Oceans  by Roger King  

Table of Contents

1. Introduction
2. Sea Levels
3. Gulf Stream
4. Oceans Cooling
5. Causes for Oceans to Warming
6. Ocean Facts

Sea Levels

President Obama Keeps Repeating Climate Falsehoods  By Dr. Tim Ball   October 5, 2009  Sea level rise is the centerpiece of Gore’s movie. It has risen steadily and naturally over the last few thousand years as we emerged from the ice age, but the rate of increase has decreased.

     
Figure 1: Sea level Rise 20,000 years to present.

Nature, Not Human Activity, Rules the Climate by  Fred Singer  2008   Local relative sea-level (LRSL) change is all that counts for purposes of coastal planning, and this is highly variable worldwide, depending upon the differing rates at which particular coasts are undergoing tectonic uplift or subsidence. There is no meaningful global average for LRSL [Douglas 2001].  At one of the allegedly most endangered sites, the Maldives, condemned to disappear soon into the sea, both satellite altimetry and tide-gauge records have not registered any significant SL rise. Contrary to IPCC expectations, sea level there fell by 20 to 30 cm in the past 30 years [Mörner 2004].  ...  there has been an insignificant amount of acceleration, if any, in SL rise since 1900 – in spite of temperature changes. This conclusion is completely at variance with that of the IPCC, yet it is supported by many independent researchers [Douglas 2001].    

NZers misled by unfounded sea level claims   Press Release: New Zealand Climate Science Coalition August 6, 2007  Professor Mörner has published a booklet entitled "The Greatest Lie Ever Told," to refute claims of catastrophic sea level rise. "When we were coming out of the last ice age, huge ice sheets were melting rapidly and the sea level rose at an average of 1 metre per century. If the Greenland ice sheet stated to melt at the same rate - which is unlikely - sea level would rise by less than 100 mm - 4 inches per century. So the rapid rise in sea levels predicted by computer models simply cannot happen." 

Claim that Sea Level is Rising is a Total Fraud An Interview with Dr. Nils-Axel Mörner a sea level expert at Stockholm University   June 22, 2007   "We can see that the sea level was indeed rising, from, let us say, 1850 to 1930-40. And that rise had a rate in the order of 1 millimeter per year. Not more. 1.1 is the exact figure.”  “That ended in 1940, and there had been no rise until 1970 ... There's no trend, absolutely no trend

I have been the expert reviewer for the IPCC, both in 2000 and last year. The first time I read it, I was exceptionally surprised. First of all, it had 22 authors, but none of them—none—were sea-level specialists. They were given this mission, because they promised to answer the right thing.   

Arctic dips as global waters rise  by Jonathan Amos   June 15,  2006   Arctic sea level has been falling more than 2mm a year - a movement that [supposedly] sets the region against the global trend of rising waters. A Dutch-UK team made the discovery after analyzing radar altimetry data gathered by Europe 's ERS-2 satellite.  Correcting the data to take account of ocean tides, wave heights, air pressure, and atmospheric effects that might bias the signal, Dr Scharroo and colleagues established seasonal and yearly sea-level trends in the Arctic (from 60 to 82
degrees latitude) for the period 1995 to 2003. The analysis reveals an average 2.17mm fall per annum. 

Scientists Counter Computer Model Sea Level Rise Fears    by Marc Morano   September 26, 2007 

1. State of Florida Climatologist Dr. Jim O'Brien of Florida State University   “The best measurements of sea level rise are from satellite instrument called altimeters. Currently they measure 14 inches in 100 years. Everyone agrees that there is no acceleration. Even the UN IPCC quotes this,” O’Brien wrote to EPW on September 23.  O’Brien is also the director of the Center for Ocean-Atmospheric Prediction Studies.   “If you increase the rate of rise by four times, it will take 146 years to rise to five feet. Sea level rise is the ‘scare tactic’ for these guys,” O’Brien added  
2. Dr. Richard S. Courtney, a climate and atmospheric science consultant and a UN IPCC expert reviewer:  “Global sea level has been rising for the 10,000 years since the last ice age, and no significant change to the rate of sea level rise has been observed recently,” Courtney wrote to Inhofe EPW Press Blog on September 23.  “Simply, there is no reason to suppose that sea level rise will be more of a problem in this century than it was in the last century or each of the previous ten centuries,” he concluded.
3. The Viscount Christopher Monckton of Brenchley in the UK, an advisor to the Science and Pulblic Policy Institute The mean centennial sea-level rise over then 10,000 years since the end of the last Ice Age has been 4 feet per century; in the 20th century sea level rose less than 8 inches; and the IPCC's current central estimate is that in the coming century sea level will rise by just 43 cm (1 ft 5 in),”
4. Simon Holgate , an oceanographer in UK, whose paper in GRL( Geophysical Research Letters, 2007) has analyzed nine long sea-level records from 1903-2003 and the study finds that the SLR from 1953-2003 was about 1.5 mm/yr while the SLR from 1903-1953 was about 2 mm/yr, so there is NO ESCALATING sea level rise at present

The Truth About Tuvalu   by Dr Vincent Gray  June 15, 2006    The IPCC Chapter on Sea Level is one of the more dishonest. It practices two important deceptions. First, it completely fails to mention the fact that many tide gauges are situated close to cities where the land is subsiding because of erection of heavy buildings, or removal of ground water, oil and minerals.

The other deception of the IPCC Sea Level Chapter is in statistics. The sea level averages are so inaccurate that they have to supply only one standard deviation as a measure of inaccuracy, instead of the otherwise universal use of two standard deviations.   

The Truth About Tuvalu   by Dr Vincent Gray  June 15, 2006  A tide gauge to measure sea level has been in existence at Tuvalu since 1977, run by the University of Hawaii It showed a negligible increase of only 0.07 mm per year over two decades It fell three millimeters between 1995 and 1999. The complete record can still be seen on John Daly's website: http://www.john-daly.com>www.john-daly.com  Obviously this could not be tolerated, so the gauge was closed in 1999 and a new, more modern tide gauge was set up by the Australian Bureau of Meteorology's National Tidal Center by Flinders University at Adelaide. But Tuvalu refuses to submit to political pressure. The sea level has actually fallen since then Tuvalu cannot be allowed to get away with it. So Greenpeace employed Dr John Hunter. a climatologist of the University of Tasmania, who obligingly "adjusted" the Tuvalu readings upwards to comply with changes in ENSO and those found for the island of Hawaii and, miraculously, he found a sea level rise of "around" 1.2 mm a year which, also miraculously, agrees with the IPCC global figure.    

IPCC Scientist calls Global Warming Fears the Worst scientific scandal in history  by Marc Morano June 17, 2008   Sea Level Falling? – By Meteorologist Joe D’Aleo of IceCap.US   Icecap note: Note that sea levels are not accelerating up but appear to be falling in part due to ocean cooling and compression and perhaps part due to record extent of Antarctic ice.  Certainly there is no signs of an alarming increase threatening coastal areas as Gore and Hansen have prophesized.   See Latest Sea Level Chart here   

Another Miss for the Modelers  The Truth About Tuvalu   by Dr Vincent Gray  June 15, 2006  Hansen's catastrophe posterchild, Bangladesh — which, far from being soon underwater, is actually gaining land mass rather than losing it.   It turns out that the genii at the IPCC never considered that rivers silt up. This should not be surprising: leading sea-level rise expert Nils-Axel Mörner noted that the IPCC’s SLR panel is stacked with people who aren’t sea-level rise experts.    

Oceans Cooling

The oceans, he says, have a cycle in which they warm and cool cyclically. The most important one is the Pacific decadal oscillation (PDO).

For much of the 1980s and 1990s, it was in a positive cycle, that means warmer than average. And observations have revealed that global temperatures were warm too.

But in the last few years it has been losing its warmth and has recently started to cool down.

These cycles in the past have lasted for nearly 30 years.

So could global temperatures follow? The global cooling from 1945 to 1977 coincided with one of these cold Pacific cycles.

Professor Easterbrook says: "The PDO cool mode has replaced the warm mode in the Pacific Ocean, virtually assuring us of about 30 years of global cooling."

Boffins: Atlantic temperature ruled by dust, not CO₂  by Lewis Page  March 27, 2009   Warm ocean, hurricane increases down to clean skies  Free whitepaper – Guidelines for specification of data center power density 

Causes For Oceans to Warm

Al Gore Ducks Northeast Blizzard by Phil Brennan   February. 15, 2007    On his Web site iceagenow.com, Robert W. Felix provides the following information about ocean warming as a result of hydrothermic activity under the seas.

"A new type of volcano may be heating up the floor of the western Pacific Ocean," says an article posted on National Geographic News and on Yahoo. "Scientists suspect the new volcanoes occur at cracks in tectonic plates caused by stress as the plates slide past each other. A group of small volcanoes called petit spot volcanoes has been discovered far from the tectonic-plate boundaries (like mid-oceanic ridges) that often spawn volcanoes, earthquakes, and other geologic activity.

"Geoscientist Naoto Hirano's team believes that the source of these volcanoes is melted rock from the upper mantle, which has been squeezed through cracks in the tectonic plate above. This type of [activity produces] tiny volcanoes, possibly now active, on the old, cold subducting Pacific plate,' said Hirano from his office at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, California. 'This petit spot volcano theory suggests that this type of eruption can occur wherever the oceanic plate is flexed. These small volcanoes may be widespread on ocean floors where the mantle just under the crust is squeezed out by tectonic forces when one plate moves under another, the researchers explained.  "'Dubbed "petit spots," these new types of volcanoes are difficult to spot using satellite technology. Specific geophysical and sampling expeditions would have to be carried out in order to locate them,' Hirano explained."

Scientists working in the southern Atlantic Ocean have found a 407 degree centigrade hydrothermal vent, the hottest yet known on an ocean floor. Expedition leader Andrea Koschinsky of International University in Bremen, Germany, and her team found the hydrothermal vent just south of the equator on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge at a depth of 2,990 meters. The vent is located on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, where the African and South American continental plates are moving apart at the relatively sedate rate of 3.2 centimeter a year. In the Pacific, by comparison, the Pacific and Nazca plates are speeding apart at some 15 centimeter per year.

 German-American researchers discovered more hydrothermal activity at the Gakkel Ridge in the Arctic Ocean than anyone ever imagined. The Gakkel ridge is a gigantic volcanic mountain chain stretching beneath the Arctic Ocean. With its deep valleys 5,500 meters beneath the sea surface and its 5,000 meter- high summits, Gakkel ridge is far mightier than the Alps. Two research icebreakers, the USCGC Healy from the United States and the German PFS Polarstern, joined forces in the international expedition AMORE (Arctic Mid-Ocean Ridge Expedition). In attendance were scientists from the  Planck Institute for Chemistry and other international institutions. 

This is puzzling in part because here on the surface of the Earth, the years since 2003 have been some of the hottest on record. But Josh Willis at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory says the oceans are what really matter when it comes to global warming.

In fact, 80 percent to 90 percent of global warming involves heating up ocean waters. They hold much more heat than the atmosphere can. So Willis has been studying the ocean with a fleet of robotic instruments called the Argo system. The buoys can dive 3,000 feet down and measure ocean temperature. Since the system was fully deployed in 2003, it has recorded no warming of the global oceans.  

Buoy Meets Gore  by Investor's Business Daily  March 26, 2008  Computer models used by environmentalists predict imminent and disastrous climate change. But actual temperature measurements by high-tech equipment show something completely different.   ...    As Lorne Gunter reported Monday in Canada's National Post, the first of 3,000 new automated ocean buoys were deployed in 2003. They amounted to a significant improvement over earlier buoys that took their measurements mostly at the ocean's surface. ...   

These Argos buoys have disappointed the global warm-mongers in that they have failed to detect any signs of imminent climate change. As Dr. Josh Willis, who works for NASA in its Jet Propulsion Laboratory, noted in an interview with National Public Radio, "there has been a very slight cooling" over the buoys' five years of observation, but that drop was "not anything really significant." Certainly not enough to shut down the Gulf Stream.   Climate-change promoters also are perplexed by the observations of NASA's eight weather satellites. In contrast to some 7,000 land-based stations, they take more than 300,000 temperature readings daily over the surface of the Earth. In 30 years of operation, the satellites have recorded a warming trend of just 0.14C — well within the range of normal variations.   

An Inconvenient Truth: An Inaccurate Depiction of the State of Global Warming Science   by Robert C. Balling Jr.  (October 13, 2006)   sea level has been rising at a rate of 1.8 mm per year for the past 8,000 years; the IPCC notes that "No significant acceleration in the rate of sea level rise during the 20^th century has been detected."  

Ocean Circulation

Ocean Facts

The Remarkable Resilience of Nature  by Indur Goklany   April, 17, 2008  In 1954 the South Pacific atoll was rocked by a 15 megaton hydrogen bomb 1,000 times more powerful than the explosives dropped on Hiroshima.  The explosion shook islands more than 100 miles away, generated a wave of heat measuring 99,000ºF and spread mist-like radioactive fallout as far as Japan and Australia.  But, much to the surprise of a team of research divers who explored the area, the mile-wide crater left by the detonation has made a remarkable recovery and is now home to a thriving underwater ecosystem.

Ocean Temperature Affects Most Warming

NASA measures global temperatures  at American Thinker  April 25, 2008 Josh Willis at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory says the oceans are what really matter when it comes to global warming.

In fact, 80 percent to 90 percent of global warming involves heating up ocean waters. They hold much more heat than the atmosphere can. So Willis has been studying the ocean with a fleet of robotic instruments called the Argo system. The buoys can dive 3,000 feet down and measure ocean temperature. Since the system was fully deployed in 2003, it has recorded no warming of the global oceans. "There has been a very slight cooling..."  

How the Oceans Once Ended Global Warming  by Larry O'Hanlon at  Discovery News   December 26, 2007   Last time Earth suffered a carbon-induced fever, it was the oceans that helped saved the day, say marine scientists in California.  

12 Facts about Global Climate Change That You Won’t Read in the Popular Press  by Joseph D’Aleo   August 18, 2008    The multidecadal cycles in the ocean correlate extremely well with the solar cycles and global temperatures. These are 60 to 70 year cycles that relate to natural variations in the largescale circulations. Warm oceans correlate with warm global temperatures. The Pacific started cooling in the late 1990s and it accelerated in the last year, and the Atlantic has cooled from its peak in 2004. This supports the observed global land temperature cooling, which is strongly correlated with ocean heat content. Newly deployed N.O.A.A. buoys confirm global ocean cooling.

Warmer ocean cycles are periods with diminished Arctic ice cover. When the oceans were warm in the 1930s to the 1950s, Arctic ice diminished and Greenland warmed. The recent ocean warming, especially in the 1980s to the early 2000s, is similar to what took place 70 years ago and the Arctic ice has reacted much the same way, with diminished summer ice extent.