Comment to assessing sea level rise costs and adaptation benefits under uncertainty in Greece

Comment to assessing sea level rise costs and adaptation benefits under uncertainty in Greece

environmental science & policy 38 (2014) 178–179 Available online at www.sciencedirect.com ScienceDirect journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/e...

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environmental science & policy 38 (2014) 178–179

Available online at www.sciencedirect.com

ScienceDirect journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/envsci

Short communication

Comment to assessing sea level rise costs and adaptation benefits under uncertainty in Greece Albert Parker School of Aerospace, Mechanical, and Manufacturing Engineering, RMIT University, Bundoora, Australia

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The authors should realize that the anthropogenic forcing through the modified composi-

Sea level rise

tion of the atmosphere postulated in the climate models is largely overrated, and if the

Sea level acceleration

temperatures have been mostly oscillating more than monotonically increasing following

Temperature warming

the anthropogenic carbon dioxide emission it is very unlikely that the sea levels will rise of metres by the end of this century that so far has seen no warming at all of temperatures, as compatible with natural oscillations and incompatible with climate models. # 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

The recent papers (Scafetta, 2013a,b; Parker, 2013a) have evidenced an overwhelming quasi 60 years periodicity in the oscillations of temperatures, with upwards phases 1910–1940 and 1970–2000, and downward phases 1940–1970 and 2000 to present, about a longer term movement. If the sea levels do not follow the anthropogenic carbon dioxide emission by magic but through the temperature, then the sea levels should also similarly oscillate about a longer term movement as shown in (Parker et al., 2013; Parker, 2013b,c) or (Chambers et al., 2012). The quasi 60 years oscillation of sea levels requires ideally many more but minimum 60 years to compute a reasonable local rate of rise of sea level in a tide gauge location (Parker et al., 2013; Parker, 2013b,c), and the sea level acceleration may then be computed as the time rate of change of the rate of rise (Parker et al., 2013; Parker, 2013b,c). These are not the absolute sea level velocity and acceleration, but the values relative to the land that may move for isostasy or subsidy, which contribute with other factors to make local sea level velocities and accelerations different from site to site. For what concerns Europe, on average the tide gauges show sea levels with very small velocity and negligible acceleration

at the present time (Parker, 2013d). The average sea level rise for Europe is 0.432 mm/y with a 95% confidence interval of 0.391 mm/y (76 tide gauges of average record length 101.0 years, average completeness 91.9%) (Parker, 2013d). Without considering the stations in Sweden, Finland and Norway, the average sea level rise is 1.35 mm/y with a 95% confidence interval of 0.36 mm/y (46 stations of average record length 101.6 years and completeness of 91.34%) (Parker, 2013d). Because of this present lack of acceleration about the low velocities of the tide gauge results, the lower bound of future sea level rise scenarios should be lowered to the simple continuation of the trend measured so far. The lack of sea level acceleration in Europe is consistent with the lack of sea level acceleration in any other geographical compilation of tide gauges of enough quality and length (Parker et al., 2013; Parker, 2013b,c), as well as with the lack of any warming for at least the last 15 years despite rising atmospheric carbon dioxide levels. This evidence the climate models are wrong and the very well perceived ongoing marked economic decline affecting Greece as well as the United States and the rest of Western

E-mail address: [email protected]. 1462-9011/$ – see front matter # 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.envsci.2013.12.003

environmental science & policy 38 (2014) 178–179

Europe should suggest environmental policies not dictated by unsustainable unwarranted alarmism.

references

Chambers, Don P., Merrifield, Mark A., Steven Nerem, R., 2012. Is there a 60-year oscillation in global mean sea level? Geophysical Research Letters 39 (September (18)) . Parker, A., 2013a. Why global warming went missing since the year 2000. NLENG, http://dx.doi.org/10.1515/nleng-2013-0017. Parker, A., 2013b. Sea level trends at locations of the United States with more than 100 years of recording. Natural Hazards 65 (1) 1011–1021.

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Parker, A., 2013c. Oscillations of sea level rise along the Atlantic coast of North America north of Cape Hatteras. Natural Hazards 65 (1) 991–997. Parker, A., 2013d. Assessment of present sea level velocity and acceleration in Europe. Applied Oceanography accepted paper, in press. Parker, A., SaadSaleem, M., Lawson, M., 2013. Sea-level trend analysis for coastal management. Ocean and Coastal Management 73, 63–81. Scafetta, N., 2013a. Discussion on climate oscillations: CMIP5 general circulation models versus a semi-empirical harmonic model based on astronomical cycles. EarthScience Reviews 126, 321–357. Scafetta, N., 2013b. Solar and planetary oscillation control on climate change: hind-cast, forecast and a comparison with the CMIP5 GCMs. Energy & Environment 24 (3–4) 455–496.