“Sea level has been overall rising since the last ice age, with some ups and downs. Sea level has been rising for the past 200 years…. Humans are not going to stop sea level rise on the time scale of a few centuries by ceasing emissions of CO2.”

– Judith Curry, “The Blame Game.” Climate Etc. August 14, 2017.

Judith Curry is the personification of “one plus the truth equals a majority.” This esteemed climate scientist and erstwhile professor changed her views from climate alarmism and (government) forced energy transformation, a story told elsewhere.

Climate realism–respecting the science rather than getting ahead of it–is her forte. She is a foe of science emanating from groupthink, false certainty, bad incentives, and half-truths. In science, she is telling us, the ends can never justify the means.

That transformation has produced a middle view of the climate debate that is basically:

1. Climate is changing and has an anthropogenic (man-made) component, with the enhanced greenhouse effect (other things equal) resulting in a warmer, wetter world with higher sea level.
2. The human influence is modest, not pronounced, with climate models overpredicting warming.
3. Carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions and atmospheric concentrations have ecological and economic benefits, not only costs.
4. Government mitigation policies will have negligible impacts on climate

Sea Level Fright

The public relations push of the Climate Lobby is to make “climate change” real in ordinary people’s lives. This seems to be the mantra of the Yale Climate Connections website that has these current features on their homepage.

• Yes. Your Streets are Flooding More (August 10)
• The Rising Seas of Climate Change (August 7)
• Waters Rise, and So Do the Costs of Coastal Insurance (August 10)

The same group recently send this communication:

In the hours before and after the eclipse, extra-high tides will occur as a result of the alignment between the sun, Earth, and moon. Those enhanced tides will give us a glimpse of how sea-level rise will affect us – and we want your help to document those tides. The high tides will be visible in many coastal communities, so you can participate even if the eclipse won’t be visible in your region.

So just think imagine the problem in another context…. Really ….

Enter Judith Curry

A recent blog post by Judith Curry put the science back into sea level–at least the best research we have now. Titled “The Blame Game,”

Sea level has been overall rising since the last ice age, with some ups and downs. Sea level has been rising for the past 200 years. The rate of sea level rise during the period ~1925-1960 is as large as the rate of sea level rise the past few decades. Human emissions of CO2 became large after 1950; humans don’t seem to be to blame for the early 20th century sea level rise, nor for the sea level rise in the 19th and late 18th centuries. Humans are not going to stop sea level rise on the time scale of a few centuries by ceasing emissions of CO2.

Always meticulous, Curry refers to previous posts at her site Climate Etc. that summarize the peer-reviewed, data-driven literature:

• Sea level rise, acceleration and the closure problem
• Is sea level rise accelerating?
• Slowing sea level rise
• PDO, ENSO and sea level rise
• 20th century mean global sea level rise
• Sea level rise discussion thread

“We need to learn to live with continuing and possibly accelerating sea level rise,” she concluded her post. ” The solutions lie in land use policy and engineering/technology.”