The Lawspeaker
03-01-2010, 11:05 PM
Interview: Dr. Nils-Axel Mörner (2007):
Claim That Sea Level Is Rising Is a Total Fraud (http://www.larouchepub.com/eiw/public/2007/2007_20-29/2007-25/pdf/33-37_725.pdf)
Dr. Nils-Axel Mörner is the head of the Paleogeophysics and Geodynamics department at Stockholm University in Sweden. He is past president (1999-2003) of the INQUA Commission
on Sea Level Changes and Coastal Evolution, and leader of the Maldives Sea Level Project.
Dr. Mörner has been studying the sea level and its effects on coastal areas for some 35 years. He was interviewed by Gregory Murphy on June 6 for EIR.
EIR: I would like to start with a little bit about your background, and some of the commissions and research groups you’ve worked on.
Mörner: I am a sea-level specialist. There are many good sea-level people in the world, but let’s put it this way: There’s no one who’s beaten me. I took my thesis in 1969, devoted to a large extent to the sea-level problem. From then on, I have launched most of the new theories, in the ’70s, ’80s, and ’90s. I was the one who understood the problem of the gravitational
potential surface, the theory that it changes with time. I’m the one who studied the rotation of the Earth, how it affected the redistribution of the oceans’ masses. And so on. And then I was president of INQUA, an international fraternal association, their Commission on Sea-Level Changes and Coastal Evolution, from 1999 to 2003. And in order to do something
intelligent there, we launched a special international sea-level research project in the Maldives, because that’s the hottest spot on Earth for—there are so many variables interacting there, so it was interesting, and also people had claimed that the Maldives—about 1,200 small islands—were doomed to disappear in 50 years, or at most, 100 years. So that was a very important target.
Then I have had my own research institute at Stockholm University, which was devoted to something called paleogeophysics and geodynamics. It’s primarily a research institute, but lots of students came, and I have several PhD theses at my institute, and lots of visiting professors and research scientists came to learn about sea level. Working in this field, I don’t think there’s a spot on the Earth I haven’t been in! In the northmost, Greenland; and in Antarctica; and all around the Earth, and very much at the coasts. So I have primary data from so many places, that when I’m speaking, I don’t do it out of ignorance,but on the contrary, I know what I’m talking about. And I have interaction with other scientific branches, because it’s
very important to see the problems not just from one eye, but from many different aspects. Sometimes you dig up some very important thing in some geodesic paper which no other geologist would read. And you must have the time and the courage to go into the big questions, and I think I have done that.
The last ten years or so, of course, everything has been the discussion on sea level, which they say is drowning us; in the early ’90s, I was in Washington giving a paper on how the sea level is not rising, as they said. That had some echoes around the world.
EIR: What is the real state of the sea-level rising?
Mörner: You have to look at that in a lot of different ways. That is what I have done in a lot of different papers, so we can confine ourselves to the short story here. One way is to look at the global picture, to try to find the essence of what is going on. And then we can see that the sea level was indeed rising, from, let us say, 1850 to 1930-40. And that rise had a rate in the order of 1 millimeter per year. Not more. 1.1 is the exact figure. And we can check that, because Holland is a subsiding area; it has been subsiding for many millions of years; and Sweden, after the last Ice Age, was uplifted. So if you balance those, there is only one solution, and it will be this figure.
That ended in 1940, and there had been no rise until 1970; and then we can come into the debate here on what is going on, and we have to go to satellite altimetry, and I will return to that. But before doing that: There’s another way of checking it, because if the radius of the Earth increases, because sea level is rising, then immediately the Earth’s rate of rotation would slow down. That is a physical law, right? You have it in figure-skating: when they rotate very fast, the arms are close to the body; and then when they increase the radius, by putting out their arms, they stop by themselves. So you can look at the rotation and the same comes up: Yes, it might be 1.1 mm per year, but absolutely not more. It could
be less, because there could be other factors affecting the Earth, but it certainly could not be more. Absolutely not! Again, it’s a matter of physics.
So, we have this 1 mm per year up to 1930, by observation, and we have it by rotation recording. So we go with those two. They go up and down, but there’s no trend in it; it was up until 1930, and then down again. There’s no trend, absolutely no trend.
Another way of looking at what is going on is the tide gauge. 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. So tide gauges,
you have to treat very, very carefully.
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!
That is terrible! As a matter of fact, it is a falsification of the data set. Why? Because they know the answer. And there you come to the point: They “know” the answer; the rest of us, we are searching for the answer. Because we are field geologists; they are computer scientists. So all this
talk that sea level is rising, this stems from the computer modeling, not from observations. The observations don’t find it!
I have been the expert reviewer for the IPCC, both in 2000
and last year. The first time I read it, I was exceptionally surprised.
First of all, it had 22 authors, but none of them—none—were sea-level specialists. They were given this mission, because they promised to answer the right thing. Again, it was a computer issue. This is the typical thing: The metereological community works with computers, simple computers.
Geologists don’t do that! We go out in the field and observe, and then we can try to make a model with computerization; but it’s not the first thing. So there we are. Then we went to the Maldives. I traced adrop in sea level in the 1970s, and the fishermen told me, “Yes,you are correct, because we remember”—things in their sailing routes have changed, things in their harbor have changed.
I worked in the lagoon, I drilled in the sea, I drilled in lakes, I
looked at the shore morphology—so many different environments.
Always the same thing: In about 1970, the sea fell about 20 cm, for reasons involving probably evaporation or something. Not a change in volume or something like that—it was a rapid thing. The new level, which has been stable, has not changed in the last 35 years. You can trace it so very, very carefully. No rise at all is the answer there. Another famous place is the Tuvalu Islands, which are supposed to soon disappear because they’ve put out too much carbon dioxide. There we have a tide gauge record, a variograph record, from 1978, so it’s 30 years. And again, if you
look there, absolutely no trend, no rise. So, from where do they get this rise in the Tuvalu Islands?
Claim That Sea Level Is Rising Is a Total Fraud (http://www.larouchepub.com/eiw/public/2007/2007_20-29/2007-25/pdf/33-37_725.pdf)
Dr. Nils-Axel Mörner is the head of the Paleogeophysics and Geodynamics department at Stockholm University in Sweden. He is past president (1999-2003) of the INQUA Commission
on Sea Level Changes and Coastal Evolution, and leader of the Maldives Sea Level Project.
Dr. Mörner has been studying the sea level and its effects on coastal areas for some 35 years. He was interviewed by Gregory Murphy on June 6 for EIR.
EIR: I would like to start with a little bit about your background, and some of the commissions and research groups you’ve worked on.
Mörner: I am a sea-level specialist. There are many good sea-level people in the world, but let’s put it this way: There’s no one who’s beaten me. I took my thesis in 1969, devoted to a large extent to the sea-level problem. From then on, I have launched most of the new theories, in the ’70s, ’80s, and ’90s. I was the one who understood the problem of the gravitational
potential surface, the theory that it changes with time. I’m the one who studied the rotation of the Earth, how it affected the redistribution of the oceans’ masses. And so on. And then I was president of INQUA, an international fraternal association, their Commission on Sea-Level Changes and Coastal Evolution, from 1999 to 2003. And in order to do something
intelligent there, we launched a special international sea-level research project in the Maldives, because that’s the hottest spot on Earth for—there are so many variables interacting there, so it was interesting, and also people had claimed that the Maldives—about 1,200 small islands—were doomed to disappear in 50 years, or at most, 100 years. So that was a very important target.
Then I have had my own research institute at Stockholm University, which was devoted to something called paleogeophysics and geodynamics. It’s primarily a research institute, but lots of students came, and I have several PhD theses at my institute, and lots of visiting professors and research scientists came to learn about sea level. Working in this field, I don’t think there’s a spot on the Earth I haven’t been in! In the northmost, Greenland; and in Antarctica; and all around the Earth, and very much at the coasts. So I have primary data from so many places, that when I’m speaking, I don’t do it out of ignorance,but on the contrary, I know what I’m talking about. And I have interaction with other scientific branches, because it’s
very important to see the problems not just from one eye, but from many different aspects. Sometimes you dig up some very important thing in some geodesic paper which no other geologist would read. And you must have the time and the courage to go into the big questions, and I think I have done that.
The last ten years or so, of course, everything has been the discussion on sea level, which they say is drowning us; in the early ’90s, I was in Washington giving a paper on how the sea level is not rising, as they said. That had some echoes around the world.
EIR: What is the real state of the sea-level rising?
Mörner: You have to look at that in a lot of different ways. That is what I have done in a lot of different papers, so we can confine ourselves to the short story here. One way is to look at the global picture, to try to find the essence of what is going on. And then we can see that the sea level was indeed rising, from, let us say, 1850 to 1930-40. And that rise had a rate in the order of 1 millimeter per year. Not more. 1.1 is the exact figure. And we can check that, because Holland is a subsiding area; it has been subsiding for many millions of years; and Sweden, after the last Ice Age, was uplifted. So if you balance those, there is only one solution, and it will be this figure.
That ended in 1940, and there had been no rise until 1970; and then we can come into the debate here on what is going on, and we have to go to satellite altimetry, and I will return to that. But before doing that: There’s another way of checking it, because if the radius of the Earth increases, because sea level is rising, then immediately the Earth’s rate of rotation would slow down. That is a physical law, right? You have it in figure-skating: when they rotate very fast, the arms are close to the body; and then when they increase the radius, by putting out their arms, they stop by themselves. So you can look at the rotation and the same comes up: Yes, it might be 1.1 mm per year, but absolutely not more. It could
be less, because there could be other factors affecting the Earth, but it certainly could not be more. Absolutely not! Again, it’s a matter of physics.
So, we have this 1 mm per year up to 1930, by observation, and we have it by rotation recording. So we go with those two. They go up and down, but there’s no trend in it; it was up until 1930, and then down again. There’s no trend, absolutely no trend.
Another way of looking at what is going on is the tide gauge. 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. So tide gauges,
you have to treat very, very carefully.
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!
That is terrible! As a matter of fact, it is a falsification of the data set. Why? Because they know the answer. And there you come to the point: They “know” the answer; the rest of us, we are searching for the answer. Because we are field geologists; they are computer scientists. So all this
talk that sea level is rising, this stems from the computer modeling, not from observations. The observations don’t find it!
I have been the expert reviewer for the IPCC, both in 2000
and last year. The first time I read it, I was exceptionally surprised.
First of all, it had 22 authors, but none of them—none—were sea-level specialists. They were given this mission, because they promised to answer the right thing. Again, it was a computer issue. This is the typical thing: The metereological community works with computers, simple computers.
Geologists don’t do that! We go out in the field and observe, and then we can try to make a model with computerization; but it’s not the first thing. So there we are. Then we went to the Maldives. I traced adrop in sea level in the 1970s, and the fishermen told me, “Yes,you are correct, because we remember”—things in their sailing routes have changed, things in their harbor have changed.
I worked in the lagoon, I drilled in the sea, I drilled in lakes, I
looked at the shore morphology—so many different environments.
Always the same thing: In about 1970, the sea fell about 20 cm, for reasons involving probably evaporation or something. Not a change in volume or something like that—it was a rapid thing. The new level, which has been stable, has not changed in the last 35 years. You can trace it so very, very carefully. No rise at all is the answer there. Another famous place is the Tuvalu Islands, which are supposed to soon disappear because they’ve put out too much carbon dioxide. There we have a tide gauge record, a variograph record, from 1978, so it’s 30 years. And again, if you
look there, absolutely no trend, no rise. So, from where do they get this rise in the Tuvalu Islands?