This is What You Get When You Put A Railroad Engineer in Charge of the International Panel on Climate Change

I have already commented on the silly people trying to blame the Japan earthquake and tsunami on global warming.

But, the head of the U.N.'s International Panel on Climate Change, Rajendra Pachauri, an ex-railroad engineer (with no training in atmospheric science), should know better. He told the world that the tsunami was 17cm (6.7") higher because of 'global warming.'

Click to enlarge. Courtesy: Anthony Watts, WattsUpWithThat

See the tiny purple bar in the far lower left corner of the illustration? That is 17cm versus the height of the tsunami (at right). The vertical black bar in the center is the height of the Fukushima Reactor. The idea that 17cm made any difference is absurd.

But, lets assume, for just a moment, that 17cm would have made a difference. If you click on the purple link above, he connects global warming to sea level rise.  Here is a graph of sea level change (sea level has been rising since the end of the Little Ice Age) for the last 100+ years.

Sea level rise since 1880. The red at the end is the rise as
determined by satellites. It is approximately the same
as the long term trend measured from tide gauges.

See any big increase recently when 'global warming' was occurring (1978-1998)? Didn't think so. The rate of sea level change has been more or less constant for 130 years no matter how it is measured.

To sum up: There is no indication 'global warming' is affecting sea level rise. Even if it had, 17 cm. (6.6 inches) would not have made any difference. Any meteorologist or oceanographer would have known this. This is the -- very large -- problem of having non-atmospheric scientists and even non-scientists in these high positions in the global warming movement.