Nils Axel-Morner is a global warming denialist who has claimed that sea-level rises predicted by supporters of global warming are not happening and even that sea levels were higher in the historical past.
First, check out this blog entry from Tim Lambert:
http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/11/the_australians_war_on_science_42.php
Category: The War on Science
Posted on: November 8, 2009 1:23 PM, by Tim LambertDespite her training in law, Janet Albrechtsen was not able to figure out that the Copenhagen treaty wasn’t going to impose a COMMUNIST WORLD GOVERNMENT, so you just know that she has no chance in hell of understanding a scientific question. Albrechtsen claims that it is a “fact” that “Sea levels have remained constant for the past 30 years”. Study the graph below from the CSIRO to see that measurements from tide gauges and satellites contradict this claim.
So how did Albrechtsen get it so completely wrong? Well, her authority, Nils Axel-Morner, completely ignored all direct measurements of sea-level from tide gauges and satellites. Simply really. Details in a previous post.
Graeme Readfearn (who, like Albrechtsen, works for News Limited) observes
wasn’t inquisitive enough to find out that Morner is treated like something of a joke among most oceanographers and quaternary scientists.
Albrechtsen tries to invest Morner with some authority because of his association with INQUA, but Readfearn gets a statement from the president of INQUA:
Dr Morner was, quite some time ago, president of one of INQUA’s commissions, indeed, the commission on sea-level changes. That commission no longer exists, as such, but is now part of our Commission on Coastal and Marine Processes. Dr Morner’s views concerning sea-level change are his own and are not endorsed by the current Executive Committee of INQUA, nor have previous INQUA Executive Committees endorsed Dr Morner’s views. On several occasions INQUA has requested of Dr Morner that he not inadvertently represent his views on sea-level change as if they have some connection with INQUA.
OUCH! How embarrassing! Oh, wait….denialists have no sense of embarrassment. Nowhere does this become more obvious than in the testimony that Nils Axel-Morner gave to the British House of Lords on March 30, 2005.
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld200506/ldselect/ldeconaf/12/12we18.htm
With the TOPEX/POSEIDON satellite mission in 1992, we now have new means of recording actual sea level changes. The record from 1992 to early 2000 (Fig 4) lacks any sign of a sea level rise; it records variability around zero plus a major ENSO even in year 1997.
When we three years later have the same record extended into year 2003 on the Webb, a tilt has been introduced. This tilt does not originate from the satellite altimetry readings, however, but represents an inferred factor from tide-gauge interpretations. In order to get back to true satellite data, we have to tilt the whole record back to its original data of Fig 4. When this is done, there is no sea level rise to be seen—only a variability around zero plus a number of high-amplitude ENSO oscillations (Fig 5). This is why I in Fig 3 conclude that the sea level remained stationary at around zero for the last 10-15 years (as further discussed in Mörner, 2004a and 2005).
The tide-gauge introduced into the satellite data on the Webb seems to violate observational facts at sites spread all over the globe; not least our NW European data covering both uplifted areas (Fennoscandia, Scotland) as subsiding areas (the North Sea).
From 2000 to the present, we have run a special international sea level project in the Maldives including six field sessions and numerous radiocarbon dates. Our record for the last 1,200 years is given in Fig 6. There are no signs of any on-going sea level rise. It seems all to be a myth.
How the hell is it that denialists are willing to accuse the makers of the “hockey stick” graphs of faking data, yet they never noticed anything from their own people like THAT?! Morner did not provide any proof that the land in question was sinking! He merely ASSUMED it!
Tide gauges are indeed based on sea levels relative to land, so if the land is rising or sinking, it will indeed affect their measurments of sea levels. It reminds me of Einstein’s Theory of Relativity. Even with tide gauges, you can get a more accurate reading of sea levels by taking readings from dozens of places around the world, taking into account that it is unlikely that all those locations are rising or sinking at the same rate.
Satillite readings of sea levels may seem more accurate than tide gauges, but even satillites can be affected by variations in their orbits. It’s the same issue as satillites taking temperature readings vs temperature readings based on the ground. There is no ABSOLUTE accuracy in any measurement.
In 2007, other scientists took Mörner’s claims and cut them to pieces.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.gloplacha.2006.08.002
Global and Planetary Change
Volume 55, Issue 4, February 2007, Pages 358-360
R.S. Nerema, b, ,
, A. Cazenavec, D.P. Chambersd, L.L. Fue, E.W. Leuliettea and G.T. Mitchumf
Yikes! When someone in science gets smacked down like that, his career is effectively OVER!
And yet that loon just wrote the following open letter to the President of the Maldives attacking him for making efforts to raise public awareness about climate change. The Maldives, being low islands, would be among the first areas of Earth to be affected by rising sea levels caused by global warming. Since Morner lives in Sweden, not the Maldives, his arrogance is amazing!
You have recently held an undersea Cabinet meeting to raise awareness of the idea that global sea level is rising and hence threatens to drown the Maldives. This proposition is not founded in observational facts and true scientific judgements, Accordingly it is incorrect.
(Dale Husband: Actually, this is exactly how con artists faking science operate; they avoid the process of peer review through publishing in science journals and go directly to the public with their claims, which they present as fact to decieve the scientifically illiterate. I’m amazed he would admit to this publicly!)
Mörner has written a number of works claiming to provide theoretical support for dowsing. [2] He was elected “Deceiver of the year” by Föreningen Vetenskap och Folkbildning in 1995 for “organizing university courses about dowsing…”[2]. In 1997 James Randi asked him to claim The One Million Dollar Paranormal Challenge, making a controlled experiment to prove that dowsing works.[12] Mörner declined the offer.[13]
UPDATE: I learned more about Morner here:
http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2008/11/the_australians_war_on_science_24.php
{{{Cut and Paste normally gives a proper cite with the date and source of the quote, but they didn’t for Morner. I wonder why not? A little bit of searching, and I found the source. It wasn’t a journal or even a conference paper — it was a poster. And it was presented back in 2003. Is it possible that Morner’s results have been superseded? Note also that Morner used “coring, levelling, sampling and carbon dating”. Conspicuously absent from this list is any direct measure of sea level from tide gauges or satellites. Sea level rise at tropical Pacific and Indian Ocean islands by Church, White and Hunter published in 2006 in the journal Global and Planetary Change looked at data from tide gauges and satellites and found:
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Dale, this is a damn fine expose, and there’s some sidewinder who used the following to counter it;
http://www.examiner.com/examiner/x-7715-Portland-Civil-Rights-Examiner~y2010m1d12-Hungarian-Physicist-Dr-Ferenc-Miskolczi-proves-CO2-emissions-irrelevant-in-Earths-Climate
The sidewinder asked me to ask you to try and punch holes in this thinking you can’t. The Examiner’s a damn tabloid IMO.
Texc, I already addressed the complex interactions between water vapor and carbon dioxide here:
https://dalehusband.wordpress.com/2009/01/19/those-terrible-twins-of-climate-change-co2-and-h2o/
Denialists may repeat the mantra that “CO2 can’t change climate” a trillion times, but that will never make it true. The status of CO2 as a greenhouse gas is too well established and has never been debunked, so the denialists’ rhetoric is simply wrong. The increase in cloud cover, precipitation, and storms caused by the increase of CO2 are well documented and they are also examples of climate change that that are explained by the known laws of chemistry and physics.
Indeed, the term “global warming” is a oversimplification of the matter; man-made climate change is much more than atmospheric temperatures getting warmer. It is an increase in the total thermal budget of the Earth as a whole. Most of the increased heat trapped by increasing CO2 has been going into the oceans. Without the oceans to act as a moderating influence on Earth’s climate by absorbing heat as well as CO2 itself, we might have overheated already like Venus did.
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A commenter named Bernard J helped me find the original online source of the critique of Morner above in orange print:
http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2011/02/heretic_and_the_heretic.php#comment-3383187
And I have updated the blog entry to reflect that finding.
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I like Your Article about Nils Axel-Morner. Perfect just what I was searching for!
I do like the manner in which you have presented this concern plus it does supply me personally some fodder for thought. Nevertheless, because of everything that I have personally seen, I basically hope when the actual reviews pile on that people today continue to be on point and not start on a soap box involving the news of the day. Still, thank you for this exceptional piece and even though I can not really go along with this in totality, I value the standpoint.
From the last little ice age to now sea levels have been rising gently and in recent times have started to level off. the graph above emphasises the gentle rise. 2010-1870 (140 years) and rise of 200mm. So thats 1.43mm per year. Not really a dramatic rise and certainly not anywhere near the rate required to see a 1.1m rise (Aust govt) or 6m (Al Gore). The 1.1m rise in 90 years as touted by the Australian Govt. would require a significant change to 12mm year whereas a 6m rise would require an acceleration to 66mm per year. Neither of these is plausible. Ad hominem attacks on scientists like Dr Morner are typical when the actual empirical data doesn’t fit the alarmist exaggerations. No need to panic and certainly an economy wrecking carbon dioxide tax is not going to change anything other than Australian living standards.
Yeah, believe those delusions if you want, but I know you are ignorant. Sea level rise was slow as the ice age was ending because it was natural, being driven by the Sun and shifts in the Earth’s orbit. That is not the case now. And considering that we could be burning coal for up to 1000 more years, a sea level rise of several meters driven by melting ice caps in turn caused by greenhouse gases trapping more heat in the atmosphere IS plausible. Have YOU done the calculations on how much the melting ice caps would rise the oceans when they are almost gone? That’s where those figures came from that you call exaggerated! Refute them directly, or SHUT UP!
Fears about wrecking the economy are also bullcrap. The economy will be wrecked anyway if we don’t stop using up non-renewable energy sources and switch to renewable sources, especially those that don’t pollute the atmosphere.
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(Dale Husband: Both your comments are ridiculous and show you have no understanding of the actual scientific misconduct I slammed with my blog entry above. Find some other place to troll, you creep.)
With almost everything that appears to be building within this specific area, all your opinions tend to be fairly radical. Nonetheless, I am sorry, because I can not give credence to your whole idea, all be it exciting none the less. It would seem to us that your commentary are not totally rationalized and in reality you are generally yourself not totally convinced of the argument. In any event I did enjoy reading it.
(Dale Husband: If you don’t have a specific criticism of my blog entry [like what facts did I get wrong], your comment is just pointless. Give me something to chew on, please.)
Huff and puff as much as you like Dale but I’m not buying a tall pair of Wellingtons any time soon.
Seems to me that sattelite altimetry is about as accurate as a prediction on a bumble bee’s flight path -and can be adjusted by anyone in any direction.
You should read his actual on ground observational stuff, site reports. Beats half assed satllite guessing and dodgy tide guages by miles.
(Dale Husband: OK, give me some links to that stuff. And be prepared to explain away all the other stuff I find so incredible, such as why he would think he would know so much more about sea level rises around the Maldives than those who actually have lived in the Maldives all their lives! That’s what I found so insulting to them!)
(P. S. I disemvowled your screen name because it is a lie.)