When it comes to sitcoms, a personal favourite of mine was Men Behaving Badly, and I know my wife felt the same way about Doc Martin. And so it was a no-brainer that last night we should tune in to follow Martin Clunes, exuding his trademark affability as he island-hopped through Micronesia. He’s fast becoming a national treasure, don’t you know — and he loves his dogs. So when he landed on a miniscule beach in Papua to report upon the plight of the Hawksbill Turtle, the whole nation must have been hanging on his every word. In particular, there was this to dangle upon:

The beach is suffering rising sea levels caused by climate change.

I was immediately reminded how Mark Hodgson had recently commented upon a similar climate connection here on Cliscep. Specifically, The Guardian was reporting that the Fijian rugby team was supposedly in danger of losing its international competitiveness due to climate change. How so? Well how could it not be so when the beaches upon which the locals play the game are fast disappearing due to sea level rise?

Then there was this statement from The Guardian in the wake of the establishment of a loss and damage financing mechanism enshrined in the Cop27 agreement:

After the announcement of the fund, Pacific leaders and activists celebrated, while also warning that unless more radical action was taken to limit warming to 1.5C, entire islands could disappear.

Entire islands, God forbid! Something must be done about this. Over to the celebrating Marshall Islands climate envoy, Kathy Jetnil-Kijiner:

This is huge progress, but we are also not doing enough to reduce the loss and damage that will affect us in the future. We must phase out fossil fuels and we must do so now.

Of course, I should dismiss what Kathy what’s-its-name had to say on the matter for being just the sort of bandwagon-riding, Micronesian money-grabbing pronouncement one might expect to hear; but what about Doc Martin and his turtles? Perhaps, if he is pointing the finger, it is high time I dropped my climate change scepticism and accepted that, just for once, there is a real peril here. But before taking that idea too seriously, we have to find out just how much sea level rise there has been in the Pacific region recently, and determine how much of that could be attributed to non-climatic factors such as tectonic movement. It’s only what Doc Martin would have done – surely?

An appropriate paper on the subject of sea level changes in the Fiji Islands was not hard to find. Perhaps the clue was in its title: New Records of Sea Level Changes in the Fiji Islands.

Just a glance at the paper was enough to confirm that it is a meticulous and rigorous study into the subject. It runs to some 40 pages, and it richly illustrates the geological evidence for historic sea level change to be found at each of Fiji’s many coves and beaches. To be fair, however, it is not a paper that has anything to say regarding satellite data. Nevertheless, the conclusions were pretty conclusive as far as conclusions go:

Elevation was measured with a high-precision instrument with respect to HTL [High Tide level]. Ages were determined by 17 C14-dates. A +70 cm higher sea level was observed, sampled and dated at AD 1530-1673. It was followed by a significant regression of about 1.7-1.8 m, killing coral reefs and cutting a new rock-cut platform some 20-30 cm above present mean low tide level (LTL). Then sea level rose again to its present position, or slightly above, a level, which remained fairly constant over the last 150-200 years. In the last 60 years corals were killed due to a sea level lowering or a severe bleaching episode. After that very stable sea level conditions must have prevailed for the last decades, forcing corals at several sites to grow laterally into microatolls. [My emphasis]

So, according to this paper, not only has Fiji relatively recently undergone (and survived) massive changes in sea level every bit as severe as the worst predictions for future climate change, it is currently undergoing — well, nothing. And Fiji is not alone in sharing this fate. From the same author, Nils-Axel Mörner, we hear:

Observational facts from the Maldives, Goa and Bangladesh in the Indian Ocean and from Fiji and New Caledonia in the Pacific record a high sea level in the 17th century, a low sea level in the 18th century, a high sea level in the early 19th century and a stable sea level in the last 50 – 70 years.

But if these are the ‘observational facts’, why is everyone going on about a crisis that is currently in the process of causing ‘entire islands’ to ‘disappear’? One possible answer to that question may lie in the quality of science that has been used to support that narrative. In a paper bluntly titled, ‘Absolute Evidence of the Absence of an on-Going Sea Level Rise on Ouvéa Island of New Caledonia’, Mörner wrote:

Changes in sea level are a hot topic, and frequently addressed in present day media. The quality of statements is another thing. Doomsday statements of a rapidly rising sea are not anchored in observational facts… The author notices with sadness that people still think that there are shortcuts, and that an outsider can contribute with significant material (summarizing data maybe, but never advancing the science of sea level changes). Personally, I have worked intensively on the science of sea level changes for 54 years. It may therefore be appropriate to summarize the findings. Absolute eustatic sea level is not uniform over the globe, but differs, and we must talk about regional eustatic changes and try to define the regional eustatic component.

If only Martin Clunes had asked his advisors to identify for his benefit the regional eustatic component, then he might have been in a position to consider the possibility that Micronesia is subject to a rotational eustasy that has completely dominated all other effects, not only locally but throughout the Indian and Pacific oceans. In fact, as far as Mörner was concerned, there is little reliable or convincing evidence of there being a recent sea level rise that can be attributed to climate change. Indeed, if Mörner is to be believed, there is plenty of geological evidence of there being no recent sea level rises at all, despite what satellite data may be suggesting.

It is forgivable that Martin Clunes should, in all good faith, be uncritically passing on the advice given to him. The IPCC, on the other hand, is deserving of a much more severe scrutiny. As Nils-Axel Mörner wrote:

Rapidly rising global sea level has in recent years become a central part of the story claimed by the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) and its proponents despite the absence of validation in observational facts (e.g. [1]). Still, the myth of a rapid sea level rise is effectively spread in media.

Somehow I doubt that any of the IPCC’s Assessment Reports will have cited any of Nils-Axel Mörner’s papers. He was, after all, using geological data to argue against the consensus, and his advocacy for dowsing did his credibility no favours whatsoever. Nevertheless, he was right about the narrative being so effectively spread by the media. There is something called the halo effect, a cognitive bias in which one is much more likely to believe someone you already respect and like. Even I had a little wobble when Doc Martin peered into the camera to make his special plea for the Hawksbill Turtle. It was the same disarming face that I grew to love from watching Men Behaving Badly. But now I am a little older and wiser and much more inclined to look up the facts for myself. It’s called empirical scepticism, and it is something I would recommend to anyone, because the fact is that you will never be able to tell whether men are behaving badly just by looking at their faces. And, despite what some might tell you, it is never too late to call them out.

Now, if you will excuse me, I am just off to find Kathy somebody or other to find out if I can get my money back.