Sea levels from University of Colorado as you recommended:
Did you check before you posted that recommendation? The sea level has been rising steadily ever since the last ice age. It certainly hasn’t accelerated like the pro-warmers like to think. And now it’s descending. Go figure!
Monthly mean global surface temperature heading down too:
...and this from a website under James Hansen's control.
Sea Surface Temperatures. Current global sea surface temperatures are between 0.1 and 0.2C below average:
For what it’s worth, there’s a trend line included. Admittedly, it doesn’t tell you much, if anything, because if you start a trend line in the 1940’s the trend is up. However, the trend for the last decade or so is down. This is counter to global warming predictions. CO2 concentration has been going up since the 1700’s. Thank God it did go up, because if it continued down, we wouldn’t be here discussing it. The climb in CO2 doesn’t explain any of the cooling periods that have occurred in between then and now either. (Perhaps there is something else at play, but the warmers gloss over these periods with no satisfactory explanation.) One huge ongoing contention is that temperatures have been rising and falling ahead of CO2 concentrations, perhaps indicating that temperature determines CO2 concentration, NOT the other way round.
Re: other research. The catastrophic global warming models use the standard solar model (SSM) as the solar heat input. The sun’s output varies and research is indicating that the variance is having a greater effect than expected. In addition,
CERN has recently proven through experimentation that cosmic rays have an influence on cloud formation. How much or how little is not known at this stage. It may be significant and it might not be, but that’s one of how many unknown factors not taken into account on the models? The cloud input into the models is extremely rudimentary. The modelers guessed and fed water vapour calculations into the models as a positive feedback. That research is ongoing. Spencer has satellite records indicating the earth sheds heat at far greater amounts than the pro-warmers assert. Dressler countered with his own calculations, but while minimizing the Spencer result, it still supported Spencer's initial conclusions. Research is ongoing there too. Even more; the pro-warmers' rely on reflected long-wave radiation for their predictions and the entire earth as a blackbody absorber. Water doesn't absorb reflected LWIR at nearly the extent that land does. Further, water cools more by evaporation than by radiation and this has been glossed over in calculations as well. Considering 71% of the earth's surface is water, some recalculations are in order.
What I’m getting at here is that AGW as a result of CO2 is certainly not proven. Thanks to Al Gore and loads of press coverage on a “fabricated” global catastrophe, an IPCC loaded with report writers employed by and linked to the World Wildlife Fund and Greenpeace, many people seem to think it is proven and then one of their arguments to skeptics is a demand to “prove it’s not happening”. WTF! (What would you think of a report supporting unconstrained oil drilling in Sydney Harbour authored by employees from BP or Shell?)
Meanwhile, thanks to the IPCC and Al Gore, global warming has been politicized. The ALP is instituting a tax for political reasons and for nothing else. Global warming is an excuse. This is a tax that will extract more money from the population’s pockets; in a very basic way meaning the less discretionary income those people have to spend on goods and services. Billions are going overseas. And many people expect to have business as usual?
Further: it's the affect that the CO2 tax will have on future power production and development that is of significant concern. The tax demonises CO2. The world's population has grown by 4 billion in the last 50 years. The availability of cheap, reliable and plentiful power supplies has been an essential component in the advance of living standards (and concurrent supply of food resources) in developed nations. Likewise, a common denominator in underdeveloped nations is the lack of cheap, reliable and plentiful power supplies.
The CO2 tax, if left unchanged, will eventually send Australia backwards and IMO I see no other recourse than having it amended in due course. Despite wishful thinking, renewable energy sources (as considered by the Greens) are not cheap, or reliable, or plentiful (24/7) and unlikely to be so for several generations at least, if ever. They supplement current energy supplies, but only do so at an economically acceptable rate thanks to unsustainable government subsidies. Coal power plants (the backbone of Australia's energy supply) are slated to be priced or legislated out of the market. Without a nuclear option, there is nothing else. Those individuals and corporations that can do so, will shift to solar or wind and put up with the inconveniences of the vagaries of supply.
Those who have no choice and rely on a consistent and readily available power supply (medium and heavy manufacturing) and who can export their workforce needs, will do so. Those individuals and organisations that are stuck with increased costs (aviation, trucking, construction, etc.) will have no other option but to try and pass on increased costs to the consumer. All the time, Australia's industries will be competing with evermore nimble overseas competitors taking advantage of something that Australia won't have: cheap, reliable, plentiful power supplies.
Australia has jumped into the deep end of the pond when all other developed nations are pulling back. The outcome will not be pleasant and the next government is going to be hamstrung either way: in trying to wind the legislation back, or in trying to lessen its impact. Just remember which political parties put Australia in this predicament.