If Sea Level Was Rising, Wouldn't Someone Have Noticed?

Many times erosion or subsidence is taken to be proof of sea level rise. Consider how we’re wrecking the Mississippi delta with levees for flood control. The Chesapeake bay has numerous islands some of which are disappearing more from simple erosion than anything else. Same thing with barrier islands (sand bars) which use to move but because we’ve built on them we’ve attempted to stabilize the unstable.

In one lifetime I doubt anyone would notice, but there is the concern that future generations will suffer. But how many adults still live in the house where they were born, the same neighborhood, or even the same city? And even if the sea were to rise most infrastructure would need to be replaced long before the water got there.

Sea level rise is not uniform around the world. In some places, like around the Maldives, the sea level is declining. This makes the claims about the Maldives being imperiled by sea level rise both a lie and a stunt. A large region of the Indian Ocean (where Maldives are situated) has shown a measurable decline over the period 1950-2000, and the rate of decline measured by satellite altimetry exceeds 10mm per year in places.
Sea level all along the west coast of USA is stable or declining. At La Jolla it is very slightly declining. Check out the facts in paper by John A. Church et al (Journal of Climate, July 2004).
Church shows that most regions of the oceans are stable or in slight decline, but there are some regions with steep increases, especially around Indonesia. So we have the same situation as ‘global temperature’ – we can have most of the globe with stable or declining temperatures, but the ‘global average’ can be record high due to a local hotspot, as we saw in Canada earlier this year. So it is with sea level – a relatively small region around Indonesia dominates to give a ‘global average’ sea level rise. But for most of the world – no change!
Doubtless there are statistical artifacts, and then there is calibration by a tide gauge in Hong Kong which is subsiding. So we have the marine equivalent of UHI as well!
See all this and more in my post here (which includes some figures):
http://buythetruth.wordpress.com/2008/11/15/sea-level-scam/

pho99 says:
May 1, 2010 at 4:30 pm
The simple answer to the tides in the photos is to look at places where there was/is soil.
If the sea were truly rising catastropically, then the soil/sand line would recede as ever higher sea levels led to storms/tides that continued to wash off more soil.
Look at the horse & carraige in Steve’s photos. Is that land is still there?

The U.S. Gulf Coast has rising sea levels, but not from global warming and ocean volume expansion. It’s due to land subsidence, defined as “the lowering of the surface of the Earth with respect to a datum or point of reference.”
From the American Geophysical Union (2006): http://www.agu.org/report/hurricanes/subsidence.html
“An enormous volume of debris eroded from the Rocky Mountains and the Appalachians is carried by the waters of the Mississippi [River]. Upon entering the Gulf of Mexico, the river slows to a stop and the sediments come to rest, forming the Mississippi River delta. Over time, the Gulf of Mexico basin has accumulated an aggregate thickness of sedimentary deposits of nearly 60,000 feet (more than 10 miles). This massive pile of sediments at the edge of the continent has two characteristics. First, its colossal weight has depressed and continues to depress the Earth’s crust. Second, the pile of sediment is weak and unable to support itself laterally. Over time, large tracts of the unstable pile have been displaced southward along sloping faults.
Geological and geophysical investigations have shown that subsidence is widespread, extending beyond the Mississippi River delta and coast, and is occurring more rapidly than previously thought. Several natural and human-related processes are known to be causing subsidence in the Gulf Coast today.”
Also, regarding the before-and-after La Jolla cove photos, I urge caution on drawing conclusions. The impact of the local tide at the time of each photo can give erroneous results. For example, if the earlier photo was taken at high tide, and the more recent photo taken at low tide, there would have been considerable overall sea level rise. On May 13th – 14th of this year, the difference between high tide and low tide will be 7 feet at La Jolla, at the new moon. (high tide of 6 feet on 4/13 at 9:14 p.m., and low tide of -1 feet on 4/14 at 4:17 a.m.) The high-low tide difference will be 7.5 feet two weeks later, when the moon is full.

The assertion that LaJolla seems stable (strike slip don’t cause uplift? (not so)) and a good proxy for sea level NOT rising doesn’t seem quite right to me. Is that what you are saying?
Matching photos (not referenced to tides?) doesn’t seem to be proof to me. Sorry – I’m skeptical – lots of evidence to the contrary in other places (stable and with continuous measure).
Further, one shouldn’t confuse relative sea level rise with absolute sea level rise.
Changes in relative sea level might occur due changes in subsidence (due to ground water withdrawal, faulting, etc), sediment supply and land use / cover changes (stabilization and deforestation).
These are not proof of sea level rise.

Hush! I’m hoping that the hype will cause seaside real estate to drop to the level where I can buy my own shoreline!

Been saying this for years has anyone noticed it getting hotter or colder over the past 20 years?. More storms less storms?, more rain less rain?, No, you haven’t and you never will because you will not live long enough to notice climate change which occurs over 1000’s of years and reverts to default status every time anyway until the sun explodes LOL.

Are we arguing that sea levels are not rising now? Because they most certainly are.
Better arguments might be that sea levels have been rising for at least 150 years (probably much longer), that the rate of sea level rise has slightly decreased over the last few year and was rising much, much faster in the distant pass, and that the amount of sea level rise is dwarfed by other natural factors we already deal with, such as tides.

Two things to note in your photos. The modern picture was taken at low tide by the look of the rocks in the foreground. Second is that people in the past appear to be a lot taller. Clearly there is some distortion in the photos and they may have been taken from different vantage points. Tidal gauge readings and records in this area of California are available would give a much more convincing record of sea level changes.

@ur momisugly stevengoddard says: “Water is extremely fluid. It isn’t very good at forming hills.”
I believe the Maldives is below Mean Sea Level, so I guess sailing outta there is uphill 😉 Mind you, local sea level in the Maldives was higher during the Little Ice Age.