Sea Levels
Depending on which coast you look at, the longest-running tide gauges all show the same story - 2-3mm/year or 11 inches per century of sea level rise. This doesn’t change even when you take rising and falling ground levels into account, or GPS being added to the tide gauge station for verification. Accuracy checks and balances don’t change the numbers. The seas have been slowly, inexorably rising ever since we began checking, but there is no evidence of any acceleration of any kind. There is no signal that CO2 has had any effect on sea levels.
Satellites are now measuring greater rates of rise than this, primarily on the open ocean, after many different ‘adjustments’ to the numbers. But this is where I ran into another ‘common sense’ problem.
Where does sea level rise matter? Simple, obvious answer: THE COAST. If the coastal tide gauges show one number but satellites show another out on the open ocean, which do you care about? You care about the one nearest to your front door. Another thought occurred to me - what about islands? Those would have both issues present - being in the middle of the ocean and having a coastline. I remembered some past discussion about islands being disappeared due to climate change, specifically the Maldives. So I checked on the latest figures….
It isn’t happening.
First, the Maldives seem to be oblivious to their losing battle against the seas since they are building like crazy to capitalize on tourism. Five new airports in 2019, four more in 2020!
Maldives to Open Five New Airports in 2019
Maldives to Open Four New Airports in 2020
In spite of this, the last two presidents of the Maldives have waged PR campaigns aimed at extracting money from Western countries, the source of the CO2.
Other studies show that most Pacific islands are actually growing, not sinking…
Low-lying Pacific islands ‘growing not sinking’
The Indian Ocean area, including the Maldives and Bangladesh have seen no sea level rise in decades.