Sea Level Rising Despite Faux Science Claims

As the Gulf of Mexico fills with petroleum, 2010 warms up to become one of the hottest years on record so far, and polar sea ice melts to record low levels, industry-aligned sources have come up with a new angle in their effort to undermine the well-founded scientific consensus that current climate change is real and due largely to human behaviors. They’re quoting a scientist who they refer to as a leading expert in sea level, Nils-Axel Morner, as saying that sea level rise is hoax – that it’s not taking place at all.

Is Morner actually a leading expert in sea level? Morner is retired, actually. He has been for 5 years, though he once led the Department of Paleogeophysics and Geodynamics at Stockholm University. Morner is also regarded as rather eccentric. He supports the idea, for example, that people can locate underground sources of water by dowsing – wandering around with a forked stick until it points downward. Skeptic James Randi challenged Morner to engage in a scientific test his dowsing methods, but Morner refused.

Actually, Nils-Axel Morner’s claims the global sea level rise isn’t happening aren’t new. Morner has been saying this sort of thing for years – and for years, his claims have been scientifically refuted. For example, in 2007, colleagues pointed out that Morner’s studies attempting to show lack of sea level rise failed to include the correct calibrations for satellite altimeter measurements of sea level records. When the correct calibrations were included in a corrected Morner’s methodology, the results showed sea level rise, just as had been observed by other scientists all along.

Still, pro-industry media cite Morner’s opinions, as if his work had never been reviewed and found faulty. In this rather unscientific view, once a researcher makes a declaration, it remains forever true, like a religious prophecy, regardless of contradictory evidence.

Morner is Swedish, which may account for his disposition to dispute observations of sea level rise. You see, in the northern part of the Baltic Sea, where Sweden lies, observations have shown a decrease in sea level. That data is shown on a map prepared by the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration, using data gathered through the Global Sea Level Observing System.

That map shows quite clearly that, although there are some locations where sea level has fallen, on a global scale, sea level is rising. The places where sea level is rising greatly outnumbers locations where sea level is not. Furthermore, islands in the middle of the largest bodies of water almost all show sea level rise. As with the relationship between weather and climate, a few anomalies do not contradict the larger trend. Morner has made the mistake of presuming that what’s happening in his own back yard is happening all over the planet.

The research confirming sea level rise is consistent and strong. Just yesterday, NOAA announced the results of a new study by the Joint Institute for Marine and Atmospheric Research on global sea temperatures. The study found that the Earth’s oceans are absorbing warming at a much higher rate than the atmosphere, taking in between 80 and 90 percent of the general rise in global temperature, a huge amount of energy that’s “enough to power nearly 500 100-watt light bulbs per each of the roughly 6.7 billion people on the planet.”

This finding is in accord with observations of sea level rise, because when water gets warmer, it expands its volume. Much of global sea level rise is due to melting glaciers and polar sea ice, but water temperature increase is also a major component in the rise.

The sources that publish Nils-Axel Morner’s old accusations of a sea level hoax have ignored this study, just as they have pretended that the larger body of evidence of human-caused global climate change does not exist. They’re looking only for justifications to continue believing what they want to believe, but that’s just not the way that true science works.

Why do these people so badly want to believe that human industrial activities are not leading to global warming and sea level rise? We only have to follow the money to see the answer. Nils-Axel Morner has worked in conjunction with the Heartland Institute, an organization that is dedicated to promoting the idea that global warming isn’t real, or isn’t caused by human beings. The Heartland Institute receives money from ExxonMobil, which profits from the sale of fossil fuels that are a significant factor in global warming when they are burned.