John Church and the rising ocean

John Church in Hobart. “Most countries who
 value science would be proud and happy
 to have a world-class scientist
like him,” says a German colleague.

Global warming sceptics often claim that climate science is perpetuated by collusion, but the most powerful driver of science is disagreement. Dissent was the impetus for oceanographer John Church, who has spent 36 years with the CSIRO, entering the conversation around future sea levels in the 1990s.

Reading journal papers, he decided the rises being projected were way too big. The numbers just didn't seem right. "So we did our own work," Church says, "and came up with smaller numbers, but not that much smaller. Actually quite similar to where they are now."

Sea-level scientists are a fractious bunch; Church's job for a while now has been to steer them to consensus on the most hard-fought, white-knuckle chapter in the story of the warming Earth. As a lead author on two of the past three reports by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) on the state of the planet, Church investigates what the melting of polar ice and warmer waters mean for the world's coastlines.

He's also an author of more than 150 peer-reviewed papers. The latest, in the esteemed journal Nature, laid out the case that humans have been the dominant force in accelerating the rise in sea levels since 1970.

Read Jo Chandler’s Good Weekend story in today’s Melbourne Age - “John Church and the rising ocean.”