Sea Level Rise: “The Greatest Lie Ever Told”

I have just been reading a booklet on sea level rise by Nils-Axel Mörner, former Head of Paleogeophysics and Geodynamics at Stockholm University, and President of the INQUA commission on Sea Level Changes and Coastal Evolution.  If you are unfamiliar with INQUA (as I was), it is the International Union for Quaternary Research, which studies geological issues in the Quaternary Period — that is, the last 2½ million years, a period of extensive glaciation interspersed with occasional interglacial periods, like the one we are enjoying at the moment, and which we (or at least, humanity) have enjoyed for the last 10,000 years or so.  Find INQUA at http://www.inqua.tcd.ie/
 
Unlike most of the “scientists” at the IPCC, Mörner has worked with sea level issues for 40 years, and knows something about the subject (although sadly, it seems that INQUA, having appointed Mörner as head of its Sea Level Commission’ has now repudiated his work, having apparently sold out to the global warming “consensus”).
 
Mörner’s conclusion: There is no sea level rise going on, that might flood islands and low-lying coasts in the near future.  He concludes that there have been fluctuations in mean sea levels over the last 300 years, caused by a range of factors which he outlines, and which most of us would never even have considered, including (for example) the centrifugal forces associated with the Earth’s rotation, tectonic plate movement, the rise or subsidence of the underlying land (Venice’s problems are primarily caused by the land subsiding, not by sea level rise), and even levels of evaporation.  But there has been no significant directional trend in sea level.
 
The first IPCC report made terrifying predictions of multi-metre sea level rises this century which could have led to disaster.  To be fair to the IPCC, their subsequent reports have indicated progressively lower forecasts, with the latest suggesting up to 70 cms (approximately two foot four inches).  Mörner and his INQUA Commission (consisting of scientists who actually know something about the issue), on the other hand, predict a rise of +5 cms ± 15 cms (+ 2″ ± 6″).
 
Mörner has undertaken specific studies in three of the locations most often touted as “at risk” from global warming: the Maldives in the Indian Ocean, and Tuvalu and Vanuatu in the Pacific.  In the Maldives, there are fluctuations over time but no trend, up or down.  In Tuvalu, data over 20 years show no trend, while in Vanuatu data from 1993 to 2006 show minor fluctuations about the mean, but no trend.  The talk of islands being inundated by rising sea levels is simply a projection of computer climate models, but receives no support whatever from observed data.
 
Mörner concludes “It is high time to face available observational facts, to discard untenable model scenaria, and to start discussing real threats in the real world”.  His booklet is ISBN-91-631-4072-2, available from the author morner@pog.nu