One of the most egregious aspects of Global Warming alarmism is that its "science" is built upon computer models, based upon conjectures, conjured up by projecting centuries into the future. As with all models, garbage in, garbage out. But worse, the models rely upon core assumptions about how the global climate and atmospheric systems work.
But since the models produce "hard" numbers, they immediately gain credibility amongst the credulous. "On average, global temperatures will rise 3.659023 percent in the next one hundred years." Who can doubt when such precision is displayed.
Only an evil sceptic who has to be in the pay of robber barons would question such a scientific tour de force. How else can such contumacy be explained?
Global warming alarmism is the closest the West has yet come to the Soviet model of science. Under the Kremlin masters, science was what the Politburo said it was. Only officially approved theories were tolerated: all contrary theories were suppressed, using the full range of the state apparatus. The Global Warming alarmist cause has come pretty close to this. It has worked on suppression, censorship, media-manipulation, and the seduction and capture of politicians. It has succeeded remarkably. (The media/alarmist nexus is only just now beginning to be exposed. It now turns out that when the Climatic Research Unit was exposed as falsifying data and censoring and silencing opposing science--that is, blatantly manufacturing data to support their cause--it hired former News-of-the-World big-shots to manage its defensive PR campaign. See the latest revelations from Climate Audit on the connection. Ex-Murdoch editors were hired to stage manage the "investigations" into the CRU's activities which, surprise, surprise found the CRU was up to all good. They earned their money. Needless to say, the investigations have been exposed as phony and fraudulent. But to this day, the Warmists claim that the CRU was vindicated.)
Thankfully, we still live in a relatively free society. Experienced and expert-in-field scientists have just plodded on, measuring things. As every day passes it becomes clearer that the "science" of global warming is a croc. First in line: sea levels--the black bane of climate alarmism. It has been used repeatedly to frighten little children and childish adults. "If we don't do something to combat carbon dioxide, we are all going to drown," has been the funereal dirge.
Moral: never let the facts get in the way of a good story. (A good story is defined as one which purveying snake-oilers can exploit to extract money.)
But facts are stubborn things. J. M. Keynes reportedly was once accosted because he had changed his opinions. He replied, "I base my opinions upon the facts. When the facts change, I change my opinions. What do you do, sir?" What indeed. Gradually more facts (as opposed to conjectures) are emerging about the climate. Here are some real data, from Australia (and New Zealand, and the United States).
Sea-level rises are slowing, tidal gauge records show
ONE of Australia's foremost experts on the relationship between climate change and sea levels has written a peer-reviewed paper concluding that rises in sea levels are "decelerating".
The analysis, by NSW principal coastal specialist Phil Watson, calls into question one of the key criteria for large-scale inundation around the Australian coast by 2100 -- the assumption of an accelerating rise in sea levels because of climate change.
Based on century-long tide gauge records at Fremantle, Western Australia (from 1897 to present), Auckland Harbour in New Zealand (1903 to present), Fort Denison in Sydney Harbour (1914 to present) and Pilot Station at Newcastle (1925 to present), the analysis finds there was a "consistent trend of weak deceleration" from 1940 to 2000.
Mr Watson's findings, published in the Journal of Coastal Research this year and now attracting broader attention, supports a similar analysis of long-term tide gauges in the US earlier this year. Both raise questions about the CSIRO's sea-level predictions.
Climate change researcher Howard Brady, at Macquarie University, said yesterday the recent research meant sea levels rises accepted by the CSIRO were "already dead in the water as having no sound basis in probability. In all cases, it is clear that sea-level rise, although occurring, has been decelerating for at least the last half of the 20th century, and so the present trend would only produce sea level rise of around 15cm for the 21st century."
Dr Brady said the divergence between the sea-level trends from models and sea-level trends from the tide gauge records was now so great "it is clear there is a serious problem with the models". In a nutshell, this factual information means the high sea-level rises used as precautionary guidelines by the CSIRO in recent years are in essence ridiculous," he said. During the 20th century, there was a measurable global average rise in mean sea level of about 17cm (plus or minus 5cm). . . .
Mr Watson's analysis of the four longest continuous Australian and New Zealand records is consistent with the findings of US researchers Robert Dean and James Houston, who analysed monthly averaged records for 57 tide gauges, covering periods of 60 to 156 years. The US research concluded there was "no evidence to support positive acceleration over the 20th century as suggested by the IPCC, global climate change models and some researchers". (Emphasis, ours)
Mr Watson cautioned in his research and again yesterday that studies of a small number of northern hemisphere records spanning two or three centuries had found a small acceleration in sea-level rises. He said it was possible the rises could be subject to "climate-induced impacts projected to occur over this century". Mr Watson's research finds that in the 1990s, when sea levels were attracting international attention, although the decadal rates of ocean rise were high, "they are not remarkable or unusual in the context of the historical record at each site over the 20th century".
"What we are seeing in all of the records is there are relatively high rates of sea-level rise evident post-1990, but those sorts of rates of rise have been witnessed at other times in the historical record," he said. "What remains unknown is whether or not these rates are going to persist into the future and indeed increase." He said further research was required, "to rationalise the difference between the acceleration trend evident in the global sea level time-series reconstructions (models) and the relatively consistent deceleration trend evident in the long-term Australasian tide gauge records".
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