Putting the rise in sea level due to the warming of the earth in the right perspective.

We recently made a holiday trip along the Cape coast starting in Knysna and ending up at the Weskus as far north as Velddrif. Amongst scientists who study climate change, there is much discussion about the increase in the level of the oceans and how this could affect life in and around coastal cities.

In fact, I heard some alarmists on radio claiming that by 2050 the water would rise to the level of Paarl. I decided to investigate. I show 3 graphs of places with sea level gauges on the western Cape coast.

We note an average increase of around 2 mm per annum for the western Cape. If we also include the results of the gauges on the east coast, the total average for South Africa is 1.75 mm/year. I must say that the error margin is large, on average 0.8 mm. I also suspect that at some stage new equipment was installed at most stations and that automatic recording procedures were instituted. This would make comparing current data with data from previous times somewhat complicated.

Be that as it may, let us assume that the graphs we have, thanks to NOAA, are completely correct and that we are dealing with a sea level rise of about 2 mm per annum, on average, for the western Cape. We can therefore expect a rise of 50 mm to bring us to 2050. That is 5 cm. To put this amount into some kind of perspective, I show you some pictures of the places that we visited, from top to bottom: Knysna, Brenton-on-Sea, Mossel Bay, Reebok, Jacob’s Bay, and Port Nolloth.

5 cm rise by 2050. Really? You have to laugh….

Yet, amongst our learned friends who study all the data from all over the world, which are all here:

https://tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/sltrends/sltrends_global.htm

there are those who are arguing that there is an accelerating trend, meaning there is not only an upwards linear trend line, there is a curved line going upwards. Now, if I look at the gauge of Simon’s Bay – which seems to be the most reliable record that we have here, with the smallest error – you can see that the opposite is true: there is a distinct downturn from ca. 2015. To quote one of my friends over at the Dutch blog:

People who claim that all those hundreds of dead straight NOAA sea level lines worldwide (covering almost 200 years) are curves are not scientists. I thought that such people were extinct after the Dark Ages, but they still appear to be present in large numbers. Insane.