Posted on 08/22/2010 9:47:29 AM PDT by Ernest_at_the_Beach
Are the small islands of the South Pacific in danger of disappearing, glug, under the waves of the rising ocean? Will thousands of poor inhabitants be forced to emigrate, as desperate refugees, to Australia and New Zealand? Has any of this got anything to do with man-made emissions of CO2?
By looking closely at the records, it turns out that the much advertised rising sea levels in the South Pacific depend on anomalous depressions of the ocean during 1997 and 1998 thanks to an El Nino and two tropical cyclones. The Science and Public Policy Institute has released a report by Vincent Gray which compares 12 Pacific Island records and shows that in many cases its these anomalies that set the trends and if the anomaly is removed, sea levels appear to be more or less constant since the Seaframe measurements began around 1993.
Sea levels: The El Nino / tropical storm anomaly in 1997-1998 is clear. A long sustained rise is not.
Take the infamous Tuvalu for example. Its sea level rise was reported as 5.7 mm/year back in 2008. Now its calculated as 3.7mm/year. But look at the Seaframe Graph its flat. It is universally forecast to disappear by 2050. New Zealand has even agreed to accept the inevitable rush of refugees, yet the best records available show that sea levels have not risen at all since 1993. Its not that it will take decades, or hundreds of years to submerge, theres no reason to suppose it will submerge at all (asteroid strikes excepted). Its a place that naturally is reshaped and reformed as the ocean moves sand from one part to another, and the corals shift and grow with the changes.
There may indeed be legitimate refugees from some areas, but its most likely due to subsidence, rather than sea-level rises.
ABSTRACT
The SEAFRAME sea-level study on 12 Pacific islands is the most comprehensive study of sea level and local climate ever carried out there. The sea level records obtained have all been assessed by the anonymous authors of the official reports as indicating positive trends in sea level over all 12 Pacific Islands involved since the study began in 1993 until the latest report in June 2010. In almost all cases the positive upward trends depend almost exclusively on the depression of the ocean in 1997 and 1998 caused by two tropical cyclones. If these and other similar disturbances are ignored, almost all of the islands have shown negligible change in sea level from 1993 to 2010, particularly after the installation of GPS levelling equipment in 2000.
The study includes the Cook Islands, Federated States of Micronesia, Fiji, Kiribati, Marshall Islands, Nauru, Papua New Guinea, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Tonga, Tuvalu and Vanuatu.
One of the big problems with measuring sea-levels is that everything is in motion. The tides shift, the sand moves, and even the bedrock can subside. The Seaframe stations are state of the art, and regularly checked to compensate for all these changes.
The Seaframe equipment used to measure sea levels is carefully recalibrated every 18 months to take these factors into account.
Precise levelling of the height of the SEAFRAME sea level sensor relative to an array of land-based benchmarks is undertaken by Geosciences Australia every eighteen months where possible. The precision to which the survey must be performed is dependent on the distance Km (km) between the SEAFRAME sensor benchmark and the primary tide gauge benchmark (TGBM) and forms part of the projects design specifications.
The claimed sea level trends look alarmingly large, yet calculated trends can be misleading.
South Pacific Sea Levels 1992 - 2010
The people of Tuvalu are worried, and it appears, their anxiety and fears may simply be a product of those who want to draw attention to their own pet projects for their own selfish goals. Though the climate change fears have attracted some extra foreign aid to the country, how much of that filters through to the worried mums and dads, and how much just feeds the bureaucrats with their taxes?
We dont want a mass migration but most people are worried for their kids. They see no future here in 50 years.
If sea levels rise 0.5m in that time we wont be entirely under water, but with king tides and storm surges we will be in severe trouble.
The long-term future of Tuvalu as a viable nation is being considered by the Government.
No matter what was heating the Earth, sea levels would rise, the rise in and of itself tells us nothing about the cause of the warming. Whats amazing is that so much of our CO2 has been unleashed since 1993, yet at least in the South Pacific, its not clear that sea levels have risen.
Read the full assessment of the South Pacific Sea Levels thanks to the Science and Public Policy Institute.
So Barack “Canute” Obama really has lowered the sea levels?
Claim That Sea Level Is Rising Is a Total FraudDr. Nils-Axel Mörner is the head of the Paleogeophysics and Geodynamics department at Stockholm University in Sweden. He is past president (1999-2003) of the INQUA Commission on Sea Level Changes and Coastal Evolution, and leader of the Maldives Sea Level Project. Dr. Mörner has been studying the sea level and its effects on coastal areas for some 35 years. He was interviewed by Gregory Murphy on June 6 for EIR.
The seas are not rising and the sky is not falling.
There must be room in there for the marxists to find *something* to panic about.
*********************************EXCERPT ****************************************
EIR: What is the real state of the sea-level rising?
Mörner: You have to look at that in a lot of different ways. ... we can see that the sea level was indeed rising, from, let us say, 1850 to 1930-40. And that rise had a rate in the order of 1 millimeter per year. Not more. 1.1 is the exact figure.
That ended in 1940, and there had been no rise until 1970 ... There's no trend, absolutely no trend.... and then we go to satellite altimetry, and I will return to that.
Another way of looking at what is going on is the tide gauge. Tide gauging is very complicated, because it gives different answers for wherever you are in the world. But we have to rely on geology when we interpret it. So, for example, those people in the IPCC choose Hong Kong, which has six tide gauges, and they choose the record of one, which gives 2.3 mm per year rise of sea level. Every geologist knows that that is a subsiding area. It's the compaction of sediment; it is the only record which you shouldn't use.
... Not even ignorance could be responsible for a thing like that. ...So tide gauges, you have to treat very, very carefully. Now, back to satellite altimetry. From 1992 to 2002, [the graph of the sea level] was a straight line, variability along a straight line, but absolutely no trend whatsoever. We could see those spikes: a very rapid rise, but then in half a year, they fall back again. But absolutely no trend, and to have a sea-level rise, you need a trend.
Then, in 2003, the same data set, which in [the IPCC's] publications, in their website, was a straight linesuddenly it changed, and showed a very strong line of uplift, 2.3 mm per year, the same as from the tide gauge. And that didn't look so nice. It looked as though they had recorded something; but they hadn't recorded anything. It was the original one which they had suddenly twisted up, because they entered a "correction factor," which they took from the tide gauge. So it was not a measured thing, but a figure introduced from outside. I accused them of this at the Academy of Sciences in Moscow I said you have introduced factors from outside; it's not a measurement. It looks like it is measured from the satellite, but you don't say what really happened. And they answered, that we had to do it, because otherwise we would not have gotten any trend!
That is terrible! As a matter of fact, it is a falsification of the data set. Why? Because they know the answer....
I have been the expert reviewer for the IPCC, both in 2000 and last year. The first time I read it, I was exceptionally surprised. First of all, it had 22 authors, but none of themnonewere sea-level specialists. They were given this mission, because they promised to answer the right thing....Three of them were from Austria, where there is not even a coast! The others were not specialists. So that's why, when I became president of the INQUA Commission on Sea-Level Change and Coastal Evolution, we made a research project, and we had this up for discussion at five international meetings. And all the true sea level specialists agreed on this figure, that in 100 years, we might have a rise of 10 cm (3.9 inches), with an uncertainty of plus or minus 10 cmthat's not very much.
(Four inches of sea level rise in 100 years - plus or minus
four inches. Not exactly earth shattering.)
Thank you. I will replace the link.
I think his influence has been nil.
I didn’t mean that was necessary...just that some people have trouble with PDF links.
Oh, I understand. I hate PDFs. I don’t know how many times a PDF has locked up my system requiring a complete re-boot. I curse them! ;^)
OK...I usually handle them OK...but some don’t... as you say.
Good to see you, too, dear al baby! *smooch*
If the seas aren't rising, and yet global warming is melting the glaciers, then ... where is the water going? Are the lakes getting bigger? Are the water levels in the aquafers rising? The melting must result in water accumulating somewhere.
Or is it possible that, somehow there is no melting?
That would introduce yet another puzzle? How, despite the globe warming, is the frozen water not melting?
I think that history indicates that periods of climate-alarmism last about thirty years. That is how long it takes for short-term trends to reverse themselves and reveal the foolishness of the alarmists.
I suspect a new ice age coming on, real soon now.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.