The oceanographer Nils-Axel Mörner challenges the IPCC and warnings about sinking islands
Date: 18/02/18
Basler Zeitung
Mr. Mörner, you have recently visited the Fiji islands in South Pacific several times in order to research changes on the coasts and sea levels. Why Fiji? Nils-Axel Mörner: I knew there would be a science conference in New York in June 2017 that focused on sea level changes in Fiji. In addition, it was known that the island nation would chair the 23rd World Climate Conference, which took place last November in Bonn. Thus, Fiji moved into the focus of interest. It was said that the rising sea level had done a lot of damage there. I wanted to check with my own eyes if that is true. What made you skeptical? I have been researching sea-level changes my entire life, traveling to 59 countries. Hardly any other researcher has so much experience in this field. However, the IPCC has always misrepresented the facts on this topic. It exaggerates the risks of a sea level rise enormously. The IPCC relies in particular on questionable computer models rather than field research. However, I always want to know what is going on. That is why I went to Fiji.
it appears you guys have been punked again by a pseudo-scientist...
Posted on 6 December 2011 by dana1981
The Spectator has published an article written by Nils-Axel Mörner with his usual denial about sea level rise (which has been re-published by many of the usual suspects). Figure 1 shows the mean global sea level data whose accuracy Mörner denies:
sea level
Figure 1: University of Colorado global mean sea level time series (with seasonal signal removed)
Mörner claims that the "true experts" think this data is wrong (emphasis added):
"The world’s true experts on sea level are to be found at the INQUA (International Union for Quaternary Reseach) commission on Sea Level Changes and Coastal Evolution (of which I am a former president), not at the IPCC. Our research is what the climate lobby might call an ‘inconvenient truth’: it shows that sea levels have been oscillating close to the present level for the last three centuries. This is not due to melting glaciers: sea levels are affected by a great many factors, such as the speed at which the earth rotates. They rose in the order of 10 to 11cm between 1850 and 1940, stopped rising or maybe even fell a little until 1970, and have remained roughly flat ever since."
This is quite different from the INQUA official position on climate change, which opens by saying (emphasis added):
Climate change is real There is now strong evidence that significant global warming is occurring. The evidence comes from direct measurements of rising surface air temperatures and subsurface ocean temperatures and, indirectly, from increases in average global sea levels, retreating glaciers, and changes in many physical and biological systems. It is very likely that most of the observed increase in global temperatures since the mid-twentieth century is due to human-induced increases in greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere (IPCC 2007).
As George Monbiot has documented, INQUA has been trying to dissociate itself from Mörner's views.
Current president of the INQUA commission on Coastal and Marine Processes, Professor Roland Gehrels of the University of Plymouth, says his view do not represent 99% of its members, and the organisation has previously stated that it is "distressed" that Mörner continues to falsely "represent himself in his former capacity."
Tuvalu is among the various individual locations Mörner focuses on in his attempt to distract from global sea level rise. However, it is a rather poor choice, since sea level rise around Tuvalu is faster than the global average (Figure 2).Posted on 6 December 2011 by dana1981
The Spectator has published an article written by Nils-Axel Mörner with his usual denial about sea level rise (which has been re-published by many of the usual suspects). Figure 1 shows the mean global sea level data whose accuracy Mörner denies:
sea level
Figure 1: University of Colorado global mean sea level time series (with seasonal signal removed)
Mörner claims that the "true experts" think this data is wrong (emphasis added):
"The world’s true experts on sea level are to be found at the INQUA (International Union for Quaternary Reseach) commission on Sea Level Changes and Coastal Evolution (of which I am a former president), not at the IPCC. Our research is what the climate lobby might call an ‘inconvenient truth’: it shows that sea levels have been oscillating close to the present level for the last three centuries. This is not due to melting glaciers: sea levels are affected by a great many factors, such as the speed at which the earth rotates. They rose in the order of 10 to 11cm between 1850 and 1940, stopped rising or maybe even fell a little until 1970, and have remained roughly flat ever since."
This is quite different from the INQUA official position on climate change, which opens by saying (emphasis added):
Climate change is real There is now strong evidence that significant global warming is occurring. The evidence comes from direct measurements of rising surface air temperatures and subsurface ocean temperatures and, indirectly, from increases in average global sea levels, retreating glaciers, and changes in many physical and biological systems. It is very likely that most of the observed increase in global temperatures since the mid-twentieth century is due to human-induced increases in greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere (IPCC 2007).
As George Monbiot has documented, INQUA has been trying to dissociate itself from Mörner's views.
Current president of the INQUA commission on Coastal and Marine Processes, Professor Roland Gehrels of the University of Plymouth, says his view do not represent 99% of its members, and the organisation has previously stated that it is "distressed" that Mörner continues to falsely "represent himself in his former capacity."
Tuvalu is among the various individual locations Mörner focuses on in his attempt to distract from global sea level rise. However, it is a rather poor choice, since sea level rise around Tuvalu is faster than the global average (Figure 2). Figure 2: Map of the Pacific Island region interannual sea level trend (linear variation with time) from the reconstruction 1950-2009. Locations of the 27 tide gauges (black circles and stars) used in the study are superimposed. Stars relate to the 7 tide gauges used in the global reconstruction. Dark areas relate to non-significant trends. From Becker (2011). So how does Mörner explain the global sea level rise record, in which both satellite altimeters and tide gauges show average global sea level rise on the order of 3 mm per year (Figure 1)? It's all a conspiracy, of course:
"In 2003 the satellite altimetry record was mysteriously tilted upwards to imply a sudden sea level rise rate of 2.3mm per year...This is a scandal that should be called Sealevelgate. As with the Hockey Stick, there is little real-world data to support the upward tilt. It seems that the 2.3mm rise rate has been based on just one tide gauge in Hong Kong"
Obviously this conspiracy theory is utterly absurd, and is easily disproven by simply examining the IPCC Third Assessment Report (TAR) published in 2001, two years before Mörner's accusation of falsified sea level data, which shows an approximately 10 to 15 mm rise in average global sea level from 1993 to 1998 (Figure 3).
ipcc tar sea level
Figure 3: Global mean sea level variations (light line) computed from the TOPEX/POSEIDON satellite altimeter data compared with the global averaged sea surface temperature variations (dark line) for 1993 to 1998. The seasonal components have been removed from both time-series. (IPCC TAR)
In short, Mörner's conspiracy theory and accusation of falsified data is complete nonsense. It's also ironic that Mörner accuses others of falsifying data, since he has previously doctored photographs in his own presentations (i.e. see multiple photos of the Maldives 'marker tree' spliced together here and here).
However, even if we disregard the satellite altimetry data and instead examine the tide gauge data that Mörner prefers, his assertions are still clearly false. Church and White (2011) examined sea level data from both tide gauges (TGs), satellite altimeter data (Sat-Alt), and the estimated contribution to the sea level rise from various sources (Figure 4). The net estimated mean sea level rise from tide gauges and satellites is essentially the same.
Date: February 17, 2019 at 18:09:19 From: pamela, [DNS_Address] Subject: Re: The oceanographer Nils-Axel Mörner challenges the IPCC and...
Wow, having a huge de ja vu moment as I post this-- seems I have posted all of this somewhere before. pw https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Monbiot George Monbiot is a writer and environment activist, not a scientist.
and cited by dana1981 to the Spectator article this quote: This is quite different from the INQUA official position on climate change, which opens by saying (emphasis added): Climate change is real There is now strong evidence that significant global warming is occurring. The evidence comes from direct measurements of rising surface air temperatures and subsurface ocean temperatures and, indirectly, from increases in average global sea levels, retreating glaciers, and changes in many physical and biological systems. It is very likely that most of the observed increase in global temperatures since the mid-twentieth century is due to human-induced increases in greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere (IPCC 2007).
Again citing IPPC 2007.
How does IPPC 2007 hold up?
Not good. Spectacular Sea Level Fraud From The IPCC https://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2015/12/21/spectacular-sea-level-fraud-from-the-ipcc/
The IPCC switched measurement systems in 1993 from tide gauges to satellites, declared a huge increase in sea level rise rates, and didn¡¯t consider the possibility that the increase in rate was due to their changing measurement systems ¨C rather than the climate. Any third grader trained in science would have cross-checked vs. their earlier measurement system to see if there actually was an increase in 1993, rather than just an instrumentation issue. There wasn¡¯t ¨C the authors and reviewers are completely incompetent.
But the fraud is worse than it seems. The 1990 IPCC report showed around 1.2 mm/year and said there was no convincing evidence of acceleration during the 20th century. (see links and charts) How did they go from 1.2 mm/yr to 3.1 mm/yr between 1990 and 2007? But the fraud is even worse than it seems. In 2004 the official rate of satellite sea level rise was only 2.8 mm/year.
And now they have further bumped it up to 3.3 mm/year.
Using tide gauges, NOAA reports just over half that much sea level rise. the absolute global sea level rise is believed to be 1.7-1.8 millimeters/year. Sea Level Trends ¨C Global Regional Trends Tide gauges show that sea level rise rates peaked in the 1950¡¯s. East coast tide gauges report high rates due to land subsidence, but they have slowed down over the past 60 years ¨C not accelerated.
AGAIN HAVE TO GO TO SITE TO READ AND SEE ALL THE CHARTS AND LINKS AND REFS.
In 2007, the union issued a statement on climate change in which they reiterated the conclusions of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), and urged all nations to take prompt action in line with the UNFCCC principles:[8] Human activities are now causing atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases - including carbon dioxide, methane, tropospheric ozone, and nitrous oxide - to rise well above pre-industrial levels¡.Increases in greenhouse gasses are causing temperatures to rise¡The scientific understanding of climate change is now sufficiently clear to justify nations taking prompt action¡.Minimizing the amount of this carbon dioxide reaching the atmosphere presents a huge challenge but must be a global priority. Please Climate scientists have no training in signal processing, and have a clear conflict of interest. They are not qualified in any way to do this sort of analysis, and keep bumping the numbers up to keep their funding coming in.
Gail Combs says: December 21, 2015 at 3:00 pm ¡°The IPCC AR5 WG1 represents the current state of climate science PROPAGANDA as of 2013.¡± Is the IPCC being consistent in both draft and final figure, including non-peer reviewed content? NO! The IPCC has no reason and no desire to be consistent with peer-reviewed or non-peer reviewed content. The IPCC only needs to be consistent with the decisions made by politicians when amending and approving the Summary for Policymakers. When John Houghton was IPCC Chairman. He decreed: ¡°We can rely on the Authors to ensure the Report agrees with the Summary.¡± This was done and has been the normal IPCC procedure since then. So, IPCC custom and practice dictate that the AR5 report will be edited to match the SPM. This custom and practice enabled the infamous ¡®Chapter 8¡ä scandal.
Such adjustment of Reports to agree with the SPM is stated in Appendix A of the AR5. It says 4.6 Reports Approved and Adopted by the Panel Reports approved and adopted by the Panel will be the Synthesis Report of the Assessment Reports and other Reports as decided by the Panel whereby Section 4.4 applies mutatis mutandis. I would be grateful if anybody were able to explain why some people like Marty want to think the IPCC is a scientific organisation when the purely political nature of the IPCC is declared by its name, its nature, its governing principles and its official procedures as stated in its own words in its own documents. The IPCC is only permitted to say AGW is a significant problem because they are tasked to accept that there is a ¡°risk of human-induced climate change¡± which requires ¡°options for adaptation and mitigation¡± that can be selected as political polices and the IPCC is tasked to provide those ¡°options¡±.
This is clearly stated in the ¡°Principles¡± which govern the work of the IPCC. Near the beginning of that document says ROLE 2. The role of the IPCC is to assess on a comprehensive, objective, open and transparent basis the scientific, technical and socio-economic information relevant to understanding the scientific basis of risk of human-induced climate change, its potential impacts and options for adaptation and mitigation. IPCC reports should be neutral with respect to policy, although they may need to deal objectively with scientific, technical and socio-economic factors relevant to the application of particular policies. http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/ipcc-principles/ipcc-principles.pdf
So, the IPCC does NOT exist to summarise climate science. That has NEVER been its role. The IPCC exists to provide (a) ¡°information relevant to understanding the scientific basis of risk of human-induced climate change¡± and (b) ¡°and options for adaptation and mitigation¡± which pertain to ¡°the application of particular policies¡±.
Hence, its ¡°Role¡± demands that the IPCC accepts as a given that there is a ¡°risk of human-induced climate change¡± which requires ¡°options for adaptation and mitigation¡± which pertain to ¡°the application of particular policies¡±.
Since a draft of the IPCC report BEFORE the politicians got at it was made available this has become evident by comparing the before and after copies.
FIXING THE FACTS: McIntyre on IPCC¡¯s switching the pea under the thimble Martin Smith says: December 21, 2015 at 3:03 pm Gail, please stop whining. If you can show errors in the IPCC AR5 WG-1, please report them to the IPCC so they can be corrected. That¡¯s how the process works.
Gail Combs says: December 21, 2015 at 3:18 pm HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA You have to be KIDDING! Don¡¯t you think that has been tried by IPCC scientists with credentials more lofty than mine?
46 statements by IPCC experts against the IPCC
Dr Robert Balling: ¡°The IPCC notes that ¡°No significant acceleration in the rate of sea level rise during the 20th century has been detected.¡± This did not appear in the IPCC Summary for Policymakers. Dr Lucka Bogataj: ¡°Rising levels of airborne carbon dioxide don¡¯t cause global temperatures to rise¡. temperature changed first and some 700 years later a change in aerial content of carbon dioxide followed.¡±
Dr John Christy: ¡°Little known to the public is the fact that most of the scientists involved with the IPCC do not agree that global warming is occurring. Its findings have been consistently misrepresented and/or politicized with each succeeding report.¡± Dr Rosa Compagnucci: ¡°Humans have only contributed a few tenths of a degree to warming on Earth. Solar activity is a key driver of climate.¡± Dr Richard Courtney: ¡°The empirical evidence strongly indicates that the anthropogenic global warming hypothesis is wrong.¡±
Dr Judith Curry: ¡°I¡¯m not going to just spout off and endorse the IPCC because I don¡¯t have confidence in the process.¡± ((Dr Judith Curry has a whole lot more to say about her findings and I will post tomorrow on them))
Dr Robert Davis: ¡°Global temperatures have not been changing as state of the art climate models predicted they would. Not a single mention of satellite temperature observations appears in the IPCC Summary for Policymakers.¡±
Dr Willem de Lange: ¡°In 1996 the IPCC listed me as one of approximately 3000 ¡°scientists¡± who agreed that there was a discernible human influence on climate. I didn¡¯t. There is no evidence to support the hypothesis that runaway catastrophic climate change is due to human activities.¡±
Dr Chris de Freitas: ¡°Government decision-makers should have heard by now that the basis for the long-standing claim that carbon dioxide is a major driver of global climate is being questioned; along with it the hitherto assumed need for costly measures to restrict carbon dioxide emissions. If they have not heard, it is because of the din of global warming hysteria that relies on the logical fallacy of ¡®argument from ignorance¡¯ and predictions of computer models.¡±
Dr Oliver Frauenfeld: ¡°Much more progress is necessary regarding our current understanding of climate and our abilities to model it.¡±
Dr Peter Dietze: ¡°Using a flawed eddy diffusion model, the IPCC has grossly underestimated the future oceanic carbon dioxide uptake.¡±
Dr John Everett: ¡°It is time for a reality check. The oceans and coastal zones have been far warmer and colder than is projected in the present scenarios of climate change. I have reviewed the IPCC and more recent scientific literature and believe that there is not a problem with increased acidification, even up to the unlikely levels in the most-used IPCC scenarios.¡±
Dr Eigil Friis-Christensen: ¡°The IPCC refused to consider the sun¡¯s effect on the Earth¡¯s climate as a topic worthy of investigation. The IPCC conceived its task only as investigating potential human causes of climate change.¡±
Dr Lee Gerhard: ¡°I never fully accepted or denied the anthropogenic global warming concept until the furore started after NASA¡¯s James Hansen¡¯s wild claims in the late 1980s. I went to the [scientific] literature to study the basis of the claim, starting with first principles. My studies then led me to believe that the claims were false.¡±
Dr Indur Goklany: ¡°Climate change is unlikely to be the world¡¯s most important environmental problem of the 21st century. There is no signal in the mortality data to indicate increases in the overall frequencies or severities of extreme weather events, despite large increases in the population at risk.¡±
Dr Vincent Gray: ¡°The [IPCC] climate change statement is an orchestrated litany of lies.¡±
Dr Mike Hulme: ¡°Claims such as ¡®2500 of the world¡¯s leading scientists have reached a consensus that human activities are having a significant influence on the climate¡¯ are disingenuous ¡ The actual number of scientists who backed that claim was only a few dozen.¡±
Dr Kiminori Itoh: ¡°There are many factors which cause climate change. Considering only greenhouse gases is nonsense and harmful.¡±
Dr Yuri Izrael: ¡°There is no proven link between human activity and global warming. I think the panic over global warming is totally unjustified. There is no serious threat to the climate.¡±
Dr Steven Japar: ¡°Temperature measurements show that the climate model-predicted mid-troposphere hot zone is non-existent. This is more than sufficient to invalidate global climate models and projections made with them.¡±
Dr Georg Kaser: ¡°This number [of receding glaciers reported by the IPCC] is not just a little bit wrong, it is far out by any order of magnitude ¡ It is so wrong that it is not even worth discussing.¡±
Dr Aynsley Kellow: ¡°I¡¯m not holding my breath for criticism to be taken on board, which underscores a fault in the whole peer review process for the IPCC: there is no chance of a chapter [of the IPCC report] ever being rejected for publication, no matter how flawed it might be.¡±
Dr Madhav Khandekar: ¡°I have carefully analysed adverse impacts of climate change as projected by the IPCC and have discounted these claims as exaggerated and lacking any supporting evidence.¡±
Dr Hans Labohm: ¡°The alarmist passages in the IPCC Summary for Policymakers have been skewed through an elaborate and sophisticated process of spin-doctoring.¡±
Dr Andrew Lacis: ¡°There is no scientific merit to be found in the Executive Summary. The presentation sounds like something put together by Greenpeace activists and their legal department.¡±
Dr Chris Landsea: ¡°I cannot in good faith continue to contribute to a process that I view as both being motivated by pre-conceived agendas and being scientifically unsound.¡±
Dr Richard Lindzen: ¡°The IPCC process is driven by politics rather than science. It uses summaries to misrepresent what scientists say and exploits public ignorance.¡±
Dr Harry Lins: ¡°Surface temperature changes over the past century have been episodic and modest and there has been no net global warming for over a decade now. The case for alarm regarding climate change is grossly overstated.¡±
Dr Philip Lloyd: ¡°I am doing a detailed assessment of the IPCC reports and the Summaries for Policy Makers, identifying the way in which the Summaries have distorted the science. I have found examples of a summary saying precisely the opposite of what the scientists said.¡±
Dr Martin Manning: ¡°Some government delegates influencing the IPCC Summary for Policymakers misrepresent or contradict the lead authors.¡±
Dr Stephen McIntyre: ¡°The many references in the popular media to a ¡®consensus of thousands of scientists¡¯ are both a great exaggeration and also misleading.¡±
Dr Patrick Michaels: ¡°The rates of warming, on multiple time scales, have now invalidated the suite of IPCC climate models. No, the science is not settled.¡±
Dr Nils-Axel Morner: ¡°If you go around the globe, you find no sea level rise anywhere.¡±
Dr Johannes Oerlemans: ¡°The IPCC has become too political. Many scientists have not been able to resist the siren call of fame, research funding and meetings in exotic places that awaits them if they are willing to compromise scientific principles and integrity in support of the man-made global-warming doctrine.¡±
Dr Roger Pielke: ¡°All of my comments were ignored without even a rebuttal. At that point, I concluded that the IPCC Reports were actually intended to be advocacy documents designed to produce particular policy actions, but not a true and honest assessment of the understanding of the climate system.¡±
Dr Paul Reiter: ¡°As far as the science being ¡®settled,¡¯ I think that is an obscenity. The fact is the science is being distorted by people who are not scientists.¡±
Dr Murray Salby: ¡°I have an involuntary gag reflex whenever someone says the science is settled. Anyone who thinks the science is settled on this topic is in fantasia.¡±
Dr Tom Segalstad: ¡°The IPCC global warming model is not supported by the scientific data.¡±
Dr Fred Singer: ¡°Isn¡¯t it remarkable that the Policymakers Summary of the IPCC report avoids mentioning the satellite data altogether, or even the existence of satellites ¡ª probably because the data show a slight cooling over the last 18 years, in direct contradiction of the calculations from climate models?¡±
Dr Hajo Smit: ¡°There is clear cut solar-climate coupling and a very strong natural variability of climate on all historical time scales. Currently I hardly believe anymore that there is any relevant relationship between human CO2 emissions and climate change.¡±
Dr Richard Tol: ¡°The IPCC attracted more people with political rather than academic motives. In AR4, green activists held key positions in the IPCC and they succeeded in excluding or neutralising opposite voices.¡±
Dr Tom Tripp: ¡°There is so much of a natural variability in weather it makes it difficult to come to a scientifically valid conclusion that global warming is man made.¡±
Dr Gerd-Rainer Weber: ¡°Most of the extremist views about climate change have little or no scientific basis.¡±
Dr David Wojick: ¡°The public is not well served by this constant drumbeat of alarms fed by computer models manipulated by advocates.¡±
Dr Miklos Zagoni: ¡°I am positively convinced that the anthropogenic global warming theory is wrong.¡±
Dr Eduardo Zorita: ¡°Editors, reviewers and authors of alternative studies, analysis, interpretations, even based on the same data we have at our disposal, have been bullied and subtly blackmailed.¡±
and the debate and comments go on as you will see in this article.
I know that is what you posted was your point, but what you posted does not back that up scientifically. Here is a 57 min interview of Nil Morner. Tomorrow I will post Prof. Judith Curry. Dr. Nils-Axel Mörner – Sea Level Basics by Kim Greenhouse on February 22, 2010 Dr. Nils-Axel Mörner’s extensive hands-on experience and 40 years of mindful focus bring valuable context to the climate change debate. Is the IPCC giving us an accurate picture? Tune in and find out! see link to hear audio interview. Audio Player
Date: February 17, 2019 at 18:13:59 From: pamela, [DNS_Address] Subject: Re: The oceanographer Nils-Axel Mörner challenges the IPCC and...
Dr Judith Curry: ¡°I¡¯m not going to just spout off and endorse the IPCC because I don¡¯t have confidence in the process.¡± ((Dr Judith Curry has a whole lot more to say about her findings and I will post tomorrow on them))
Responses:
None
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Date: February 15, 2019 at 23:18:35 From: sequoia, [DNS_Address] Subject: oceanographer Nils-Axel Mörner challenges the IPCC and...
Hi Pamela,
thanks for mentioning an article which shines some real light and logic onto the rise and fall of sea levels way beyond IPCCanism.
On his researchgate entry you can find more current material, under research. My occasionally incooperative compi does not allow me to directly link there. An hour earlier it worked but not now.
Thank you, will check it out. Also here's a video interview of Morner. posted this month
UN IPCC Scientist Debunks UN IPCC Lies STOCKHOLM, Sweden — The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (UN IPCC) is misleading humanity about climate change and sea levels, a leading expert on sea-level who served on the UN IPCC told The New American. In fact, it is more likely that sea-levels will decline, not rise, explained Dr. Nils-Axel Mörner, the retired head of the paleogeophysics and geodynamics at Stockholm University. A new solar-driven cooling period is not far off, he said. But when Mörner tried to warn the UN IPCC that it was publishing false information that would inevitably be discredited, they simply ignored him. And so, dismayed, he resigned in disgust and decided to blow the whistle.
Asked if coastal cities such as Miami would be flooding due to sea-level rise caused by alleged man-made global warming, Mörner was unequivocal: “Absolutely not.” “There is no rapid sea-level rise going on today, and there will not be,” he said, citing the observable data. “On the contrary, if anything happens, the sea will go down a little.” The widely respected scientist, who has been tracking sea levels in various parts of the globe for some 50 years, blasted those who use incorrect “correction factors” in their data to try to make it appear that the seas are rising worldwide. That is just wrong, he said.