The most widely feared consequence of global warming appears to be sea level rise (SLR).  Environmental advocacy groups are polluting the airwaves and internet with lurid images of flooding of Bangladesh and Pacific islands, and raising the specter of hundreds of millions of environmental refugees.  Even sober scientists, while not endorsing such obvious scare stories, predict an acceleration of the ongoing global rise, which a system of tidal gauges places at about 18 cm (7 inches) for the past  century,  Other scientists stoutly maintain that there has been no acceleration -- even during the strong global warming of 1920-1940.

Recall that Obama even predicted a deceleration of SLR when he accepted his party's nomination in 2008: "This was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow, and our planet began to heal."  So far, the existing data can be used to support all three sides.  Some tidal-gauge data tend to show deceleration starting in 1960 (Holgate).

With estimates of past SLR all over the place, how does one proceed?  The principal data have come from gauges, which measure not only tides but storms and everything else.  And from these measurements one extracts a steady rise in local sea level.  There are about two dozen stations in the world with long-enough records dating back to the early 1900s, which have been used by the international tidal gauge network, located in Liverpool, England.

In March of 2012, the climate alarmist website Skeptical Science had their forums "hacked" and the contents posted online. In a forum thread titled, "Introduction to TCP" (2012-01-19) John Cook layed out the game plan for the 97% consensus study, Cook et al. (2013) 'Quantifying the consensus on anthropogenic global warming in the scientific literature',

Introduction

It's essential that the public understands that there's a scientific consensus on AGW. So Jim Powell, Dana and I have been working on something over the last few months that we hope will have a game changing impact on the public perception of consensus. Basically, we hope to establish that not only is there a consensus, there is a strengthening consensus. Deniers like to portray the myth that the consensus is crumbling, that the tide is turning. However, our survey of the peer-reviewed literature shows that the opposite is true - the consensus is getting stronger and the gap between those that accept and reject the consensus is increasing. What we have in mind is an extended campaign over 2012 (and beyond).

Meteorologist Anthony Watts responds to Dana Nuccitelli: Watts: ‘Nuccitelli thinks that a Carbon Tax is the solution. In a hilariously swivel-eyed op-ed he managed to get published at the Sacramento Bee,Viewpoints: Climate debate is settled; carbon tax is vital where the editorial board didn’t take note of the slow motion discrediting of his claims about the so called 97% scientific consensus,  Nuccitelli beams: ‘One of the most effective solutions – a revenue-neutral carbon tax’ — The only thing a Carbon Tax will command in California, is a mass exodus of business.’

Background on the fallacy of the new 97% ‘Consensus’ study:

The warmists’ models seem to have wildly exaggerated the warming threat:

Courtesy of John Christy, a comparison between 73 CMIP5 models (archived at the KNMI Climate Explorer website) and observations for the tropical bulk tropospheric temperature (aka “MT") since 1979…

Now, in what universe do the above results not represent an epic failure for the models? I continue to suspect that the main source of disagreement is that the models’ positive feedbacks are too strong…and possibly of even the wrong sign.

In a previous post, I discussed how the structure of environmental laws encourages a cozy “sue and settle” relationship between some environmental groups and federal regulatory agencies.  This quirk of the law allows the agency to obtain court sanctioned, negotiated settlements that bypass input from affected parties and the public.  This structure of environmental laws allows environmental groups to impose delay after delay in federal decisions by charging that the federal agency failed to follow proper process.  This wastes taxpayer money both directly due to delay and from the need of the federal agency to defend against the litigation or repeat the process under the environmental laws.

Attorney Karen Budd-Falen says this practice is both a scandal and waste of taxpayer dollars.  The following is her charge (I’ve made some minor edits for clarity):

Without question, it must have been one of the dottiest public utterances ever delivered by a British Cabinet minister. 

This was the extraordinary speech made on Monday — at an event staged by the Met Office — by Ed Davey, our Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change.

What inevitably attracted attention was Mr Davey’s attack on those ‘sections of the Press’ who dare question any aspect of the way his energy policy for Britain has become wholly skewed and dominated by the belief that the world is in the grip of global warming.

The timing of his outburst against ‘destructive and loudly clamouring scepticism’ in the Press was not accidental: it was to preface yesterday’s Commons debate on the mammoth Energy Bill by which he plans to ‘decarbonise’ our electricity industry.

Oh dear. I've just read the speech Ed Davey delivered yesterday at the Met Office and the best thing you could say about it is that was worthy of its host venue: which is to say short on science, shamelessly parti-pris, and completely out of touch with what is going on in the real world.

In the real world, as we know, global warming paused in 1997 and shows little sign of starting up any time soon. If it did it would be good news for almost all of us, for it would make our climate more pleasant, crops would be more abundant and attractive young women would parade themselves in skimpier outfits for longer stretches of the year. But what it increasingly looks like is that the opposite is going to happen. We appear to be entering a period of solar minima – that's an era of low sun-spot activity – which could, if we're unlucky, recall the miseries of the Little Ice Age (ice fairs on the Thames; the Year Without A Summer; etc) bringing famine, pestilence and war.

So that's the real world. Now let's visit the inside of Ed Davey's head, a most scary fantastical place full of weird imaginings with no bearing whatsoever on reality.

THE climate is changing – but not in the style prognosticated by the global warmist fanatics.

As the bottom falls out of the man-made climate change industry, those who were among its most bullish investors at the height of the scam are now covering their positions in a bear market.

Great damage was done to this much-hyped imposture by Climategate (“Hide the decline!”), by the discredited “hockey stick”, by the farce over “melting” Himalayan glaciers and the “decrease” in the polar bear population from 5,000 in 1970 to 25,000 today. Yet what has chiefly discredited the climate change superstition is the basic, inescapable fact that there has been no global warming since 1997.

The official face-saving response is that this is a “pause” in an otherwise menacing trend – a pause of a decade and a half. The warmist fanatics will freeze to death in their solar bunkers before they will admit defeat; but the more worldly wise, especially scientists anxious to preserve a vestige of academic credibility, are now striving to effect a withdrawal in good order.

The U.K.’s 2013 energy bill is up for a key vote Tuesday, and even the best-case outcome is likely to hurt an already weak British economy. Three years into David Cameron’s five-year term as Prime Minister, growth is at a standstill, government deficits remain stubbornly high, and Mr. Cameron’s Conservatives are on track for a stinging defeat at the polls. Yet Mr. Cameron and his Liberal Democrat coalition partners seem intent on pursuing the economic folly of total “decarbonization” of the British economy. Voters could be forgiven if they haven’t noticed how crazy this policy is. --Editorial, The Wall Street Journal, 4 June 2013

U.K. Energy Secretary Ed Davey will make his strongest attack yet on climate change skeptics he accuses of purveying a what he calls a “seductive” and “dangerous” message that global warming has stopped. His comments come as the debate over climate change and its causes intensifies. Former Chancellor Nigel Lawson, a Conservative who started the Global Warming Policy Foundation that shares concerns about the costs of policies to address climate change, wrote in a Feb. 25 letter on its website that he aimed to draw attention to a warming trend that “appears to have ceased.” Davey will say the pause in surface temperature is a “false summit” and that temperatures are increasing caused by greenhouse gas emissions trapped in the atmosphere.  --Sally Bakewell, Bloomberg, 3 June 2013