Letter below received by email. The author, Professor Dr. Nils-Axel Moerner, is a leading world authority on sea levels and coastal erosion who headed the Department of Paleogeophysics & Geodynamics at Stockholm University
Open Letter to President Mohamed Nasheed of the Maldives
Mr. President,
You have recently held an undersea Cabinet meeting to raise awareness of the idea that global sea level is rising and hence threatens to drown the Maldives. This proposition is not founded in observational facts and true scientific judgements, Accordingly it is incorrect. Therefore, I am most surprised at your action and must protest to its intended message.
In 2001, when our research group found overwhelming evidence that sea level was by no means in a rising mode in the Maldives, but had remained quite stable for the last 30 years, I thought it would not be respectful to the fine people of the Maldives if I were to return home and present our results in international fora. Therefore, I announced this happy news during an interview for your local TV station. However, your predecessor as president censored and stopped the broadcast.
When you became president, I was hoping both for democracy and for dialogue. However, I have written to you twice without reply. Your people ought not to have to suffer a constant claim that there is no future for them on their own islands. This terrible message is deeply inappropriate, since it is founded not upon reality but upon an imported concept, which lacks scientific justification and is thus untenable. There is simply no rational basis for it.
Let me summarize a few facts (see Fig. 1, and evidence presented in M”rner, 2007):
(1) In the last 2000 years, sea level has oscillated with 5 peaks reaching 0.6 to 1.2 m above the present sea level.
(2) From 1790 to 1970 sea level was about 20 cm higher than today.
(3) In the 1970s, sea level fell by about 20 cm to its present level.
(4) Sea level has remained stable for the last 30 years, implying that there are no traces of any alarming on-going sea level rise.
(5) Therefore, we are able to free the Maldives (and the rest of low-lying coasts and island around the globe) from the condemnation of becoming flooded in the near future.
When I was president for the INQUA commission on Sea Level Changes and Coastal Evolution (1999-2003), we spent much effort on the question of present-to-future sea level changes. After intensive field studies, deliberation within the commission and discussions at five international meeting, we agreed on a "best estimate" for possible sea level changes by the year 2100. Our figure was +10 cm ñ10 cm. This figure was later revised at +5 cm ñ15 cm (as given in Fig. 1).
Such changes would imply small to negligible effects. From our sea level curve in Fig. 1, we can directly see that such a small rise would pose no threat for the Maldives. Rather, it would be a natural return to the conditions existing from 1790 to 1970; i.e. to the position before the sea level fall in the 1970s.
The same non-rising sea level story is recorded for all other areas claimed to be under a flooding already in progress; viz. Tuvalu, Vanuatu and Venice (Moerner, 2007b).
Besides, the proposed global trend derived from satellite altimetry has been tampered by a "personal correction" in order to create a rising trend (Moerner, 2008), actually not measured..
Thermal expansion of the water column may affect the ocean level by some centimetres to a decimetre. At the shore, however, the effect is zero (Moerner, 2000, 2005a, 2009a).
So, Mr. President, when you ignore to face available observational facts, refuse a normal democratic dialogue, and continue to menace your people with the imaginary threat of a disastrous flooding already in progress, I think you are doing a serious mistake.
Let us be constructive. Let us discuss available observational facts. Let us continue and extend our sea level project to new sites in the huge Maldivian atoll archipelago. And let us, for Heaven's sake, lift the terrible psychological burden that you and your predecessor have placed upon the shoulders of all people in the Maldives, who are now living with the imagined threat that flooding will soon drive them from their homes, a wholly false notion that is nothing but an armchair fiction artificially constructed by mere computer modelling constantly proven wrong by meticulous real-world observations.
Your cabinet meeting under the water is nothing but a misdirected gimmick or PR stunt. Al Gore is a master in such cheap techniques. But such misconduct is dishonest, unproductive and certainly most un-scientific.
Stockholm, Sweden, October 20, 2009 Nils-Axel Moerner Head of Paleogeophysics & Geodynamics at Stockholm University, Sweden (1991-2005) President of the INQUA Commission on Sea Level Changes and Coastal Evolution (1999-2003) Leader of the Maldives Sea Level Project (2000 on) Chairman of the INTAS project on Geomagnetism and Climate (1997-2003) Awarded the Golden Condrite of Merit from Algarve University (2008) "for his irreverence and contribution to our understanding of sea level change"
COOLING, WARMING AND THE TRACK RECORD OF CLIMATE MODELS
An email from Norm Kalmanovitch [kalhnd@shaw.ca]
The pollution resulting from the rapid uncontrolled post war industrial expansion spawned two environmentalist movements. One group primarily composed of physical scientists and engineers set about to directly address the pollution problems by developing facilities and legislative controls that have to date virtually eliminated industrial contamination of soil, water and air.
A second group primarily composed of activists with little or no physical science background did nothing but protest against industry without ever having addressed a single environmental problem for which they created a solution.
While the physical scientists and engineers worked quietly with industry solving the environmental problems, the ideology driven environmentalist activists, used dramatic alarmist rhetoric to gain media control and have become a dominant political force capable of forcing their self serving ideologies on the general public with impunity.
The Earth entered a cooling phase in 1942, and by 1970 the environmentalists found a way to blame this cooling on industrial expansion. The concept was that particulate matter from fossil fuel usage was blocking energy from the sun giving this cooling effect. This concept was incorporated as a parameter in the crude climate models of the time, and the predictions from models run by James Hansen in 1971 projected fifty years of further cooling from the increased use of fossil fuels.
Only four years later, and in spite of the continued increase in fossil fuel usage global cooling came to an end, proving that the models did not have a proper physical basis for relating fossil fuel usage to global cooling.
By 1988, after 13 years of global warming the ideological environmentalists developed a new tact for blaming fossil fuels. The British Government had embarked on a political campaign to promote their nuclear industry and attack the powerful coal unions by creating alarmist scenarios of "runaway global warming" resulting from CO2 produced by coal and other fossil fuels. This was entirely political in nature with absolutely no scientific backing, but it did make the perfect weapon for the environmentalists to promote their anti energy (and anti humanity) ideology. All that was needed was some scientific justification.
As was done in 1971, climate models which were now far more sophisticated provided the science backing. Instead of blaming fossil fuels for blocking incoming solar radiation, the models removed this parameter and replaced it with a newly contrived parameter that now related global warming to the effect of fossil fuel sourced CO2 on the outgoing thermal radiation from the Earth.
This model also produced by James Hansen, projected warming for the next century because of the fossil fuel CO2 emissions that were increasing at a continued accelerated rate. As with the 1971 model, the 1988 model was proven to be false when global warming ended after 1998 even as CO2 emissions continued to rise at unprecedented rates. To make matters worse since 2002, the Earth has been cooling making all of the projections clearly in the wrong direction.
By even the most basic standards of ethical science, models that first predict cooling from fossil fuel usage that are discredited just four years later when warming occurs with increased usage, and then predict warming from fossil fuel usage and are again discredited ten years later as cooling reoccurs with increased usage, would be declared absolutely invalid; but when ideology is involved science protocol is totally abandoned.
As a result of the alarmist predictions of the 1988 climate models of Hansen, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was formed under the auspices of the United Nations. This body was given a science mandate to investigate the possibility of human effects on climate to determine if the projections of Hansen were valid.
The true nature of the IPCC was not that of a science based body, but that of a political body to give scientific legitimacy to false alarmist predictions in order to meet a political self serving environmentalist agenda. Since its inception, the IPCC has used its position of authority to promote its agenda to the detriment of science and even more importantly to the detriment of the global population.
From 1997 to 1998 the average global temperature increased by over half a degree C and from 1998 to 1999 the average global temperature fell by over half a degree C. This was due to an extraordinary el Niño and has nothing to do with either the greenhouse effect or CO2 emissions (CO2 emissions increased from 24.0gt/y in 1997 to 24.2gt/y in 1998 to 24.4gt/y in 1999).
An honest scientific body would have made some sort of statement to this effect, but the IPCC in their 2001 Third Assessment Report and particularly in their Summary for Policy Makers for this report not only made no mention of the fact that from 1998 to 1999 the Earth cooled more than it had ever cooled during the entire global temperature record, but emphatically stated that from 1997 to 1998 the Earth had warmed more than it ever had.
This is an absolute violation of science ethics because the policy makers were purposely misinformed with alarmist rhetoric. This same 2001 report also stated that the observed global warming for the past century which they stated was attributable to CO2 emissions was measured at 0.60°C + 0.20°C. This is only 0.006°C per year making the el Niño temperature spike over eighty times greater than what the IPCC stated was attributable to CO2 emissions, so it is clear that this was stated for the purpose of politically motivated alarmism and not to properly convey information in a scientifically justified manner.
The 2001 IPCC report also included the infamous MBH98 “Hockey Stick” temperature proxy which used physical temperature measurement data up to and including 1998 which gave the alarmist impression of twice the 20th century warming because 1999 was not included.
The Hockey Stick graph became the pivotal evidence that convinced governments around the world to ratify the Kyoto Protocol, that has resulted in such detrimental effects to the global population and global economy.
In this regard the el Niño temperature spike of 1998 may be considered the most significant climate event in recent history, and when one considers the hundreds of millions of the world’s poorest people starving because of Kyoto biofuel initiatives that has literally taken their food away and made it into “Kyoto friendly” fuel, this el Niño might also be considered the most tragic climate event as well.
Through diligence and hard work physical scientists were able to correct most of the environmental problems that had been created through industrialization, but there is no scientific effort capable of undoing the damage caused to the global population by the ideological environmentalists. This issue is now out of the hands of the scientists and the only salvation for the global population is the media who must readopt their lost journalistic integrity and expose the true nature of this global fraud.
This link to a 1999 article is very enlightening
CARBON CREDITS FOR HAVING ONE CHILD: AN ALTERNATIVE SUGGESTION
An email from James Rust [jrust@bellsouth.net]
Recently New York Times Environment Reporter Andrew Revkin floated the idea of reducing the world's carbon footprint by giving carbon credits to families that have only one child. "Should--probably the single most concrete and substantial thing an American, young American, could do to lower our carbon footprint is not turning off the lights or driving a Prius, its having few kids, having fewer children," said Revkin. So shouldn't a one child family get credit as opposed to having two or three children.
To be fair to reporter Revkin, these remarks are ideas for discussion; he is not endorsing the idea.
Isn't this a great idea for America! America is the most productive nation in the world and already has a no growth birthrate among its educated population. In a few centuries, with one child families America could be removed as a leading, productive nation in the world.
I believe those on both sides of the anthropogenic global warming issue are honorable and have best interests of the world as their motivation. Those claiming increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide has a negligible influence on climate want a more prosperous world with abundant, affordable energy. Those wanting to reduce use of fossil fuels by 80-90 percent in the next forty years will necessarily have a population with reduced standard of living.
So keeping the best interests of the world in mind, one could float the idea of providing a financial reward for climate alarmists who have a vasectomy. This is just an idea for discussion; I am not endorsing the idea.
I think Rusty Jim is a bit too kind above. I think that the Warmists are motivated by a need for personal publicity rather than genuine concern for anything -- JR
British government in the scare business
The Advertising Standards Authority will investigate the Government's £6m TV spine-tingler designed to change our behaviour. 357 complaints have been made to the ASA, a self-regulatory body.
The first tasteless ad features a girl watching a cartoon dog drown, engulfed by a flood - with the advice that only by reducing "everyday things like keeping houses warm and driving cars" can we avert a watery fate for our pets, our children's pets, and our children's pets' children:
Most complaints focus on the fact that it is too terrifying - while others have complained that the scientific evidence doesn't justify the nightmare portrayed, albeit in cartoon form.
Ministers haven't helped in their statements defending the taxpayer-funded ad splurge. Minister Joan Ruddock claimed: "It is consistent with government policy on the issue, which is informed by the latest science and assessments of peer-reviewed, scientific literature made by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), and other international bodies."
But that's not quite true.
In 2007 the IPCC released six scenarios generated from computer models. They projected rises of ranging from 0.18m - 0.38m to 0.26m - 0.58m, depending on how much the climate were to warm. That's barely enough to drown a kitten.
So if it's not rising sea levels, perhaps it's storm surges?
Alas, that's not borne out by the evidence. Southern Hemisphere cyclone energy has fallen to a 30-year low, and the long-term trend shows no significant increase in major hurricane activity, despite a warming period from the mid 1970s to 2000.
Barely a day passes without the climate refusing to conform to the models, and specifically the nightmare predictions they can generate with a crank of a handle. Just yesterday, we reported, dramatic ice loss reported in the Antarctic in 2007 turns out to have been overestimated.
Certainly, there's nothing that remotely justifies the dramatic cartoon disaster. Behaviour change has become an imperative with its own momentum. Much of it depends on huge sums being thrown at the advertising "industry", which is unlikely to bite the hand that feeds it. Think of it as a green jobs bonanza (at your expense).
Maybe Ruddock is thinking of Peerages, rather than Peer Review.
SOURCE
British government climate change figures 'are misleading'
A typical British "fudge". Nobody in the know believes British official statistics any more. They would do Stalin proud
The Government has been accused of exaggerating Britain’s success in fighting climate change by presenting “misleading” figures on carbon emissions. Sir Michael Scholar, chairman of the UK Statistics Authority, said that presentation of data by the Department of Energy and Climate Change was “unsatisfactory”. In a letter to Tim Yeo, the chairman of the House of Commons Environmental Audit Committee, he said that a statistical bulletin released in February “fell short” of the Government’s code of practice.
Sir Michael raised serious concerns about the claim that CO2 emissions had fallen by 12.8 per cent compared with 1990 levels. Nearly a third of that fall is made up of carbon credits purchased by polluters in an EU trading scheme and do not represent actual cuts in UK emissions. Without the credits, the fall is a much more modest 8.5 per cent.
Robin Oakley, head of Greenpeace’s energy and climate campaign, said: “Given that the government is falling short on just about every climate change emissions target going, apart from the pretty low Kyoto one, this really isn’t going to do much for their reputation in this area. "When the public see that emissions figures are going down, they want to be assured that global warming is actually being tackled, not that there’s been some creative accounting going on.”
It is not the first time that ministers have fallen foul of the government watchdog. In October last year, the Home Office was forced to admit that serious violent crime is much worse than they had been claimed because police forces had been failing to record offences properly. And in December Jacqui Smith had to backtrack on an announcement that knife crime had fallen after failing to substantiate it with statistical evidence.
The latest row is damaging for the Government as it casts doubt on whether people can believe official statistics on carbon emissions at a time when ministers are aiming to project an image of the UK as a world leader in the fight against climate change. "The fact that the authority has rapped the department's knuckles is quite a strong censure," said Nigel Hawkes, director of the campaign group Straight Statistics. "You've got Gordon Brown saying 'We've got 50 days to save the world', Ed Milliband appearing at an event at the Science Museum tomorrow. But frankly we're not in a position to lecture people if we're misrepresenting our own achievements"...
SOURCE
Reality ignored. Reuters spin GROWING Arctic ice by reporting on 'predictions' of an ice free Arctic
Despite the fact that 2009 has officially been “declared year the media lost their faith in man-made global warming fears,” there still remains many deep seated journalistic failings when it comes to the mainstream media's global warming coverage.
The global warming fear promoting media is particularly faced with a difficult challenge when it comes to the Arctic. How do you counter the climate reality of the latest inconvenient data about the expanding Arctic sea ice? See:
1) Arctic sea Ice GROWS by 'area one and a half times the size of Texas' - September 20, 2009
2) NYT: 'Spread of Thicker Arctic Ice Seen Last Summer' -- 'A substantial expansion of the extent of 'second year ice' - 'Gives some hope of stabilizing the ice cover over the next few years' - October 6, 2009
Despite this latest data, Reuters has made a woeful attempt to spin the reality of growing Arctic ice and ended up with a truly embarrassing article. An October 15, 2009 article by Peter Griffiths of Reuters, is so poorly written that it belongs in the same league as a press release for an environmental group. (Griffith's publicly available email address is: peter.griffiths@reuters.com)
In the article, entitled: “Arctic to be ice-free in summer in 20 years: scientist,” Griffiths refers to the green pressure group WWF, as an "environmental charity." How noble sounding and pure Reuters makes WWF sound.
The Reuters article also noted that "scientists" say the new Arctic sea ice predictions "should send a warning to world leaders meeting in Copenhagen in December for U.N. talks on a new climate treaty." Reuters cites Britain's Energy and Climate Change Secretary Ed Miliband who boldly announces the new Arctic ice prediction "further strengthens the case for an ambitious global deal in Copenhagen."
Gee. No ulterior motives by Reuters, WWF or Miliband are noticeable in this article, are they? In fact, the article drips with pure propaganda and pre-planned political activism to coincide with pending UN climate meeting in Copenhagen in December. Reuters seems to believe that “predictions” about Arctic ice conditions decades into the future are the some sort of “evidence.” (Note: The media's coverage of Arctic ice issues has always been problematic. See: Media Charged with Performing 'Climate Porn' on Arctic Ice Shipping Claims - Sept. 14, 2009)
The Reuters article is pure journalistic drivel. As the real world data fails to match the global warming claims, all the climate fear promoters have left are "scary" predictions of the future. When present day reality fails to alarm, Reuters is all too happy to help present a virtual world where scary scenarios can be effortlessly painted, all the while promoting the urgency of agreeing to a pending UN climate treaty.
The article claims "Global warming will leave the Arctic Ocean ice-free during the summer within 20 years, raising sea levels and harming wildlife such as seals and polar bears, a leading British polar scientist said on Thursday."
First off, it is hard to fathom how floating sea ice will "raise sea levels." (Yes, there is land based ice in Greenland, but Reuters specifically refers to "sea ice.") But that aside, the article -- in true "climate astrology" fashion -- is peppered with such phrases as "will be" and "melting will take place."
Reuters cites one scientist, Peter Wadhams, professor of ocean physics at the University of Cambridge, as the premier authority on Arctic ice. The article notes: "...the melting will take place within a decade, although the winter ice will stay for hundreds of years."
Huh? What does Reuters mean by "winter ice will stay for hundreds of years." Is Wadhams predicting or implying the loss of WINTER ice in several hundred years? If so, it would seem the more shocking lead of this article should have been something like: "Scientist claims Arctic WINTER ice will disappear in hundreds of years!"
For this feat to occur, it would likely mean the entire Northern Hemisphere winters would have to disappear completely. (Note: Obama science Czar John Holdren has also made this same incredible claim. See: Arctic could 'lose the WINTER sea ice' suggests Obama's Science Advisor John Holdren! - Warns of Year round ICE FREE Arctic - Feb. 6, 2009)
Reuters cites the Catlin Arctic Ice survey and presents their findings uncritically. But the ice survey has been surrounded in controversy. See: Meteorologist: 'The Top Ten Reasons why I think Catlin Arctic Ice Survey data can't be trusted' - October 15, 2009 & see: Arctic Comedy: Global warming trek 'makes it less than half way' to North Pole due to temps dropping below -40C! - May 13, 2009
As for the Reuters uncritical reporting of "predictions", a healthy dose of skepticism is in order on any climate predictions. See: Top forecasting experts now say the models violate the basic principles of forecasting. 1) Ivy League forecasting pioneer Dr. Scott Armstrong “Of 89 principles [of forecasting], the UN IPCC violated 72.” – January 28, 2009
More HERE (See the original for links)
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Jim Hansen and his twin
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