Alarmists cheat with almost every measurement, but none more blatant than the global isostatic adjustment (GIA) scam.
The theory is that due to post-glacial rebound, land is rising and the sea floor is sinking – making the oceans deeper. So they add 0.3 mm/year on to compensate. This might be a valid consideration when calculating ocean depth or volume, but it is 100% fraudulent for calculating sea level – which is the essentially the distance of the sea surface from the center of the Earth.
The only theoretical reason to do adjustments, is to compensate for measurement error. But there is no claim of measurement error associated with GIA. It is simply an excuse to further jack up the phony sea level data required by politicians.
How much are Africa and South America rebounding from ice sheet loss?
All over the world sea level rose by 120m so it must be the 120m more seawater pressure on the sea floor doing the work.
With sea level 120m lower would the top of the atmosphere also have been 120m lower so air pressure at sea level would have been the same as today ?
The top of the atmosphere would probably increase by 120 m (very little) but the density would decrease (by a very small amount) so that the pressure at sea level would remain the same. This could have some effect on temperature, but with delta h = 120 meters, the variation would be “infinitesimal”.
Accurately and succinctly put!!!
Exactly right. If “sea level” means the level of the surface of the sea, which is how every dictionary defines the term, then when that 0.3 mm/yr is added the result is not a sea level trend.
What’s more, when the Peltier VM2 (GIA) adjustments for the world’s best long term tide gauges are added in, it increases their average by much more than 0.3 mm/year. For NOAA’s 2013 list of 285 long term trend (LTT) tide gauges, adding Peltier’s VM2 GIA to each gauge’s trend adds 0.654 mm/year to the unweighted average rate of sea level rise, increasing the average rate of sea level rise (SLR) from 1.273 mm/yr to 1.936 mm/yr, and increasing the median from 1.41 mm/yr to 1.58 mm/yr:
http://sealevel.info/MSL_global_trendtable4.html
(scroll to the “averages” and “medians” lines at the bottom)
Now, I think the large magnitude of the adjustment to the average SLR is due, in part, to the large number of northern gauges that are, indeed, experiencing PGR. The adjustment would be smaller if geographically-weighted averages were used,
Attempting to account for GIA for those gauges is legitimate, though problematic, since the GIA calculations are very rough, much rougher than the measurements that they are “correcting.”
Note, too, there there’s no attempt in any of the calculated “averages” that I’m aware of to account for inflated sea level rise measurements at some gauges due to local land subsidence, due to groundwater pumping, oil & gas extraction, etc. By correcting for a factor that decreases SLR (GIA), while not correcting for a factor that exaggerates SLR (local subsidence), the corrections introduce a bias toward exaggerated SLR.
What’s more, I’m 90% sure that those individual tide gauge adjustments do not include the 0.3 mm/yr which alarmists add to the “average” to account for postulated sinking of the ocean floor. By adding both the (legitimate but very rough) calculated GIAs for the tide gauges, plus the (bogus) 0.3 mm/yr ocean floor adjustment, it is possible to come up with an “average” that is dramatically higher than a simple average or median of the best measurements of sea level trend. This confirms the late John Daly’s observation that:
“The impression has been conveyed to the world’s public, media, and policymakers, that the sea level rise of 18 cm in the past century is an observed quantity and therefore not open to much dispute. What is not widely known is that this quantity is largely the product of modeling, not observation, and thus very much open to dispute, especially as sea level data in many parts of the world fails to live up to the IPCC claims.”
We have reached the situation where all the scientific data which is used to back CAGW belief has been so falsified that it is no longer a valid guide to anything. The Warmistas convey the impression that the science backs their theory, but it is the theory that has corrupted the data and the science. Unfortunately the dim politicians and policymakers believe all their misrepresentations.
I think it’s more likely that the politicians and policymakers are driving the misrepresentations because those misrepresentations support the desired political goals.
From http://sealevel.colorado.edu/content/what-glacial-isostatic-adjustment-gia-and-why-do-you-correct-it
So nice to know that is sooo accurate and precise (+/- 50%)!
Nice link.
Why is every major climate science conclusion based on models? It’s models all the way down now.
“…the mean rate of sea level change due to GIA is independently estimated from models at -0.3 mm/yr (Peltier, 2001, 2002, 2009; Peltier & Luthcke, 2009).”
Estimates with 50% error cannot rationally lead to 95% AGW certainty.
Dipwads…
Global warming is the BIG LIE. All the little lies are fully justified to support it.
I’m fond of referring to it as “PC” science–both Politically Correct, AND Perverted and Corrupted!
I’ve pointed out for years on news sites that what climate “scientists” label on their graphs as “sea level” is *not* really sea level. I have yet to have even a single attempt at a reply from any Gorebot since, Gore only teaches dumbed down Astroturf messaging, as if opinions stated merely counted as votes in favor of a theory. Mostly it simply flies over their heads. But it’s quite effective on rational people. They do the same trickery with adding water in water reservoirs and behind dams to the ocean volume, while hand waving away the vast amount of fresh water that has been pumped up from aquifers. The blog ClimateReason picked apart Germany’s major Climatologist Rahmstorf, a sea level guy who cofounded RealClimate.org which is site registered to the same notorious PR firm (Fenton Communications/EMS Services) that was behind both the junk science silicone breast implant scare that bankrupted Dow Corning and the autism/vaccine scare that has sickened thousands of kids.
http://climatesanity.wordpress.com/the-search-for-acceleration/
History is filled with fad scientific theories and most had a lot more going for them than AGW ever did. PGR wasn’t even recognized until residents on the Canadian side of the Great Lakes complained about the sanctimonious Yanks stealing the Canadians’ water in the dead of night, leaving Canadian docks and sea walls high and dry. The wisdom was that before long the Great Lakes would become a desert of blowing sand and fish bones unless the Canadian government stepped in and taught those thieving Yanks a proper lesson.
Meanwhile the Yanks on the South shore of the same bodies water noticed that their boat docks and seawalls were disappearing beneath the waves. The Yanks complained that in the dark of night those provincial Canadians were sneaking their excess water to the U.S. side of the same lake and illegally stockpiling it there. ;<)
When the aqua lung made possible the discovery of standing forests on the bottom of the Southern side of the lakes It was theorized that the North shore was rebounding, and rebounding faster and more than the South shore, shifting the water from the Canadian to the U.S. shore of the Great Lakes like water in a bathtub. This sloshing from the North side of the lakes to the other was what had drowned these forests and left them standing in place. It was not until accurate LASER satellite measuring devises came along that it was proven that the land its self was rising or growing, but that it is rising faster and further on the North shore than on the Southern one.
How PGR occurring thousands of miles from the ocean affects sea level at the coasts remains to be seen. But I guess that the warming community looks at it like any lie in a storm is a good thing.
Like so much of AGW rationale, STOOPID. If sea floor is sinking and land rising, the perceived sea overlap of the land would fall. The GIA is 180° WRONG.
That is, wrt sea flooding of coastal areas, islands, etc. All this extra 0.3mm/yr is magically entering the sea, but the bottom is sinking to balance, except for the amount needed for land rise? Hand-waving supreme, a poster child.