Tag Archives: Rising Sea Levels

Islands That Climate Alarmists Said Would Soon “Disappear” Due to Rising Sea Found to Have Grown in Size

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From The Daily Sceptic

BY CHRIS MORRISON

An amount of land equivalent to the Isle of Wight has been added to the shorelines of 13,000 islands around the world in just the last 20 years. This fascinating fact of a 369.67 square kilometre increase has recently been discovered by a group of Chinese scientists analysing both surface and satellite records. Overall, land was lost during the 1990s, but the scientists found that in the study period of three decades to 2020 there was a net increase of 157.21 km2. The study observed considerable natural variation in both erosion and accretion. Of course, the findings blow holes in the poster scare run by alarmists suggesting that rising sea levels caused by humans using hydrocarbons will condemn many islands to disappear shortly beneath rising sea levels. By means of such flimsy scare tactics, as we have seen in many other cases, desperate attempts are made to terrify global populations to accept the insanity of the Net Zero collectivisation.

The scientists said their data suggested that sea-level rise has not been a widespread cause of erosion for island shorelines in the studied regions. “Presently, it is considered one of the contributing factors to shoreline erosion but not the predominant one,” they explained. Needless to say, none of this will detain the attention of climate hysterics in both mainstream media and politics. The Guardian was in fine form last June stating that rising oceans will extinguish more than land. “It will kill entire languages,” it added, noting the effect on Pacific islands such as Tuvalu. Those areas of the Earth that were most hospitable to people and languages are now becoming the “least hospitable”.

Silly emotional Guardianista guff of course, but happily it does not seem to apply to Tuvalu. A recent study found that the 101 islands of Tuvalu had grown in land mass by 2.9%. The scientists observed that despite rising sea levels, many shorelines in Tuvalu and neighbouring Pacific atolls have maintained relative stability, “without significant alteration”. A comprehensive re-examination of data on 30 Pacific and Indian Ocean atolls with 709 islands found that none of them had lost any land. Furthermore, the scientists added, there are data that indicate 47 reef islands expanded in size or remained stable over the last 50 years, “despite experiencing a rate of sea-level rise that exceeds the global average”.

The Maldives is also a poster scare for rising sea levels, with the attention-seeking activist Mark Lynas – he of the nonsense claim that 99.9% of scientists agree humans cause all or most climate change – organising an underwater Cabinet meeting of the local Government in 2009. As it happens, the Maldives is one of a number of areas that have seen recent increases in land mass. Other areas include the Indonesian Archipelago, islands along the Indochinese Peninsula coast, and islands in the Red and Mediterranean Seas. Notably, the  coastal waters of the Indochinese Peninsula had the most substantial gain, with an increase of 106.28 km2 over the 30-year period. Of the 13,000 islands examined, the researchers found that only around 12% had experienced a significant shoreline shift, with almost equal numbers experiencing either landward (loss) or seaward (gain) movement.

The scientists identify many reasons why islands can grow in size despite the small annual rises in sea level seen in many parts of the world. It is noted that island shorelines are constantly changing due to factors such tides, winds, nearshore hydrodynamics and the transport of sediment. On inhabited islands, human action such as fish farming and land reclamation can be important.

Of course, humans action can have a number of unintended consequences, notably the mining of coral and the breakdown of natural water barriers. Island states such as the Maldives have not been slow in coming forward to claim ‘climate reparations’ from guilt-tripped citizens in the developed world. But tourism has dramatically boosted income in the Maldives to first world levels at a time when the locals have mined coral in industrial quantities to build ports, airports and resort developments. In the process, ocean life diversity has been lost and the islands are often less protected from storm waves that can flow direct to the shoreline. In a recent essay, a group of scientists and economists charged that coral mining “has resulted in massive degradation of shallow reef-flat areas, with important negative impacts on coastal protection”.

The Chinese findings are important in helping destroy the claim that many low-lying islands will simply disappear beneath the waves in the near future due to human-induced climate change. They show how shoreline changes are a persistent and ongoing process that is subject to many natural and human influences. Most of the poster islands used for climate scares such as Tuvalu and the Maldives have increased in size of late, and are hardly suitable to whip up fear of a claimed climate ‘emergency’. Sea level rise is not a “predominant” cause of the changing coasts, the scientists note.

Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’s Environment Editor.

The Climate Alarmist Attack Dog Who Was Wrong About Everything

From The Daily Sceptic

By RICHARD BURCIK

The journalist Ross Gelbspan, who led the fight against what he called “climate denialism”, has passed away. Mr. Gelbspan who wrote for the Boston Globe and other mainstream outlets died of COPD (likely from smoking). He championed the idea that global warming results in the spread of disease and rising sea level. In 1995 he wrote in an op-ed for the Washington Post:

We’re all familiar with future-horror stories about global warming – that in some distant era, the glaciers will melt, the oceans will rise and Florida will disappear beneath the waters. But a much more imminent – and deadly – threat from climate change is already upon us and could be felt in North America as early as this summer. Scientists call it a worldwide redistribution of disease ‘vectors’ – the animals, insects, microorganisms and plants that transmit disease to humans. To the layman, it means a global spread of infections.

Let’s examine our planet’s rising sea level first. A recent NASA satellite study found that:

The average global sea level rose by 0.11″ (0.27cm) from 2021 to 2022, according to a NASA analysis of satellite data. Since satellites began observing sea surface height in 1993 with the U.S.-French TOPEX/Poseidon mission, the average global sea level has increased by 3.6″ (9.1cm), according to NASA’s Sea Level Change science team. The annual rate of rise – or how quickly sea level rise is happening – that researchers expect to see has also increased from 0.08″ (0.20cm) per year in 1993 to 0.17″ (0.44cm) per year in 2022. Based on the long-term satellite measurements, the projected rate of sea level rise will hit 0.26″ (0.66cm) per year by 2050.

That’s right, less than four inches over a 30-year interval, which is not enough to get anyone’s shoes and socks wet. Context matters!

Another NASA satellite study covering 25 years found that the rate of sea level increase was speeding up: “Global sea level rise is accelerating incrementally over time rather than increasing at a steady rate, as previously thought, according to a new study based on 25 years of NASA and European satellite data. If the rate of ocean rise continues to change at this pace, sea level will rise 26 inches (65 centimeters) by 2100.”  Two feet instead of the 30+ feet by 2100 that climate change advocates have been predicting.

Finally, a third NASA satellite study uncovered the fact that roughly 50% of the sea level increase along the U.S. East Coast was due to subsidence and not increasing water levels. Ergo, the other two NASA satellite studies may have overestimated the real increase in sea level by as much as 100%. Perhaps, only a one foot increase in sea level by 2100. 

Interestingly, James Hansen in a 2023 published paper repeated his prediction that a dramatic sea level rise remains in our planet’s future. But he made a similar forecast in 2007, stating that the Earth would see serious sea level increase within 10 years. Six years after his deadline we still have a quiescent water level in our planet’s oceans. Since 1988 Dr. Hansen has been only wrong. Perhaps in the distant future he may turn out to be correct, but so far he has been solely incorrect.

Turning to the idea of spreading infections, diseases, pandemics and plagues, which Mr. Gelbspan predicted would spread to North America as soon as the summer of 1995, this has not happened even after over 25 years have passed.

According to the World Atlas there were six deadly epidemics during the 20th century: HIV/AIDS that killed almost 40 million people worldwide and is still killing 2.5 million per year, the 1918 Spanish Flu that resulted in 50 to 100 million deaths, the 1950s Asian Flu which killed 70,000 Americans, the 1968 flu with one million demises worldwide, the 6th cholera outbreak at the turn of the 19th century to which 800,000 succumbed, and the 1974 smallpox outbreak in India with 15,000 deaths. There have been no recurrences during the 21st century except the 2020 Covid pandemic that had zero connection with climate change.

According to the CDC there have only been a total of 496 cases of plague (that is spread by fleas) in the U.S. (almost all were in the South West) over the past 20 years. As of 2019, Our World in Data reported that only 3.2% of worldwide deaths were attributable to malaria and other infectious diseases. And almost all of these illnesses occurred in the tropics.

The bottom line is that Gelbspan has so far been only wrong about everything.

Richard Burcik is the author of two short books, The DNA Lottery and Anatomy of a Lie.