to President Anote Tong of Kiribati

Full text

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Open Letter
to President Anote Tong of Kiribati
Mr. President,
On Augusst 13, you sent a letter to all the world’s governments where you
urged for a moratorium for coal mining under the assumption that CO2-
emision affects global climate and under the claim that your islands are
serious threatened by a rising sea level. You end your letter by saying that it
is a matter of ”moral obligation”.
Well, as scientists we, too, have an obligation – and this is to ensure that your claims
are based on a soid scientific ground, and in harmony with physical laws.
The claim by the IPCC that global sea level is rapidly rising is a misguiding myth built up
from weird computer modelling. Observational facts document no to negligible changes in
sea level over tha last 50 years (Figure 1, below). Values obtained by observational facts
and measurements give a spectrum ranging between ±0.0 to +1.0 mm/year, which poses no
threats to low-lying coasts and islands over the next century (Mörner, 2014, 2015a, 2015b).
Your own tide gauge date fail to support your idea of a rapidly rising sea level. None of
your 10 stations have records for the minimum required period of 60 years. Two of you
stations have records over 30 years. This is Christmas Island II (from 1974 to 2015) with a
minute mean rise of 0.36 mm/yr (Figure 2), and Kanton Island (from 1972 to 2012) with a
small mean rise of 0.52 mm/year. Both these values fit well within the globally observed
range of +0.0–1.0 mm/yr, and poses no problem for Kiribali or any other coastal area over
a century or more.
The Tarawa C tide gauge has been claimed to give a higer value of sea level rise. This is
not correct, however, because it is strongly affected by ENSO (El Niño) pulses and
recoveries from their low levels. Over the period of measurement (1993-2015), the Betio
station give virtually no rise at all (Figure 3).
The idea that CO2 is driving global temperature is not backed up by observation, nor does
it concur with the physical lay of CO2/temterature relation (it is logarithmic, not linear.
The IPCC group has run 102 AGW-models (i.e. models where the concentration of CO2
drives the global temperature in a linear relation). All of those 102 modells give trends far
above the actually measured temperature on the surface of the Earth as well as in the
troposphere (Figure 4).
So, indeed, what you claim with respect to sea level rise and CO2-effects
is not founded in facts and physics
This means that it violates both science and geoethics.
Stockholm, Sweden, November 26, 2015
Nils-Axel Mörner
Head of Paleogeophysics & Geodynamics at Stockholm University, Sweden (1991-2005)
President of the INQUA Commission on Sea Level Changes and Coastal Evolution (1999-2003)
Leader of the Maldives Sea Level Project (2000 on)
Chairman of the INTAS project on Geomagnetism and Climate (1997-2003)
Founder of the Independent Committee on Geoethics (2015 on)

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Illustrations
Sea level as observed and modelled
Figure 1. Comparison of sea level records from models and from field observations and
measurements (modified from Mörner 2015b). There is no relation between model out-puts
and observational facts. Science chose observational facts (Mörner 2015a, 2015b) and
discard model out-puts (Mörner 2015c).
A 40 years long tide gauge record from Kiribati
Figure 2. The Christmas Island II record (PSMSL 1371) claimed to record a mean rise of
0.36 mm/yr, which would have negligible effects over a century, or even more.
Considering, ENSO signals and port-ENSO recoveries, the graph hardly show any rise at
all.

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A 22 years tide gauge record from Tarawa
Figure 3. The Tarawa/Betio record (PSMSL 1804) show vitually no rising trend (but a
strong post-ENSO recovery that must be held outside the trend analysis). In conclusion,
available tide gauge records in Kiribati document stable condition with sea level varying
between ±0.0 and 0.5 mm/yr, posing no threats what so ever of any flooding in the next
century.
On the relation between rise in CO2 and global changes in tempwerature
Figure 4. Observed temperature has risen in the order of +0.3 °C over the last 35 years; on
Earth’s surface as well as up in the troposphere. The mean of 102 AGW models, on the
other hand, suggest a rise of 0.9 °C. The graph reveals that there are no relation between
observed changes in themperature and those established by AGW (CO2-driven) models
(modified from Mörner 2015b).
References
Mörner, N.-A., 2014. Sea Level Changes in the 19-20th and 21st Centuries. Coordinates, X (10), 15-21
Mörner, N.-A., 2015a. Glacial isostasy: regional – not global. International Journal of Geosciences, 6, 577-
592.
Mörner, N.-A., 2015b. Natural Scienece is ruled by observatinal facts, not ephemeral model out-puts. Global
Journal fro Research Analysis, 4 (11), 193-194.
Mörner, N.-A., 2015c. The liberation from fear of a disastrous sea level rise – observational facts don’t lie.
Paris Climate Challende fonference, Dec. 1-3, 2015. ResearchGate, 26 pp.
Nova, Jo, 2015. Sea level hyperbole. Jo Nova blogg.
Parker, A., 2015. A rising sea of ignorance and misrepresentation is sinking Kiribati. Unpublished report.