Kerby Anderson

Columnist Brittany Bernstein described a first-of-its-kind study by Dutch researchers that found no evidence of a global acceleration in sea level rise because of climate change. The peer-reviewed paper has the title: “A Global Perspective on Local Sea Level Changes.”

The researchers analyzed more than 100 tide-gauge stations worldwide and found that the average rate of sea level rise in 2020 is only around 1.5 millimeters per year. This is significantly lower that the number reported by climate scientists. The researchers don’t deny the reality of climate change, but they do point to other factors to explain the local trends that have previously been reported.

Their findings match my observation of one of my major professors in graduate school. He left Yale University to work for a short time at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. By the time he became a faculty member at the University of California at Santa Barbara, I noticed he was critical of some of the more extreme environmental statements. Perhaps having access to some of the oceanic data caused him to reevaluate some of his earlier concerns.

As I mentioned in a previous commentary this year, we have been warned that the sea levels would rise to such heights “that major European cities will be sunk beneath the rising seas . . . by 2020.” As we can all see, that has not happened. In fact, in another earlier commentary I mentioned that a city in Belgium that used to be a seaport is now ten miles away from the coastline.

I think it is time to cool some of the hype. The lesson is simple: global temperatures ebb and flow, and so does the sea level.