The left, particularly the climate change shouters, are constantly invoking "science." Now I use scare quotes in that sentence deliberately, writing as someone with a science background myself, because what the left, the climate scolds, and the legacy media (if you'll allow a triple redundancy) invoke generally has very little to do with science. There is no data, no finding, no analysis that will make the scolds change their minds; they will continue to insist that humanity abandon our modern, energy-demanding technological lifestyle to appease their climate-change claims.
The problem is that the climate does change; it always has and it always will, and from day to day, we find that human impact on that change isn't all the scolds claim it is. On Monday, I wrote about a finding that small island nations are not, as the scolds claim, sinking into the sea; now a new study shows that the sea level changes the scolds invoke in the name of their version of "science" are 1) mostly local, and 2) mostly caused by geological, not climate-related, phenomena.
So let's take a quick look at that study, published in the Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute (MDPI).
First: The study uses data from the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), often cited as the authority on global climate. They aren't, not really, but the raw data is what researcher Dr. Hessel Voortman was looking for. His abstract states in part:
We used two datasets with local sea level information all over the globe. In both datasets, we found approximately 15% of the available sets suitable to establish the rate of rise in 2020. Geographic coverage of the suitable locations is poor, with the majority of suitable locations in the Northern Hemisphere. Latin America and Africa are severely under-represented. Statistical tests were run on all selected datasets, taking acceleration of sea level rise as a hypothesis. In both datasets, approximately 95% of the suitable locations show no statistically significant acceleration of the rate of sea level rise. The investigation suggests that local, non-climatic phenomena are a plausible cause of the accelerated sea level rise observed at the remaining 5% of the suitable locations. On average, the rate of rise projected by the IPCC is biased upward with approximately 2 mm per year in comparison with the observed rate.
There's an observation there: In the data Dr. Voortman looked at, the hypothesis put forth that sea level rises are accelerating is not supported by the data, and that local non-climatic causes are responsible for the changes. That's in direct contradiction to what the scolds maintain.
Geologists have known for years about various non-climate phenomena that can cause local sea level changes, either a rise or a fall. These include such things as:
Glacial isostatic adjustment. When glaciers withdraw, as happened at the end of the Wisconsinan Glaciation, about 11,000 years ago, the land rebounds. This is still happening over much of North America, which was, during the Wisconsinan, covered in mile-thick ice sheets. Drive through Alberta, and you'll see the results of that glaciation first-hand, as the land looks as though it has been crushed flat by a massive iron; that's because, in effect, it was. The rebound from that process is still happening, and in coastal areas, that can lead to a perceived local drop in sea level.
Tectonic activity. The continental land masses, the great tectonic plates, when you look at a geological time scale, are sliding around the planet like ice cubes on a hot griddle. When they meet, there is a lot of activity around the boundaries. Subsidence, overriding, and strike-slip faults; all of these geological activities can, again, cause a perceived local change in sea level.
Sedimentation. Even the weariest river winds somewhere safe to sea, and when they do, they often bring big loads of sediment with them, sediment measured in thousands or millions of tons, over time. This can also cause a perceived change in sea level.
Dr. Voortman considered all of these factors, as well as the global sea-level change claims of the scolds. His conclusion speaks plainly:
The statistical procedure detects accelerating sea level rise in a few isolated locations. This pattern is inconsistent with sea level acceleration driven by global phenomena. Further investigation of a subset of locations revealed that local phenomena are often a plausible explanation for the locally observed pattern of sea level rise. The majority of the local causes of rapid sea level rise (or drop) appear to be geologic. Tectonic motion explains sudden changes of sea level rise found in a few places. More gradual but rapid rise (or fall) of sea level is mostly caused by glacial isostatic adjustment and in a few isolated cases by an excessive sediment load. In a few cases, water extraction and loading of soft sediments by buildings explains the (changes of) the observed rate of sea level rise.
Empirically derived long-term rates of sea level rise in 2020 were in majority found to be in excess of the contemporary projected rates of rise. The current generation of projections can therefore be considered conservative. Lower rates were found only in locations where geological processes were suspected to heavily influence the sea level signal.
In plain English, he finds, through his analysis of the data, that most of the observed changes in sea level had a geological, not a climate-related, cause.
Read More: No, Small Island Nations Are Not Sinking Into the Sea
They Just Don't Get It - Another Climate 'Expert,' Same Bad Message
The entire study is long and dry, but if you have time, read it. It's a good illustration of how science actually works. A great next step would be for someone to build on this by making a new set of measurements in coastal areas around the world, but that's literally a global enterprise that would take decades to yield data that would very likely support Dr. Voortman's conclusions; and even if it did not, the proper response would be to change the hypothesis, not to discard the data.
That's how science works.
So, geology, not climate. The natural processes of the Earth, not your air conditioner or your SUV. Yes, the Earth will probably continue its present, long-standing warming trend, as we're in an interglacial period. We're still in a geological epoch in which continental glaciers are going up and down, on the geological time scale, like window blinds, and we're lucky enough to live in a time when those glaciers have mostly withdrawn.
So, keep your air conditioning and your SUV, and if a climate change shouter objects, tell them where to head in. And, yes, I'm keeping my big diesel pickup.
