FACT-CHECK BOY WRONG AGAIN

Since everything written about the Earth's future climate is speculation, computer scientist Tim Lambert is right to characterize a recent NRO article as "speculation". That's all Lambert gets right in his post.

Lambert wrongly asserts the article contains only one fact and that the fact is wrong:

But anyway, here's his one fact:

But sea-level data from Tuvalu show basically a flat-line average since 1977 -- talk about an inconvenient truth!

And here's what the South Pacific Sea Level and Climate Monitoring Project 2005 report says about Tuvalu:

The sea level trend to date is +4.5 mm/year but the magnitude of the trend continues to vary widely from month to month as the data set grows. Accounting for the precise levelling results and inverted barometric pressure effect, the trend is +3.4 mm/year. A nearby gauge, with longer records but less precision and datum control, shows a trend of +6.2 mm/year.

The NRO article is not fact laden but coes contain other facts. More importantly, the sea level trend excerpt provided by Lambert does not come from the report he links to. Here's what the report actually says:

The sea level trend to date is +5.0 mm/year but the magnitude of the trend continues to vary widely from month to month as the data set grows. Accounting for the precise levelling results and inverted barometric pressure effect, the trend is +4.3 mm/year. A nearby gauge, with a longer record but less precision and datum control, shows a trend of +0.9 mm/year.

Lambert not only provides an erroneous quote, he fails to note that the SEAFRAME gauge was only installed in 1993, making it inappropriate to draw long term conclusions from the data generated. As always, Lambert is not a reliable source of information.