Guest essay by Larry Hamlin
The Los Angeles Times latest anti-science sea level rise propaganda campaign articles claims are devoid of any scientific data addressing the record of actual California coastal measurements of sea level rise outcomes which remain at unchanging and steady rates of only about 3 to 9 inches per century with no acceleration impacts present.
Actual NOAA measured California coastal sea level rise data through year 2018 is shown for the states coastal sites having between 70 to 120 years of recorded data.
The latest Times propaganda article notes the following as the basis for its exaggerated coastal sea level rise claims.
“But lines in the sand are meant to shift. In the last 100 years, the sea rose less than 9 inches in California. By the end of this century, the surge could be greater than 9 feet.”
This ridiculous and data unsupported assertion was addressed in a prior WUWT article with the following graphic (provided through courtesy of Willis Eschenbach) showing the absurdity of Times “computer model” driven coastal sea level rise climate alarmist hype.
This “big lie” climate alarmist propagandist focused Times article relies on nothing but pure speculation and conjecture based on “computer models” which have a proven 30 year long track record of flawed and failed highly exaggerated coastal sea level rise errors as was also addressed in a prior WUWT article.
Climate alarmists and their media shills desperately try to ignore and conceal this totally flawed prior three decades of failure in completely blowing projections of coastal sea level rise outcomes.
These failed alarmists then proceed to simply move the goal posts yet again and make the same flawed “computer model” claims for the next 30 year and longer intervals and expect everyone to forget their prior failures at bungling assessments of non existent coastal sea level rise acceleration and steady unchanging rates of sea level rise measured outcomes.
The Times scientifically unsupported and flawed “computer model” driven coastal sea level rise claims of future “9 foot” increases are ludicrous given the unassailable fact that NOAA tide gauge data for California coastal locations some of which with measurement records of over 100 years show no sea level rise acceleration has occurred with rates of sea level rise remaining steady and unchanging. These results have occurred despite more than 30 years having passed since climate alarmist first made accelerating sea level rise flawed assertions in alarmism hyped Congressional hearings in 1988.
The actual tide gauge data measurements showing increased sea level rise at California coastal locations remaining between 3 to 9 inches per century with no acceleration displayed make a mockery of the ridiculous hyped Times article assertion of “9 feet” of increased sea level rise during the next century which is based on use of flawed and failed “computer model” speculation and conjecture.
The Times has become nothing but a purely politically driven propaganda publication which provides no objectivity whatsoever in its climate articles but instead is lost in a scientifically unsupported make believe climate alarmist world devoid of connection to scientific reality – especially regarding use of actual data versus the Times continual use of flawed and exaggerated “computer model” speculation and conjecture.
This latest Los Angeles Times article is basically an expansion and repeat of an article published in its March 13, 2019 edition by the same reporter that was addressed in a prior WUWT essay. Both the prior L. A. Times article and WUWT essay are noted below.
The latest Times article mentions a $1.8 million dollar change being made to a sea wall on Balboa Island and falsely implies that this change is based on future sea level rise concerns.
In fact the wall in question is being raised 9 inches above its present height (versus the articles idiotic 9 foot future sea level rise claim) based on new FEMA flood assessments that reflect revised analysis of the impacts of distant swells, local storm waves, tidal variations and El Nino events not future sea level rise concerns.
Nothing has changed regarding California coastal sea level rise data or the flawed and failed “computer model” hyped outcomes since the Times prior article. This latest Times sea level rise hype article which is basically just a repeat of its prior alarmist article is nothing but a reflection of how desperate the Times has become to push scientifically unsupported climate alarmism propaganda schemes.
Why did my post get removed?
I see your 11:04 post.
It is back up now, but it had disappeared. Curious
Every time any of these terrorists publish these scare lies they should be hauled to court. Put an end to the coddling. Any other type of demonstrable deliberate terror inciting lie would be prosecutable. This is no different than shouting FIRE in a theater.
We all must stop talking about tide gauge data showing a slow steady rise for the past century or more and no acceleration to this day. If NOAA or, even worse, NASA find out about it, both will do thorough, independent, very expensive. taxpayer funded sciency studies and conclude that gauge measurements since 1970 have all been too low and they will “adjust” them upwards. Think not? They have both done it to temperature records.
How’s this for SLR:
“However, much of southern California is barely above sea level, and scientists have discovered that past earthquakes have caused the ground in the region to sink by as much as three feet. If such an earthquake happened today, vast stretches of southern California could suddenly go underwater as the Pacific Ocean came pouring in.
So instead of talking about southern California “going into the ocean”, perhaps it would be more accurate for us to talk about “the Pacific Ocean going into southern California”.
Cal State Fullerton professor Matt Kirby was one of the lead researchers on the groundbreaking study that alerted all of us to this possibility, and he says that if a large enough earthquake happened today “you would see seawater rushing in”…
‘It´s something that would happen relatively instantaneously,’ Kirby said.
‘Probably today if it happened, you would see seawater rushing in.’”
The artificial Salton Sea could become real and Death Valley would become cooler.
Interesting how the last few strong El Nino’s are represented on the sea level rise graphs as higher rates of rise. They are listed here https://ggweather.com/enso/oni.htm . I guess it should be a surprise to most readers here who know that sea level rise follows global warming and not CO2 levels.
Last year a similar story was printed in a local newspaper so I challenged the reporter about it. What I got back was “NOAA says it’s so!” Idiot reporters. No ability to understand or smell a rat.
That graph looks just like the Hocky stick one of many years ago.
Re. the newspaper business, they make money on the adverts, so is the scary reporting bringing in the advertising money or not. ?
Re. sea levels and beach front property. As all the indications are that it is far more likely to cool rather that warm, the sea cooling will shrink. Seems a good time to buy them up if the price is right.
MJE VK5ELL
““But lines in the sand are meant to shift. In the last 100 years, the sea rose less than 9 inches in California. By the end of this century, the surge could be greater than 9 feet.”
And some 😡 people live in hope that this will happen! 😈
Jim Steele
“If you plot the data from 1980 to 2010 you will no sea level rise trend at SF for more than 30 years.”
Of course, Mr Steele. But your SF is one of 1573 PMSL tide gauges in the grand total since measurement begin.
Here is a list of computed linear trends out of the entire PMSL data set (only gauges with a lifetime equal to or exceeding 50 years were selected):
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1MgguUuWLbJeUbVKjc3Fm8YkmXY70ZnW_/view
All trends were computed over each station’s entire lifetime. I’ll generate a list comparing all stations over a common part of say 30 years when I have some idle time.
The focus was on the SF tide gauge because the LA Times focused on nearby Pacifica causing many local Pacifica’s to believe in a catastrophe. The other “1573 PMSL tide gauges” are not relevant to the LA Times ranting the California coast is eroding due to sea level. Besides many of those tide gauges are short term
Furthemore, satellite data shows from 1992 to 2009 Sea level along the west coast of North and South America has fallen despite subsidence at most sea level gauge sites.
http://cdn.antarcticglaciers.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/figure-6.png
Jim Steele
1. “Besides many of those tide gauges are short term”
That was the reason why I selected over 360 with a lifetime over 50 y.
2. “Furthemore, satellite data shows from 1992 to 2009 ”
And what does it show for 2010-2019?
3. “http://cdn.antarcticglaciers.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/figure-6.png”
Not found in the paper you provided a link to in your previous comment:
Sea-Level Rise and Its Impact on Coastal Zones
Robert J. Nicholls and Anny Cazenave
*
Sea level – regardless wether rising or not – is not a matter we can cherry-pick spatially or temporally just like we want to prove or disprove something.
Only a global consideration allows for example to compare gauge and satellite data within their common period:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1NUueHTTWSteZoZdolMUrZTTe5ohByhO6/view
I understand your will to concentrate on the LA Times nonsense, but…
Like fusion power, the big increase in sea level rise, is always a couple years in the future.
Sydney Harbour (Australia) is connected to the Pacific ocean and it’s siting and geology enables accurate sea level measurements. Levels in the last 100 years varying between about 1.00m to 1.10m. In 1914 it was 1.11m and in 2019 1.05m.
Nothing much is changing.
I my post above a better term than SLR would be LLS: Land Level Sinking……
Oceans that contain floating ice are at a higher level than when that ice melts. Because ice is less dense than liquid water, causesing ice to float. Upon melting – ice shrinks, occupying less space. Therefore water level drops. Both polar ice caps are floating upon water. As melting occurs, the supporting water actually drops in level. Ice bergs do not raise water levels when melting. That is simple physics. The global-warmers-climate-changers have completely ignored this simple basic fundamental scientific fact. And the politicians are not about to give up on the source of new found revenue known as carbon tax. The dispensers of climate hysterics are now members of the newest Cult, predicting the end of the world.
That’s not the argument they use, 2001 wants it’s “facts back” the theory is land based ice will flow at an increased rate into the sea because the sea based ice acts as a dam, hence the panic over Greenland ice caps rather than antarctic ones and why the Arctic disappearing at varying rates has no effect whatsoever, except with regard to Greenland. I’m sure I used to worry about this stuff, but the sea level thing became the boy who cried wolf. Anyway I suppose land based ice could cause sea level rise, but everyone with a basic science education knows the sea ice itself makes no difference due to the relative density difference of ice and water, including alarmist.
Also the antarctic ice cap isn’t floating on water, it has land underneath it and is built up with snow.
Yeah, ice is less dense than water, but part of it sticks up above the surface.
In the same proportion by which the density differs from the water it is floating in.
This is called buoyancy.
Simple physics.
But it is not as simple as that.
Sea water is salty, and sea ice, unless it is newly frozen, is mostly fresh water. The older it is, the fresher it gets, as the salt is excluded over time.
But unless it is glacial ice from land, it is frozen sea water anyway, a sizable percentage of which melts in Summer and refreezes in Winter.
But when sea ice which is not salty melts, it results in water which is less dense than the water of the ocean.
The sea will rise.
But this amount is tiny, and if the total amount of sea ice in the world ocean is relatively constant from year to year (so far it is, although it varies quite a bit during each year, and from pole to pole, by the same time of year from one year to the next, the difference is slight), there is no effect.
Now, grounded sea ice is a different matter entirely, and much of it is grounded.
The bottom line is, is all the sea ice in the world melted and stayed melted, sea level would rise a small amount.
A few centimeters I think is the amount.
But that is not going to happen, ever.
Each pole is dark for half the year, no solar energy input, and very low Sun angle for much of the rest of the year. Humidity is generally quite low.
It gets very cold.
But Thaddeus, sorry to have to contradict you, but you got your simple physics wrong in multiple ways.
Ice sticks up above the water, and if the water is a fresh water lake, and the ice is all floating, there is zero change in the water level when ice melts.
When the surface of the ocean freezes, salt is excluded, and the ice is not as salty as the ocean it froze out of. Over time it becomes almost salt free. This lowers sea level.
When the ice melts, it rises back to where it was.
A tiny amount considering the relative volumes and surface areas involved.
Best to get the facts straight when attempting to get the facts straight.
There is very little that is simple as it seems.
“Both polar ice caps are floating upon water.”
One other error, Thad. The South polar ice cap is on top of a continent called Antarctica.
What would happen if you deleted the last 30 years of sealevel data (or temps) and fed that data into the computer programs to predict the “next”, i.e the most recent, three decades.
I grew up in northern VA, but visited my Grandmother on my Mom’s side quite often, from early childhood, all the way to her death at 104 about 10 years ago. She lived in Capitola, CA, a quaint town on the coast south of San Jose, Next to Santa Cruz, at the north end of Monterey Bay.
We would always visit the beach. Over the last 50 years (I just visited there few years ago when on an IT project), the cliffs are still there, including one house that hangs right on the edge. The pier is still there, the tidepool is still there. The ocean hasn’t overcome anything.
But it seems like people see what they think they should see. I just don’t get it.
One of the other great fallacies of this article (actually an entire separate section of the paper) is to imply that all coastal erosion is caused by sea level rise. Of course, the very presence of coastal bluffs is proof that coastal erosion has been going on for a very long time, as they are created by this erosion.
Of course, the bluffs are still vulnerable to this erosion, sea level rise or not.
Northern California beaches can vary quite a lot year to year, or season to season. Bonny Doon, north of Santa Cruz, could vary about 50% year to year, in no particular pattern.
”We have to mitigate the effects of climate change and sea level rise and increasing storm surges by building a higher sea wall”…..seems to be the catch-cry of every coastal community at the moment – including where I live. The local council says we expect a rise of 8cm by 2030 and 39cm by 2070. That’s over 7mm/year! Where they pull this garbage out of is a mystery but no one seems to be questioning it. It was front page news in Sunday’s paper…”Race against the Tide”
Here’s another Morner video that found me yesterday.
Probably the best thing we can say is that, this time a lot more people are paying attention, much is being written in blogs, social media, news websites, political committees around the world…
So in ten years when nothing has changed except for some small and unknowable amount of SLR or fall, and some GMAT rise or fall, I would have to think it will be harder to wriggle away from.
Prices for a lot of stuff for a lot of people have escalated by a large amount, and at some points some voters might actually notice they have been fleeced.
And if the GMAT should happen to fall by half a degree or more at any time over the next ten years, then there will not only be no warming but actually cooling over the whole period of alarmism.
If that happens and the liars are still lying and taking people’s money based on these lies, I think the liars will be putting themselves in grave danger.
What can billions of people do when they suddenly realize they have been lied to and robbed and many killed?
I would not want to be on the liars end of finding out the answer to that question.
But Twould be far better to plan for 39cm by 2070 and only realize 9cm than it would be to plan for 9cm and receive 39cm
“By the end of this century, the surge could be greater than 9 feet.”
The LA Times is lying.
Surge: noun. 1. a sudden powerful forward or upward movement, especially by a crowd or by a natural force such as the waves or tide.
There is nothing sudden about 81 years. The use of the word ‘surge’ is a lie.
I live in the Pearl Islands of Panama, and our island has a number of fish traps that were built by the pre-Colombian Indians to trap fish at low tide. They still trap fish at low tide, now some 500 years later (at the least) from when they were built. There is no evidence that I can see that sea levels are any higher now than they were 500 years ago.
The only time that we have documented an exponential rise in sea level similar to what is shown in the 9th illustration is when the northern hemisphere was covered in thick ice. The end of the glaciation resulted in an abrupt increase in sea level. However, for about the last 8,000 years, the trend has been approximately linear. What ice is left to melt is not located in the mid-latitudes. It is therefore improbable that another melt-water event similar to 20,000 years ago happen. It is all speculation intended to scare those who don’t know any better. What is presented is offered up as science, but is really political propaganda with little or no supporting evidence.
“The [LA] Times has become nothing but a purely politically driven propaganda publication”
Ditto for the Seattle Times. And the NY Times. etc.
I provided the following summary comment at the Los Angeles Times website for this article:
“The Los Angeles Times latest anti-science sea level rise propaganda campaign articles claims are devoid of any scientific data addressing the record of actual California coastal measurements of sea level rise outcomes which remain at unchanging and steady rates of only about 3 to 9 inches per century with no acceleration impacts present.
Actual NOAA measured California coastal sea level rise data through year 2018 confirms these rates of coastal sea level rise for the states coastal sites with many locations having between 70 to 120 years of recorded data.
The latest Times propaganda article notes the following as the basis for its exaggerated coastal sea level rise claims.
“But lines in the sand are meant to shift. In the last 100 years, the sea rose less than 9 inches in California. By the end of this century, the surge could be greater than 9 feet.”
This ridiculous and data unsupported assertion was addressed in a prior WUWT article showing the absurdity of Times “computer model” driven coastal sea level rise climate alarmist hype.
This “big lie” climate alarmist propagandist focused Times article relies on nothing but pure speculation and conjecture based on “computer models” which have a proven 30 year long track record of flawed and failed highly exaggerated coastal sea level rise errors as was also addressed in a prior WUWT article.
Nothing has changed regarding California coastal sea level rise data or the flawed and failed “computer model” hyped outcomes since the Times prior article. This latest Times sea level rise hype article which is basically just a repeat of its prior alarmist article is nothing but a reflection of how desperate the Times has become to push scientifically unsupported climate alarmism propaganda schemes.”
The comment was deleted by the Times moderator.
LA Times the modern day National Enquirer .
Whole forests are wiped out to produce the LATimes .
Given their preachy selective journalism you would think for the good
of the planet they would do everyone a favor and stop printing .
The California Coastal commission is requiring developers, who want to do any development on the coast, to assume the sea level will rise 6 feet based on global warming. ie; an easy way to stop most development, their real goal.
At least this article is relevant. There are far to many items on this blog that are just giving oxygen to nutty “we are all doomed” brigade. And that, in my opinion dilutes the effect of WUWT.