Russ Steele
The Pacific Institute conducted a study of sea level rise and it's impact on the Bay Area. They were to evaluate the risk of future sea level rise on the California coast and the San Francisco Bay. The study was published as part of the California Energy Commission's Climate Change Center Report Series. This series is to provide California citizens ready access to climate change research.
I was reading the Pacific Institute report when I came across this graphic on page six of the report and wondered why the data plot stopped at 2000. It was a 2008 report.
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This report was written in 2008 and up to date data is available at this NOAA Web site. Where you will find this graphic that goes to February 2009.
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Just eyeballing the data it looked like the sea level rise trend stopped about 1998-2000. I was telling my friend George Rebane about the disparity and he proposed to do a more detailed regression analysis. Here is his plot.
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As you can see the sea level rise leveled off and then started to drop about 1200 months, which is the year 2000. I am wondering why this Pacific Institute report did not note this emerging trend. Yes, I know it ran contrary to the reports theme, "sea levels are expected to continue to rise, and the rate of increase will likely accelerate," and we are all doomed. As taxpayers are funding these reports, I think we should be given all the data, it should not be truncated to fit a political agenda. Sea level rise has stopped.
