THE MYTH:
Sea level rise is accelerating,
so many coastal areas
will soon be underwater ?
THE TRUTH:
Earth’s sea level
has been slowly rising
at a constant rate
for the last few
thousand years.
Nils-Axel Mӧrner,
a UN IPCC scientist, and
a world-renowned expert on
global sea level measurement,
warned the IPCC that it was
publishing false information
about sea level rise.
When they ignored him
rather than heeding
his warning, he resigned.
Morner says sea level
has been rising at an
average rate of only
+1.1 mm per year --
or seven inches
per century,
not the 1 to 2 meters
per century predicted
by some government
agencies.
His figure is confirmed
by the U.S. Commerce
Department's NOAA.
Sea level is tricky to measure
because land a tide gauge
in mounted on can be rising
or sinking, a phenomenon
called isostasy.
The northern end
of the North American
continent is rising,
due to the melting
of the mile-thick
Laurentide glacier
that covered it
20,000 years ago.
When that glacier melted
between 15,000 and 8,000
years ago, the land it had
covered slowly started rising,
causing the southern end
of the continent, bordering
the Gulf of Mexico, including
the Miami Florida area,
to sink.
The rate of sea-level rise
has tripled over the last decade,
according to a recent study
from the University of Miami,
bringing with it more
frequent coastal flooding.
Not mentioned is that Miami
and the surrounding area
are sinking due to isostasy
and other causes.
Other causes:
Miami is also sinking
because of the removal
of so much water
from the water table,
and the construction
of many large buildings
close to the shoreline.
Sea level measurements
are made both by averaging
tidal gauge data and by
satellite altimetry.
It was reported to Dr. Mörner
that the satellite data
had been tampered with
to show a faster rise
in sea level, than tide gauges.
Another system called GRACE
– gravitational-anomaly satellites –
which compute the mass
of the ocean, from which
changes in sea-level
can be directly calculated.
According to these data,
sea level fell slightly
from 2002-2007.