IPCC accused of falsifying figures
Jun 25, 2007
Bishop Hill in Climate: WG2

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.

 

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