For over a quarter-century the world’s leading climate scientists and news media have warned that human-caused climate change has doubled the rate of sea level rise and is thus putting civilization in grave danger. “We will see at least four feet of sea level rise and possibly ten by the end of the century,” wrote The New York Times’ David Wallace-Wells in 2019. “The oceans we know won’t survive climate change,” claimed The Atlantic that same year. The author, Robinson Meyer, quoted estimates by Princeton University’s Michael Oppenheimer that sea levels would rise by more than 34 inches by 2100.
When I asked Oppenheimer about those numbers at the time, he told me, “The actual number, which is based on the sea level rise amount in [IPCC Representative Concentration Pathway] 8.5 for its [Special Report on the Ocean and Cryosphere in a Changing Climate] report, is 1.1 meters, which is 3 feet, 7 inches,” or 43 inches.
All of those claims have been proven false by the first-ever global study of sea level rise based on data gathered locally rather than on models extrapolating from assumptions. The Journal of Marine Science and Engineering published the peer-reviewed article, “A Global Perspective on Local Sea Level Changes,” by Hessel Voortman, a Dutch engineer, and Rob de Vos, a researcher, last week.
