Dr. Nils-Axel Mörner, former chairman of the International Commission on Sea Level, recently gave his opinion about the supposed catastrophic sea level rise that is causing such worldwide anxiety. His assessment is blunt, "the greatest fabrication in modern history."
Lest Dr. Mörner’s politically incorrect candor causes anyone to doubt such a top-tier scientist’s judgment on the topic upon which he’s spent his entire professional life, the iconic and most progressive voice on all matters concerning the ocean, co-founder and ex-president of Greenpeace, Dr. Patrick Moore, also buoys-up that opinion.
Those seemingly obsessed with the non-stop broadcasting of our certain apocalyptic destruction take little notice of these and other calmer and countervailing views, not diminishing at all the breathless declarations that the seas are rising. This should come as an epiphany to no one however, since this fact has been well-known to everyone including our forebears for some time — going back thousands of years.
It’s no great revelation to anyone that the last ice age ended, some 11,700 years ago. Since that time — thankfully — our previously bitterly cold planet has warmed. As we all know, ice melts when temperatures rise. Of course, Sumerians, Egyptians, Babylonians, Greeks, Persians, Assyrians, Romans, and others knew this also — and the lesson wasn’t lost on them as they watched their harbors, roads, and other infrastructure disappear beneath the waves at changing shorelines.
Dilmun (once part of Eastern Arabia) for example, was an important trading center located along the shoreline of the Persian Gulf. The rich land is mentioned in inscriptions found all over the Fertile Crescent yet the ruins of Dilmun are nowhere to be found. Around 500 B.C. it simply dropped off the map — perhaps literally. Many archaeologists are of the opinion that theodolites and ground-penetrating radar are useless in finding Dilmun and that the tool of choice would be a submarine.
No matter how or when a Mesopotamian trading power might have been drowned 2,500 years ago, we can attest with surety what transpired much closer to us in time and space in Britain. The Roman port of Faxfleet, near Broomfleet, was reclaimed by the sea and abandoned in the fourth century. Likewise, the Roman road built in the first century from South Ferriby toward the Humber was ultimately buried 200 years later by sediments deposited by the encroaching sea.
So, indeed, the seas are in fact rising, as they have been for some time. The question of catastrophic, wave-pounding, civilization-destroying sea level rise however might be as far-fetched as one’s common sense and reasonable skepticism should count it. What the true figures are is a subject of great debate, but even the inflated calculations aren’t the kind to cause seven billion people to press the panic button. Mean sea level is rising some 7 to 9 centimeters per century.
Of course, the prognosticators keep telling us that this calculus is destined to change. Year after year, decade after decade (it’s been more than 30 years already since the "global warming" clarion call burst breathlessly upon the scene) the horizon however always keeps moving just slightly into the future.
The terrific disasters are never upon us, but just always destined to break as soon as the next Kyoto Protocol or Paris Climate Accord is signed. Unfortunately, that isn’t though how the scientific method works — not at all. Proof is required, along with decades of checking that proof. Then those not fully convinced or in disagreement are allowed further decades to test every scintilla of whatever new theory is being postulated; that is the scientific method.
Both Sir Isaac Newton’s and Albert Einstein’s work are still to this very day tested by researchers globally, in an attempt to determine if there is the slightest nuance still to be discovered and better understood.
Recently the cabinet members of the Maldive Islands put on scuba equipment and held their meeting underwater, capering for the news cameras in an outlandish display. Back onshore they made it plain whose fault it was that their island nation was supposedly doomed: it’s your fault, and my fault, and everyone else’s fault minding their own business in dozens of countries in the West.
There’s a way for us to rectify it though. Send money for the"climate change refugees," and just make the check out to cash. That, and dismantling our factories and infrastructure and stumbling back into the Stone Age, will put everything right.
Or, one can take their grandparents to the nearest beach and ask them if everything is as it was when they first saw that shore as children — and where the great seawalls are that should be holding back the raging ocean.
It’s one or the other; not both.
David Nabhan is a science writer, the author of "Earthquake Prediction: Dawn of the New Seismology" (2017) and three previous books on earthquakes. Nabhan is also a science fiction writer ("Pilots of Borealis," 2015) and the author of many scores of newspaper and magazine op-eds. Nabhan has been featured on television and talk radio all over the world. His website is www.earthquakepredictors.com. To read more of his reports — Click Here Now.
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