By Christopher Monckton of Brenchley
Professor Nils-Axel Mörner, who died on Friday October 16 aged 83 after a short illness, knew more about sea level than did Poseidon himself. He wrote more than 650 papers on the subject in his long and distinguished career. He became even more well-known after his retirement than before it, because he decided to take the risk of publicly opposing the false notion, profitably peddled by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change et hoc genus omne, that global warming would cause many meters of sea-level rise.
On one occasion, when the climate Communists were reporting that Bangladesh was subsiding beneath the rising waves, he went on a fact-finding trip to Bangladesh with a group of fellow sea-level specialists. All the others were true-believers, so they just drifted along with the Party Line and took few measurements.
Only the Professor not only used his altimeter but walked 100 meters uphill, in his late 70s, and back down again so that the instrument would be correctly calibrated. Only the Professor subsequently reported that, as a result of those measurements, sea level off Bangladesh was actually falling. Only the Professor reported that in the few beaches where the sea had encroached, it had done so not because of global warming and consequent sea-level rise but because local prawn farmers had grubbed up the mangroves whose roots had previously kept the coastline stable.
On another occasion Professor Mörner was visiting the Maldives when he noticed a small tree, 40 years old, right on the beach, in leaf but lying on its side. The fact that the tree was still there, feet from the ocean and inches above sea level, after 40 years told him that there had been no sea-level rise since the tree had first begun to grow, or it would have been drowned.
He enquired locally about whether there had been an exceptional spring tide caused by global warming and sea-level rise that had overthrown the tree. He discovered, however, that a group of Australian environmental extremists had visited the beach shortly before him. They had realized that the presence of the tree showed that the official sea-level record showing a sharp rise over the past half-century must be incorrect, and had uprooted the tree. Professor Mörner stood it back up again and photographed it.