Ian Bradford: Sea Level Rise (or Not!)

This is one aspect of climate where common sense should prevail. 

It’s a matter of going to a beach you visited when a child and looking at the level of the sea. Can you notice any difference in sea level? 

I’d be surprised if the answer is yes. 

You might notice more erosion- that’s not sea level rise, or you might notice that the beach has built out. Sometimes, the land along a stretch of coast may be slowly sinking, and it might appear that the sea has risen when it is really the land that has sunk.

We shall begin this section with some very real comments made by climate alarmists connected to the United Nations. These comments may still be available on the internet.

UN Predicts Disaster if Global Warming Not Checked
Peter James Spielmann June 30^th 1989

UNITED NATIONS (AP)   A Senior UN environmental official says entire nations could be wiped off the face of the Earth by rising sea levels if the global warming trend is not reversed by the year 2000.  ( YES 2000 !).

Coastal flooding and crop failures would create an exodus of “eco refugees” threatening political chaos, said Noel Brown, director of the New York Office of the UN environmental programme-UNEP.  

He said governments have a 10 year window of opportunity to solve the greenhouse effect before it goes out of control. (Yes, that’s still by the year 2000).

As the warming melts polar ice caps, (that’s both ice caps), ocean levels WILL rise up to three feet (that’s nearly a metre), enough to cover the Maldives and other flat Island nations, Brown told The Associated Press in an interview on Wednesday.

Coastal regions will be inundated, one sixth of Bangladesh will be flooded, displacing a fourth of its 90 million people. A fifth of Egypt’s arable land in the Nile Delta will be flooded, cutting off its food supply, according to a joint UNEP and US Environmental Protection Agency study. Ecological refugees will become a major concern.  

Here we are in 2022. Did any of this happen? NO of course it didn’t. Now wouldn’t this alone make anyone think maybe it’s all a giant fraud?

Let’s look some more at the Maldives, one of the group of islands mentioned in the disaster warning.

The Maldive Islands are a series of coral atolls built up from the crowns of a submerged ancient volcanic mountain range. There are 1200 Islands altogether and they are all low lying, the highest point being about 2m above sea level.

The Islands are a Republic with a population of just 500,000. Barrier reefs protect the Islands from the destructive effects of monsoons.

The position of the Maldives is shown with the black dot.

The president of the Maldives wants to buy a new home for all 500,000 of his people to save them from rising sea levels.

 Mohamed Nasheed, the first democratically elected president of the Maldives is setting aside a chunk of his country’s sizeable tourist revenue to set up a land purchase fund. “We can do nothing to stop climate change on our own, so we have to buy land elsewhere.” “It’s an insurance policy”, he told the Guardian on the eve of his inauguration.

The residents are complaining about sea water contaminating the ground water and the sea breaking over the land from time to time.

With the highest point on all the islands being just 2m, one would expect sea water to contaminate the ground water. That happens everywhere near a low lying coast.  With very high tides and a following wind, seas will often encroach on the land. I will say a bit more about that aspect later.  

However, here are some extracts for an article by Michael Bastasch writing in Daily Caller, News Foundation. It is dated 2018. Here is the Headline:

30 Years Ago, Officials Predicted the Maldives Would be Swallowed By The Sea. It Didn’t Happen.

Environmental officials warned 30 years ago the Maldives could be completely covered by water due to global warming induced sea rise.

That didn’t happen. The Indian Ocean did not swallow up the Maldives island chain as predicted by government officials in the 1980’s.

In September 1988, the Agence France-Presse (AFP), reported a gradual rise in sea level is threatening to completely cover this small Indian Ocean nation of 1200 small islands within the next 30 years, based on predictions made by government officials. The article went on to suggest the Maldives along with its then 200,000 inhabitants, could end sooner than expected if drinking water supplies dry up by 1992 as predicted. Today, more than 417,000 people live in the Maldives.

The Maldives are among the island nations held up by the United Nations as being on the “front Lines” of man-made global warming. The island nation was among the first to apply for Green Climate Fund aid, but the funding hasn’t been flowing , according to the New York Times. 

“That’s too long to wait,” Maldives energy and environment minister Thoriq Ibrahim told the Times last year. “There’s no use having a fund somewhere if you can’t access it quickly.”

But obviously, decades-old warnings the Maldives were on the verge of being swallowed by the sea didn’t pan out.

A study projects sea level rise and wave dynamics over reefs will lead to the annual wave-driven overwash of most atoll islands by the mid 21^st century.

However, other research suggest the Maldives and other coral islands may actually be expanding - not sinking into the sea.

New Zealand researchers published a study in 2018. Based on aerial photos and satellite images of Pacific islands over the last four decades, that found most atolls they examined were increasing in size.

The results echoed a 2015 study by the same lead author that also found coral island expansion. Study lead author and scientist Paul Kench told the New Scientist “that the Maldives seem to be showing a similar effect.” 

Below is a graph of sea level rise for the past 20,000 years from the time of the last ice age.

Sea level was about 120 metres lower than at present. As the Earth warmed (nothing to do with humans), sea level began to rise. Sea level rise was caused by the expansion of the oceans, melting land based glaciers, and the melting of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets.

Glacial Sea Level :  Wikipedia Commons. Author:  Robert A Rohde  (3)

You can see that the black line is an average of several readings taken in many places. 

Mathematicians can fit an approximate equation to the above graph, and hence predict sea level rises into the future. We must remember also that the Little Ice Age, which the Earth only started coming out of about 1850, is superimposed on this graph and the Earth is still warming from that.  Figures for sea level rise from about 5 years ago, vary from just 1mm per year to 1.8mm per year.  As the graph is levelling out, those figures are slowly reducing. Note also this graph is reliable as it is the average of several readings taken at various places listed on the right hand side. We shall take the larger figure 1.8mm per year.

The climate alarmists are saying that this figure of 1.8mm per year has nearly doubled in recent years due to global warming. The problem with that statement is that since 1998 there has been no warming of the earth and in fact a very slight cooling which has accelerated in the past 5-8 years.

We are now in 2022. So there is 78 years till the year 2100. In that 78 years at the rate of 1.8mm per year we can expect a sea level rise of:

 1.8 x 78 =  140mm or 14 centimetres. That’s somewhere between 5 and 6 inches.

However, since the rate is decreasing, the actual rise may be nearer to 50mm (2inches) or even less.  If we take the figure of 1mm per year then at that rate the rise by 2100 will be insignificant. 

On the other hand if we enter into another Little Ice Age as predicted by many, sea level will actually fall.

It is becoming increasingly difficult to say exactly what is happening to sea level at present. One report said there has been no change in sea level for three years.  The IPCC and alarmists still keep talking about relatively large rises in sea level, but they have been doing that for some time now, and none of their predictions have actually happened.  They frequently say that sea level rise is accelerating. However, according to the Heartland Institute, the highest quality tide gauges around the world show no evidence of acceleration since 1920. A 2017 report released from the Heartland Institute by geophysicist Dennis Hedke analysed data from ten coastal cities with long and reliable sea-level records. Hedke found there was no correlation between changes in sea level at these locations and rising Carbon Dioxide levels.

It appears that in some places at present, there is no change in sea level. In others a slight rise, and in yet others a slight fall.  What is apparent is that sea level is not responding to changes in Carbon Dioxide.

Sea Level Rise and Sinking Landmasses

In recent times there has been an emphasis on landmasses sinking. I found this rather interesting.  Have the climate alarmists realised that they are flogging a dead horse with continually talking about sea level rise. There’s a suggestion that the alarmists are equating land sinking with sea level rise. So if the land sinks but the sea level stays the same, it is a sea level rise!  In some places the land is sinking because people are drawing water from the underground aquifers. 

New Zealand was once part of a large landmass called Gondwana.

Africa detached from this large landmass some 170 million years ago. The landmass that was to become NZ broke away about 80 million years ago. Full separation of NZ took over 20 million years with the Tasman Sea reaching its full width about 60 million years ago. This movement of continents which is still going on, is called Continental Drift. India shown on the diagram will eventually disappear under the Himalayas.

NZ has not always had the same shape- far from it in fact.  Each Geological period brought a new shape for the country.  I have picked just one map from the Mid Eocene, that’s about 40 million years ago:

Diagram: Author,   The mid Eocene map of NZ, 40 Million years ago

The reason why I have introduced Gondwana and the Eocene map is to show readers that nothing is static in regard to landmasses.  Of course the other thing is that these changes take place very slowly. A typical landmass rise or fall may be only about 1- 2mm per year (except in the case of an earthquake of course).  This is happening in NZ right now. In another 40 million years you will not recognise the shape of the country, or in fact any country, (If you are still around then). On top of this, the Earth’s surface is divided into “Plates.” It is along the lines between the plates that earthquakes and volcanic action occur.  A plate boundary runs right through NZ- the Alpine Fault. On one side the Pacific plate and on the other, the Australian plate. Sometimes, one side of a plate boundary is pushed down and sometimes up. So movement of a landmass is always occurring. Some parts of a coast may be rising, some parts may be sinking. This has nothing to do with humans, NOR climate.  We cannot stop it. But a sinking coastline is not a rising sea level. Finally, all the continents are basically floating

Diagram: USGS

The plates move because of the slow movement of the hot softened mantle that lies beneath the solid plates. The circulation of the mantle carries the continents along like items on a conveyor belt.

Ice Melt at the Poles

Many alarmists talk about ice melt at the Arctic. The Arctic is a floating mass of ice. There is no land underneath. I have seen it written down, that sea level rise needs to take into account (among other things), Arctic meltwater. I have seen this quoted over and over again by alarmists. It is totally incorrect. Anyone can illustrate this. Fill a jar say 2/3 full of water and put three or four normal size ice cubes in it. They will of course float. Mark the level of the water with the ice cubes in it. Come back later when the ice has melted and check the mark. You will find no change. The melting of floating ice does NOT raise the water level.  I prefer a simple explanation.  Let’s take a cube of water within a container of water. Then suppose we can turn this cube of water into ice.  Now ice is a solid and water a liquid. To keep the ice solid and rigid it produces bonds. These bonds take up room so the original volume of the water cube is increased. So the ice cube formed is bigger than the water cube.  Now most readers will remember from science classes the little formula: Density = mass divided by volume.  D=M/V. So if the volume increases as with the ice then the density must decrease. (the mass stays the same) Let me illustrate.

Suppose the mass was 10 and the volume was 2 then the density would be 10 divided by 2 i.e. 5  (D=M/V). Now if the volume increases to say 5 then the density now is 10 divided by 5 and that gives a value of 2. So what I am getting at here is that the density of the ice is less than that of the water. So that’s why ice floats.  Now the bit of ice above the water line can be considered the extra room taken up by the bonds. When the ice melts the bonds disappear so the melted ice just fills the original cube. So there is no change in the water level.  The Arctic is just floating ice- no land underneath. It can all melt with NO rise in sea level.  Any continent which is covered in ice, because it is essentially floating, will rise very slowly after all the ice has melted. The ice pushes the continent down because of its huge weight. When that weight is released the land rises. So sea level may rise but the land rises too but more slowly, lagging behind the sea level rise.

This diagram explains why ice takes up more volume than water.  You see that both diagrams contain the same number of molecules. In water there is no structure so the water molecules can group close together. In Ice, there is that hexagonal structure, and it’s that big gap in the middle that takes up extra room.

Storm Surges

Now and then we get what are called king tides. The moon influences the tides. Millions of years ago the moon was much closer and tides were horrendous - probably several hundred metres. The moon is very slowly moving away so tides will gradually get less and less. A king tide occurs when the orbits of the Earth, Moon and Sun combine to produce the greatest tidal effects of the year. If a strong wind is behind an incoming tide, then waves can be pushed high up on the shore - nothing to do with sea level rise. Since the prevailing wind in New Zealand is from the West, the West coast of both Islands suffers from coastal erosion. So TV makes hay out of this and shows water over roads and causing damage to property, the implication being that humans are to blame for making the Earth’s temperature higher. These kinds of pictures are always shown when the news is about climate change. It’s nothing to do with climate, nor humans. Just more propaganda.

Photo:  Wikimedia Commons.  Author :  Andrew Dunn     (22) 

The photo shows coastal erosion at Happisburgh, Norfolk, UK.

This is not about sea level rise, but erosion due to very high tides and a following wind. This kind of erosion can be found anywhere in the world.

I once watched a “Time Team” programme where the team were excavating Medieval remains near the Eastern coast of England about half way up, near a town called Skipsea.   There was intense coastal erosion there.  A once thriving Medieval town was now under the sea something like half a kilometre off shore. This has happened with low CO₂ levels, no cars or trucks, no planes, no large industries and so on. This was in the Medieval Warm Period. However, we then went into the Little Ice Age, but coastal erosion in this spot continued, and still continues today. 

NOTE: The medieval period went from about 500AD to about 1400AD.

Ian Bradford, a science graduate, is a former teacher, lawyer, farmer and keen sportsman, who is writing a book about the fraud of anthropogenic climate change.