"The Cause of this is Unknown"

I am in search of the "golden 23" tidal gauges which speak the holy sea level truth.

My sides are sore from laughter.

The title of this post is taken from a scientific paper written by Bruce C. Douglas (PSMSL Bruce C. Douglas, @ Section 1.8, PDF).

He is or was a good scientist.

One out of the many who Mitrovica noted "did not have a clue" about why the tide gauges did not say the same thing everywhere around the "global mean average sea level" fantasy land of their assumption that the ocean is just a big bathtub or backyard pool that always seeks to be on the "level."

Those tide gauges evidently said different things ("the sea is rising" or "the sea is falling" or "the sea is at the same level as always"), therefore the tide gauges needed to be fixed, or so they said.

Fig. 1

Like the lunatics in congress "fixing" this or that, by way of demented cognition and reasoning of various sorts, they chose lists of good republican tide gauges, or good democrat tide gauges, and the rest be damned.

Some few examples of good scientists lost in the fog (The Good Nine tidal gauges (Auckland, Trieste, Newlyn, Cascais, Honolulu, Balboa, San Diego, Key West, New York); The Good Twenty One or So (Douglas 1991, Table 9): (Aberdeen II, North Shields, Newlyn, Brest, Cascais, Tenerife, Marseille, Genova, Trieste, Honolulu, San Francisco, Balboa, Cristobal, Key West, Charleston I, Hampton Roads, Baltimore, Atlantic City, New York, Portland, Eastport); Another Good 21 or So (Aberdeen I + II, Newlyn, Brest, Cascais, Lagos, Marseille, Genova, Auckland II, Lyttelton II, Honolulu, La Jolla, Los Angeles, Charleston I, Fernandina, Galveston II, Miami Beach, Key West, Eastport, Newport, Halifax, Annapolis, Solomon's Islands, Stavanger, Kobenhavn , Nedre Gavle, NW North America, Victoria, Neah Bay, Seattle).

Fig. 2

It is like "why is the sea rising or falling" (Washington Edu)?

You get my drift.

So now, finally, sea level fingerprints are the rage  ... you know, "book 'em Dano." (NASA SLC fingerprints, Physics World sea level change fingerprinting).

Fig. 3

Those bad tidal gauges really messed us up, huh?

Anyway, since the direction of those in the know is that sea level is anything but level, I am getting closer to discerning "the golden 23" that Mitrovica talked about (but will not give me their names by answering my email).

Fig. 4

The good news is that I only have six more stations, out of the 23, to figure out.

Then I will possess the holy grail (The Pillars of Knowledge: Faith and Trust?).

Fig. 5

Oh, by the by, the graphs Fig. 1 - Fig. 3 are from the East Coast, where sea level is rising, unlike the Alaska coast where sea level is dropping (Proof of Concept - 2).

Except for Hawaii, shown in Fig. 4 and Fig. 5, which is Polynesian.

Which is democrat, so their tide gauges are going with the sea level rise thingy, you know, the East Coast "Catholic stuff."

/snark