Quote:
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.

Quote:
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.

Yes it's the Telegraph :)

There seems to be an ever more revealing trend related to the mass of the scientific community where science is chucked for the intended result. Using a "corrective factor" because you must "show a trend" is another way of saying that you fabricated evidence in an intentional attempt to defraud.

As always, I have to caveat that there is no doubt that as a species we're impacting some geography in negative ways, although in 99% of the cases it's the "tragedy of the commons" sort and not private property.

An interview with one scientist contradicts a single global warming prediction: that sea levels will rise to very high level. But the IPCC's report was "59 cm" which I wouldn't call doomsday. Bad, yes; worse than Dr. Morner's worst-case prediction yes; but not 'doomsday' like Al Gore's documentary showed (apparently; I haven't seen it). So really by 'predictions' you meant 'prediction' in your subject. This empiric data only deflates one claim made by global warming scientists by a factor of around 5-6. But the IPCC already undercut Al Gore's claim by a factor of 15 so it seems like they were already doing a decent job even without anyone Dr. Morner considered a sea level specialist.

Next up, the opening paragraph says "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". I don't know... is that actually true? Obviously some island and coastal nations seem to be using that as justification but I bet the author didn't even make an attempt to try and see what the most used justification was and just stated something as fact. I'm sure it's different for other people but the most common reasons I've seen to justify proposals to combat global warming were about record heat waves, more frequent more extreme weather, problems with food production, etc.

Since the IPCC's recent investigation into their own practices has shown they've had problems letting in dissenting opinion hopefully people like Dr. Morner will be heard more often. But the bit of article you posted really could have been written better in my opinion.

And here is what looks to be a rebuttal of Dr. Morner's claims. A comment mentions that one of the people the IPCC report used was Any Cazenave who has written papers such as 'Sea-Level Rise and Its Impact on Coastal Zones' as recently as a few months ago in Science magazine. So maybe Any Cazenave isn't an expert according to Dr. Morner but some people seem to disagree.

edit: I was also going to point out something a little funny about this part of the article: "Six times he and his expert team visited the islands, to confirm that the sea has not risen for half a century." Why do you need to visit the island to confirm the sea level has not risen? Are satelites any less a valid way to measure ocean levels than whatever method Dr. Morner apparently uses that requires being on site? I will need to look into that more since I still haven't read the entire skeptical science article.

[Edited by - nobodynews on August 30, 2010 7:00:10 PM]

Let's see, in an article in the Torygraph, by a known idiot, a retired professor who believe in a magical water stick and completely ignored the satellite data on the subject* tells us that the entire rest of the scientific community is lying about sea levels.

On the other hand, here's some info from people who did more than take a pacific island holiday six times over 20 years.


You'll forgive me if I'm extremely skeptical about his conclusions.


*(Nerem et al. (2007) Comment on “Estimating future sea level change from past records” by Nils-Axel Mörner, Global and Planetary Change 55 (2007) 358–360)


btw, nobodynews your link is broken. You're missing the "http://"

Quote: Original post by nobodynews
And here is what looks to be a rebuttal of Dr. Morner's claims. A comment mentions that one of the people the IPCC report used was Any Cazenave who has written papers such as 'Sea-Level Rise and Its Impact on Coastal Zones' as recently as a few months ago in Science magazine. So maybe Any Cazenave isn't an expert according to Dr. Morner but some people seem to disagree.

edit: I was also going to point out something a little funny about this part of the article: "Six times he and his expert team visited the islands, to confirm that the sea has not risen for half a century." Why do you need to visit the island to confirm the sea level has not risen? Are satelites any less a valid way to measure ocean levels than whatever method Dr. Morner apparently uses that requires being on site? I will need to look into that more since I still haven't read the entire skeptical science article.

Thanks for the link.(You have two urls in it btw). There's some interesting discussion at the end of the page. Everything from "the satellite data is adjusted" to the ocean rose more in the 1700s than in the 1900s.

Visual depictions of Sea Level Rise (Fixed link from nobodynews' post).

As for the OP. To have "more" empirical data requires having empirical data to begin with. A more accurate title would have been "more climate change denial dressed up as science" and perhaps with the added notation "brought to you by Koch industries" ("The report showed that, from 2005 to 2008, the Kochs vastly outdid ExxonMobil in giving money to organizations fighting legislation related to climate change, underwriting a huge network of foundations, think tanks, and political front groups." The billionaire brothers who are waging a war against Obama; "... the same group of mischief-makers, given a platform by the free-market ideologues of The Wall Street Journal's editorial page, has consistently tried to confuse the public and discredit the scientists whose insights are helping to save the world from unintended environmental harm." Climate sceptics are recycled critics of controls on tobacco and acid rain).

A serious article on the science would not devote so much effort to debunking Al Gore. That's a dead give away that the purpose of the article is political and isn't meant to illuminate but obfuscate. I'm surprised the article doesn't attack Gore with allegations of masseuse harassment. I guess that's because 28 Mar 2009 when that article was published that line of character attack on Al Gore hadn't yet been taken.

The Secret of Sea Level Rise: It Will Vary Greatly by Region

How much is sea level rising?


Meanwhile...

Pacific Hot Spells Shifting as Predicted in Human-Heated World (August 27, 201)

NASA/NOAA Study Finds El Niños Growing Stronger (August 25, 2010)

Sorry Dredd but your effort to debunk the science comes across as desperate.

Quote: Original post by LessBread
Sorry Dredd but your effort to debunk the science comes across as desperate.

I'm no fan of the Koch brothers either, and I'm not sure how my OP can be "desperate" when I'm not that largely invested in the issue.

I think it's healthy to entertain dissenting views, especially when it's considered taboo.

To that end, plenty of "science" has been unravelled as propaganda on the issue. Details of social pressure to outright fraud have been outed. It wouldn't amaze me at all to find this among them.

Of course, I'm not a fan of this particular brand of kool-aid.

It's so obvious that man made climate change is occurring but there is a large amount of FUD being thrown around by parties who benefit from obscuring the evidence to delay policies. Their last resort argument is too concede it is happening but deny any human factor, of course also to delay any action as long as possible. Not that it matters, we've already went pass the tipping point probably 10 years ago, climate change will accelerate soon. The acidification of the oceans and the warming already has had dramatic affects on the phytoplankton, about 50% reduction in the last few years, they form the basis for the entire oceanic food chain. The tundras are about to thaw once they do they will release enormous amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere, which will feedback into more tundra thawing.

Paradoxical all the freshwater melt might actually trigger a mini-ice age for northern Europe and Americas, though that probably won't last too long.

What does this mean for the average person? Probably higher food and water prices, more drought, maybe more displaced peoples and more wars as a result, some threatened species dying out. Luckily we've reached a technological level where we can blunt the affects of climate change to an extent.

I'm more worried about the coming peak oil.

-ddn

Quote: 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

from his wiki page

"Mörner has written a number of works claiming to provide theoretical support for dowsing. [1] He was elected "Deceiver of the year" by Föreningen Vetenskap och Folkbildning in 1995 for "organizing university courses about dowsing..."[2]. In 1997 James Randi asked him to claim The One Million Dollar Paranormal Challenge, making a controlled experiment to prove that dowsing works.[14] Mörner declined the offer.[15]"

A million dollars!, he must be super rich to turn down that offer :)
ouch, at least he doesnt profess to believe in fairies I suppose

Quote: Original post by Dreddnafious Maelstrom

Quote: Original post by LessBread
Sorry Dredd but your effort to debunk the science comes across as desperate.

I'm no fan of the Koch brothers either, and I'm not sure how my OP can be "desperate" when I'm not that largely invested in the issue.

Well, apparently you're sufficiently invested in the issue to create a thread with an exaggerated title linking to a year old article based on claims made by a known charlatan.

Quote: Original post by Dreddnafious Maelstrom
I think it's healthy to entertain dissenting views, especially when it's considered taboo.

I think it's unhealthy to waste time entertaining views from discredited sources.

Quote: Original post by Dreddnafious Maelstrom
To that end, plenty of "science" has been unravelled as propaganda on the issue. Details of social pressure to outright fraud have been outed. It wouldn't amaze me at all to find this among them.

Global Warming Deniers Aren't "Experts" At All: It's Time for a New View of Science

Quote:
...
The protagonists of our story merchandised doubt because they realized -- with or without the help of academic decision theory -- that doubt works. And it works in part because we have an erroneous view of science. We think that science provides certainty, so if we lack certainty, we think the science must be faulty or incomplete. This view -- that science could provide certainty -- is an old one, but it was most clearly articulated by the late-nineteenth-century positivists, who held out a dream of “positive” knowledge -- in the familiar sense of absolutely, positively true. But if we have learned anything since then, it is that the positivist dream was exactly that: a dream.

History shows us clearly that science does not provide certainty. It does not provide proof. It only provides the consensus of experts, based on the organized accumulation and scrutiny of evidence. Hearing “both sides” of an issue makes sense when debating politics in a two-party system, but there’s a problem when that framework is applied to science. When a scientific question is unanswered, there may be three, four, or a dozen competing hypotheses, which are then investigated through research. Or there may be just one generally accepted working hypothesis, but with several important variations or differences in emphasis. When geologists were debating continental drift in the 1940s, Harvard professor Marlin Billings taught his students no less than nineteen different possible explanations for the phenomena that drift theory -- later plate tectonics -- was intended to explain.

Research produces evidence, which in time may settle the question (as it did as continental drift evolved into plate tectonics, which became established geological theory in the early 1970s). After that point, there are no “sides.” There is simply accepted scientific knowledge. There may still be questions that remain unanswered -- to which scientists then turn their attention -- but for the question that has been answered, there is simply the consensus of expert opinion on that particular matter. That is what scientific knowledge is.

Most people don’t understand this. If we read an article in the newspaper presenting two opposing viewpoints, we assume both have validity, and we think it would be wrong to shut one side down. But often one side is represented only by a single “expert” -- or as we saw in our story -- one or two. When it came to global warming, we saw how the views of Seitz, Singer, Nierenberg, and a handful of others were juxtaposed against the collective wisdom of the entire IPCC, an organization that encompasses the views and work of thousands of climate scientists around the globe -- men and women of diverse nationality, temperament, and political persuasion. This leads to another important point: that modern science is a collective enterprise.
...
Science has grown more than exponentially since the 1600s, but the basic idea has remained the same: scientific ideas must be supported by evidence, and subject to acceptance or rejected. The evidence could be experimental or observational; it could be a logical argument or a theoretical proof. But what ever the body of evidence is, both the idea and the evidence used to support it must be judged by a jury of one’s scientific peers. Until a claim passes that judgment -- that peer review -- it is only that, just a claim. What counts as knowledge are the ideas that are accepted by the fellowship of experts (which is why members of these societies are often called “fellows”). Conversely, if the claim is rejected, the honest scientist is expected to accept that judgment, and move on to other things. In science, you don’t get to keep harping on a subject until your opponents just give up in exhaustion.
...

Quote: Original post by Dreddnafious Maelstrom
Of course, I'm not a fan of this particular brand of kool-aid.

I'm not a fan either. The issue isn't equivalent to a sports team or a pop celebrity or a movie-star or a brand of kool-aid. It's a matter of science.

If you're looking to discredit "a brand of kool-aid", in an industry that you probably have more familiarity with, here's a story that you ought to sink your teeth into: Banks’ Self-Dealing Super-Charged Financial Crisis "Faced with increasing difficulty in selling the mortgage-backed securities that had been among their most lucrative products, the banks hit on a solution that preserved their quarterly earnings and huge bonuses: They created fake demand."



edit: emboldened portions of the Oreskes book extract to highlight points that refute complaints by "deniers" that calling them "deniers" is unfair.


[Edited by - LessBread on August 31, 2010 2:50:23 PM]