For over 100 years the North European cities of Oslo, Stockholm and Helsinki have been steadily rising from the sea with no suggestion from observed evidence that local sea levels will not continue to drop by a few millimetres a year. That is until 2020, when the IPCC’s new AR6 Sea Level Projection Tool suddenly promoted substantial sea level rises all round. The discovery appears to baffle Ole Humlum, Emeritus Professor of Physical Geography at the University of Oslo. It seems that this tool was not produced to test the validity of a scientific idea. It was instead an attempt to “alarm the user”, he said.
Alarm it has. Since this Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) computer model was first made publicly available in 2020, there has been a rush of unchecked ‘flood’ stories in the mainstream media. The Daily Sceptic has reported on the activities of a US-based green agitprop operation called Climate Central that is backed by billionaire Foundations and uses the IPCC data to promote custom-made flood catastrophe stories in local media. Recently the Mirror reported that much of London could be gone within 80 years, while large area along the Humber and the Midlands could also disappear beneath the waves. Local politicians such as London mayor Sadiq Khan pick up on these fantastical stories and use them to justify harsh ‘climate’ polices, including an assault on private transport.

This is what Humlum found when he interrogated the IPCC’s new sea level change computer projection model for the coastal city of Oslo. The Norwegian capital, in common with other Scandinavian cities, was buried under a massive ice sheet that only started to lift 20,000 years ago. Even today, the area experiences an ongoing ‘isostatic’ land rise of several millimetres a year as it bounces back from underlying layers. The observed rate of sea level decline can be seen in the above graph in purple. If the 100-year plus observational trend continues, the sea level will fall by 28cm by the end of the century. The IPCC model forecasts a rise in sea level by 2100 of 17cm. Humlum found similar IPCC patterns and disconnects for the capitals of Sweden and Finland. Copenhagen was at the margin of the ice sheet, and a very small annual increase has become a substantial uplift of 45cm by 2100.
It is “extremely surprising”, observes Humlum, that this modelled change should first appear in 2020 as a rather marked step change in the relative sea level. Humlum suggests that if the modellers had produced data going back to 1950, “the conflict between measured and modelled data would immediately have become apparent”. In Humlum’s view, “it is highly disappointing that such a simple quality – or sanity check – was apparently never requested or performed by the IPCC”.
Humlum’s work features in the recently-published Clintel Report – The Frozen Climate Views of the IPCC – and is part of a detailed and critical examination of the UN organisation’s Sixth Assessment Report (AR6). As we noted recently, the scientific authors are damning about much of the IPCC’s work. In addition to emphasising worst-case scenarios, it rewrites climate history, has a “huge” bias in favour of bad news, and keeps good news out of the widely-distributed Summary for Policy Makers. The worst case scenario is called SSP5-8.5 and it assumes temperatures will rise by up to 5°C within less than 80 years. Given that temperatures increased by barely 0.1°C in the first two decades of this century, almost nobody believe these scenarios are remotely plausible. Nevertheless, Clintel notes that 43% of IPCC predictions of drastic and damaging climate change, and around half the climate science literature, are based on these scenarios.
Humlum’s graph uses only a moderate SSP2-4.5 scenario. The more extreme scenarios are available to use on the IPCC Tool, a fact that might explain how, with the help of Climate Central, the Wilshire Times reported last year that by 2050 the waters could be lapping around Gloucester Cathedral, sited at an elevation of 19 metres. For its part, Climate Central notes that it provides “authoritative information to help the public and policymakers make sound decisions about climate change and energy”.
The level of the sea is very difficult to measure and despite recent advances in satellite altimetry, tidal gauges still offer a consistent record. Humlum has noted that these gauges located around the world suggest an average sea level rise of 1-2mm a year. Recent modelled attempts to incorporate satellite measurements produce a rise that that is said to be over 3mm. The IPCC is claiming a recent acceleration in sea level rise, but Humlum says the evidence for this is “thin”. The tide gauge records are said to show “remarkably linear behaviour for more than a century”.
Humlum says it is likely that the IPCC conflates what it sees as a recent “acceleration” in sea level with ocean multidecadal variability. “This should become clear in the next 10-20 years,” he writes. “Right now, it is very preliminary to claim there is an acceleration of the sea level rise.”
The starting point for the IPCC’s work is the assumption that all warming from about 1850 was caused by humans burning fossil fuel. Its 1988 founding principles told it to determine the “scientific basis of risk of human-induced climate change”. Given this dogma, the IPPC has become uniquely unsuited to considering all aspects of climate change, whether arising from the activities of humans or due to natural causes. Since 1988, there is considerably more understanding about the natural forces that cause the climate to change. Humlum feels that the IPCC’s blinkered view may have led to its latest errors in sea level modelling. “The fundamental IPCC finding of no significant influence of natural variations since about 1850 should therefore be reconsidered,” he argues.
The more cynical might note that the IPCC’s primary purpose is to promote the idea that the sole cause of global warming since 1850 is human activity. Any deviation from this line will cause considerable financial hardship and widespread unemployment in the climate science community.
Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic Environment Editor.
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The population us being primed to see and feel high temperatures just as it was primed to see piles of covid corpses.
Most people I speak to mindlessly yap about high temperatures and look at me very confused when I suggest it’s not true. Basically like telling people there were few deaths from covid. They think you’re mad and weird.
I think it fair to say that a lot more people are wise to Climate lies than they were at this point in Covid. That said, lots of sheep still trapped in the narrative.
I would love to see and feel a high temperature at the moment – 15 degrees and raining here in Gloucestershire. I notice headlines keep popping up on my computer about ‘when the 40 degree heatwave will hit the UK’. Fat chance.
People who have spent their entire lives trusting the BBC find it incomprehensible that they could be lying. Why don’t people think for themselves?
What really annoys me is I have enough problems of my own to sort out without people wailing around me about the end being nigh and that I should be very worried. Sorry, I am reserving my worry for use closer to home!
“Sorry, I am reserving my worry for use closer to home!”
No need to be sorry T o b.
Those headlines that keep popping up may well use phrases like “40 degree heatwave”, but all that means is the vague possibility that the mercury might just about peak at 40 for a brief moment then reduce for the rest of of the heatwave. And anyway, for people who have real things to worry about, it’s quite an insult!
I had exactly that experience the other day when I said the European hot weather was being exaggerated.. the woman serving in the shop closed me down toute-suite with “it is true I’ve seen people interviewed on television”.. then proceeded to look very smug..
‘It’s true ‘cos it was on the telly.’ A well-washed brain indeed.
Absolutely.. well-washed and then some..
When I’ve mentioned the tornado jet cause of last year’s 30 seconds of 40 degrees to people they’ve gone all startled-rabbit-in-the-headlights, as though the actual reason simply can’t penetrate the cognitive dissonance reverberating between their propagandised indoctrination and the several layers of clothing they’re currently wearing in this ‘hottest ever’ year. I despair.
I also wonder if this ‘hottest ever year’ will produce a bitterly cold winter in the UK. In some ways I hope it does (although it sounds selfish). A few prolonged power cuts due to cold, still, cloudy conditions, and people finding the limitations of air source heat pumps might wake some people up, especially if they can’t charge their ev’s either.
I understand you completely. I spent the entire insane corona years hoping for economic collapse.
Fear mongering as the casus belli for the next LD.
I heard on classical fm that 1) man is responsible for soaring temps, confirmed by unnamed ‘experts’, as I sat in an office, in July, 17C and raining oustide;
and 2) UK will see 40C temps in the ‘future’ on a ‘regular’ basis – say the unknown ‘experts’
There is no science to any of this – but I know that half the sheeple will be shatting their diapers and believing the totalitarian propaganda.
This autumn get ready for a new scariant and viral wave of some sort….with end of the world attached to the ‘expert’ testimony.
Jeremy Grantham and Dale Vince are just two of the most obviously malicious and venal mega-liar super rich in the UK.
Then there is Charles III, with a different level of power, assiduously lying but likely believing his lies.
Then there are the mass of political, academic and media liars thirsting for wealth and power, control, over ordinary people.
Most people reject habitual liars but, in the case of “Climate” and it’s evil bastard offspring “Covid”, the enemy has been lying so long and with such resources that up until now they have held sway. Especially as anything “sciency” leads to glassy eyed awe.
Obviously the truth eventually will out. But we have a very long and very rocky road before we arrive there.
I just hope I survive to see some of these swine properly held to account.
But his (Charles) plants tell him it is true.
Give me dandelion to talk to any day over HRH..
A while ago I linked this Crown Estate site
https://www.thecrownestate.co.uk/en-gb/what-we-do/asset-map/#tab-2
to a comment along the lines of – no wonder Charles is in favour of Offshore wind, the firm is coining it. I was told the profits are remitted to the Treasury. I should have asked, how much?
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak cut the wind farm profits used to finance King Charles III’s household, directing the funds instead to boost the UK’s public finances.
The sovereign grant — used to fund the royal family — will be frozen at £86.3 million ($111 million) in the 2024-25 tax year, the Treasury said in a statement on Thursday. That’s despite a 41% jump in profits at the Crown Estate linked to income from new leases for six offshore wind farms. The estate manages much of the UK seabed on behalf of the monarchy. The Treasury said it’s slashing in half the proportion of the Crown Estate’s profits that will be directed to the monarchy. The reduction to 12% from 25% will give the government an extra £24 million in 2024/2025, and £130 million in the two subsequent years, it said.
Still coining it.
(Paywalled https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-07-20/sunak-takes-wind-farm-profits-from-king-charles-to-fund-services?in_source=embedded-checkout-banner&leadSource=uverify%20wall )
Surely Chris the cause of these fires is more to do with land management, drought and arson than a heat wave.
Sure.. management plays a part Bill, but I bet the majority are arson, or those sneaky so&so’s DEW’s (directed energy weapons) from up on high.
It was DEW’s responsible for the majority of Californian fires. The incineration of the buildings had to be seen to be believed.. even glass and porcelain toilets were totally destroyed..
I agree, Bill. I lived in Portugal for a number of years until recently and we had many fires, one of which tore through my land. In most cases, it was down to a combination of monoculture (vast tracts of dense eucalyptus forest), the dry undergrowth which is not being cleared because there are fewer people working on the land these days, hot weather (it’s southern Europe) and arson. Once land is burned, it can either bought up cheap and either be re-designated or allowed to grow another cash crop of eucalyptus. Wood pulping for toilet paper is a huge industry for Portugal. Most of our toilet paper probably comes from there in fact.
There are only two sources of ignition available: Lightning ground strikes and man. Thigs do not catch fire even at 60C however dry, it takes ignition at several hundred degrees. If a man leaves a suitably shaped glass bottle part which happens to focus the sun then it may be delayed man ignition, but it is still man! Just to be clear man as a specis not sex!
Watching F1 racing is quite instructive because they often highlight the extreme difference between air temperatures and those of the track aka ground.
I expect weather driven fear-porn from the BBC and Sky, which is why I never watch ’em. However, GB News were at the same game this morning regarding the Greece fires. Wall-to-wall computer modelling guff predicting that 40 degree temperature ‘MAY’ become a feature of UK weather by 2060. Oh really? And no mention of the part played by arsonists setting the fires, despite televised video evidence backing up the fact. Shameful reporting!
..unfortunately I think the ‘science of modelling’ is one of the big parts of the scam, that people were naturalised to during Convid.
We will see a lot more of it..let’s face it, it’s good for the ‘experts’, as they can make any old crap up.. and present it in a ‘model’…..and as with everything, no one is ever held to account for the fact that they haven’t got anything right yet!!?
40C temps for the UK..
hahaha.. say that again !!!!!
On sky I saw a segment about the heat in Spain..the ticker-tape underneath was talking about 40+ temperatures, and Armageddon…..but in the actual video you could clearly see 38 on one of those temperature clocks they often have outside Pharmacies….I wonder how many other people noticed? LOL!
When they start with A.I we’ve got no chance!?
Yes.. I saw that on a Telegram channel.. as bold as brass.. you couldn’t miss it..
“BBC Dragon’s Den celeb Deborah Meaden” As always the virtue signalling Ukraine flag in the profile tells its own story.
And I wonder which countries are being ‘abandoned’ due to climate change?!
Ukraine is undergoing a planned genocide to prepare for its new occupants.
Pushing thousands of young men into a meat grinder is not the tactics of modern warfare, there’s no need for it, but its being ordered day after day. Reminiscent of WW1 when Britain lost the flower of its manhood to exactly the same tactics.
Perhaps the downvoter shuold phuque oph to Ukraine and dye for their cause..
I hear that a Senior BBC Climate Change Disinformation journalist contacted Robin Monotti to say that he will debunk that extreme temperatures across Europe were somehow ‘faked’. This was in answer to Robin’s Tweets showing that there is no cataclysmic heatwave going on, just a hot spell. The fact that the BBC have a Climate Change Disinformation journalist, and a senior one at that, shows just how committed they are to spread the fear. Most people coming back from holiday in Europe to escape our current wash-out, report nice hot weather.
I wish the phantom downticker would explain their objection. It is really quite brainless.
You need to pay to comment but not to tick.
When I first came here I used to comment without paying, although I do pay now. The requirement was then to be logged in, which as far as I am aware is still free.
Ah, he/she was joined by other brainless ones.
The climate is changing but it’s mainly through entirely natural causes. We’re still technically coming out of the last Little Ice Age. If humans are in any way responsible for weather changes it’s due to out of control population growth, the resulting construction of concrete heat trapping megacities and the resulting slashing and burning of cooling forests.
It’s got NOTHING to do with beneficial CO2 or cow burps. But, our money is being chucked at the CO2 Net Zero Holy Grail of the Climate Zealots, where it will be utterly wasted, gone forever, our futures bolloxed up by an utterly false notion.
The BBC Propaganda Ministry of CO2 linked Climate Alarmism makes me want to vomit.
“Last week’s heatwaves in southern Europe would have been “virtually impossible” without humans altering the climate, “
Nothing to do with the ongoing recovery from an Ice Age 12 000 years ago, and the end of a mini-Ice Age 170 years before which temperatures were higher than now?
I get the impression that as with Covid we are continuously on the back foot.
Hysterical climate reporting without balance and without debate is rife.
There must be a way to turn the tables? Or are people simply loving all this doom and gloom stuff?
I checked temps for Sardinia over that period on TimeandDate and the peaks were 43C on 19th, 44C on 24th, not far off what was prognosticated. Have they retrospectively altered things or has the writer of this made a mistake or cherry-picked?
Why was my last comment removed re the top temp in Sardinia being 44C not 40C as shown on that site? 19th shows as 43C. Has it been tampered with?
https://www.timeanddate.com/weather/@8410803/historic
Oops! Had comments sorted by ‘oldest’, my bad
BBC (and SKY) newsreaders and reporters are visibly drooling over wildfires. All their Christmases have come at once. They are quivering with excitement and have this lovely warm glow inside that the world is “boiling” just like they knew it would all along.
radio news said ‘ extreme’ weather and is going up to 96 fahrenheit today 20 years ago it was 104 was over 100 Fahrenheit for a few days and no constant warning about the climate or dangerous heat.just called it a heat wave . people are crazy, aside from us of course
Great article. The pillars supporting the net zero edifice are crumbling
https://davidturver.substack.com/p/pillars-supporting-net-zero-crumbling