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| Generated in Excel from data here : http://www.psmsl.org/data/obtaining/rlr.annual.data/1839.rlrdata |
On the Twitter #AGW hashtag we find the following:
Cosmocon @gdthomp01
The link is to a page on a contrarian website "Real Science" where Steve Goddard says "Sea ice has no impact on sea level, Antarctic sea ice is at the highest level ever recorded at either pole, and sea level is not rising in Tuvalu. Three whiffs for the hockey boy – send him back to strike out in little league."
Goddard links to the original Huffington Post article where Michael Mann is interviewed about Arctic sea ice melt. Mann explains "we [will] really start to see sea level rises accelerate," as the Greenland and the west Antarctic ice sheets disappear. Unlike with the melting of sea ice, these ice sheets would introduce vast quantities of water into the world's oceans"
So Goddard is wrong to imply that the interview suggests that sea ice melt will cause sea levels to rise.
He is also wrong about "Sea Level is not rising in Tuvalu". The graph Goddard publishes shows a clear upward trend. I point this out to @gdthomp01.
He replies:
only an #agw Kool-Aid drinker like you would "see" a trend in that sea level graph but no trend here --> [points to a cherry picked selection of recent global temperatures.]
Your eye, is biased by your green agenda you try and push. Keep trying.
So I go to the data, and with a little help from @bobfishell and @bobirving99 (thanks guys) I manage to paste the data into Excel, to generate the chart you see at the head of this post - which clearly shows an upward trend of sea level in Tuvalu, of 3.57mm per year.
So Steve Goddard and Cosmocon are wrong on two counts: Mann did not claim that sea ice melt would affect sea levels, and there is a rising trend in Tuvalu sea levles. It is pointless to expect them to retract or apologise, because the tactic of the Right is to put confident claims out there and not to worry about whether or not they can be substantiated. The aim of the game is to create impressions in the minds of the onlookers, by means of headlines, not to try to represent the truth.
In the process, we see also how they use pejoratives and derogatory language to belittle those who disagree. I am pretty used to this stuff now. There is no point in responding to it at the same level, but there is a point in continually re-iterating the fact that the contrarian hypothesis is incompatible with the facts.
PS since we are talking about ice, people will want to now why Antarctica's sea ice sheet is growing.
In the process, we see also how they use pejoratives and derogatory language to belittle those who disagree. I am pretty used to this stuff now. There is no point in responding to it at the same level, but there is a point in continually re-iterating the fact that the contrarian hypothesis is incompatible with the facts.
PS since we are talking about ice, people will want to now why Antarctica's sea ice sheet is growing.
