Why do climate scientists bother to gather data when the go-to methodology is to manipulate it to prop up the global warming agenda?
The University of Colorado’s Sea Level Research Group admitted it adds 0.3mm per year to observed sea level measurements.
UC added the 0.3mm to compensate for ‘glacial isostatic adjustment’ (GIA) . Land masses are rising, in turn creating larger basins for seas and oceans, which is compensated for by the GIA:
The correction for glacial isostatic adjustment (GIA) accounts for the fact that the ocean basins are getting slightly larger since the end of the last glacial cycle. GIA is not caused by current glacier melt, but by the rebound of the Earth from the several kilometer thick ice sheets that covered much of North America and Europe around 20,000 years ago. Mantle material is still moving from under the oceans into previously glaciated regions on land. The effect is that currently some land surfaces are rising and some ocean bottoms are falling relative to the center of the Earth (the center of the reference frame of the satellite altimeter).
UC says it’s no big deal, everyone does it. Unfortunately, GIA is not the ‘scientifically well-understood GIA correction‘ the UC group claims on its new CYA front page. Dig deeper and look at the one of the key goals for UC:
We summarize recent results from the 2007 IPCC 4th Assessment Report (AR4), as well as post-IPCC results relevant to sea level observations, causes and projections. New challenges are identified for the coming decade in terms of observations, modelling and impact studies. From these challenges, a number of recommendations emerge…
…c) Improved accuracy for the Glacial Isostatic Adjustment (GIA) forward modelling that are needed to provide corrections for GRACE, tide gauges and satellite altimetry observations over ocean, land and ice-sheets should be made available. Specifically, the GIA community should be encouraged to perform intercomparison studies of GIA modelling, similar to what has been done for coupled climate model outputs. The goal should be to produce a global, spatially varying, community wide best-estimate of GIA and its uncertainty that is appropriate for application to global sea level studies.
It’s a model? Well, why didn’t UC say so? If it’s a model, it must be right. Right?
That UC doesn’t understand why people are making a fuss about their little adjustment is one of the reasons climate scientists are demanding respect instead of earning it.
Climate alarmists, the WWF and Greenpeace included, have used the threat of rising oceans to prompt governments and otherwise sensible people into taking unnecessary, expensive action for a problem that barely exists. Adding 0.3mm per year to sea levels offset rising land masses might be a small thing to sea level researchers, but it’s more ammunition for cynical marketers to support nonsense like this:
Between the Greenland ice sheet and the Western Antarctic ice sheet the world could well be facing a 13 metre (43 foot) rise in sea level if we do not drastically curb our greenhouse gas emissions. Even a small fraction of this much sea level rise would be an economic and humanitarian disaster.
Ask any person on the street what they think of when they hear ‘rising sea levels’ and they’ll tell you the water level is rising relative to the land. Tell that same person on the street that land masses are rising at about the same rate as the sea and suddenly there’s no panic. How much funding goes away when the problem isn’t a problem?
It turns out that when the WWF, Al Gore, Greenpeace and friends said mankind would force the seas to rise, they were right. Just not how they thought.
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There is also a practical reason why saying “0.3mm is not much” is wrong. That reason is: with so many hands in the pie, with each possibly adding their “not much” adjustment, you could finally get “very much” distorted data.
Where I used to work, somebody once pointed out that when someone requested say, a “3-meter piece of cable”, people in-between always added a few centimeters to make sure the requester had enough. But then the guy who cut the cable also added a safety margin to his cut. And the guy who requested the cable also had a safety margin built-in in request. And so on. The company calculated that this “add a safety margin, not much” practice ended up with quite an incredible amount of waste. Such a trivial matter turned up to be very wasteful.
I don’t know how many people between the raw measurements and the IPCC add their “safety margin, not much” to the real value, but I do know that “not much” is always too much when it’s not needed.
The only reason it is “not much” is that they claim to expect 14m soon. Since that’s never going to happen, they’ll simply adjust in 5 or 6 cm over the next decade and claim that’s what they really meant by catastrophic sea rise.
The whole affair points to a willingness to fudge data.
.3 mm? Are you serious about questioning the veracity of sea level rise based on a .3 mm fudge factor when the total sea level rise is expected to be over 300 feet. Do you not see the accelerated melting of the Greenland and Polar ice caps? Glaciers? Wake up people.
The most accurate measurement of sea level is by satellite. Ups and downs of dry land has no bearing on the satellite measurement, because the measure is strictly between the satellite, and the sea.
Sat records show no significant rise in sea level for many years. There has been a slight drop in sea level in the last year.
If you look at the long term sea level graph, it shows a leveling off of rise about 2000 years ago, with very little rise in the last 1000 years.
Alarmists must assume the average human being is both too stupid, and lazy to gather their own information which is readily available on the internet. They may be on to something.
Karl, when floating ice melts it does not raise the water level of the container it is in. (Try it with a glass of gin and tonic and a floating ice cube. Then add more ice cubes before drinking the experimental material). The entire polar ice cap can melt without raising sea levels.