Satellite Altimetry Shows Sea Level Rising At Less Than Two mm Per Year

Over the last five years, satellite altimetry shows average sea level rising at 1.96 mm/year. This number is likely too high, but is considerably lower than the 3.1-3.3 mm/year normally claimed.

http://sealevel.colorado.edu/current/sl_noib_global.txt

Note in the map below that the numbers are driven way up by a few areas (red) of likely erroneous data near the Philippines.

http://sealevel.colorado.edu/current/sl_noib.jpg

 

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81 Responses to Satellite Altimetry Shows Sea Level Rising At Less Than Two mm Per Year

  1. Global warming alarmists have taken the part of the graph in the box

    http://img97.imageshack.us/img97/1301/cusealevel20052010.png

    to alarm people about sea level. That is their technique. They look through various graphs and truncate out parts that “prove” their hysteria.

    • Joel Shore says:

      And, I presume that you have a cite to show us where they have done this?

      Furthermore, did you ever wonder if Steve is not himself truncating the full graph in a certain way? For example, I can take the same data that Steve is looking at but instead of plotting between the beginning of 2005 and now, I can plot between the beginning of 1999 and the end of 2009 and I can get a linear trend of 3.03 mm/yr. If I take periods of the same length as Steve’s (5 and 3/4 years) but end them in fall 2004 instead of fall 2010, I can get a trend of over 4 mm/yr. The point is simply that over short periods, the trend is uncertain because the data is noisy and you will get a trend that is strongly influenced by the level around the beginning and endpoints.

      As for Steve’s claim that the trend is strongly influenced by the behavior in certain regions where the sea level rise is much larger than average:

      (1) Are these regions really large enough to make a significant difference in the trend?

      (2) What about similar “blue” regions where the trend is much lower than average (in fact negative)? Are these regions also suspect or do we only suspect the regions where the trend is high?

  2. Mike Davis says:

    Natural weather patterns account for the changes in sea level that are shown on that display. It will require over 100 years of reliable satellite data to determine if sea levels are indeed changing. The errors that will have to be accounted for will mainly result from improved resolutions with advances in technology and that is evident in the sea ice records since 1979.

  3. Andy Weiss says:

    I would hope humanity would be adaptable enough to cope with a 2 mm per year sea level rise.

    • Mike Davis says:

      Humanity used to be able to cope with whatever weather patterns came along even when they did not have the technology we enjoy today.

  4. woodNfish says:

    I seriously doubt they have the kind of resolution to determine 2mm of anything. I am willing to bet they can’t pull that signal out of the noise, and this whole assumption is based on pure BS.

    • jim says:

      Totally agree.

    • Selwyn Firth says:

      I agree. Satellites are moving at high speeds unless they are geosunchronus. And the distance is hundreds of miles. which is 158,000,000 mm
      This means that the accuracy claimed is 2mm/ 158,000,000 mm which is 13 parts per billion. The tides vary twice a day every day and this requires significant computing to calculate exactly where the satellite is and what the tide should be there. The electronic noise would be much greater than that so they must be using some type of computer program to get the numbers. This is so much nonsense as to be really bad science on the part of NASA and the Universitys that work with them. It’s all about where the money comes from isn’t it? For climate science see http://bit.ly/caSrNc

  5. PJB says:

    Seems to me that the La Nina winds would tend to “pile up” water in the area of the Phillipines so those recent values are more than reasonable, given the strength of this latest La Nina.

  6. P Gosselin says:

    You have to send this news to Stefan Rahmstorf. You see, he’s extremely worried that sea levels are going to rise by 1.8 meters by the ned of the century. This can help to calm him down and alleviate his fears.

    • Mike Davis says:

      I do not think anything will calm him down. It seems he lives on running around crying the SKY IS FALLING like the others in the Chicken Little Brigade. You need to remember he is one of the founding fathers of Surrealclimate!

  7. SMS says:

    When you substract out the almost 1 mm/yr of water coming from borehole pumpage, that doesn’t leave much for glacial melt and expansion.

    “Not much warming folks, no need to get excited, go back to your seats and enjoy the rest of the show”.

    Pssst……………you won’t see anyone shutting off the 1/4 mile rainbirds either. It might harm the ethanol industry.

  8. hstad says:

    I’m trying to understand how satellites can be so accurate, 1.96mm increase, despite all the changes of the planet and solar system?

    • I don’t think they can.

      • Gator says:

        Hey Steven! I was a Remote Sensing student 25 years ago and have followed the science. I’m with you on this, the accuracy is good on these satellites, but not that good. They really need to emphasize the range of error, I’m guessing it’s around 2 mm.

        Of course another possibility is as you pointed out above, a few bad readings (think UHI) that skew the measurements. There is just too much uncertainty to convince me of any significant rise at all.

  9. Denis Ables says:

    I suspect that a reading of “less than 2mm” is just another way of saying there is no detectable sea level change.

    I’d be interested in how satellite readings arrive at a sea level change so small. There’s got to be some serious noise in the data, given the sizable waves and swells driven by wind (not to mention the moon), and what about tectonics ?

    We’re near the Chesapeake Bay, not far from the mouth of the Rappahannock River. Last year during Ernesto the “sea level” was 5 foot above the mean high tide for a few days.

  10. BT Harley says:

    As a former fisherman who watched tides very closely over the past 25 years, in an area with up to 10.2M of movement twice daily, tides 20 years ago were 10cm higher than today. This area shows an increase on your map, if this was true, the business centre of Broome in NW Australia would now be underwater during spring tides.
    Parts of town were briefly underwater in the early 20th century, during king tides twice a year, as shown in photos found at the local museum. Patrons at the local outdoor picture theatre can be seen wading out from the entrance at high tide prior to 1920. The theatre is still in use today.

  11. BT Harley says:

    YouTube – King Tides Broome

    High tides used to regularly flood the Chinatown area of Broome in Western Australia. They are still a spectacular sight, especially at Streeters Jetty once used by the pearl …

  12. Brian G Valentine says:

    Note carefully that this sea level “rise” is not in the margin of error of the measurements (which is at least 4 or 5 mm over the course of a year)

  13. A great post! The hysteria about rising sea levels IMO is an important part of the AGW propaganda, as it’s a tangible threat. People can imagine the results. C02 and even temps lack the impact.

  14. Sense Seeker says:

    Cherry-picking again. Just looking at the last 5 years is simply misleading. You have to look at the full picture, which is shown on the main page of the project. There it says: Rate: 3.1 +/- 0.4 mm/yr.

    • Right, it is accelerating non-linearly and slowing down – simultaneously.

    • StuartMcL says:

      The thing that I find interesting about http://sealevel.colorado.edu/ is that you only get 3.1 mm/yr by splicing two sets of records from different sources. If you take the current measurement method since its inception (Jason), you get less than 2.5 mm/yr.

      • Mike Davis says:

        The results from JASON have now been adjusted using the proper Al-Gore-Rhythm. It will take more than 100 years of records from that source to determine if a trend exists. The methods used before showed anything from lowering slightly to rising dramatically. Whatever claims you might have heard about possible future sea levels the opposite is also possible. If Brother Al claims there is evidence the sea level will rise by 8 meters you can bet there is also evidence showing a lowering of 8 meters is also possible as it is just as likely that the ice cover will increase as it is that it will decrease and thermal expansion goes both ways.
        We know about ocean atmosphere cycles that last 60+ years so we would need two of those cycles in a region to determine what might be going on in that region. Then where we are in longer term global climate patterns would need to be determined, such as the Glacial / Interglacial cycle that we are on the down slope towards the next maximum glaciation in about 70 or 80 thousand years according to geological records.

  15. Pingback: Global Sea Level rise appears to be slowing | Future Historic

  16. paintitblack says:

    What does “No IB correction applied” mean and does it affect the results?

  17. Joel Shore says:

    For those worrying about the margin of error: You don’t have to be able to measure to an accuracy of better than 3 mm to determine a trend of 3mm/yr if you measure over a long enough period of time. The data they have from TOPEX and Jason combined goes back 17 years now, over which time the sea level has increased by close to 55 mm.

    And, yes, they do worry about margin of error ,so their quoted rate is 3. 1 +/- 0.4 mm/yr over that 17 year time period. Given that, you would be correct to worry that the margin of error for what Steve shows (about 1/3) of the data would be quite high.

    • Mike Davis says:

      17 years of sea level data!!!! WOW that is such a long time compared to the current Holocene period that is in its waning years!
      Combining two separate methods of measuring sea level is also very impressive. Maybe you should combine them with the extremely accurate data from carefully selected tide gauges around the world to come up with a much longer period. Be really careful because if you pick the wrong ones you get a much different answer.

    • Brian G Valentine says:

      Joel, let’s face it. If a 2mm rise were true and systematic, then over a 10 year period, this would account for 20mm rise, which would be quite apparent to builders and maintainers of dikes, sea walls, etc, which have existed over decades. Nothing like this has been observed.

  18. barry says:

    Maybe you should combine them with the extremely accurate data from carefully selected tide gauges around the world to come up with a much longer period.

    You’re probably aware this has been done by many different groups. Here’s one.

    http://www.cmar.csiro.au/sealevel/sl_hist_few_hundred.html

    Data from 2005 – 2010? You won’t learn anything about a climate trend with that short a time-frame. Same with global temperature, sea ice, etc.

  19. barry says:

    Brian, a 2 centimetre rise over 10 years would not be so apparent to maintainers of sea walls, or, if observed, would not yet outweigh more immediate concerns like wall maintenance (crumbling and undermining) and lateral extension. Sea walls are built to fend off storm surges and are typically a few metres higher than sea level even at high tide. One-in-100 year storms can overflood sea walls. And sea-level change is different, even in sign, around the world. Global sea level change is an average.

    Nevertheless, sea walls are being proposed for low-lying islands around the world as their coasts become eroded by rising sea levels (Tuvalu and Kiribati, for example).

    Here is a comprehensive Australian Bureau of Meteorology study, comparing tide gauges old and new, satellite altimetry and vertical land movement finds sea level rates rising faster than the IPCC mean for Southern Pacific islands (caveat below).

    http://www.bom.gov.au/ntc/IDO60033/IDO60033.2007.pdf

    This report covers a wide area, but is focused on Tuvalu, which is an interesting object lesson in how the issue of sea-level rise and adaption (like sea walls) is not simple. Sea walls have already been erected or rebuilt/built up to stem the rising waters. But not all the sea walls have been effective, and they can interfere with coastline ecology – which becomes important if your livelihood is made right on the coast, as is the case with much of the Tuvaluan population. In fact, the primary environmental concern with sea walls from greenies is their ecological impact – they often protest their construction. Irony, eh?

    Between 1993 and 1999 the average sea level rise in Tuvalu was 22mm a year, which was rather confounded by a 36mm drop during the el Nino even 1997/1998. The rate from 1993 to 2007 – the longest period of reliable data at the time of the above report – is ~5.3mm a year*. The point I want to make here is that interannual variability swamps trends when we’re speaking in terms of one or even two decades. Sea level rise is not monotonic year-to-year or even bidecadally.

    The caveat then – even this period (13 years) is too short a time-frame to get reliable results for sea level changes as a function of climate change. But locals, whose livelihood is sea bound, are saying that the waters are rising, and their governments are either considering or implementing sea wall projects already based on sea level rise. As one might expect, sea-wall planning is occurring in places where sea level rise is happening fastest – fast enough to notice it.

    * There is a John Daly article out in the skeptiverse on Tuvalu (which has spawned others), positing a negative sea level change for Tuvalu. It was flawed to begin with, but the main problem with it, in hindsight, was that it was published 2000/2001, right after the el Nino event that caused the sea level to plummet around Tuvalu. It’s now well out of date, but I thought I’d head that one off early. It usually gets a mention when Tuvalu is discussed – a subject I’ve been interested in for some years.

    • Brian G Valentine says:

      I’m not convinced that a lot of this “consideration” isn’t a response to “alarmism” and not a response to “reality.”

      Unfortunately, places like Tuvalu have been poster children for alarmists, so of course they are going to be “concerned.”

    • Mike Davis says:

      Barry:
      Thank you for proving my point about carefully picking your years and locations to get the desired results.
      Over a 5 or 6 thousand year time scale you would find the sea levels are doing just fine and they do have a tendency to fluctuate. Using less than 500 years in any region is a fool’s game that you seem to have fallen into because the errors in procedures are greater than the results. The current accuracy s somewhere close to 1 meter + or – over a 50 year period near the Equator and it grows as you move towards the poles.
      Global sea level average is a joke and tends to lead people down blind alleys. You proved my point on that one also!

      • Mike Davis says:

        The term hundred year events is a misnomer based on average events over a preselected period of time usually shorter than 100 years and extrapolated to claim ten year, 50 year, hundred year, 500 year and thousand year events. It was something that sounded plausible and made to make pronouncers sound as they knew what they are talking about. A 100 year event can happen every year or even a few times during one year with certain types of weather patterns affecting that region.

  20. barry says:

    Unfortunately, places like Tuvalu have been poster children for alarmists, so of course they are going to be “concerned.”

    Tuvaluan fishermen are not concerned about being a poster children. They point to where their houses used to be, the shoreline, and they suffer real consequences when storm surge reaches their water supply. Long-lived residents have seen their their atolls eroded. While the scientific understanding of sea level rise is problematic owing to too little data, what there is backs up local experience.

    I’m not convinced

    Doubt is a good starting point. There’s plenty of material on the net to learn about it.

    On the way, you should be able to at least pick up that 7 years of data – the data period for the top post – is insufficient to draw any kind of conclusion about climate trends. If you apply your doubt evenly, you’ll recognize that this kind of short-term cherry-picking is very unconvincing, to say the least.

    • Sea level has risen 130 meters in the last 15,000 years. These islands used to grow – until the human residents interfered.

    • Mike Davis says:

      The primary problem on the islands and atolls of Tuvala is the population and the fishermen you talk about are a major contributor to their own problems.
      If the island can not self sustain the population level the islands will disappear. Overpopulation in the region is the problem not long term weather.

    • Brian G Valentine says:

      From what I understand, people commonly built near the shore and periodically had to move inland despite Government warnings not to build dwellings near the shore. I’m not so sure the Government warns them in such a way anymore if it is convenient to have problems near the shore.

      Alarmists always have any out anyway, don’t they? Water vapor “Feedback” has to come from someplace, so if seas don’t appear to rise they can always claim that it “went into the air.”

      Rainfall patterns unfortunately don’t support this, and to all appearances the water content of the atmosphere seems to be and have remained a constant to within a couple of days maybe for as long as rain has been recorded.

      This AGW stuff is nuts, when it was fashionable back in the 1920’s and 30’s reliable institutions such as the Royal Society stopped the crank alarm from spreading. The only difference nowadays is they are part of the problem

  21. barry says:

    Sea level has risen 130 meters in the last 15,000 years. These islands used to grow – until the human residents interfered.

    Again, that’s not the whole story.

    Sea levels rose dramatically over ~6000 years, beginning a steep rise about 15000 years ago, then leveling off 8-9000 years ago. 90% of the altitude difference occurred more than 10,000 years ago, as the great ice sheets melted and the last quaternary ice age ended. global average sea levels changed little for the last 8000 years. Last century the rate was about ~1.7mm/yr. It appears this rate has almost doubled in the last 30 years.

    These islands used to grow – until the human residents interfered.

    I have no idea what you’re talking about. The sea-caused erosion of atolls around the Pacific (and specifically Tuvalu) is well-documented. The best available data supports that. If you’re saying that sea level rise is caused by humans (rasing the global temperature via CO2), well, there seems to be a fairly good case for that. But I don’t know where you’re getting the idea that the islands ‘used to’ grow. Each has its own tectonic activity. Some are rising, some are falling – this is monitored as part of sea level analysis. Human activity has no effect on tectonic plate movement, to my knowledge.

    The primary problem on the islands and atolls of Tuvala is the population

    Of course, sea level change is not the only/i> issue on Tuvalu, but population size there has no impact on sea level.

    A good place to start for scientific data is the Australian Bureau of Meteorology. The University of Hawaii has some old tide gauges for Tuvalu (and other Pacific islands), but the records have long gaps, and their monitoring stations weren’t designed for long-term analysis. It’s not hard to find a lot of anecdotal information from locals on the net.

    I’m happy to provide links, but only if there’s real interest.

  22. barry says:

    Here, at least, is a graph of sea level rise over the last 20,000 years. There’s no controversy on the general understanding (short term fluctuations, particularly early pulses, are still being investigated).

    • Mike Davis says:

      Over the last 10,000 years the sea levels have only been stable if you use the proper smoothing method. In spite of your displayed ignorance Coral islands grow and have been growing for MILLIONS of years. Coral appears to be rather robust in adapting to all but malicious damage caused by the inhabitants. People living on Coral atolls are destroying the environment and killing off the Coral along with the other species that live among the coral reefs, islands, and atolls. As long as humans continue to live in that region destruction of that biosphere will be the only result!
      The solution for the problem is to depopulate the islands by moving or birth control.

  23. barry says:

    If coral reefs didn’t grow as sea level rises, there obviously wouldn’t be any coral reefs. They would all be drowned under 130 metres of water.

    Coral grows beneath the waterline. The coral at risk on the Tuvaluan atoll is above the waterline – it’s dead. If sea level rises slowly and the temperature is not too warm (or cool), coral can form. If seas rise at a *rapid* rate, storm surge wears away the atolls that usually lie above the waterline. As it spends most of the time above water, the coral doesn’t replenish.

    It isn’t as simple as you think. For example, if the seas have been constantly rising, then how come there is dead coral inland? (Virtually all corals are no more than 10,000 years old – the earliest formed when the waters rose and warmed after the end of the last ice age) Some time in the last 8000 years, sea level dropped a meter or so around Tuvalu.

    The locals have seen the atolls eroding in the last 10 – 15 years – just when, it appears, the sea level has risen most rapidly. And they’ve moved their houses inland and built their own sea walls/breakwaters. The sea has risen in their lifetimes, and is currently higher – on a consistent basis – than they know of.

    As it often is, the issue is not just change, but the rate of change.

  24. barry says:

    “Virtually all corals”

    That should be ‘virtually all living corals’ are no more than 10,000 years old. There’s plenty of dead coral in the fossil record.

  25. barry says:

    Coral reefs and atolls track sea level

    That’s a part of the story, highly generalized. There’s deep water coral, too, but it’s rarer. But it’s a fact that inland coral is worn away by storm surge. This is what’s been happening at Tuvalu lately. Their underwater coral is growing where it is submerged.

    • Mike Davis says:

      Barry:
      Just keep on sharing your ignorance with all the readers on this site. PLEASE!
      You provide half of reality by claiming erosion is the natural condition when sea levels rise. Sea levels rising and storm surges deposit additional sand to maintain a balanced height for the islands until humans come along and do destructive things like build sea walls or dredge sand to use as building materials.
      Without human intervention the Atolls would remain healthy and vary with natural events. Sometimes they would be above water and sometimes below. They are not a stable land base for human habitation. 90% or more of all islands in the tropics should not be inhabited by humans.

      • Brian G Valentine says:

        There isn’t a danged thing in the world you can say to stop the Barrys of the world from yelling that people going to drown next week or next year at the latest if civilization isn’t brought to a screeching halt right now.

        About all the Barrys can do is visit other web sites where they all share the same views and fuel each other’s paranoia. It’s a sickening habit, but believe it or not it’s a lot of people’s idea of entertainment

      • Mike Davis says:

        They still have a long way to go to reach the entertainment value of people like Steven King or Terry Brooks but they are trying to imitate the better fantasy writers!
        They can not even come up to the quality of the Brothers Grimm or Aesop.

  26. barry says:

    But the coral is only one issue. Salt-water pollution of inland fresh water (most Tuvaluans now drink rain water), crop contamination from salt-water, tree-felling from coastal erosion and higher water marks making people move house. Many are considering moving away.

    There are, of course issues with sewerage disposal, which oversaturates submerged coral, slowing its growth, and coastal erosion from human activity. It’s not one or the other, though. There is also the problem of rising sea temperatures – coral grows in a very narrow range temperature, and within a narrow PH band. I’ve seen the bleaching at the Great Barrier Reef for myself (I’m a diver in my spare time). The waters at Tuvalu are pretty constant all year round.

    We got on to this because someone upthread said that sea walls are not being planned because of observed sea level rise. while that’s true for much of the coastal world, it is not for some specific locations.

    And none of this really covers the statistical flaw in your top post, Steve G. You don’t have enough data to say anything about sea level trends as a function of climate. The 3.2mm/yr figure is based on data since 1992/3. Even that’s too short, but then the institutes that publish them (B of M, Uni Colorado etc) also publish the error bounds. If you published the error bounds for your much shorter period, they’d be much wider, and much less certain.

    • 3.2 mm is bogus. Tide gauge data doesn’t support it.

    • Mike Davis says:

      Thanks Barry:
      You gave supporting evidence with everything but your false claims about human induced climate change. Of course the water temperature has been fairly constant for the entire history of the coral! RIGHT YOU ARE! There is a piece of land on the continent of Antarctica waiting for you. If you move now you can beat the land rush and pick the best spot 45 meters above sea level for your ocean front property!
      By the way the islanders have always relied on rain water for their fresh water and they have always had a problem with salt water destroying their crops. Long term weather patterns tend to be cyclic with about 60 years periodicity. There are also much longer patterns that are observed in the historical records that show living within 2 meters of sea level is asking for a disaster to befall you. It is actually worse than living in a flood plain because there is little or no warning before the next major disaster strikes. Or are you going to claim tsunamis are caused by human activities? Rogue waves?
      The primary weather limiting factor for coral is cold water temperatures.

    • Thon Brocket says:

      Salt-water pollution of inland fresh water (most Tuvaluans now drink rain water),

      Barry, I’m unconvinced that insalination of ground water can be blamed on a sea-level rise of a few inches in a generation. A coral island is porous, like a sponge. In our context, that is, excluding earthquakes and such, it doesn’t move up or down, more or less as you’d expect. But because it’s porous, it contains groundwater. Mostly seawater – obviously – but also fresh water that falls as rain and percolates into the ground. Because it’s not an open body of water, but instead contained in the coral / sandstone “sponge”, and because it’s less dense than seawater, this fresh water forms a “lens” with a definite boundary above the seawater, so that you can dig a well and abstract fresh water from several meters below sea level. That, if you like, is the “state of nature”.

      But what happens if you start to pump out fresh groundwater faster than it can rain back in? Remember, there’s no other source of fresh water. Why, the freshwater lens grows smaller, and the fresh-salt boundary rises. When it gets as high as the bottom of the well, you’re pumping salt water. This would happen even if sea-level were rapidly falling, say with the onset of a new Ice Age. It has almost nothing to do with sea-level changes, and whether or not they’re happening.

      Many are considering moving away.

      Of course they are. Tuvalu’s an impoverished, overpopulated fly-strip with no economic future; but all Western nations are leery of third-world immigrants, and that makes the AGW pity-party an entirely rational strategy for the Tuvaluans.

  27. glacierman says:

    Barry said

    “Salt-water pollution of inland fresh water (most Tuvaluans now drink rain water), crop contamination from salt-water, tree-felling from coastal erosion and higher water marks making people move house.”

    “There are, of course issues with sewerage disposal, which oversaturates submerged coral, slowing its growth, and coastal erosion from human activity.”

    Your house is made of straw, none of these have anything to do with CO2 emissions causing sea level rise.

    “You don’t have enough data to say anything about sea level trends as a function of climate. ” That was not claimed. Another straw man?

  28. barry says:

    You provide half of reality by claiming erosion is the natural condition when sea levels rise.

    Nope, you’re inventing an argument and calling it mine.

    Storm surges can deposit sand. They can also drag it away. They can pull soil into the sea and deposit it against inland coral. They can introduce sea-water to fresh water supplies. They can drag belongings and people out to sea and undermine coastal housing. They can wash up treasure. The higher the watermark, the further inland the encroachment.

    They do lots of things, good and bad, but if you want to talk about Tuvalu, you should read up on it. Coastal topology and ecology is different everywhere. One size does not fit all, how ever convenient it may be to imagine otherwise.

    • Mike Davis says:

      All good reasons that coral islands are not meant to be inhabited by humans!
      The second major cause of island life destruction is tourism by SCUBA divers. That should be restricted heavily!

  29. barry says:

    Your house is made of straw, none of these have anything to do with CO2 emissions causing sea level rise.

    Neither was the top post. Perhaps you’re in the wrong thread?

    • glacierman says:

      I never said it was in the top post, I was reacting to your posts about how sea level rise is destroying this island.

      • barry says:

        I’m not interested (in this thread) in linking CO2 emissions and sea level rise. But I’m easily led astray, reading back on the conversation. I brought up Tuvalu in response to someone making a claim about planning for sea walls, which was definitely not the topic of the top post.

    • Brian G Valentine says:

      Does the author of the top post of want to make such a connection?

      Or does Barry?

      I think it’s reasonable to say, “there’s no observable relation right now between CO2 in the air and sea level rise and some people have predicted there would be an observable relation by this time.”

      • barry says:

        some people have predicted there would be an observable relation by this time

        Who?

        (For the record, I didn’t introduce this topic, either)

  30. barry says:

    “You don’t have enough data to say anything about sea level trends as a function of climate. ” That was not claimed.

    No, but it is implied by the nature of this blog.

    However, I could have stuck strictly to what was presented, in which case the rebuttal is simpler. Eg,

    Goddard uses a different time frame to his source – less than 30% of the data, in fact. That’s why the results are different (the variability dominates the trend). His trend is also less statistically significant than the source.

  31. barry says:

    Does the author of the top post of want to make such a connection?

    Or does Barry?

    glacierman first mentioned CO2 link. I’m not biting.

  32. Brian G Valentine says:

    For no particular reason, I think I’ll rant to make myself feel a little better right now

    “I think AGW is a stinking pile of SH*T and the worst idea that has hit “civilization” in two hindered years!!!!!”

    I feel a little better, but not much

    • Mike Davis says:

      Brian:
      Your math may a bit off or your spelling I believe the number of HINDERED years is more like 5 or 6 HUNDRED. The two years is to short of a period to make a statistical analysis of this type! 😉 As far as AGW it is probably closer to 30 to 40 years of Hindered scientific research by the promoters.

      • Brian G Valentine says:

        Thanks. I did see that but cannot edit after sending.

        This discussion lapsed into a parody of a “Who’s on first?” routine.

        I didn’t say that you did no then why did you bring it up no you did not me so why bring it up now no you’re the one bringing it up I never said I brought it up what are you claiming that for …

      • Mike Davis says:

        I brought it up because I interpreted what you said as being what I responded to. if you think I misinterpreted your meaning then you need to find a better Ghost Writer for your comments so they can be properly be interpreted. My Interpretation has been proven in the past to be correct and it is based on the current scientific consensus by the leading consensus researchers based on the best Pathological practices. 😉

  33. Brian G Valentine says:

    Sorry, I’m the one who brought it up.

    I did it just to spite Barry.

    And Joel Shore, too.

    I *love* to heckle and then blame other people for heckling.

    It’s part of my spiteful nature.

    So is my “denialism.”

  34. Mike Davis says:

    Here I thought you were attempting to have a reasonable conversation with Barry! 😉 I observed no Heckleing outside of that promoted on the “Best” climatologist Web Sites such as Airhead and Surrealclimate and well within bounds of CLB skyis falling progressives are us web site! I think Joey Boy uses a different name, but the name he uses would be an Oxymoron if applied to what he produces. That is also the problem with the site GAV leads. Surreal seems a better fit.
    I am just a kind and gentle person who just wants to get along with everyone!!!!!! 😉

    • Mike Davis says:

      Cantankerous Old FART is probably a better descriptor!

    • Brian G Valentine says:

      Well, if you want to me Mister Nice Guy, that’s you’re business.

      All I know about “getting along” with people I learned from the author of “How to lose friends and alienate people,” written by that well- known Wascally Wabbit. Here are some tips:

      – Mock people for things they didn’t say

      – Mock people (without evidence) for not knowing things that were never part of the discussion

      – Abuse anybody in serial columns who dares to call you by your correct name, instead of Wascally Wabbit

      – Abuse anybody who dares to ask for some “evidence” for things Wascally claims

  35. barry says:

    Merry Christmas.

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