Seek Sea Level Truth, Stamp Out Ignorance

National news services have recently disgorged many articles about Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming (CAGW), and the San Francisco Chronicle has particularly highlighted predictions of sea level rise of five feet by 2100. However, since coastal features look the same now as they did when I came to Point Arena in 1949, I was intrigued to discover what I had missed observing the past 63 years. “The truth must be in the data the eminent scientists have developed,” I commented to myself, and decided to seek their truth.

It was surprisingly easy. I went to the government’s website for the Commerce Department/National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration/National Ocean Service, tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov, clicked on “mean sea level trends for stations in California,” and put the information for the 16 stations on a spreadsheet. Two significant facts were immediately obvious: sea level on the California coast increased at a rate of about seven inches per century, and there has been little or no increase since 1980. Instead of an accelerating rate of increase, there has been deceleration and in some instances, sea level decline, in recent years.

These simple facts, easily determined from government records by any citizen with curiosity and Internet access, are totally at odds with the alarmist press releases. Any “science” reporter could find what I found during a 30-minute coffee break. It took another 30 minutes to scan the records for the 21 other US coastal states, plus 14 Atlantic and Pacific islands.

Conclusions? Sea level rose as much or more in the first half of the 20^th Century, and subsidence caused by isostatic rebound from the Ice Age affects some Atlantic coast records.

The information readily available is mind boggling, and it boggles my mind that “science” journalists don’t use it. They must fear what they might find.