Run for the hills! The sea is rising!

One of the basic tenets of the global warming alarmists is that with rising temperatures ice melts and the seas rise. No educated person would disagree with that tenet. However, the questions that must be answered are: 1) is it happening faster than it did previously (i.e., since the last ice age), and 2) if the seas are rising, is CO2 from combustion of fossil fuels the reason for it?

I have previously posted that the seas are not rising. I also posted that the Marshall Islands… wait, what are the Marshall Islands, ask you? Those are the islands that already are supposed to have disappeared with the rising seas, answer I. Did they disappear, ask you? No, answer I, they are bigger than they were before the prediction that they would disappear.

Let us move on to the latest lame-stream media screed about “sea level rise.”

[Source: Sea Level Rise At Norfolk, VA, by Paul Homewood]

From Voice of America News:

NORFOLK, VA —

A nondescript metal box at the end of an unremarkable pier in Norfolk, Va. is one key to why the U.S. Navy is concerned about climate change. For nine decades, the Sewells Point tide gauge or its ancestors have been recording the sea level off Pier 6 at Naval Station Norfolk. The story it tells is clear… the water is a half-meter higher than it was at the beginning of the last century.

OK. The sea has “risen” a half meter in 120 years! A half meter is just under 20 inches – so let’s round up and call it an even 20 inches… That’s less than 0.2 inches per year.

But here is the real problem with the tide gauge measurement. It measures both sea level rise and naturally SINKING LAND! I doubt that any rational person would try to make the argument that rising temperatures are causing continents to sink. Frankly, I was not aware of continental subsidence. Were you?

Therefore, the “sea level rise” represents a combination of rising oceans and sinking land. The later must be subtracted from the total to know the true sea level rise. But, as luck would have it, there is a study by John Boon et al, which estimates the subsidence of the land. The figure is 2.72mm/yr. Aren’t you so happy to know that factoid?  But here is the point: 60% of the total “sea level rise” at Sewell Point came from the land sinking, not the ocean rising.

Boon et al explain why the land at Sewell Point is sinking. The Chesapeake Bay is, in fact, an old meteor impact crater approximately 35 million years old. The land is still settling there, and this effect is added to the general sinking of the US East Coast since the end of the ice age.

When we subtract land subsidence from the total “sea level rise” we find that only 8 of those inches actually are due to the “seas rising.” Over 120 years that means the seas are rising at a rate of 0.07 inches per year. Is that a lot or a little, ask you? And has the rate increased since the post-war era of increased fossil fuel burning? Good questions, answer I.

If you look at the chart and graph in the footnote you can see that the answers are: 1) it’s “a little,” and 2) it has not increased since the post-war era.

And thanks to HP for sending this to me.

Roy Filly

Footnote:

The rate of sea level rise was virtually the same before 1975 as after when subsidence is considered.

One can also readily see that there is no acceleration of sea level rise in the post-war era on the full NOAA graph of sea level rise since 1927: