As regular readers will know, you can arrive at this twaddle by assuming sea levels will rise 13 times higher than current projected increases, and temperature rises will stop jogging along at around 0.1°C a decade and suddenly jump by 4°C by 2100. Just for good measure you can ignore the 2016 Dutch Deltares report that found the world has actually gained more land than was lost to water since 1985.
The science around sea level rise is a tad more complex than clickbait stories backed by attention-seeking climate scientists/activists might suggest. The Mail Online story was written by the publication’s Executive Science and Technology Editor Shivali Best, who pulled out all the stops by warning readers in the UK that one in four properties will be at risk of flooding within 25 years. Some catching up will be required then, given that in the year to March 2024 just 5,000 properties were flooded in England, similar to annual totals recorded over the last 20 years. Best has past form promoting her party piece, writing in the Mirror in 2019 that “rising sea levels could wipe out entire cities by 2050”. Countries in Asia such as Bangladesh, India and Thailand were singled out for particular concern. No doubt water-concerned citizens of Bangladesh were reassured by a recent science paper that found Bangladesh had experienced a 13.7% growth in its coasts since 1990. Overall, coastal areas across the globe had a net gain of more than 13,000 km2.
It would of course be unfair to single out Shivali Best for her services to entertainment. Matt McGrath of the BBC is another six footer and in 2019 he gave us his two metre ‘scientists say’ scare by noting, “scientists believe that global sea levels could rise far more than predicted”. This could lead to the displacement of hundreds of millions of people, he added. Where will they go, we might ask? Perhaps they could head to the coast. In 2016 the BBC noted the comment by Dr Fedor Baart on the Deltares findings when he said: “We expected that the coast would start to retreat due to sea level rise, but the most surprising thing is that the coasts are growing all over the world.”
It is obvious that the complexities of sea level rises and falls make simplistic sci-fi stories designed to induce mass climate psychosis look rather silly. Coral islands often accrete mass with the current small rises in sea levels, while land rises and falls around the Earth due to numerous natural geological forces. Measuring the actual sea level movement is problematic. Recent satellite measurements suggest annual rises around 3 mm but there are concerns that the radar altimeter data are heavily contaminated near the shore, the very area where accuracy is required. Whenever there are uncertainties, climate models are never far from the scene to give faux ‘scientists say’ certainty to the uncertain source material. According to a recent paper published by Malaysian scientists, “in-situ sea level observations through tide gauges remain the best approach for long-term tide coastal sea level study”. These appear to provide lower sea level rises around the 2 mm mark.
Best’s latest story is based on work produced by climate academics working out of a Singaporean university. They published a “fusion of probabilistic projects” about future sea level rises using ice sheet models and what are described as “expert elicitations”. It was noted that the projection of a 1.9 metres rise by 2100, “can inform a high-end storyline, supporting decision-making for activities with low uncertainty tolerance“. Quite what this gobbledegook means is not clear, so apologies if it does not refer to pumping out stories that journalists and politicians can use to scare the living daylights out of populations that fail to grasp the importance of Net Zero.
As if this “terrifying study” was not enough, Best uses a ‘Coastal Risk Screening Tool’ supplied by the Green Blob-funded Climate Central. Set the water level at 6.2 ft and Hull, Skegness and Grimsby disappear beneath the waves. In addition, several areas of London head for a watery grave including Bermondsey, Greenwich and Chelsea, while further west the bands in Weston-Super-Mare, Newport and Cardiff are tuning up to play Nearer My God to Thee. As we have noted in past editions, Climate Central’s handy flood reckoner is in regular use and many scare stories in local media can be traced back to this source. Climate Central claims that it has “built strong relationships with thousands of trusted, mostly local messengers who deliver our content”. Best is quite a fan. In her 2019 Mirror article she reported on Climate Central’s claim that 3.5 million could be at risk of flooding in the UK within 30 years. Climate Central hopes that its findings “will encourage coastal communities to prepare themselves for the future”.
Steering clear of this unsubstantiated, sandwich-board guff might be a start.
Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’s Environment Editor. He is a freelance journalist who started in financial journalism in the late 1970s and for nearly 20 years ran a company – Evandale Publishing. This article was sourced HERE
The science around sea level rise is a tad more complex than clickbait stories backed by attention-seeking climate scientists/activists might suggest. The Mail Online story was written by the publication’s Executive Science and Technology Editor Shivali Best, who pulled out all the stops by warning readers in the UK that one in four properties will be at risk of flooding within 25 years. Some catching up will be required then, given that in the year to March 2024 just 5,000 properties were flooded in England, similar to annual totals recorded over the last 20 years. Best has past form promoting her party piece, writing in the Mirror in 2019 that “rising sea levels could wipe out entire cities by 2050”. Countries in Asia such as Bangladesh, India and Thailand were singled out for particular concern. No doubt water-concerned citizens of Bangladesh were reassured by a recent science paper that found Bangladesh had experienced a 13.7% growth in its coasts since 1990. Overall, coastal areas across the globe had a net gain of more than 13,000 km2.
It would of course be unfair to single out Shivali Best for her services to entertainment. Matt McGrath of the BBC is another six footer and in 2019 he gave us his two metre ‘scientists say’ scare by noting, “scientists believe that global sea levels could rise far more than predicted”. This could lead to the displacement of hundreds of millions of people, he added. Where will they go, we might ask? Perhaps they could head to the coast. In 2016 the BBC noted the comment by Dr Fedor Baart on the Deltares findings when he said: “We expected that the coast would start to retreat due to sea level rise, but the most surprising thing is that the coasts are growing all over the world.”
It is obvious that the complexities of sea level rises and falls make simplistic sci-fi stories designed to induce mass climate psychosis look rather silly. Coral islands often accrete mass with the current small rises in sea levels, while land rises and falls around the Earth due to numerous natural geological forces. Measuring the actual sea level movement is problematic. Recent satellite measurements suggest annual rises around 3 mm but there are concerns that the radar altimeter data are heavily contaminated near the shore, the very area where accuracy is required. Whenever there are uncertainties, climate models are never far from the scene to give faux ‘scientists say’ certainty to the uncertain source material. According to a recent paper published by Malaysian scientists, “in-situ sea level observations through tide gauges remain the best approach for long-term tide coastal sea level study”. These appear to provide lower sea level rises around the 2 mm mark.
Best’s latest story is based on work produced by climate academics working out of a Singaporean university. They published a “fusion of probabilistic projects” about future sea level rises using ice sheet models and what are described as “expert elicitations”. It was noted that the projection of a 1.9 metres rise by 2100, “can inform a high-end storyline, supporting decision-making for activities with low uncertainty tolerance“. Quite what this gobbledegook means is not clear, so apologies if it does not refer to pumping out stories that journalists and politicians can use to scare the living daylights out of populations that fail to grasp the importance of Net Zero.
As if this “terrifying study” was not enough, Best uses a ‘Coastal Risk Screening Tool’ supplied by the Green Blob-funded Climate Central. Set the water level at 6.2 ft and Hull, Skegness and Grimsby disappear beneath the waves. In addition, several areas of London head for a watery grave including Bermondsey, Greenwich and Chelsea, while further west the bands in Weston-Super-Mare, Newport and Cardiff are tuning up to play Nearer My God to Thee. As we have noted in past editions, Climate Central’s handy flood reckoner is in regular use and many scare stories in local media can be traced back to this source. Climate Central claims that it has “built strong relationships with thousands of trusted, mostly local messengers who deliver our content”. Best is quite a fan. In her 2019 Mirror article she reported on Climate Central’s claim that 3.5 million could be at risk of flooding in the UK within 30 years. Climate Central hopes that its findings “will encourage coastal communities to prepare themselves for the future”.
Steering clear of this unsubstantiated, sandwich-board guff might be a start.
Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’s Environment Editor. He is a freelance journalist who started in financial journalism in the late 1970s and for nearly 20 years ran a company – Evandale Publishing. This article was sourced HERE
1 comment:
Bob Harvey, a previous Waitakere mayor said downtown Auckland would soon be under 3ft of water (or similar comment) back in the ‘70’s?. We’ve heard it all before and all predictions have come to nought. We should be calling out those who create hysteria and vanish into the woodwork.
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