Maine Sea Level Panic

Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach

So I open my electronic window onto the world this morning, and I find lots of wailing and gnashing of teeth about a projected sea level rise in the US state of Maine. Seems there’s something called the “Maine Climate Council”, which has un-named “scientists” advising it. Here, per the Portland [Maine] Press Herald, is an interactive map that you can use to scare yourself silly by choosing a given sea level rise and seeing who goes underwater. To give you an idea of how high they want you to dial up the alarmism, the article says (emphasis mine):

For reference, Maine sea levels are projected to rise between 1.1 and 3.2 feet by 2050 and between 3 and 9.3 feet by 2100, depending on how successful and quick we are at curbing global emissions rates, according to the scientists who advise the Maine Climate Council.

Now, folks who follow my work know that I’ve done a lot of analyses of sea level claims. And this one set my bad number detector ringing louder than Representative Bowman’s fire alarm.

And sadly, the hype runs deep in the study of the sea level. For example, in my post Munging The Sea Level Data, I demonstrated that the claims of modern acceleration in sea level rise come entirely from a totally invalid splicing of two sets of satellite-measured sea levels. Here’s the money graph from that post.

Figure 1. The four satellite records that are combined to claim acceleration.

Note that the earlier two satellites show a sea level rise of about 2.6 mm/year, which is in line with tide station data. But the latest two satellites show a rise that’s about 50% higher. And the unethical “scientists” using this satellite data fraudulently splice them all together, spread peanut butter over the splice so it can’t be seen, and scream “MASSIVE 50% ACCELERATION IN SEA LEVEL RISE!! EVERYONE PANIC!”. The fraud is shown below.

Figure 2. The artificial claimed “sea level acceleration”.

Grrr … the amount of flat-out lying by climate alarmists knows no bounds … but I digress.

Returning to Maine, NOAA has records from five tide gauges on the Maine coast. A couple of them are around a century long. And guess what?

Despite our total lack of success at “curbing global emissions rates” over the last century, not one of them shows the slightest sign of any acceleration in sea level rise.

Figure 3. Maine sea level records.

So I thought I’d project those records out to 2050, and compare them with the “scientists” claim that by 2050 the sea level in Maine would rise by 1.1 to 3.2 feet (335 to 975 mm, or 13 to 38 inches). Here’s the result. The “whisker bars” show the uncertainty in the projected rise.

Figure 4. Projected sea level rise to 2050, using the historical trends of the five cities, and also showing the rise that is projected by the “scientists who advise the Maine Climate Council”.

Yeah, that’s totally legit … not much else to say about that, except that when you hear someone talking about “climate change” and “sea level rise”, hang on to your wallet, because you’re being had.

Here, it’s a gloriously raining Sunday morning, with the football playoffs on TV (not the round ball kind) and our daughter, son-in-law, and two young grandkids whom my gorgeous ex-fiancée and I live with laughing and running around this big old house I built with my own hands … truly, dear friends, I’m the luckiest man in the world.

My very best to all,

w.