Assembling the “big picture” of bad weather on a planet as big as the Earth is more difficult than you may suppose.

One reason is that it is possible to define “extreme weather” in numerous ways (total rainfall for a year, heaviest rain in one day, number of days with more than 2 inches of rain, number of consecutive days, etc.). This means that reseachers can get almost any result they want.

Another reason is that the “big picture” is about climate CHANGE, and there are many more weather monitoring systems today than there were decades ago, especially in developing countries. This makes ‘then and now’ comparisons very difficult. More extreme events will be detected and recorded just by virtue of the increased density and spatial coverage of weather-tracking technology.

Finally, there is much more media coverage and instant communication about weather today than there was 30 years ago. We are surrounded by weather-related news and commentary. This enables us to ‘see and feel’ weather in more and more places we’ve never been.

You write: “In the past five years we have seen more weather related anomalies than we have seen in the past eighty years.” This is not the case with the respect to heat and drought in the United States, the country with best long-term temperature records. Weather in the 1930s was drier, hotter, and more variable than in any succeeding decade. See, for example: http://www.worldclimatereport.com/index.php/2012/07/13/the-heat-was-on-before-urbanization-and-greenhouse-gases/#more-547 and http://www.globalwarming.org/2012/08/03/john-christy-climate-data-maven/.

Since 2007, global hurricane activity has decreased dramatically whether measured in terms of frequency or accumulated energy (power): http://pielkeclimatesci.wordpress.com/2012/04/18/presentation-by-ryan-maue-titled-new-normal-historical-context-of-recent-global-tropical-cyclone-inactivity/.

As for tornadoes, 2011 was an active year, 2012 was not. As of Aug. 6, there were fewer tornadoes this year than in any year since 2005. In July, which was certainly a very hot month, there were fewer tornadoes than in any July in the 62-year record going back to 1950 (http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/08/13/july-hottest-ever-but-u-s-tornado-count-lowest-since-1951-poisoned-weather-meme-falsified-by-nature/). Greenhouse theory does not project an increase in tornadoes, because, as Roy Spencer points out, tornadic thunderstorms do not require tropical-style warmth. In fact, tornadoes are almost unknown in the tropics. The apparent long-term increase in the total number of tornadoes over the past 60 years is an artifact of the data — a consequence of better weather-tracking technology (see reason two above). If we consider only strong-to-violent tornadoes (category F3 and above), which have been monitored for decades, the long-term trend is down: http://www.globalwarming.org/2011/05/02/tornadoes-blame-sins-of-emission/.

Another metric worth pondering: Global death and death rates associated with extreme weather decreased by 93% and 98%, respectively, since 1920. With respect to extreme weather, the world is becoming a safer place: http://www.jpands.org/vol14no4/goklany.pdf.

Finally, it is not true that “the only thing that people want to hear is that everything is ok.” Bad news is more exciting than good news. The media therefore craves bad news about the weather, because it helps boost sales and ratings. More importantly, the anti-fossil fuel lobby needs bad news about the weather to keep people in fear and, thus, willing to support wealth transfer schemes (like cap-and-trade) and the expansion of government control over the economy. H.L. Mencken said it best: “The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.”

I am unaware of any scientific studies of sea-level rise in the Torres Strait. I find reports on the Internet about the plight of villagers living on Saibai Island. On Saibai, king tides repeatedly breach the low, crumbling sea wall built in the 1980s. See, for example, http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-03-02/cohen-saibai-sinking-feeling/3865116.

During the past 30 years, the island reportedly lost about 200 meters of ground in front of the village. Sea water flooding damages roads, houses, the public school, and the cemetary; spills raw sewage into fresh water lagoons and coastal fishing areas; and produces brackish ponds that breed malaria mosquitoes. Not a pretty picture.

The same article notes that Saibai at its highest elevation is only 2 meters above sea level. That is hard to square with your recollection of sea levels rising at a rate of 1 meter-plus every year. The article also mentions that the “worst tidal surge” experienced on the island occurred in 1948, “and people were forced to leave.” That was three decades before global warming emerged as a public concern.

Three general points to keep in mind:

(1) Global sea levels and the rate of global sea-level rise cannot be determined from any one location. Local conditions — including land subsidence (sinking) — can dramatically affect the relative positions of the sea surface and the coast line. The following is an excerpt from Kolker, A. S., and S. Hameed. 2007. Meteorologically driven trends in sea level rise. Geophysical Research Letters, 34, L23616:

“Determining GSLR [global sea level rise] rates is complicated by non-tidal, year-to-year variability in local mean sea level that is one to two orders of magnitude greater than the long-term trend, potentially masking changes in the rate of rise. The cause of this variability is largely unknown, although it has been linked to storms, winds and floods, wind driven Rossby waves, shifts in major ocean currents such as the Gulf Stream, volcanically induced ocean heat content variations, and in the Pacific Ocean, the El Nino Southern Oscillation.”
Source: http://www.worldclimatereport.com/index.php/2008/01/04/lowering-sea-level-rise/

(2) Global sea level rise is measured in millimeters per year, not feet per year, and the rate of sea level rise is not accelerating (see, for example, http://www.co2science.org/articles/V15/N31/C1.php and http://www.co2science.org//articles/V10/N32/C1.php).

(3) If all the ice on Greenland melted, this would raise sea levels by 20 feet. The real issue, however, is how likely that is to occur, and over what time frame. The Arctic (which includes Greenland) was substantially warmer than it is today for millennia during the last interglacial period (http://www.worldclimatereport.com/index.php/2007/02/05/arctic-lessons-from-the-last-interglacial-polar-bears-survived/). The ice sheet did not disappear.

Ridley et al. 2005 (http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/pdf/10.1175/JCLI3482.1), a study reviewed in the IPCC’s Fourth Assessment Report, estimates that CO2 levels would have to reach 1,000 parts per million (~2.5 x current levels) and stay there for 1,000 years to melt half of Greenland’s ice. Yes, it’s just a climate model projection. Nonetheless, even if the projection is way off, Al Gore’s scenario of a 20-foot wall of water sweeping the globe and displacing hundreds of millions of people in our lifetimes, or those of our children’s children, is science fiction.

Pat wrote: “It takes about 37.4 gigatons of ice loss to raise the global sea level 0.1 millimeter—four hundredths of an inch.” As you correctly point out, if 37.4 gigatons raises global sea level by 0.04 inches, then a combined Greenland/Antarctica ice loss of 191 gigatons a year produces 0.2 inches of sea level rise in a year and 18 inches in 90 years.

But 0.1 millimeter is not 0.04 inches, it is 0.004 inches. See the conversion chart here http://calculator-converter.com/mm_to_inch_millimeters_to_inches_conversion.php. It shows that 1 millimeter (not 0.1 mm) = 0.039 inches. So Pat’s typo mislead you into thinking that the current contribution of Greenland/Antarctica ice loss to sea level rise is 10 times larger than it actually is.

THIS I believe IS INCORRECT, because from my own experience, going back to yr. 2000
at Mer Island Torres Strait -Australia [between Papua New Guinea and Australia] while there, I noticed that the king-tide level was up to the level
of the sand bank some 4-5 feet high from the normal beach level.
In year 1965 I remember the k/tide level was [in the same place]
12-14 feet from the edge of the drop of the continental shelf. [My island is a volcanic mountain jutting out from the sea].
This means that the level [in yr. 2000] rose some 10 feet in 35 years,
that’s roughly 3-1/2 feet [give or take a few feet due to situation in the weather
and other events] every year for 35 years….
and this was just from normal ‘slow’ melting of the ice off
the two ice-continents.

It is to a genuine scientific studies and research based fact that,
-if all of Greenland ice would melt
the global sea level would rise to about 20ft; and
-if all of Antarctica’s ice would melt [Greenland in size
would fit into Antarctica about five(5) times so it] means that
global sea level rise would be about 100ft plus that of Greenland
to reach 120ft. THIS IS NOT A HIGH-TIDE or LOW-TIDE situation.
WHEN THE TIDE WILL RISE, IT WILL KEEP ON RISING UNTIL IT
REACHES THE LIMIT OF 120ft, meaning, NO COASTAL COMMUNITIES WORLDWIDE WOULD EVER EXIST -they have to be moved to higher ground NOW!