Warmies Goosing Up Rising Oceans Threat

One of the most vivid Warmie scares is rising sea levels. Ice caps melt, the ocean rises and islands -- shoot, whole island nations -- play Atlantis.

Good stuff for headline-grabbing, with one little problem. Oceans aren't rising particularly quickly; in fact, ocean levels were rising faster in the first half of the last century. That's the finding of a study by S. J. Holgate published in Geophysical Research Letters:

Nine long and nearly continuous sea level records were chosen from around the world to explore rates of change in sea level for 1904-2003. ... Extending the sea level record back over the entire century suggests that the high variability in the rates of sea level change observed over the past 20 years were not particularly unusual. The rate of sea level change was found to be larger in the early part of last century (2.03 ~ 0.35 mm/yr 1904-1953), in comparison with the latter part (1.45 ~ 0.34 mm/yr 1954-2003). The highest decadal rate of rise occurred in the decade centred on 1980 (5.31 mm/yr) with the lowest rate of rise occurring in the decade centred on 1964 (1.49 mm/yr). Over the entire century the mean rate of change was 1.74 ~ 0.16 mm/yr.

Up in the 50s, down in the 60s, up in the 80s, down in the 90s. Could it be that the Warmies looked at a year or two and drew hysterical conclusions?

Hysterical? Warmies? That's not exactly hysterical.

Hat-tip: Greenie Watch
Related Tags: Global warming, Ocean levels