When it comes to sitcoms, a personal favourite of mine was Men Behaving Badly, and I know my wife felt the same way about Doc Martin. And so it was a no-brainer that last night we should tune in to follow Martin Clunes, exuding his trademark affability as he island-hopped through Micronesia. He’s fast becoming a national treasure, don’t you know — and he loves his dogs. So when he landed on a miniscule beach in Papua to report upon the plight of the Hawksbill Turtle, the whole nation must have been hanging on his every word. In particular, there was this to dangle upon:
The beach is suffering rising sea levels caused by climate change.
I was immediately reminded how Mark Hodgson had recently commented upon a similar climate connection here on Cliscep. Specifically, The Guardian was reporting that the Fijian rugby team was supposedly in danger of losing its international competitiveness due to climate change. How so? Well how could it not be so when the beaches upon which the locals play the game are fast disappearing due to sea level rise?
Then there was this statement from The Guardian in the wake of the establishment of a loss and damage financing mechanism enshrined in the Cop27 agreement:
After the announcement of the fund, Pacific leaders and activists celebrated, while also warning that unless more radical action was taken to limit warming to 1.5C, entire islands could disappear.
Entire islands, God forbid! Something must be done about this. Over to the celebrating Marshall Islands climate envoy, Kathy Jetnil-Kijiner:
This is huge progress, but we are also not doing enough to reduce the loss and damage that will affect us in the future. We must phase out fossil fuels and we must do so now.
Of course, I should dismiss what Kathy what’s-its-name had to say on the matter for being just the sort of bandwagon-riding, Micronesian money-grabbing pronouncement one might expect to hear; but what about Doc Martin and his turtles? Perhaps, if he is pointing the finger, it is high time I dropped my climate change scepticism and accepted that, just for once, there is a real peril here. But before taking that idea too seriously, we have to find out just how much sea level rise there has been in the Pacific region recently, and determine how much of that could be attributed to non-climatic factors such as tectonic movement. It’s only what Doc Martin would have done – surely?
An appropriate paper on the subject of sea level changes in the Fiji Islands was not hard to find. Perhaps the clue was in its title: New Records of Sea Level Changes in the Fiji Islands.
Just a glance at the paper was enough to confirm that it is a meticulous and rigorous study into the subject. It runs to some 40 pages, and it richly illustrates the geological evidence for historic sea level change to be found at each of Fiji’s many coves and beaches. To be fair, however, it is not a paper that has anything to say regarding satellite data. Nevertheless, the conclusions were pretty conclusive as far as conclusions go:
Elevation was measured with a high-precision instrument with respect to HTL [High Tide level]. Ages were determined by 17 C14-dates. A +70 cm higher sea level was observed, sampled and dated at AD 1530-1673. It was followed by a significant regression of about 1.7-1.8 m, killing coral reefs and cutting a new rock-cut platform some 20-30 cm above present mean low tide level (LTL). Then sea level rose again to its present position, or slightly above, a level, which remained fairly constant over the last 150-200 years. In the last 60 years corals were killed due to a sea level lowering or a severe bleaching episode. After that very stable sea level conditions must have prevailed for the last decades, forcing corals at several sites to grow laterally into microatolls. [My emphasis]
So, according to this paper, not only has Fiji relatively recently undergone (and survived) massive changes in sea level every bit as severe as the worst predictions for future climate change, it is currently undergoing — well, nothing. And Fiji is not alone in sharing this fate. From the same author, Nils-Axel Mörner, we hear:
Observational facts from the Maldives, Goa and Bangladesh in the Indian Ocean and from Fiji and New Caledonia in the Pacific record a high sea level in the 17th century, a low sea level in the 18th century, a high sea level in the early 19th century and a stable sea level in the last 50 – 70 years.
But if these are the ‘observational facts’, why is everyone going on about a crisis that is currently in the process of causing ‘entire islands’ to ‘disappear’? One possible answer to that question may lie in the quality of science that has been used to support that narrative. In a paper bluntly titled, ‘Absolute Evidence of the Absence of an on-Going Sea Level Rise on Ouvéa Island of New Caledonia’, Mörner wrote:
Changes in sea level are a hot topic, and frequently addressed in present day media. The quality of statements is another thing. Doomsday statements of a rapidly rising sea are not anchored in observational facts… The author notices with sadness that people still think that there are shortcuts, and that an outsider can contribute with significant material (summarizing data maybe, but never advancing the science of sea level changes). Personally, I have worked intensively on the science of sea level changes for 54 years. It may therefore be appropriate to summarize the findings. Absolute eustatic sea level is not uniform over the globe, but differs, and we must talk about regional eustatic changes and try to define the regional eustatic component.
If only Martin Clunes had asked his advisors to identify for his benefit the regional eustatic component, then he might have been in a position to consider the possibility that Micronesia is subject to a rotational eustasy that has completely dominated all other effects, not only locally but throughout the Indian and Pacific oceans. In fact, as far as Mörner was concerned, there is little reliable or convincing evidence of there being a recent sea level rise that can be attributed to climate change. Indeed, if Mörner is to be believed, there is plenty of geological evidence of there being no recent sea level rises at all, despite what satellite data may be suggesting.
It is forgivable that Martin Clunes should, in all good faith, be uncritically passing on the advice given to him. The IPCC, on the other hand, is deserving of a much more severe scrutiny. As Nils-Axel Mörner wrote:
Rapidly rising global sea level has in recent years become a central part of the story claimed by the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) and its proponents despite the absence of validation in observational facts (e.g. [1]). Still, the myth of a rapid sea level rise is effectively spread in media.
Somehow I doubt that any of the IPCC’s Assessment Reports will have cited any of Nils-Axel Mörner’s papers. He was, after all, using geological data to argue against the consensus, and his advocacy for dowsing did his credibility no favours whatsoever. Nevertheless, he was right about the narrative being so effectively spread by the media. There is something called the halo effect, a cognitive bias in which one is much more likely to believe someone you already respect and like. Even I had a little wobble when Doc Martin peered into the camera to make his special plea for the Hawksbill Turtle. It was the same disarming face that I grew to love from watching Men Behaving Badly. But now I am a little older and wiser and much more inclined to look up the facts for myself. It’s called empirical scepticism, and it is something I would recommend to anyone, because the fact is that you will never be able to tell whether men are behaving badly just by looking at their faces. And, despite what some might tell you, it is never too late to call them out.
Now, if you will excuse me, I am just off to find Kathy somebody or other to find out if I can get my money back.
Very interesting, John. However, Nils-Axel Morner is a climate heretic, so the climate concerned are never going to take his work seriously:
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [1] has claimed that sea level is rising and that an additional acceleration is soon to be expected as a function of global warming. This proposition only works if the present warming would be a function of increased CO2 content in the atmosphere (a hypothesis termed AGW from Anthropogenic Global Warming). On a longer-term basis, it seems quite clear, however, that the dominant factor of global changes in temperature is changes in solar variability [2–3]. Regardless of what actually is driving climate change and sea level changes, the proposition of a rapidly rising sea level grew to a mantra in media and politics. This initiated a flood of papers rather based on models and statistics, however, than on actual field observations.
Those supportive footnotes 2 & 3 (regarding the proposition that solar variability is the main long-term driver of global temperature changes) cite his own work, which is fair enough, but something we sceptics have a healthy scepticism about. So I would lodge that caveat. Having said that, his field-work seems impressive enough and is fairly convincing. I bet the Guardian and the BBC ignored it at the time!
I wonder if there have been any updates? The report in question is now a little over six years old.
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Mark,
It is his field-work, emphasising the importance of geological evidence that sets him apart from the common or garden climate change denier. But he has a DeSmog entry, so say no more.
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It’s a not unfamiliar story. Here is what the (historically rational) IUCN said in its 2008 red listing assessment:
Reckless, greedy and poor humans have driven hawksbills to the edge of extinction. But if westerners stop driving their SUVs, everything will be fine.
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Jit,
That’s wierd, none of that got a mention on the TV programme.
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This should be added to the IUCN list of threats to the Hawksbill Turtle;
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We should remember that mangrove trees are much more sensitive to sea-level change than Hawksbill turtles. To the extent that a wildly indolent example in the Maldives had to be wrenched from its too persistent spot by climate propagandists as “falsely” demonstrating a lack of sea-level change. I recall visiting its former home during my only visit to those fair islands. Nils-Axel Mörner I believe also regretted its removal.
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Alan,
Nils-Axel Mörner I believe also regretted its removal.
Yes, the tree removal incident is mentioned in Mörner’s Wiki entry.
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Mark, here’s 2024 study
Rethinking atoll futures: local resilience to global challenges
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0169534723002987
Highlights
“Despite the dominant narrative that atoll islands are already succumbing to rising sea levels, global meta-analyses of over 700 atoll islands have identified that 88.6% of islands show no net loss in land area over the past half-century, many even increasing in size, despite sea levels having risen by up to 0.6 m [56,57]. This empirical evidence of persistence of atoll islands underscores their inherent dynamism under changing environmental conditions, including rising sea levels [10,11,58].”
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The rising sea level claim ignores Morner’s findings:
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If you’re looking for sea level data on S Pacific islands, SEAFRAME is good and current, now 30 years of history. March 2024 report:
Click to access IDO60101.202403.pdf
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The money graph is this one:
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Ron,
The rising sea level claim ignores Morner’s findings:
Such is Mörner’s notoriety that it isn’t difficult to find plenty of hatchet jobs on him on the internet. The one produced by Skepticalscience seems typical:
https://skepticalscience.com/Nils-Axel-Morner-wrong-about-sea-level-rise.html
What strikes me about such debunking, however, is that it concentrates upon ridiculing Mörner’s distrust of tidal gauge and satellite data. His arguments against the reliability of such data may or may not be particularly well made, but one should remember his motivations for going down that road. His own expertise lies in determining the geological basis for sea level rise assessment, and he has argued that, if it were sound narrative, one should see the standard narrative of continuous sea level rise corroborated by the geological data. The field studies I feature in my article concentrate upon the lack of such corroboration. So, what is really needed to debunk the Mörner scepticism is a good debunking of those field studies – and that I have yet to find. But I’ll keep looking.
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John, one of Mörner’s last statements shows why he is anathema to them:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/340917990_Expert_review_by_Nils-Axel_Morner_of_Chapter_9_Preamble
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Ron,
That’s very interesting, and it verifies my speculation that the IPCC Assessment Reports would not cite any of his work, since there he is, in his capacity as expert reviewer, explicitly admonishing AR6, Chapter 9 for not doing so.
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Also, there is this interview, guaranteed to ensure his removal from the IPCC Christmas card list:
NilsAxelMornerinterview.pdf (climatechangefacts.info)
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John, regarding you search, I see one of Morner’s collaborators is still active and publishing on the sea level issue. Here’s a more recent paper by Pamela Matlack-Klein
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/338992198_Sea-level_is_stable_Relevance_of_the_present_sea-level_changes_in_coastal_risk
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Thanks for the link, Ron. I’ll read it later.
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