Hold the hysteria, warmists wrong on sea level.

Cartoon: By Chip Bok.

For some years the state governments and local authorities in Australia have been engaging in an orgy of regulation and planning, based on the theory that the seas are going to rise by around a meter by the turn of the century. Vast swathes of coastal land are affected.

There has been a consistent push also for people to ‘downsize’ in order to reduce their carbon usage. Port Albert, on the southern coast of Victoria has to go even further to meet the challenge. There is a fascinating story from a couple of days ago about how, owing to two sets of regulations, they have to lower their height.

That’s right, residents of the town have to get shorter.

Because of the requirement that sea level rises have to be planned for, new housing has to be built on stumps 1.5m above ground level, despite the fact that the town's original colonial buildings have survived on ground level since the 19th century. Normally, this would not present that much of a problem, other than for the infirm who would now have to climb steps.

Unfortunately, heritage rules prevent rooflines being built higher than the roof of the pub, which may be Victoria's oldest continuously licensed hotel. Once heritage listings come into effect, its damn near impossible to get rid of them. You see where this is going, …

Now, an Australian expert on the relationship between climate change and sea levels has written a peer-reviewed paper concluding that rises in sea levels are "decelerating." NSW principal coastal specialist Phil Watson questions one of the key criteria for large-scale inundation around the Australian coast by 2100. The one that assumes an accelerating rise in sea levels because of climate change.

Based on century-long tide gauge records at Fremantle, Western Australia (from 1897 to present), Auckland Harbour in New Zealand (1903 to present), Fort Denison in Sydney Harbour (1914 to present) and Pilot Station at Newcastle (1925 to present), the analysis finds there was a "consistent trend of weak deceleration" from 1940 to 2000.

Mr Watson's findings, published in the Journal of Coastal Research this year and now attracting broader attention, supports a similar analysis of long-term tide gauges in the US earlier this year. Both raise questions about the CSIRO's sea-level predictions.

Climate change researcher Howard Brady, at Macquarie University, said yesterday the recent research meant sea levels rises accepted by the CSIRO were "already dead in the water as having no sound basis in probability.”

"In all cases, it is clear that sea-level rise, although occurring, has been decelerating for at least the last half of the 20th century, and so the present trend would only produce sea level rise of around 15cm for the 21st century.” “The divergence between the sea-level trends from models and sea-level trends from the tide gauge records was now so great "it is clear there is a serious problem with the models.” Article here.

In the comments section there is at least one outraged warmist claiming that the rise is not even across the world, so this proves nothing. The trouble with this is that it would mean that if the height were not to rise here or in the US, the rise would have to be substantially more elsewhere. Perhaps the Canadians and Kiwis are screwed if this guy is right.