{"id":400629,"date":"2025-09-07T13:03:38","date_gmt":"2025-09-07T11:03:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=400629"},"modified":"2025-09-07T13:04:57","modified_gmt":"2025-09-07T11:04:57","slug":"no-evidence-climate-change-has-accelerated-sea-level-rise","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=400629","title":{"rendered":"No Evidence Climate Change Has Accelerated Sea Level Rise"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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From Michael Shellenberger<\/a> on X<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Climate change will make oceans rise 3 – 10 feet by the end of this century, said scientists and the media. Nonsense. A new, first-ever global study of real-world data, not models, finds no evidence climate change accelerated sea level rise. This is a massive scientific scandal.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n

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For over a quarter-century the world\u2019s 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. \u201cWe will see at least four feet of sea level rise and possibly ten by the end of the century,\u201d wrote The New York Times<\/em>\u2019 David Wallace-Wells in 2019. \u201cThe oceans we know won\u2019t survive climate change,\u201d claimed The Atlantic <\/em>that same year. The author, Robinson Meyer, quoted estimates by Princeton University\u2019s Michael Oppenheimer that sea levels would rise by more than 34 inches by 2100. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

When I asked Oppenheimer about those numbers at the time, he told me, \u201cThe 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,\u201d or 43 inches.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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, \u201cA Global Perspective on Local Sea Level Changes,\u201d by Hessel Voortman, a Dutch engineer, and Rob de Vos, a researcher, last week. \u201c<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The average rate of sea level rise in 2020 is (only) around 1.5 mm\/year (15 cm per century),\u201d said Voortman. \u201cThis is significantly lower than the 3 to 4 mm\/year often reported by climate scientists in scientific literature and the media.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Indeed, the significance of the study lies in the fact that most of what the media and climate scientists claimed about climate change and sea level rise was false. Scientists and the media tend to focus on the IPCC projections of the extreme upper end of sea level rise despite reality tracking at the very low end. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Voortman conducted the research without financial support and does not deny the reality of climate change, sea level rise, or the need for models. \u201cIt is important to stress that there are good reasons to have models. If we as engineers design something in the coastal zone, then we try to achieve a technical lifetime of 50 to 100 years, and that means we need to try to look into the future.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

An expert on the impacts of climate change, Roger Pielke, Jr., said, \u201cMost people are not aware that the scientific community uses different concepts to discuss sea level rise. What matters for communities is what happens where they are located, not an abstract global average.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Headlines about sea level rise have been catastrophic for decades. Because of sea level rise, the earth would become \u201cuninhabitable,\u201d said The Times<\/em>\u2019 Wallace-Wells in 2019. \u201cAs oceans rise,\u201d wrote Brad Plumer in The New York Times<\/em> in 2020, \u201ccrashing waves and extreme high tides will be able to reach farther inland, putting tens of millions more people and trillions of dollars in assets worldwide at periodic risk of flooding.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Plumer\u2019s article assumed sea levels would rise 12-36 inches. Instead, it appears they could increase just six inches, the same as during the 20th Century. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Strikingly, nobody in over 25 years of research had done what Voortman and De Vos did. \u201cIt is crazy that it had not been done,\u201d said Voortman. \u201cI started doing this research in 2021 by doing the literature review. \u2018Who has done the comparison of the projections with the observations?\u2019 And there were none.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nobody paid Voortman to do his study, nor does he belong to a university. \u201cI’m a hydraulic engineer by profession, almost 30 years now, and involved in flood protection, coastal infrastructure adaptation projects all over the world,\u201d he explained. \u201cFrom practice, I had already encountered the situation that sea level projections were exceeding sea level observations.\u201d First, he published a paper in 2023 on the discrepancy between projections and what was happening in the Netherlands. \u201cThen, I decided to try to analyze as many locations over the world as possible.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In other words, despite billions of dollars poured into climate science over the last 25 years from governmental and philanthropic sources, with major climate centers in universities around the world, no scientist had done what Voortman did, without money, off the side of his desk. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Why did the media and scientists get sea level rise so terribly wrong? And why didn\u2019t anyone bother comparing real world data to the predictions of the models? Graduate students sometimes struggle to find gaps in the scientific literature to fill. Why didn\u2019t any of them notice this one? Why did it take an engineer volunteering his time to determine whether sea level rise was accelerating? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Please subscribe now to support Public’s award-winning investigative journalism, read the rest of the article, and watch the full video!<\/em> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

https:\/\/x.com\/shellenberger\/status\/1962898533398585741<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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For over a quarter-century the world\u2019s 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. \u201cWe will see at least four feet of sea level rise and possibly\u2026 pic.twitter.com\/DmMBJkLmL3<\/a><\/p>— Michael Shellenberger (@shellenberger) September 2, 2025<\/a><\/blockquote>