IPCC accused of falsifying figures

A Swedish paleogeophysicist has accused the IPCC of cherrypicking data and falsifying results in order to exaggerate sea level rise. Professor Nils Axel Mörner of Stockholm University has studied sea levels for four decades.

He points out the cherrypicking of tide gauge data

Tide gauging is very complicated, because it gives different answers for wherever you are in the world. But we have to rely on geology when we interpret it. So, for example, those people in the IPCC [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change], choose Hong Kong, which has six tide gauges, and they choose the record of one, which gives 2.3 mm per year rise of sea level. Every geologist knows that that is a subsiding area. It’s the compaction of sediment; it is the only record which you shouldn’t use. And if that figure is correct, then Holland would not be subsiding, it would be uplifting. And that is just ridiculous. Not even ignorance could be responsible for a thing like that.

Then, he accuses them of introducing arbitrary adjustments to the satellite measurements of sea level - a sleight of hand which will be familiar to anyone who has followed the debate over the surface temperature records.

Now, back to satellite altimetry, which shows the water, not just the coasts, but in the whole of the ocean. And you measure it by satellite. From 1992 to 2002, [the graph of the sea level] was a straight line, variability along a straight line, but absolutely no trend whatsoever. We could see those spikes: a very rapid rise, but then in half a year, they fall back again. But absolutely no trend, and to have a sea-level rise, you need a trend.

Then, in 2003, the same data set, which in their [IPCC's] publications, in their website, was a straight line—suddenly it changed, and showed a very strong line of uplift, 2.3 mm per year, the same as from the tide gauge. And that didn't look so nice. It looked as though they had recorded something; but they hadn't recorded anything. It was the original one which they had suddenly twisted up, because they entered a “correction factor,” which they took from the tide gauge. So it was not a measured thing, but a figure introduced from outside. I accused them of this at the Academy of Sciences in Moscow —I said you have introduced factors from outside; it's not a measurement. It looks like it is measured from the satellite, but you don't say what really happened. And they answered, that we had to do it, because otherwise we would not have gotten any trend!

The accusations of IPCC scientists involving themselves in illegitimate data adjustments, cherrypicking and deception are coming thick and fast. It's high time that the mainstream media started to involve themselves in this scandal.

Comments

[bgp]

Yes, the sea-level stuff is problematic (http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2004/2003RG000139.shtml). But I've never understood why people were trying to big this up anyway. The models indicate minimal impact from melting of glacial ice at this point anyway. I'm not so sure about thermal expansion, but if the claim is that we have so-far had warming of 0.6 deg.C and that for thermal expansion to have much of an effect this has to propagate to the depths of the oceans, it doesn't seem like you'd expect much so far. Anyway, the debate is less about whether the climate is warming and more about to what extent man is responsible. Why do the IPCC think that this would prove things one way or the other? I suppose it's a question of trying to quantify the damage that might ensue if their theories were right. But this sort of thing just seems to magnify the range of uncertainty.

On the subject of climate-change, you may have heard journalists trying to connect the recent floods to global warming. Actually, if anything, it points the other way, as I have explained at pickinglosers (http://www.pickinglosers.com/blog_entry/bgprior/20070626/summer_downpours_and_global_warming ).

[Bishop Hill]

I think they big it up because people aren't really afraid of temperature rises.

[Breem]

It's telling that this guy's interview is pulished in a Lyndon LaRouche mag. That doesn't make his claims wrong, but is that the best place he could his message out? I don't trust the credibility of someone who either a)thinks Lyndon Larouche is a valid pubisher of fact or b)doesn't seem to care where his interview is published enough to do a little research.

[Bishop Hill]

You'll have to fill me in on Lyndon LaRouche. What's the problem with it?

[John Nicklin]

The Executive Intelligence Review isn't a credible source? Oh well, doesn't really matter, its the man saying what he said that matters. Morner is a credible source and a very respected researcher. Greenpeace, through exxonsecrets, has tried to dicredit him, but nobody would consider exxonsecrets to be credible.If you can't attack the science, attack the man, that's the alarmist way, so its no surprise that he's on the Greenpeace hitlist.

If Morner says the sea level isn't rising, its not rising. Move uphill if he says otherwise.