"I highly doubt this claim will ever see a courtroom, however it would be extraordinarily entertainment [sic] indeed to see the mendacious Lord cross-examined under oath...".

Phil, any sign of Mann's case against Steyn et al coming to trial? How many years has it been now?

Climate Science is simply DEAD, (Dodge, Evade, Avoid, Deny) when it comes to evidence in Law and Science.

I remain convinced there is some truth in it somewhere, but relying on Hockey Teamsters to provide it, has wasted so much money on predicting what COULD happen, and searching for circumstantial evidence that could be linked.

At least Phil Clarke provides names and references for sources that do not deserve Taxpayer Funding. They have a track record of being unwilling to support Mann with their expertise.

Googling Mann Amicus provides a list of omissions such as:

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/mann-v-national-review-supreme-court-petition-amicus-briefs-free-speech/
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/03/10/the-drawn-out-mann-lawsuit-science-is-not-taking-a-stand-for-michael-mann/

Um, AK, that wasn't a quote, it was the title of the paper - a paper cited 343 times. As
George Santayana said, those who do not learn from the past are doomed to repeat it. What we can learn from past climate states, amongst many other things, is how the climate system responded to natural forcings in the past. From this we can extrapolate, or at least put constraints on, how it will respond to the current manmade forcings. These indicate, without the use of any models, that we are looking at a rise of between 2-5C this century. You didn't like that paper? There are many more to choose from:

Earth's climate history potentially can yield accurate assessment of climate sensitivity. Imprecise knowledge of glacial-to-interglacial global temperature change is the biggest obstacle to accurate assessment of the fast-feedback climate sensitivity, which is the sensitivity that most immediately affects humanity.

Our best estimate for the fast-feedback climate sensitivity from Holocene initial conditions is 3 ± 0.5°C for 4 W/m2 CO2 forcing (68% probability) . Slow feedbacks, including ice sheet disintegration and release of greenhouse gases (GHGs) by the climate system, generally amplify total Earth system climate sensitivity.

Slow feedbacks make Earth system climate sensitivity highly dependent on the initial climate state and on the magnitude and sign of the climate forcing, because of thresholds (tipping points) in the slow feedbacks. It is difficult to assess the speed at which slow feedbacks will become important in the future, because of the absence in paleoclimate history of any positive (warming) forcing rivalling the speed at which the human-caused forcing is growing.

The most-cited sea level dataset is Church and White. They reported that global sea level rose at a rate of 1.7 ± 0.2 mm/year from 1900 to 2009, and at 3.2 ± 0.4 mm year from 1993-2009. That's acceleration.

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs10712-011-9119-1

More up-to-date, last year Nerem et al reported:-

Using a 25-y time series of precision satellite altimeter data from TOPEX/Poseidon, Jason-1, Jason-2, and Jason-3, we estimate the climate-change–driven acceleration of global mean sea level over the last 25 y to be 0.084 ± 0.025 mm/y2. Coupled with the average climate-change–driven rate of sea level rise over these same 25 y of 2.9 mm/y, simple extrapolation of the quadratic implies global mean sea level could rise 65 ± 12 cm by 2100 compared with 2005, roughly in agreement with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) 5th Assessment Report (AR5) model projections.

https://www.pnas.org/content/115/9/2022

But then there's https://wattsupwiththat.com/2017/07/20/sea-level-rise-accelerating-not/

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs10712-011-9119-1
https://www.pnas.org/content/115/9/2022
Aug 19, 2019 at 1:04 PM | Phil Clarke

Do you have any reliable sources?

"What we can learn from past climate states, amongst many other things, is how the climate system responded to natural forcings in the past. "
Aug 19, 2019 at 1:04 PM | Phil Clarke

As Climate Science could not explain the MWP and LIA, Mann erased them both from his Hockey Stick and other Climate Scientists chose to ignore the deception.

Therefore all Climate Science is based on deception?

But then there's https://wattsupwiththat.com/2017/07/20/sea-level-rise-accelerating-not/

WUWT. Really?

Take a Tide Gauge dataset, throw out all but 63 stations on some arbitrary criterion, use that subset to demonstrate you do not know how to do trend analysis, finally, publish on a blog.

Wow.

Willis Eschenbach has a post at WUWT claiming to show that sea level rise is not accelerating. What he actually demonstrates is that he doesn’t know how to tell.

His method is to fit a straight line to sea level data (from tide gauges) and to fit a quadratic, then compare their “R^2 values.” R^2 is not a test of statistical significance, and neither is the difference from two models. Willis doesn’t know this. He thinks he does — but he’s wrong. I’ll leave it to Willis to figure out why that is (I don’t expect him to be able to do that either).

Evidently Willis also doesn’t know that there are perfectly good, and well-known (for a long time), ways to test the quadratic fit vs. the linear fit statistically. My advice to Willis: crack a book.

Source

Please read Willis' update where a better methodology is employed (suggested by Tamino), but still no cause for concern is found.

Oh I did. Firstly, if your method and results are completely wrong it is disingenuous to just tack on an 'update' on the end admitting as much. The headline still reads Sea Level Rise Accelerating? Not., only readers who get to the end of the piece and read the update would discover that the correct headline would be Sea Level Rise Accelerating? Oh Yes.

Sounds like a good addition to my 'WUWT Propaganda' thread.

Secondly, he still doesn't get statistical significance or how to conduct a sensitivity study (he threw away 96% of the data - what happens with more stations, or fewer?) so why would a 'sceptic' trust his (updated) conclusions this time around? Especially when they are at odds with what the literature and the professionals who study the data for a living are saying. I've actually run the numbers and I disagree.

'No cause for concern' may well include losing Miami..

Well Phil you've run the numbers have you? Well, as we have discussed several times before, I have seen the physical evidence first-hand in the Maldives and Western Australia which clearly indicates a recent sea-level fall. This is hardly consistent with a constant sea-level rise, let alone an accelerating one, over a large part of the Earth's surface.

I grow weary and somewhat bored with your repeating old arguments based on your selective literature searches.

If I may paraphrase:

- There's no acceleration in sea level rise. It says so at WUWT.
- But that piece contains some schoolboy statistical errors which render the conclusions just wrong.
- But he updated it and finds 'no cause for concern'
- Many flaws still remain. Even on his updated method, SLR is accelerating, in a significant way.
- But I've seen evidence of sea level falling - with my own eyes!

Maybe, but others have made similar claims, found to be bogus when properly investigated.

I remain 'sceptical'.

"If I may paraphrase:
Aug 19, 2019 at 4:54 PM | Phil Clarke"

You can't paraphrase without getting it wrong. Do you even know when you are spreading other people's lies?

Your privilege Phil. You select the "evidence" you want. Anyone wishing to see for themselves the evidence for a falling sea level fall, go to Google Earth, select coverage of the southern embayment of Shark Bay in Western Australia. Note the more than 50 beach ridges parallel with the most recent (= current shoreline) and with each other. Each beach ridge corresponds to a former sea-level and the whole complex to a progressive sea-level fall.

Aug 19, 2019 at 6:53 PM | AK

The Ancient Greeks, Egyptians and Romans had the foresight to build some of their ports above and beneath sea level. Over time, I suppose they realised that their Climate Gods were rubbish at prophecies too.

 I have seen the physical evidence first-hand in the Maldives and Western Australia which clearly indicates a recent sea-level fall. This is hardly consistent with a constant sea-level rise, let alone an accelerating one, over a large part of the Earth's surface.

That depends. People often think that as water is free to flow, sea level must be about the same everywhere, but it is not, it is 'lumpy'. It can be locally depressed by the gravitational pull of undersea mountain ranges, and relative sea level can indeed fall due to local geology as the land shifts upwards. Here's the data from Juneau in Alaska, where the land is shifting upwards as ice melts. So a local fall relative to the land is consistent with a globally rising trend.

So you could try and interpret ridges on a beach in Australia, or you could look at what 120 years of global tide gauge and satellite altimeter observations tell us.

Tough call.

Tougher call Phil when you can find evidence for a falling sea level across the entire Indian Ocean (I already mentioned the Maldives). Difficult to blame ice for that.
Oh, and BTW there is evidence in the Maldives (and all across the globe) for sea level to have been 5 metres higher than it is today (higher sea level - less land ice - warmer global temperatures (all without the aid of aCO2). Yet periodically I see headlines about temperatures being the highest (or will be the highest) for xMillion years. Utter anti-science balderdash.

https://www.nature.com/articles/ngeo901

Do you even think about what you are promoting or do you just do a search to try and find something vaguely appropriate?
You suggest I consult a paper that is behind a $8.99 paywall and whose abstract includes the following gems:

"Here we combine in situ and satellite observations of Indian Ocean sea level with climate-model simulations, to identify a distinct spatial pattern of sea-level rise since the 1960s. We find that sea level has decreased substantially in the south tropical Indian Ocean whereas it has increased elsewhere. This pattern is driven by changing surface winds associated with a combined invigoration of the Indian Ocean Hadley and Walker cells, patterns of atmospheric overturning circulation in the north–south and east–west direction, respectively, which is partly attributable to rising levels of atmospheric greenhouse gases. We conclude that—if ongoing anthropogenic warming dominates natural variability—the pattern we detected is likely to persist and to increase the environmental stress on some coasts and islands in the Indian Ocean.

So 1. Climate model simulations in an area renowned for its lack or scarcity of data points. Danger warning!!!
2. Everything attributable to rising CO2 (what else?), unfortunately the sea-level fall in Western Australia began thousands of years ago and if I recall correctly some of the higher beaches in the Maldives are similarly old. Elsewhere high wave-cut notches are similarly old, indicate a stable higher old sea level that subsequently fallen. Nothing to do with aCO2.
3.Everything. attributable to changing wind cells but in an area with a large region markedly affected by monsoons (ie changeable wind directions and strengths). Doesn't seem likely.
Won't be wasting my hard-earned $8.99.

Sorry if the point was obscure: it was simply that the sea levels in the Indian Ocean have been studied, explained and do not constitute a falsification of the general rising and accelerating trend in the global level, as you seemed to be arguing.

Actually not at all what you believe. Intensification of wind patterns (as surmised but not substantiated in the paper) might well be a cause of a different sea level than elsewhere (like sea level changes associated with the low pressures of hurricanes perhaps). Unfortunately it does not explain how increasing atmospheric CO2 could cause a decreasing sea level over many decades. This is not mentioned in the abstract available to us. But because you are so au fait with the paper, so as to be able to use it as an explanation, perhaps you might summarize the essential reasoning that explains a continuous (and accelerating perhaps) decades-long sea level fall
And while you're at it, please explain your support over the years for the Maldivian government who have argued they are at risk of being drowned as a consequence of sea level rises, when all the while sea level has been falling? Have you now changed your mind on the basis of the mass of evidence now supplied by this paper?

The abstract was sufficient to make the point I wanted to make. Life is too short to discuss assertions made without evidence and you've provided none for significant sea level fall either in the Indian Ocean or the Maldives. There's an open access copy of the paper here:-

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/45143912_Patterns_of_Indian_Ocean_sea-level_change_in_a_warming_climate/link/00b7d51a7ae49b393f000000/download

It’s a complicated picture with sea level decreasing in the Zanzibar area but rising in 'the south subtropical-midlatitude basin, the eastern equatorial region, the Bay of Bengal and the Arabian Sea.'

So you haven't got an answer to any of my questions then?
But thanks for the link to the main paper. When I have some time to waste I'll take a look, but for reasons already given I don't expect much.

Life is too short to discuss assertions made without evidence

Aug 20, 2019 at 1:49 PM | Phil Clarke

Is that why you are happy to trust Hockey Teamsters, and rehash their fabrications, without bothering to think about anything else?

"The dismal spectacle/pantomime put on by those pushing alarm over our CO2 is something to behold. "
Aug 21, 2019 at 11:05 AM | John Shade

And it is all done with misappropriated money.