John’s Blog/Newsletter: SEA LEVEL RISE NOW

It’s good to get back to regular blogging, having taken last month off to do interviews and promote my new book, MOVING TO HIGHER GROUND.

I have received hundreds of comments about the social media ads placed by my publishing team. I read each comment, and often reply.  I also notice some “interesting” patterns, particularly on my Facebook Author Page, It’s gratifying that about 80% of the comments are extremely positive.

However, the other 20% or so – which ridicule sea level rise and climate change – are really quite fascinating. There are some common themes, suggesting that it’s internet trolls, a curious group of people who post inflammatory remarks simply aimed at disrupting normal online conversation. A few seem to be based in misunderstanding the facts, but most are just DUMB. These five seem to be the most common messages of sea level rise denial:

5 Dumb SLR Denials

1. Distance to ocean or height above sea level from a particular property has not changed in 50+ years.
2. Fishermen say the water depth has not changed.
3. There were ice ages with sea level change before, so this is just natural – and NASA says we’re entering a 50 year cooling period
4. If sea level is really rising why do wealthy people (usually pointing to the Obamas) buy homes on the coast
5. Previous assertions about SLR and climate change have not happened.

The “sea level rise deniers” ignore the realities faced by property owners and local governments struggling to deal with “blue sky flooding events” happening more each decade due to rising sea level.

The Facts – How to refute the nonsense.

• Global average sea level rise over the last century has been about 8 inches, or 20 cm, an average of only 1/15 of an inch, or 1.7 mm a year, almost impossible to see in terms of ocean height with the waves, tides, and changing currents.
• The problem is that in the last 30 years the rate of SLR has tripled, still only a fifth of an inch a year, about 5 mm.  At the current rate of SLR, it would be about a foot and a half, 50 cm, in a century, which would present a modest challenge for coastal communities.
• But like looking at figures for the pandemic deaths, the important thing is the trend, acceleration, and potential for exponential growth often looked at as “doubling time.” At the recent rate of acceleration, global average sea level would be rising more than a foot each decade by mid-century, which would mean disaster. (That’s not just some theoretical projection, it happened 11,000 years ago when sea level rose some 65 feet, 20 meters,  coming out of the last “ice age cycle” – as explained in Chapter 3 of my book.)
• There’s no doubt about the ice age cycles over the last 2.58 million years in a regular pattern, recently about 100,000 years. The current warming has broken out of that pattern, and is now following the upward spike in carbon dioxide, just as expected based on the proof of greenhouse gases in 1859. The natural climate cycles, with sea level moving up and down some four hundred feet, was natural driven by the solar energy variations, due to the Milankovitch Cycles. We have now broken out of that pattern, and are warming, when we should have been entering the 80,000 year cooling era as evidenced by the graph below, one of the key graphics in my book.
• Even setting aside the political or racial undertones of those citing the Obama’s reportedly buying a summer house on the coast of Martha’s Vineyard, it’s worth deflating this red herring. Judging from the media photos, their house is about a thousand feet inland, about thirty feet above water level, and there’s a barrier island as a wave break. Even with the accelerating rate of SLR, their house should be fine for this century. Plus, they’re wealthy enough from their book deals, that any risk is likely acceptable. The same for many other wealthy coastal dwellers.
• The internet fable about NASA saying we are entering a cooling era is simply false. Check out some of the space agencies great graphics showing the warming at climate.nasa.gov
• Not only is it difficult to perceive the several inches of sea level rise in the last few decades, coastal erosion, beach restoration, and other efforts to reshape the coast, are deceiving.
• In addition to changing coastal water level from tides and weather-related events, there is an 18.6 undulating tide cycle, the lunar nodal cycle that adds and subtracts about 2.5 inches, 6 cm, which is misleading. Roughly every decade it doubles or nullifies apparent sea level.
• The allegations that fifty years ago, scientists said we were entering an ice age, or that Al Gore said we would have ten feet of sea level rise by now, or that the allegations about islands disappearing were false and alarmist, each turn out to be gross distortions of what was said. Each is easy to dismiss, for anyone that wants to understand the truth. (Skepticalscience.com is a good point of reference.)
• Finally, and perhaps most relevant, there is clear awareness and grave concern about the increased flooding in coastal cities all over the world. Decade-by-decade, residents from Seattle to Fort Lauderdale, and from Copenhagen to Calcutta are witnessing the stealthy increase in the high water mark, most noticeable at the new moon, spring tide, or “king tide” – the highest each year. These increasing “sunny day flood events” are causing serious problems and concern in thousands of coastal communities worldwide. The flooding is very real, damaging homes, routinely flooding streets, challenging local governments to reconsider their basic civil engineering. This is without precedent in human civilization as global average sea level inexorably moves towards the last high water mark, over a hundred thousand years ago, 25 feet above present.

Most objective people see what is happening with accelerating SLR, as supported by the positive comments to my book and the social media promotions. The fact that about 20% of those commenting support the nonsense and the denials is, shall we say, interesting. As I observe in the last chapter of MOVING TO HIGHER GROUND, our species is unique in that we can be guided by beliefs, even when they are in sharp contrast to facts. To those who give me great encouragement and spread good information, THANK YOU.

One of the graphs from “Moving to Higher Ground: Rising Sea Level and the Path Forward” by John Englander (The Science Bookshelf, 2021