The Met Office’s Sea Level Trick
By Paul Homewood
Sea levels have risen by around 16.5cm (6.5 ins) since 1900, but the Met Office says the rate of rise is increasing. They are now rising by 3-5.2mm a year, which is more than double the rate of increase in the early part of last century.
You will recall this BBC report last week, which I debunked here.
One of our readers asked the Met Office for evidence of their claim. They wrote back:
We have heard back from our relevant team. Please see below:
There is a clear acceleration in reconstructions of global mean sea level change based on global tide gauges since about 1960, as can be seen in Figure 1 of this paper:
https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/abdaec
The following statements, which represent the scientific consensus on climate change, come from the IPCC Sixth Assessment Report of Working Group I, Summary for Policy Makers [IPCC AR6 WG1 SPM, available from: https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg1/downloads/report/IPCC_AR6_WGI_SPM.pdf]:
“Global mean sea level increased by 0.20 [0.15 to 0.25] m between 1901 and 2018. The average rate of sea level rise was 1.3 [0.6 to 2.1] mm yr–1 between 1901 and 1971, increasing to 1.9 [0.8 to 2.9] mm yr–1 between 1971 and 2006, and further increasing to 3.7 [3.2 to 4.2] mm yr–1 between 2006 and 2018 (high confidence). Human influence was very likely the main driver of these increases since at least 1971.”
The acceleration in global mean sea level rise is in part related to the observed increase in ice sheet mass loss in the recent two decades: “The rate of ice-sheet loss increased by a factor
of four between 1992–1999 and 2010–2019. Together, ice-sheet and glacier mass loss were the dominant contributors to global mean sea level rise during 2006–2018 (high confidence)” [quote also from IPCC AR6 WG1 SPM].
At local scales, there are a number of additional factors than can shape the rates of sea-level rise, including internal variability at decadal timescales. This means that it can take longer for accelerations to manifest in individual tide gauge records.
.
Note that they are comparing the period since 1971, with the period 1901 to 1971. This, however, is the worst sort of cherry picking, because the 1970s were in the middle of a slow down in sea level rise, caused by global cooling in the 1960s and 70s. Some researchers also point to the era of global dam projects at the time being responsible for impounding water, thus lowering sea levels.
This slowdown is readily apparent on the chart below, which the Met Office has linked to:
https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/abdaec
It is also clear that the rate of sea level rise between 1920 and 1960 was similar to recent decades.
The effect of that slow down in the middle, of course, is to depress the average rise between 1901 and 1971, while at the same time increasing the trend since 1971.
The Met Office was, you may recall, talking about UK sea level rise, and we can see the very same pattern here. At North Shields, for example, the rate of rise peaked between 1920 and 1970, then fell to its lowest for 1945 to 1995:
And we can see similar trends at other tide gauges around the world:
What the Met Office have essentially done is to measure the rise over the upward part of the cycle, and compare it with the full part of the previous cycle. Look again at that graph:
This is an improper and thoroughly disreputable misuse of statistics.
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NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
So not “wrong” per se. Just extrapolating a worst-case and passing it off as most likely?
No, it is deception if they know full well what they are doing. Incompetence if they don’t. Take your pick.
No it’s wrong. Pick different time periods and you get different answers. So simply false. Just compare the rate of change across the entire time period. Why not?
Oh because that doesn’t give the answer the models say we shoukd get.
So the Met Office are lying again? This is in the ‘dog bites man’ category of news headline as opposed to ‘man bites dog’.
“…including ice sheet mass loss….’ (paraphrase). So, does that mean ‘nett loss’? Doesn’t that loss get made up later with ‘gain’. So sea levels will tend to fall (compared to previous)?
Something else Harry. There is a gross assumption that ALL that ice loss will go into the oceans but we already know that is not the case because Ice can and does something special which is called sublimation. By this method ice can go straight into gas missing out the liquid phase.
This is how glaciers above the ice line shrink when input no longer equals output. The BBC often tout nonsense about “melting glaciers” which are above the ice line when in fact what is occurring is a combination of a lack of input possibly hundreds of years ago and sublimation.
Science is a wonderful gift to man but in the wrong hands and deliberately misused, it is dangerous.
The whole data integrity issue is summed up by their statement:
“There is a clear acceleration in reconstructions of global mean sea level change”
Now, there are all sorts of very scientifically sound reasons why raw climate data needs to be adjusted for comparative use. The trouble is, this just creates a monumental cheats’ charter. Basically, they can “reconstruct” the data any which way they like and is plebs just have to suck it up. I don’t trust any of the official data banks any more, especially the government quango-backed types.
As one who was taught to respect the English language this statement says to me that there is a clear speeding up in the number of reconstructions of global mean sea level change. It says nothing about sea level change as such, just about an acceleration in the reconstructions …
You make a good point, magesox. They can ‘reconstruct’ till they’re blue in the face. It’s meaningless. And I’m not all that sure about adjusting raw data either — at least not to the extent they do.
1. There is no prima facie justification for assuming that because you have more sophisticated measuring devices the previous observations were incorrect;
2. You cannot measure everything everywhere all the time and the more you ‘reconstruct’ the further away from the original data you get;
3. And what follows from 2 is that if you don’t have data then you don’t have data! Interpolation or extrapolation or reconstruction (all aka ‘guesswork’) is as likely to end up being wronger as being righter!
And when you’re talking about “to 2 decimal places”, well, I mean …!
They should be legally (or scientifically) obliged to post the raw, unadjusted data alongside their adjusted work.
That would give people the chance to compare, and those able, like our host, to scrutinise the adjustments properly.
The following statements, which represent the ” scientific consensus “on climate change, come from the IPCC Sixth Assessment Report of Working Group I, Summary for Policy Makers [IPCC AR6 WG1 SPM, available from: https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg1/downloads/report/IPCC_AR6_WGI_SPM.pdf%5D:
Consensus is not scientific. If you agree that science can be settled by consensus, you have been conned senseless. (This does not apply to the vast majority of people on this site)
Thank you for the ‘conned senseless’. Great use of the English language 😁
Just think he composed at least two paragraphs to propose a coherent argument …Thats an improvement on some who comment on this blog
Not only ‘consensus’, David, but as usual with the MET, note that they quote, not from the actual IPCC report ( written by activist ‘scientists’ whose salary depends on their adherence to the consensus), but the “Summary for Policy Makers”, which is a 24 carat, weapons grade political document.
I’ve had that out with the MET’s Chief Twerp Richard Betts, in the past.
Martin, I think you are being too kind. From the information I have received bought “scientists” hand in their work and non-scientist political activists rewrite their words sexing them up where needed. More than a few providing input to the IPCC (one look at its name tells you this is political) have resigned in protest to this practice.
They use decimal points to show they have a sense of humour.
‘between 2006 and 2018 (high confidence)’
Oooo . . . ‘high confidence.’
Meaning it is speculation and not fact.
‘Human influence was very likely the main driver of these increases since at least 1971.’
‘Human influence’ is not a force. ‘Likely’ is not a cause.
This is an argumentum ad ignoratiam: an appeal to ignorance. They don’t know what caused it, ipso facto, it was caused by humans. Lack of evidence for one theory (actually, they don’t even have a theory) is NOT evidence for another theory.
These people have the intellect of a teenage school dropout.
And that is being very rude to teenage school dropouts!!
I think that we might be talking about a specific teenaged school dropout.
👍👍
The IPCC pulled the same trick in AR5. The text reports low rates for a long period and increasing rates for shorter, thus giving the impression rates are increasi g when actually they are linear trend plus a quasi-periodic cycle of about 60-70 Yr period.
I mentioned on previous thread the figure showing rates in a moving, then it becomes apparent higher rates also occurred n the early C20th. The text mentioned it in passing in AR5.
The met office and the IPCC should be ashamed of the way are trying to misrepresent the Data. It is utterly shameful.
Given that there’s an Advertising Standards Agency, perhaps we now need a Data Standards Agency. Someone we could appeal to when we see dodgy data or misuse of stats.
Here’s the AR5 figure. Check the (b) panel showing the rates.
https://postimg.cc/KRNLBjnM
Note the purple line – current rates are actually lower than early C20th and the satellite data is not significantly different. Note also the heavy black line – that’s the climate model output and its a bust – totally embarrassing. But hey, let’s pretend and with a bit of arm-waving no-one will notice. After all the policy wonks and prime ministers reading this are all stupid anyway.
And this is the text from the Summary for Policy Makers in AR5:
“It is very likely that the mean rate of global averaged sea level rise was 1.7 [1.5 to 1.9] mm yr–1 between 1901 and 2010, 2.0 [1.7 to 2.3] mm yr–1 between 1971 and 2010, and 3.2 [2.8 to 3.6] mm yr–1 between 1993 and 2010. Tide-gauge and satellite altimeter data are consistent regarding the higher rate of the latter period. It is likely that similarly high rates
occurred between 1920 and 1950.”
You have to parse that very carefully to understand it. So they compare the rate in a 110 yr window to a 40 yr window and then to a 17 yr window, rather like the Met Office in this thread. Only in the last sentence do they reference that the same rates occurred in the first half of the C20th in a 30 yr window but note they don’t give the rate or the confidence interval so you cannot evaluate whether that is significant or not.
An unbiased way to state that would have been “There is a generally constant rate of sea level rise from 1901 to 2010 of 1.7 mm per year. There is a quasi-periodic change in that rate that causes increases and decreases in that rate over shorter time intervals. The higher rate in the early part of the C20th is not statistically different than the current rate.”
And here’s a 30yr trailing slope plot for Jevrejeva 2014 sea level data and HadCRUT4.
https://postimg.cc/McG6Kthm
Note the lag between sea level and temps, and also the obvious quasi-periodic commonality between them. Note the current period, due to the lag, hasn’t peaked yet – more AGW hysteria coming!
This image overlays the sea level, glacier retreat and HadCRUT4 data after scaling all to temperature and accounting for the lags. Pretty similar they look, with the same oscillations etc.
https://postimg.cc/yDsGjyPM
So… what is humanity supposed to do about this calamity? Lower CO2 emissions to zero ASAP? How will that help lower or slow down the rise in sea level?
Funnily enough we moved from Broadlands across the road to be within 100 yards of the North Sea. It is truely beautiful today with light breezes and blinding sun shine.
The trouble is we live in Angus Scotland and I can assure you with the expert knowledge of the local lobster fishermen, that the North sea level is rising. Well at least maybe the land is recovering from the last vast ice sheet, hence their difficulty in launching their the shore.
Is NOT rising, senile old fart!
Another example from Lancashire: Glasson dock where the river Conder meets the Lune estuary just south of Lancaster:
October 11, 2019 9:45 am
Interesting this sea level story. Yesterday I had the pleasure of visiting The Stork Inn at Conder Green, where the River Conder and the Lancaster canal meet Morecambe Bay and the Lune estuary just south of Lancaster.
A knowledgeable local chap who had been born and bred there, had lived in the same flood-prone house for 50 years (tidal zone). He was a boat owner and fisherman some of the time. He knew a lot about the local properties, everything about the area, the history, the tides, the estuary, the weather, the fishing for Plaice and Morecambe Bay Shrimp.
He said in 50 years, sea level had not changed one millimetre.
I recommend you visit the excellent pub and get the story first hand!!
A local academic from the University of Cumbria disagrees – he said to me,
“I would ask you where the data that ‘sea level has not changed by one millimetre’ mentioned by the local man you spoke to is derived from, over what timescales such observations have been undertaken, and what accuracy and precision these observations have? Equally, what has been the sediment flux into, and out of the saltmarsh, as if sediment trapping is indeed occurring, the perception of sea level change will be zero, as the saltmarsh is accreting vertically to keep pace with the rising sea level (and doing precisely the thing we would hope to see from all coastal saltmarshes).”
The academic would not wish to risk his funding I am sure.
I’d agree. We have lived just north of Morecambe for over thirty years now and haven’t noticed a big change in sea levels. With a tidal range of about 1.5m at low tide to 10m on a spring tide (higher still with a low pressure and strong breeze behind it) a few mms would not make much difference anyway.
I hope they are called out on it. It’s absolutely disgraceful
So the world is a revolving orb in space covered with much water ! So where does this huge mass of water come from to increase some oceans ??? The world’s seas are “attached” to us by the fact that the world spins in space !!! So if one ocean is increasing there MUST be another which is diminishing ?!!! Nothing much to worry about !!!
The amount of liquid water is not constant. During the last ice age sea level was several hundred feet lower than today. Today’s changes are minuscule making attribution difficult, possibly impossible. For example there is tectonic change in basis shape, which are undetectable.
A proper analysis would go like this. The rate of sea level change varies dramatically on a decadal scale. The last few decades have been among the more rapid periods, comparable to 1930-55, but a bit slower.
So no acceleration, just natural variability.
Or:
This data is pretty much entirely useless as it’s such poor quality so I’ll not come to any conclusions whatsoever.
Science works with whatever data is available.
I would line these fuckers against a wall and shoot them without a second thought.
If I were Paul I would ban jamesgarethmorgan from my blog.
You huh? Science saved me. Without science my childhood would have been a complete nightmare. People who abuse science in this way – yes I would have them shot. If it was up to me that is what I would do. How many people are going to die because of this kind of scam anyway? Would I not in fact be saving lives? I am being completely straight with you here. This would act as an excellent deterrent. But if Paul wants to ban me for having this view that is up to him.
Darn sorry first line I meant ‘you would huh’ not ‘you huh’. Finger slipped and deleted the word.
But you’re not Paul
Sadly it does seem to have attracted a few posters of really abusive comments towards the pro AGW cohort, and completely nuts theories and mangling of science.
It’s obviously an attempt to discredit the site.
There is nothing ‘abusive’ about my suggestion. I honestly thinking people who abuse science in this way should be shot. I think it would act as an excellent deterrent. And in the long run it would save lives. If I ran on a political ticket this would be my stance. If you voted for me and I got in this is the policy I would implement. I am not some sort of raving nut – I am suggesting this as a rational solution.
There are provocateurs monitoring and posting on Pauls blog [
jamesgarethmorgan is obviously one of them… ] attempting to discredit him ,his site and other contributors here …..Not all of them rogue green activists .. Isn’t that true Jim ?.Just remember Paul is an indefatigable gadfly critic of Woke UK government agencies such as the BBC and the Met Office , peers and public servants wedded to climate emergency nonsense, renewables utopianism and Net Zero ideology . NALOPKT , WUWT and other climate skeptic websites are a lingering embarrassment to them and there are trillions of dollars at stake .My advice is to consider the sleazy JTRIG unit and the Ministry of Defence’s 77 Brigade . They employ some sinister devious individuals and dirty tactics Their targets include troublemaker bloggers Read the relevant articles and watch the MoD’s laughable recruitment advertisements .Then make up your own minds ….I was warned about them years ago
Sorry to disappoint you Stuart but ‘jamesgarethmorgan’ is not one of them. Nice try though.
Comments of mine are being ‘blanked out ‘ [ in other words not registering in the Recent Comments section ] ……Yesterday at least two of them …..And again just a few minutes ago pertaining to trolling provocateurs like jamesgarethmorgan attempting to discredit Pauls website and who they may be
Among the tactics is gaslighting …Good thing I have the screen shots
‘jamesgarethmorgan [ whoever may be hiding under that alias ] is indeed a provocateur ….I made no judgement on whether he is conducting himself in an activist or operative capacity ….The Inquisition upholding the geocentrist model and the Soviet enforcers of Trofim Lysenko’s ‘science ‘ had opponents of their brand of science shot or otherwise murdered …..Reflect on the company you are in
In most of the highest quality long measurement records there’s little or no recorded acceleration in sea-level trend in the last 90 years or more. (There are a few exceptions.)
https://sealevel.info/learnmore.html#sealevel
https://sealevel.info/MSL_graph.php?id=Harlingen&boxcar=1&boxwidth=3
Right.
Dave, in the few cases where there is acceleration of sea level, are there understood reasons for this?
Well, the southeastern U.S. coast has seen some apparent SLR acceleration over the last dozen years or so.
That’s where the Gulf Stream closely skirts the coast. See how the Gulf Stream follows the coastline, from Florida to North Carolina:
The SLR acceleration appears to be correlated with a fluctuation in the Gulf Stream:
Another reason for the apparent rate of sea level rise to accelerate, Derek, is the extraction of massive volumes of ground water to meet the demands of the ever-growing populations of coastal megacities. This makes the land subside – which looks a bit like sea-level rise.
The glacial isostatic adjustment, and ocean heat content related ocean dilatation are the 2 main adjustments that inflate the ocean rise rate. Both of them are of course very discussable…
It’s well past time all ‘science’ papers like this are publicly scrutinised and authors cross-examined by a HoC select committee, including guest scientists from all sides.
Evidence would be given under Oath, so lying is out. Any authors who refuse to be cross-examined render their work inadmissible.
If authors can reasonably defend their work, well that’s how science is supposed to work, so that’d be good.. If not it needs calling out and ignoring for policy consideration.
The policy costs and consequences for tens of millions of people are too high for these wild headline-grabbing claims to go unchallenged.
I shall defend to my death their right to say whatever they want, no matter how stupid it is.
To show you just how bad and how unrelated to science any of this is, when was the last time you saw sea level curves adjusted for the effects of isostatic rebound (that works positively in the north of the UK and negatively in the south)? When did you read about them checking for any local tectonic effects? I saw some nonsense the BBC (news you can trust) where they claimed Pembrokeshire was disappearing under water due to climate change. No mention of the fact that the north of Wales is actually emergent and as a direct consequence the south submergent with a zero-effect line in Mid Wales due to isostatic rebound.
Do you see that there is a variation in the rise from station to station? Averaging is absolutely the last thing which should be done because that number includes things nothing at all to do with the effect they are claiming. Sea level is relative. Land goes up and down as well as sea level and those changes on a geological time scale show clear cyclicity. To ignore that notch which occurred around 1960 is inexcusable and to blame all on the usual suspect is just political science. Selective and distorted presentation of data has now become mainstream and until there are consequences for the charlatans who do this, it will continue.
It seems the BBC has forgotten that we all used to be taught in geography about Milford Haven being a flooded river valley (due to isostatic rebound in the east) and that is what makes it a great deep water port.
As for Pembroke disappearing under water, the cliffs are pretty popular for rock climbing and its going to take an awful lot of climate change to hide 30+m climbs.
Try looking at the climb Armorican:
https://imgcdn.ukc2.com/i/390528?fm=jpg&time=1657230596&s=2c84769a23d883e5847fe48869766961
and a view down on the same route:
https://imgcdn.ukc2.com/i/147645?fm=jpg&time=1559340886&s=584b6e710b792755338f3e9c10d88457
I mean, is the BBC really that stupid?
Is the BBC that stupid? The answer has to be yes. But it’s hardly a surprise when an organisation with obvious political leanings is funded by a tax which has no bearing on the accuracy of their output.
I forgot to mention…finally typical for the BBC they use an emotional image which has nothing to do with sea level change and everything to do with the unconsolidated material which makes up the coastline. Notice how flat the land is above the cliff. That is a wave cut platform and shows that sea level has FALLEN not risen! Cliffs will always try to achieve a state of equilibrium and collapse is part of that irrespective of relative rise or fall of the sea with respect to the cliff. Right across the climate world you will see one cause/one effect statements made. This is an afront to the Enlightenment which we are in danger of exiting.
Exactly. BBC picture editors work wonders for ‘climate change’ hysteria, and this offering of a demolished road is no different.
The vanishing road has *nothing* to do with sea level rise rates and everything to do with coastal erosion, which is normal, particularly on the south east side of England.
They’re know full-well that they’re effectively misleading their readers but choose to do it anyway. There’s words to describe that type of thing.
Not too long ago there was a boss of the Met Office who was got rid of over an episode where he applied a less than rigorous interpretation of a financial rule.
Pity they don’t hue to the same standards when it comes to meteorology.
At least the beaches have nor disappeared, as they were predicted to do in the USA:
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2022/08/global-warming-myth-1995-new-york-times-said-beaches-east-coast-will-gone-25-years/
Are the beaches we see today on the US East Coast new ones?
Under human influence there is “clearer sky” and “dark soot” on polar ice. These are not contradictions. During the 1940s to 1970s clean air laws were enacted. For historical reference see for the UK, The Great Smog of 1952, and for the USA 1948 Donora smog.
Also, in many places (see Smoky Bear) fire suppression became policy and encouraged ageing forests and fuel build-up. More recently an era-of-megafires ensued that has lofted soot into the atmosphere.
As explanatory factors (forcings) these two things make better sense than CO2.
Even worse , if you were as dishonest as th met office you could compare 1901-70 with 1971 on and say the rate has decreased
It looks to me that buried in that OP paper that the estimate 1901-1990 is based on tide gauge but the estimate 1993-2010 is based on satellite altimeter. We know that the altimeter data has (a) been fudged by dropping unwanted data in the satellite overlaps and (b) that when compared to tide gauge data over the same period they do not show the same rate of warming and the confidence intervals do not overlap. Willis gave an excellent demonstration of this at WUWT in a post calle “inside the acceleration factory”
Check out his figure 6.
The problem with Church and White is it is a merge of tide and satellite but in the overlap period the two datasets do not agree. This cannot be reconciled without cheating.
‘…a merge of two datasets…’
Now where have we heard that before?
This good article, and many prior articles, are a series of home runs for author Paul Homewood. This is the best British website I follow (from the USA) and one of the best websites of 40 to 50 I visit every day. Three cheers for Paul Homewood. I’m assuming he survived the recent heat wave.
+100
This is the Met Office’s favourite trick – comparing time periods. But they do that only because a proper trend over the entire period doesn’t give them the right answer. Using time periods allows them to cherry pick until they get the answer they want – it’s p hacking for children. The BBC do it too.
At local scales, there are a number of additional factors than can shape the rates of sea-level rise, including internal variability at decadal timescales. This means that it can take longer for accelerations to manifest in individual tide gauge records. – Met. Office
But ‘additional factors’ could be anything, so by the same logic as ‘can take longer’ it could happen sooner. So those two alternatives could/should cancel out?
An interesting piece from Oz Spectator from 2020:
https://www.spectator.com.au/2020/01/thank-god-for-tide-gauges/
‘There is no firm evidence of acceleration in sea level rise during this century’, said the IPCC Report of 1990 (Chapter 9, p.262).
All of this was to change in 2007 and the scientific mess left by that 2007 IPCC sea level committee is still with us today.
This was the first IPCC meeting when satellite-based sea level rise data were available. The first sea level satellite (Topex – Poseidon) was launched in 1992 and replaced by the Jason 1 satellite in 2001. The satellites were showing sea level rise around 30 cm per 100 years while the tide gauges examined at earlier IPCC meetings showed a much lower sea level rise of 15-18 cm per 100 years.
Without any detailed analysis of the discrepancy between tide gauge data and satellite data, this IPCC committee concluded the satellite data was more reliable. This was a false ‘eureka’ moment with a spurious conclusion that the higher readings of the satellite were proof that sea level rise throughout the 20th Century had suddenly changed from a steady rate of 15-18 cm/100 years to a rate of 30 cm/100 years in the 1990s.
This interpretation was made without any detailed review of the reliability of tide gauge data from all over the Earth and technical altimetry problems in a satellite system; a system where a one millimetre of error in its 1,366 km orbital distance from the Earth’s surface translated to a sea level rise error of 10 cm in 100 years!”
Jaimes’s done an article on dry July’s
Always ask : is it news ? or science ? or PR ?
Most things are PR professionals feeding us PR … to push agendas
Now BBC driest month comments getting even worse
“England had its driest July since 1935, with parts having the least rainfall on record, the Met Office has said.”
Checked this the statement is only true for south east England!
This also suggests that the climate has hardly changed in 87 years.
If its the “worst since” then it was previously worse. That logical bust blows the claim completely out of the water, but no-one (including the BBC) appears to notice.
If the claim was actually due to climate change then it must (a) get progressively worse and (b) be actually worse than in the past.
Thought I should also point out 2022 was the 7th driest July.
Driest Julys were as follows:-
2022, 1935, 1864, 1865, 1869, 1868 and 1911
Which ice sheets have been losing so much? Couldn’t be Greenland? Or Antarctica?
What is wrong with the Met Office? In cahoots with the BBC?
No mention in the BBC article that the area they show has been suffering fom coastal erosion for 5000 years and the continental shelf is sinking and has been since the ice age finished 20,000 years ago, amazingly that is not factored into any sea level rise equation that they claim.
The thing that I find interesting about this piece of deception is that by drawing your dividing line earlier you can use the exact same method to show the opposite. By incorporating the flat part of the graph into the more recent figures you could claim that the sea level rise has slowed down.
Met Office: “The reconstruction and model shows that the rate of mean sea level rise is accelerating.”
“We cannot see it yet, but it is happening”.
There are fairies at the bottom of my garden, you cannot see them, but they are there.
Have faith!
There is most definitely a clear signal of misrepresentation going on at a government level. Of course, one would expect this because the Met Office comes under the Ministry of Defence and all data they provide is classified until declassified by the Government. Therefore, the Government gets to influence the narrative and selected data output to the media in accordance with Government discourse. But which media outlet advises caution due to a clear Government interest? None of them do. The IPCC in precisely the same way also has all of its media output proofread and adjusted in accordance with Governmental policy.
The biggest manipulation of the data is to demonstrate that there is such a thing as a ‘mean’ global sea level. There can be no such thing due to huge geological differences taking place. Indeed, even in the UK there is a vast regional difference in the geological forcing due to isostatic rebound.
That said, there is I believe an observable element of glacial eustacy in the data and rotational eustacy can be noted at stations closer to the equator.
The ever present cyclical astronomical forcings redistribute water between the polar regions and the equator. This is well understood, and it is a clear misrepresentation to use data from some equatorial regions simply to support one argument. In fact, it’s downright criminal when taxes are involved.
But how many media outlets explain to the public to observe caution and not simply soak in the headline message? None do.
Is it no wonder that most people are easily manipulated through the media?
Mean temp. for July 2022 in the CET was 18.0C, just outside the top 20th warmest years.
This was cooler that lots of years in the early 20th century and 17/1800s and definitely cooler than 1976.
Sea level is the most important of all the world variables to challenge the climate change mob because it is subject to precise measurement with a long history of data BUT I would also ask why are we getting our knickers so twisted over a couple of millimeters of difference when the climate mob are claining whole meters of movement?
Probably because if there is no obvious acceleration and tide gauges show an established long term trend of mere mm, the future claims of meters of sea level rise are patently absurd.
MrG: Not future claims. I have seen numerous claims of meters of rise – Bangladesh especially, with film of submerged land. The realty, of course, is that Bangladesh is the delta of two of the biggest rivers in Asia and deltas always change level for numerous reasons. In reality, the recorded levels in the Bay of Bengal are following typical changes and if they didn’t many millions world be dead and Calcutta would have been abandoned!
Yes, I’ve repeatedly highlighted the misrepresentation of the sinking deltas (some partly caused by man made reasons but not sea level rise in the main) Ganges, Mekong, Mississippi, etc. But the main claim is the threat of meters of future sea level rise, in the case of Bangladesh 1.5m by the end of the century, the same ridiculous claims that lead to maps of the USA, UK etc. with unrecognisable coastlines and 1000s of square miles of lost land.
Like most of the contributors above I know enough about sea level rise history and measurements to understand the disingenuity of the met office. Most of the population accept the so-called proven science and actually believe that organisations like the BBC and Met office are honest brokers and believe that these untruths are actually proof of a serious problem. The “Goebels big-lie” is in full swing.
We “deniers” have little opportunity to put forward the opposing case due to powerful media censorship and if it were not for the Russians activities there would be no effective opposition to the madness of net-zero. I was having a discussion of this with my 16 year old granddaughter and she said that all her teachers have told her that the world is almost doomed by climate change, so it must be: this is what we are up against, how do we fight it?
One of the reasons for sinking river deltas is the construction of vast hydro-electric dams upstream. In the case of Bangladesh’s deltas some of these dams are in India. Because of this deltas are deprived of the flow of silt which would otherwise keep them abreast of sea level. The Nile delta has also been sinking due to to the absence of the annual replenishment of silt from the Nile Flood that was curtailed when the Aswan High Dam was completed in Egypt in 1970.
Satellite data illustrates that 75% of beaches around the world are stable or accreting. Beach and coral mining have caused huge problems with erosion.
https://blog-ons-gov-uk.cdn.ampproject.org/v/s/blog.ons.gov.uk/2022/08/01/how-many-people-died-in-the-uks-recent-heatwave/amp/?amp_gsa=1&_js_v=a9&usqp=mq331AQKKAFQArABIIACAw%3D%3D#amp_tf=From%20%251%24s&aoh=16594677512901&referrer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com&share=https%3A%2F%2Fblog.ons.gov.uk%2F2022%2F08%2F01%2Fhow-many-people-died-in-the-uks-recent-heatwave%2F
England and Wales has been running about 1000 unexplained non-covid excess deaths a week for about 3 months anyway. Strange the BBC etc. isn’t investigating those real deaths, but will no doubt scream about modelled/assumed/guessed heat related deaths, that in most cases were just a few days early.
Not at all strange. After all the ‘vaccines’ are “safe and effective” so there’s nothing to see here. Move on now.
This fascinating and important debate again raises – for me at least – the question of what exactly is being measured? The traditional “Mean Sea Level” was simply the median point of tidal highs and lows at any one location. This assumes that the perennial tidal ranges (typicallty about six meters) always vary about the same mid-point. I question whether this is valid. In terms of fixing the terrestrial level systems it is just a one-off snapshot when the observed MSL is transferred to a series of permanent bench marks then distributed throughout the land. Then there are the constant varialtions in sea level due to weather effects locally. Anticyclonic weather (high pressure) depresses sea levels and depressions (low pressure) cause rises. These effects could proably be ignored at the levels of accuracy of maritime navigation but now that discussion (and claims) are based on millimeters how much confidence can there really be in the accuracy of the records?
They threaten beaches because people care about beaches. They exploit public ignorance that beaches are formed at the litoral intersection of land and sea. That is, if sea level rise moves the shoreline inland, the beach moves inland. It doesn’t go away.