Tidalgate: Climate Alarmists Caught Faking Sea Level Rise
Alarmist scientists have been caught red-handed tampering with raw data in order to exaggerate sea level rise.
The raw (unadjusted) data from three Indian Ocean gauges – Aden, Karachi and Mumbai – showed that local sea level trends in the last 140 years had been very gently rising, neutral or negative (ie sea levels had fallen).
But after the evidence had been adjusted by tidal records gatekeepers at the global databank Permanent Service for Mean Sea Level (PSMSL) it suddenly showed a sharp and dramatic rise.
The whistle was blown by two Australian scientists Dr. Albert Parker and Dr. Clifford Ollier in a paper for Earth Systems and Environment.
The paper – Is the Sea Level Stable at Aden, Yemen? – examines the discrepancies between raw and adjusted sea level data in Aden, Karachi and Mumbai.
Kenneth Richard at No Tricks Zone reports:
Here is a before/after from Karachi:
The authors do not mince their words. They refer to these adjustments as “highly questionable” and “suspicious.”
That’s because they can find no plausible scientific explanation for the adjustments.
As they explain at the beginning of their paper, it is hard to put together consistent sea level records covering a long time period. This is because tide gauges are often the result of multiple sets of data, taken over different time periods using different instruments, which are then spliced together.
So there is nothing per se wrong with PSMSL making adjustments in order to make the different datasets align.
What is wrong is the way that the scientists at PSMSL have adjusted them. In every case, they have revised them in order to make them produce a sharp upward trend in sea level rise – despite the fact that global records do not support this.
The truth, Parker and Ollier conclude in their paper, is that sea level has changed very little in the three sites examined:
But the official PSMSL data – as used by other global data-keeping bodies such as NOAA – claims that there has been a sharp increase.
In Aden, for example, the alarmists have turned a modest 1.21 mm/year rise into a 3.02 mm/year rise.
Again, there is no plausible scientific explanation for these adjustments.
As the authors put it:
Indeed, but it is perfectly consistent with the behavior of alarmist scientists in other fields, notably those concerning surface temperature data records. As we have reported here before, there is copious evidence to suggest that the gatekeepers of global warming have consistently and shamelessly cooked the books and rigged the data in order to give the impression that “climate change” is a major and unprecedented phenomenon.
A major part of the global warming scare narrative is that melting ice caps will cause sea levels to rise at a dangerous and unprecedented rate, enveloping low-lying Pacific islands, flooding vulnerable countries like Bangladesh and perhaps one day drowning even places like Manhattan.
There is little if any scientific evidence that this is actually happening.
What’s extraordinary is the desperation of scientists at what ought to be impeccably neutral and trustworthy institutions such as NASA, NOAA and PSMSL to pretend that it is.
When alarmists in charge of surface temperature datasets make dishonest adjustments to exaggerate the appearance of global warming, it looks like corruption.
When alarmists in the entirely separate field of sea level measurement make precisely the same sort of dishonest adjustments in order to accord with the same global warming narrative, it starts to look like a conspiracy.
Alarmist scientists have been caught red-handed tampering with raw data in order to exaggerate sea level rise.
The raw (unadjusted) data from three Indian Ocean gauges – Aden, Karachi and Mumbai – showed that local sea level trends in the last 140 years had been very gently rising, neutral or negative (ie sea levels had fallen).
But after the evidence had been adjusted by tidal records gatekeepers at the global databank Permanent Service for Mean Sea Level (PSMSL) it suddenly showed a sharp and dramatic rise.
The whistle was blown by two Australian scientists Dr. Albert Parker and Dr. Clifford Ollier in a paper for Earth Systems and Environment.
The paper – Is the Sea Level Stable at Aden, Yemen? – examines the discrepancies between raw and adjusted sea level data in Aden, Karachi and Mumbai.
Kenneth Richard at No Tricks Zone reports:
Here is a before/after from Karachi:
The authors do not mince their words. They refer to these adjustments as “highly questionable” and “suspicious.”
That’s because they can find no plausible scientific explanation for the adjustments.
As they explain at the beginning of their paper, it is hard to put together consistent sea level records covering a long time period. This is because tide gauges are often the result of multiple sets of data, taken over different time periods using different instruments, which are then spliced together.
So there is nothing per se wrong with PSMSL making adjustments in order to make the different datasets align.
What is wrong is the way that the scientists at PSMSL have adjusted them. In every case, they have revised them in order to make them produce a sharp upward trend in sea level rise – despite the fact that global records do not support this.
The truth, Parker and Ollier conclude in their paper, is that sea level has changed very little in the three sites examined:
But the official PSMSL data – as used by other global data-keeping bodies such as NOAA – claims that there has been a sharp increase.
In Aden, for example, the alarmists have turned a modest 1.21 mm/year rise into a 3.02 mm/year rise.
Again, there is no plausible scientific explanation for these adjustments.
As the authors put it:
Indeed, but it is perfectly consistent with the behavior of alarmist scientists in other fields, notably those concerning surface temperature data records. As we have reported here before, there is copious evidence to suggest that the gatekeepers of global warming have consistently and shamelessly cooked the books and rigged the data in order to give the impression that “climate change” is a major and unprecedented phenomenon.
A major part of the global warming scare narrative is that melting ice caps will cause sea levels to rise at a dangerous and unprecedented rate, enveloping low-lying Pacific islands, flooding vulnerable countries like Bangladesh and perhaps one day drowning even places like Manhattan.
There is little if any scientific evidence that this is actually happening.
What’s extraordinary is the desperation of scientists at what ought to be impeccably neutral and trustworthy institutions such as NASA, NOAA and PSMSL to pretend that it is.
When alarmists in charge of surface temperature datasets make dishonest adjustments to exaggerate the appearance of global warming, it looks like corruption.
When alarmists in the entirely separate field of sea level measurement make precisely the same sort of dishonest adjustments in order to accord with the same global warming narrative, it starts to look like a conspiracy.
