, our observations have implications for recent work on sea level rise...Our wide sampling of actual 2000 to 2010 changes shows that glacier acceleration across the ice sheet remains far below these estimates, suggesting that sea level rise associated with Greenland glacier dynamics remains well below the low-end scenario (9.3 cm [3.7 inches] by 2100) at present...Our result is consistent with findings from recent numerical flow models."" [Twila Moon, Ian Joughin, Ben Smith, Ian Howat 2012: Science]

posted July 18, 2012 11:29 PM            

Read here. Globally, scientists with solid empirical-based backgrounds are saying there are severe problems with many of the 2007 IPCC predictions. Namely, that many of the predictions are flat-out false based on the IPCC's political agenda, or wildly inflated by failed climate models.

New research by Houston and Dean has determined that the IPCC prediction of dangerously high acceleration of sea levels is likely both a combination of invalid climate models and desired political outcomes. They discovered that actual tidal gauge measurements over the last 80 years shows sea level increases decelerating, not accelerating per the IPCC prediction.

posted July 18, 2012 11:33 PM            

The big scare that the greenie alarmist movement, Hollywood and the MSM is always shouting about is the scare of accelerating and huge sea level increases. They speak of 3-foot increases by 2050, or 10, 20 and 80 foot increases by 2100.

Where did all these incredible sea increase predictions come from?

It turns out that all these frightening predictions share a couple things in common: one, they are based entirely on fantasy, with no scientific or empirical basis; and two, they have been fabricated by a minority of individuals seeking the limelight, which the MSM has gladly provided for them without a shred of fact-checking.

How do the over-the-top sea level increase predictions really compare to reality, though? Not well as the below chart reveals. (click on image to enlarge)

The blue bars of the chart represent both historical estimates of sea level increases and actual tide gauge and satellite measurements from recent periods. Scientists know there was a gigantic ice-sheet and glacier melt over thousands of years that raised the sea levels some 120 to 130 meters (390 to 425 feet). When averaged out over thousands of years, the sea level increase is estimated to have been about 5.0 to 7.5mm per year - with some years achieving an approximate 40mm increase.

How do more recent and current sea level increases compare to the historical record? First, it is widely recognized by all scientists that sea levels did not increase much over the 1,000 years prior to the mid-19th century. Around 1850, measurements reveal that sea levels started to increase, and interestingly, glaciers started to melt and recede, globally. Amazingly, this was decades before the modern influx of human CO2 emissions, yet it was just at the same time when natural global warming followed the frigid and freezing natural global cooling of the Little Ice Age. (For global warming alarmists, Hollywood and the MSM, this is just an "amazing" coincidence and certainly these natural cool/warm cycles could have nothing to do with modern sea levels increasing or glaciers melting.)

Regarding those current sea level measurements? Well, the remaining blue bars (starting with #6) from peer-reviewed, empirical evidence studies show increases for different time periods that range from less than 1mm/year to 3.1mm/year, with the single year of 1980 recording a 5.3mm increase. In summary, all of these studies are based in reality and one can extrapolate (predict) from the empirical evidence that sea levels are increasing at about a one-foot per century rate, which even the IPCC concurs with. A one-foot increase by 2100 is entirely manageable and entirely non-scary.

Climate alarmist scientists needing government funding for their global warming catastrophe research do not like this inconvenient empirical evidence; and, for that matter, nor does the MSM since it relies on doom and gloom stories for increased readership and viewers.

Unfortunately, for those that embrace and promote global warming fears and climate change ("disruption") catastrophes, the most current sea level evidence is especially disheartening. Indeed, the last several years of tide gauge/GPS/satellite measurements have recorded global sea level increases that are trending to zero (see bar #'s 18 and 19).

How do the predictions of scientists or climate models compare to reality based on current evidence? Some predictions are in the realm of reality and they are represented by the gold bars - reasonable, with most being higher than what recent measurement studies indicate.

The predictions with orange bars represent those that are starting to escape the world of reality, though. Typically, these are "worst" case scenarios with a very low likelihood of occurrence due to their extreme assumptions.The vast majority of scientists would not agree to climate model predictions that excessively exceed both historical estimates and current measurement studies of sea level increases.

Then there are the red-bar predictions from a distinct minority of alarmists and scientists that get all the attention of the MSM press and Hollywood. These "red-bar" predictions literally are fantasy designed exclusively to gain the attention of the feeble-minded, unable to critically think. Ultimately, these predictions can't even be considered science fiction since they are not based on a scintilla of scientific evidence.

Not surprisingly, the red-bar predictions raise some very important contradictions that global warming alarmists would prefer not to reveal (besides not comporting to recent evidence), including:

1. They claim that the predictions are based on ancient evidence over the last 20,000 years that the world was significantly warmer, which caused large sea level increases. Note, they are stating categorically that modern temperatures are not "unprecedented" and the world will return to those significantly warmer past temperatures in the near future (which is not actually looking so "hot" based on the actual evidence.)

2. The ancient warmer world happened when CO2 atmospheric levels were well below the modern, industrial levels - there were no human CO2 emissions that caused the world to warm and the ice to melt.

3. When the ancient world warmed, ice sheets and low elevation glaciers were spread all across the northern hemisphere, well into the non-polar areas. Those no longer exist, which means there is not enough ice to melt in the non-polar regions that will deliver sea level increases that would rival ancient increases.

4. The vast majority of today's ice sheets and glaciers are located in areas of extreme cold temperatures (high latitudes and/or high elevations) that minimize the potential of melting. For example, at the Greenland ice sheet Summit, current annual temperatures are -31.0°C, and for the Vostok-Antarctica station on the polar ice sheet the respective temperature is a -55.0°C. Both of these extremely cold areas hypothetically could suffer a 20° increase in temperatures and nothing is going to melt - and by the way, no sane scientist even hypothesizes a 20°C increase in these polar areas.

5. Recent studies of ice mass loss at both Greenland and Antarctica ice sheets show that the wild-ass, speculative predictions of climate alarmist scientists and their climate/ice sheet models are galactically over-estimating the losses.