54 Comments

1. Does 0.85 is greater than 3.0 actually mean that 0.85 is MORE IMPORTANT than 3.0, then given how you are interpreting those values, climate alarmists would always agree with that proposition. However, a Jakartan resident wouldn’t.

   LikeLike

2. Alan,

   3.0 may be greater in the mathematical sense that deniers obsess over, but if notoriety and political backing has anything to do with greatness, then 0.85 is probably one of the greatest numbers around. Unless, as you acknowledge, you are talking to someone from Jakarta, in which case there are other numbers that have captured the locals’ attention even more.

   LikeLike

3. Don’t you just love the Conversation? It makes the Guardian look balanced by comparison.

   LikeLike

4. At least they have numbers. When it comes to wind turbines killing birds, it’s just climate change is the biggest threat to birds.

   LikeLike

5. Mike,

   At least they have numbers.

   This is true, and a very interesting point. If you may recall, climate scientist Patrick T. Brown caused quite a stir recently by drawing attention to Nature magazine’s preference for the simplified narrative in which climatic causations are quantified but the non-climatic are not. This is one of the manifestations of ‘climate reductionism’. But here we have numbers for both the climatic and non-climatic factors, and it even turns out that the non-climatic dominates. And yet, bizarrely, the standard narrative still treats the climatic as if it were primary! Even with the numbers to demonstrate the true ranking of impact, the standard narrative still wins out. The only casualty is the integrity of basic arithmetic. The power of the established consensus, eh?

   LikeLiked by 1 person

6. John – excellent example – to be fair the BBC had this from 2013 – The rising and sinking threats to our cities – BBC Future

   PS – see from your 1st link at the end –

   “With more than 40 percent of Jakarta already lying below sea level, scientists have been modeling projections of Jakarta’s coastal floods for the year 2050. The findings of the flood risk are concerning, with the rate of flood area expansion in the next 25 years projected to grow by 3.4 times that of what it has been for the past 25 years. Wary of climate reductionism, geographer Mike Hulme argues that attempting to predict climate-shaped futures downgrades human agency, because it doesn’t take into account how our environmental future is shaped socially, culturally, and politically

   LikeLike

7. Doh, my head hurts!

   LikeLiked by 1 person

8. The alarmists also believe the ‘Penrose Triangle’ can easily be built, if you simply throw more taxpayers money at it of course (and after years of failure and £Trillions spent, they’ll just move onto their next idiocy, some far richer than they were)

   LikeLike

9. Before I wrote “to be fair the BBC had this from 2013” should have read to the end –

   “Coastal cities around the world will likely have to be abandoned and relocated as the cost of saving lives and repairing infrastructure becomes too great. Even important port cities, like New Orleans on the banks of the mighty Mississippi will eventually become unliveable. And these abandoned cities will leave their marks in the sedimentary layers forming all the time, to be discovered like mythical Atlantises by divers of the far future. 

   The coastal cities with the best chances of being preserved for posterity are those built on parts of the Earth’s crust that are being pulled ever so slowly downwards by the movement of tectonic plates, such as London. Cities drowned and then buried in silty blankets will persist in a petrified form. The subways and sewage pipes will perhaps resemble the traces left by some giant burrowing creature, and the deep foundation piles of high-rises will linger as uncharacteristic stripes in the layers of a future cliff. Little will remain of cities built in deserts, such as Las Vegas and Lima, those built at altitude, such as La Paz, and those exposed to violent destruction from cyclones, volcanoes or earthquakes, like Kathmandu.

   These seemingly permanent symbols of our species’ great civilisations are as vulnerable as we are to the ravages of time, and to humanity’s destructive practices. Our industrial pollution is impacting the man-made world as surely as it is affecting the natural world. Millions of years from now, there may be few signs of the mighty cities that have transformed our planet.”

   LikeLike

10. Dfhunter,

    Whilst we should give credit to the BBC for having written articles that mention the subsidence problem we shouldn’t be too impressed. After all, whilst the article you found is titled ‘The rising and sinking threats to our cities’ nowhere does it make the point that the sinking threat is so much greater than the rising one. In fact, the whole article reads as if subsidence wouldn’t be a problem if it were not for global warming. For example, we have this:

    More than 3 billion people live in coastal areas at risk of global warming impacts such as rising sea levels – a number expected to rise to 6 billion by 2025. Sea-level rise due to climate change has already doubled the risk of extreme flood events in coastal cities, and the greater population of Anthropocene cities only puts more lives at risk. For example, a study shows that during Hurricane Sandy in 2012, as many as 100,000 extra people were at risk of flooding for every foot of water in New York. More than half of the population of America’s coastal cities live below the high-tide mark.

    This narrative that the global warming impact was to blame for the exceptional New York flooding completely fails to mention that the greater problem has been the sinking of the city and the extent to which that has made it more vulnerable to flooding. According to the Journal of Ocean Engineering Science:

    In the New York City area, the likely absolute SLR [since 1950] is about 0.7 to 1.0 mm/yr., the likely relative sea-level acceleration is about +0.008 mm/yr², the likely subsidence is about -2.151 to -3.076 mm/yr., and the likely relative SLR is about -2.851 to -4.076 mm/yr.

    That means that of the relative rise in sea-level since 1950, about 75% had been due to subsidence and only 25% due to other factors. Furthermore, the journal says:

    Although the climate models predict that rising CO2 levels should cause an accelerated sea-level rise, the sea level measurements show that, thus far, there has been no detectable acceleration in the rate of sea-level rise.

    But these are all just numbers, and we know what we denialist do with them with our naïve concepts of scale.

    And yes, all that stuff at the end of the article was just weird.

    LikeLiked by 3 people

11. We should not forget that sea-level rises, from whatever causes, contribute significantly to flooding threats, irrespectively of any subsidence. Neither should we forget that flooding can be prevented by sea walls. Of course, climate warnings commonly are said to involve both relative sea-level rises and enhanced storm activity, both of which it is claimed have increased in recent years. What this has to do with weird mathematical reasoning, sensu Ridgway, I have little clue, but then increasingly for me such reasoning becomes more and more a closed book.

    LikeLike

12. Alan,

    It was not the purpose of my article to dispute the threat from rising sea level but to put it in a proper perspective. The allusion to ‘weird mathematical reasoning’ was my satirical effort to draw attention to the mismatch between the data and the narrative. Rather than simply say that the narrative is ignoring the data, I thought it would be fun to suggest instead that the narrative could be rendered data-compliant but only by inventing a new form of mathematics that we empirical sceptics simply fail to understand; one in which the perceived importance of a number can affect its magnitude. The bottom line is that the existence of a consensus seems to be driving the narrative when surely the data should be.

    LikeLike

13. The relative level of the threat from rising sea levels in such places, when used to bolster the climate crisis mantra, is actually even less. It’s only the result of man-made climate change if and to the extent that sea levels rise is accelerating. If it isn’t accelerating, then the part man-made climate change has to play in these cities ‘ problems is precisely zero (though I would acknowledge that if storminess is increasing there because of human-emitted GHGs, then that could properly be included in any analysis.

    LikeLike

14. Hallam of Nazareth said similar things about numbers in a sermon he delivered yesterday, although he was equally* scathing about the numbers of both deniers and scientists. Deniers and scientists (except Peter Kalmus) who insist on numbers making sense approach women like they approach maths and communicate about climate change like they communicate about moss. If we are to follow Hallam’s way, we must all stop talking about moss, stop being pervy with women we’ve only just met and just accept that 3.0 really is greater than 0.85. For 3.0 is, in a very real sense, both greater than and less than 0.85. It depends on whether you are a nerd who is trying to avoid emotional pain or you are the guy who runs into a room and shouts, in a thoroughly holistic manner, ‘I don’t give a flying f### about your f###ing certainty analysis – it’s my f###ing children you total d###s!’

    The sermon was called The Mysterious Ways of Love and was a response to criticisms of Hallam’s recent prophecy about heat-related deaths in Phoenix, Arizona, in the 2030s.

    Sometimes the truth is not actually the whole truth – there is another sense of truth which is more appropriate, more real. … when I say, “12% of Phoenix are going to die” I am not really saying 12% of Phoenix are going to die. I am not talking about moss – I am making an emotional, rhetorical and entirely appropriate statement. A deeply true statement in the holistic sense. I know 12% of Phoenix might ACTUALLY not die. But that is not the point. The point is this world is so f###ed up because we just sit there and continue watching Netflix when we are in this beyond f###ing f###ed situation. Get it yet? What I am ACTUALLY saying is “Wake the f### up you f###ing d###s.” … Let’s just accept it – and come together in love. It has to be our only hope.

    There endeth the effing lesson.

    ===
    *Or almost equally. He spake thus: ‘I prefer the deniers any day over the complacent repression of the “educated” classes. Wasn’t this why Jesus hung out with the low life rather than the Pharisees and lawyers?’

    LikeLiked by 1 person

15. Mark,

    If I may, I’d like to explain why this sort of thing bugs me so much.

    Over the years, my career entailed the analysis, evaluation, ranking and management of risks of varying nature including project schedule, health and safety, IT security, environmental and functional safety risk. The different disciplines employed different methods for identifying and evaluating threats and hazards, associated vulnerabilities and exposures, potential impacts and the uncertainties inherent in the various assessments. But in all cases, the unifying theme was that risks should be ranked in terms of urgency and importance so that a rational way forward could be established. However, this fundamental principle of approach seems not to apply when climate change risk is involved. It isn’t so much that the science is being botched or manipulated, it is more that the risk assessment has become so highly politicised, to the extent that the approved narrative reflecting the relative magnitude of risk bears no relationship to any objective evaluation based upon data. And that’s before we take into account the various arguments for the threats and hazards, associated vulnerabilities and exposures, potential impacts and the uncertainties inherent in Net Zero.

    Having my professional background I was understandably keen to investigate just how much expertise and understanding lay behind the risk management approach advocated by the likes of the IPCC. That is why I was so keen to see what the IPCC had to say in AR5, WG3, Chapter 2, ‘Integrated Risk and Uncertainty Assessment of Climate Change Response Policies‘, and that is why I was so disturbed when I found so much emphasis on psychological manipulation and so little on the basic principles of risk and uncertainty management. It goes a long way towards explaining how 3.0 can come to be less than 0.85.

    LikeLiked by 2 people

16. Vinny,

    Thank you for that very germane Hallam quote. My suggestion that there is a strange new mathematical logic at play that is going above our poor little denialist heads does not look so fanciful when you take on board Hallam’s idea of there being a fuller truth that is “emotional, rhetorical and entirely appropriate” We might insist that 3.0 being greater than 0.85 is a true statement in the mathematical sense but Hallam would argue that 0.85 being the greater is “A deeply true statement in the holistic sense”. I wish I shared his genius to be able to break the shackles of something as shallow as number theory.

    LikeLike

17. You’re right, John. I got things upside down. Hallam would argue that 0.85 is greater.

    Speaking of upside down, his Humanity Project (which probably isn’t his any more) has several mottoes, the most prominent being ‘The only way is bottom-up’.

    Then there’s Cranky Uncle Lew, who is keen on ‘bottom-up inoculation interventions’.

    LikeLiked by 1 person

18. My apologies Vinny – it took me far to long to spot that you had been in spam again.

    LikeLike

19. And my apologies to you Mark. This is my thread and I should really be working a lot harder to look out for lost comments rather than leaving it to you.

    LikeLike

20. Thanks, Mark. (I’m going to post this with uBlock Origin disabled.)

    LikeLike

21. It seems to me that climate change science’s version of mathematics has been at play again. Regarding the recent reporting of the rise of dengue fever in Europe, the headline reads:

    “Tiger mosquitoes behind dengue fever rise in Europe”

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/ce5520m6x2go

    The article explains how a climate change-driven increase in European mosquito numbers has led to a ‘dengue fever rise in Europe’. Specifically, there was an increase of 71 to 130 locally-acquired infections in 2023. And all of this is due to climate change, of course.

    One might suspect that there may be other reasons for the fever rise, other than through locally-acquired infections, but such an effect would have to be far smaller for the narrative of climate change causation to hold true. What about imported cases, for example? How much smaller than 130 is that number? Well:

    Most European cases are imported – a reflection of the international movement of people and trade, with imported cases soaring to nearly 5,000 last year.

    Yes, you’re right. The headline made it clear. Mosquitoes and not aeroplanes are behind the rise, and so 130 must be far greater than 5000.

    LikeLiked by 3 people

22. On a global scale sea level rise is a major concern, localised subsidence of populated areas represents a reinforcing factor that serves to increase the overall impact of sea level rise.
    At a local level it’s entirely possible for land subsidence and other environmental problems to be the primary concern and for global sea level rise to be a secondary concern or a reinforcing factor.

    When defining your terms , you need to state the context. That context involves being clear about both the timescale and the geographical scale to which those terms are being applied.

    Mathematical Modeling and various other scientific or professional disciplines become impossible without appropriate attention to the definition of the terms used , including reference to wether that context is Global vs Local or Short vs Long Term.

    At a Global level some area of land are rising and others are falling. A number of environmental factors are involved in climatic geomorphology including perhaps most obviously coastal erosion.

    For Dunwich, a sunken town off the east coast of the UK clearly Global warming did not represent a relevant factor in its demise.

    At a global level however sea level rise potentially brings with it a range of problems including forced migration from highly populated areas and potential disruption to food supplies.

    For Kiribati , The Maldives , Vanuatu , Tuvalu , Solomon Islands, Samoa and Nauru Rising sea levels are by far the major factor leading to the loss of land and property.
    somewhere between 0.2 to 0.4m of sea level rise would render Tuvalu uninhabitable, and it is on that basis that negotiations for the projected forced migration have been undertaken with Australia.

    LikeLike

23. Jago,

    Thank you for your comment. You have eloquently summarised the prevalent narrative, and yet, with all due respect, I still believe there is much that is wrong with it.

    Firstly, you maintain that whilst subsidence may be a problem that is primary at a local level, when viewed in a global context it still takes on a secondary role. The difficulty I have with that view is that whilst it is true that subsidence, by definition, is a local problem it seems to be a local problem that is globally widespread, to the extent that it dominates more often than not. The key statistics are provided in one of the links included within my article. From the study’s abstract:

    We measured subsidence rates in 99 coastal cities around the world between 2015 and 2020 using the PS Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar method and Sentinel-1 data. In most cities, part of the land is subsiding faster than sea level is rising.

    In the body of the report, details are provided:

    In most cities, part of the city is sinking faster than 2 mm/yr LOS. In 33 of the 99 cities, part of the city is sinking equal to or more than 10 mm/yr LOS—≥5x faster than global mean sea level is rising. These cities with fast sinking regions are located throughout the world, including in Europe, North America, Africa, and Australia. The cities where subsidence has been the fastest (over 20 mm/yr LOS) from 2015 to 2020 are in South, Southeast, and East Asia. The highest subsidence rates appear in Tianjin, Semarang, and Jakarta, where maximum rates exceed 30 mm/yr LOS—dwarfing global mean sea level rise by almost 15x.

    https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2022GL098477

    From this I have concluded that, to the extent that sea incursion of the most populated coastal regions is a major concern, that concern primarily arises from subsidence, even when viewed globally. Yes, the study makes it clear that it isn’t necessarily the whole city that is affected, and yes, the subsidence problem is more prevalent in some parts of the world than others. Nevertheless, it still strikes me as being far too prevalent to be relegated to a secondary concern on a global scale.

    Secondly, I fail to see the relevance of the timescales involved. It is the relative scale of impact, rather than the duration required for the threat to materialise that determines the correct use of the term ‘reinforcing’. For example, a short-term subsidence of 2m is not reinforcing a long-term sea-level rise of 1m.

    Thirdly, part of the problem with concentrating attention on the long-term sea-level rise caused by climate change is that it tends to distract from the threat posed by more immediate subsidence. This means that even when subsidence is locally the primary threat (as it is in Jakarta), it is still treated politically as though it were secondary. This is the concern raised by the article I cite in the footnote:

    As Jakarta Sinks, the Rising Sea Presents a Convenient Scapegoat

    https://failedarchitecture.com/as-jakarta-sinks-the-rising-sea-presents-a-convenient-scapegoat/

    Finally, but as an aside, we shouldn’t forget that the sea-level rise predictions that compete on a scale with subsidence are produced by mathematical models that assume worse case scenarios. Furthermore, the models are riddled with epistemic uncertainties that lead to very wide error bars. Therefore, one’s views on how uncertainty should affect the decision-making process become very germane.

    LikeLiked by 3 people

24. It has been brought to my attention that a preoccupation with numbers and their ordinal properties is just a colonial and racist ploy to deny indigenous peoples their rightful place in the history of mathematics. What I should be focused upon instead is so-called ‘Indigenous Mathematics’, in which numbers are simply superfluous. As Professor Rowena Ball puts it:

    Mathematics has been gatekept by the West and defined to exclude entire cultures. Almost all mathematics that students have ever come across is European-based. We would like to enrich the discipline through the inclusion of cross-cultural mathematics.

    https://science.anu.edu.au/news-events/news/maths-has-no-borders-professor-rowena-ball-brings-indigenous-mathematics-anu

    Actually, almost all of the mathematics that students have ever come across owes its origins to the Greeks, Persians and early occupants of the Indian Subcontinent. European colonialism just doesn’t come into it, other than to say that it proved an effective way of introducing other cultures to the power of mathematics. By which I mean, of course, that odd variant of mathematics that we all learnt at school, including as it did the colonialist concepts of number and the rules of arithmetic. All very superfluous if you possess the wisdom of the indigenous. As Ball puts it:

    Numbers and arithmetic and accounting often are of secondary importance in Indigenous mathematics.

    You might think this is all bullshit but it is all the rage in Australia:

    https://unherd.com/breaking_news/top-university-introduces-indigenous-maths/

    And it carries the endorsement of the Guardian, so who are we to scoff?

    https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/aug/28/forty-thousand-years-of-indigenous-maths-can-get-kids-into-numbers-today

    LikeLiked by 2 people

25. John, I think this fits your argument:

    “Fewer swallows grace summer skies in Britain amid changing climate

    Unpredictable weather affecting bird’s lifecycle, with breeding populations down by almost a quarter”

    https://www.theguardian.com/environment/article/2024/jun/20/fewer-swallows-britain-summer-skies-climate-change

    …A mixture of wet springs and summer droughts, leading to major falls in numbers of the flying insects on which they feed, has reduced the swallow’s breeding population by almost a quarter in the past 25 years or so….

    …Once again, our changing climate is to blame; but this comes on top of the huge loss of insects caused by modern industrial agriculture. This is ironic, given that the swallow’s success over the past few millennia began when it adapted to living alongside farmers, nesting in their barns, and feeding on insects attracted by their livestock.

    LikeLike

26. You wonder if Guardian editors check what’s in different articles available at the same time. This one makes not a mention of climate change with regard to the decline of insects in the UK:

    “‘I have seen the decline’: pesticides linked to falling UK insect numbers

    Experts say invertebrates are exposed to range of chemicals, some of which are 10,000 times more toxic than DDT”

    https://www.theguardian.com/environment/article/2024/jun/19/i-have-seen-the-decline-pesticides-linked-to-falling-uk-insect-numbers

    LikeLike

27. Here’s another example:

    “How islanders are saving their Indian Ocean coral reef”

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cjkkd66874ko

    …Under threat from climate change, overfishing and other human activity, the islanders faced losing their livelihoods and the prospect of moving away altogether.…

    …Dynamite being used by fishermen has also been killing off the coral, as well as the volume of unregulated tourist boats and divers causing damage to the reef...

    Yes, dynamite would do it.

    …Underwater nurseries were created using steel-mesh tables, where coral fragments are grown to be replanted on the coral reef...

    …”We’ve seen positive changes. Illegal practices, like the use of dynamite, have decreased, and fishermen have become more knowledgeable about sustainable fishing methods,” says fisherman Mshenga Ally.“

    The Zanzibar government says it is so encouraged by the success of the Mnemba restoration project, it is looking to expand it to other areas under threat.…

    Climate change hasn’t gone away, but the other threats have been removed, and now the protected reefs are thriving. Maybe not climate change after all, then?

    LikeLiked by 1 person

28. This might be another illustration:

    “Climate crisis driving exponential rise in most extreme wildfires

    Scientists warn of ‘scary’ feedback loop in which fires create more heating, which causes more fires worldwide”

    https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/jun/24/climate-crisis-driving-exponential-rise-in-most-extreme-wildfires

    The research, published in the journal Nature Ecology & Evolution, analysed data from Nasa satellites that pass over the Earth four times a day. The researchers identified the 0.01% most extreme wildfires, measured by the energy released in a day, giving a total of almost 3,000 events.

    0.01%?!!!

    After a lot of alarming quotes, we get this right at the end:

    …Also needed was the thinning of wood in suitable forests and controlled low-intensity burning to reduce the buildup of highly flammable wood, he said.

    “Indigenous Australians have been managing landscapes for millennia, using [small] frequent fires, so fuel loads never became too high,” Cunningham said. “As a result, this matrix of patchy burns of different ages produces natural fire breaks and meant catastrophic fires didn’t seem to happen. We might be able to harness some of that wisdom.”

    Following the link to the article led me to these snippets:

    Climate change is exacerbating wildfire conditions, but evidence is lacking for global trends in extreme fire activity itself.

    And:

    the total area burned on Earth may be declining, our study highlights that fire behaviour is worsening in several regions…

    And:

    Most fires on Earth are small, ignited by humans, and not remarkably damaging. Indeed, fire plays a crucial role in the health of most fire-adapted ecosystems. It has been widely reported that the area burned globally has decreased this century, but this trend is mostly driven by declines in low-intensity fires in African grasslands and savannas. Globally, average fire intensity has also been decreasing this century (with some regional increases), but burn severity, an ecological measure of a fire’s immediate effects (for example, biomass loss and mortality), is increasing in more regions than it is decreasing.

    Which sounds a lot less scary than the Guardian headline.

    LikeLiked by 1 person

29. Mark,

    The examples you have been giving are suggestive of a special accountancy peculiar to climate science, but they fall short of providing explicit examples because so few numbers are provided. That is the usual situation and that’s what lets the likes of the Guardian get away with their headlines. This failure to properly quantify all factors contributing to wildfire risk was also what Patrick Brown was complaining about (despite what Ken Rice and just about everyone else who jumped upon his bandwagon thought).

    The weird thing about the subsidence example covered by my article is that here, just for once, there are clear and directly comparable numbers available that suggest that climate-driven sea-level rise is a lesser threat to coastal cities than is subsidence, and yet it doesn’t alter the narrative.

    LikeLiked by 2 people

30. John,

    I hope you don’t mind but I’m commenting on a particular Guardian article here, given that it’s about sea-level rise, though my main purpose is to highlight spectacular levels if misinformation, both directly and by omission, within it:

    “Rising sea levels will disrupt millions of Americans’ lives by 2050, study finds

    Floods could leave coastal communities in states like Florida and California unlivable in two decades”

    https://www.theguardian.com/environment/article/2024/jun/25/rising-sea-levels-flooding

    Sea level rise driven by global heating will disrupt the daily life of millions of Americans, as hundreds of homes, schools and government buildings face frequent and repeated flooding by 2050, a new study has found.

    First dubious issue there. Sea level rise (as opposed to land-level falls) is undoubtedly the result of a warming planet. But global heating? The implication, of course, is that it’s human-induced climate change, but nowhere that I can see is there any suggestion of accelerating rates of sea-level rise, which might support such a claim.

    The analysis looks at flooding driven solely by sea level rise and tidal heights. Other climate-related drivers including storm surge, and heavy rainfall which can – and do – increase the risk of disruptive flooding were not included in the study.

    That suggests that it doesn’t look at all at the impact of sinking land, which you have demonstrated is often a much bigger problem.

    The report, Looming Deadlines for Coastal Resilience, comes at a critical juncture for the climate emergency amid spiraling fossil fuel production in countries like the US, UK, Norway, Canada, China and Brazil…

    Spiralling fossil fuel production in the UK? It is my belief that the opposite is true – fossil fuel production in the UK is in serial decline thanks to UK politicians and pressure groups, and now Court judgments. Lumping the UK in with China, Canada et al is a cynical smear, which I can only assume is intended to prop up support for an increasingly unpopular net zero policy. Shame on you, Guardian (again).

    LikeLiked by 2 people

31. Mark,

    I’ll have to find more time later today to study the report in detail. In the meantime, following a cursory glance, I have the following observations:

    The authors make it clear that they have excluded ‘local’ effects such as subsidence from their research. This makes it impossible to make quantified comparisons regarding the two threat levels, especially when using their chosen metric, i.e. numbers of infrastructure items affected. The only glimpse that this may be an issue is given by a throwaway line buried in the body of the paper:

    Importantly, along US coastlines, a combination of local factors—such as both natural and human-induced land subsidence from hydrocarbon and groundwater extraction—is causing faster-than-global average sea level rise in many places, including Norfolk, Virginia, and Galveston, Texas. By 2100, the two cities would experience increases of 7.2 feet and 8.2 feet, respectively, with the high scenario (NASA Interagency Sea Level Rise Scenario Tool 2022; Yin 2023).

    How many places? How many people? How much infrastructure?

    Also, I presume that by ‘the high scenario’ they are referring to the highest of the climate change-driven sea-level rise scenarios, so these figures are relative sea-level rises. Since they say elsewhere that the high scenario will result in 6.5ft of climate change-driven sea-level rise, they are suggesting a relatively minor contribution from subsidence in this instance. So one is left with the impression that they only mentioned subsidence to raise anxiety over the upper limit of climate change-driven sea-level rise. However, if they had chosen to make comparisons with the medium and low scenarios for sea-level rise, a quite different narrative would have offered itself.

    The only other observation I have about the paper’s findings is that it is all speculation based upon models rather than extrapolation of observed sea-level rises. In fact, it is in the near future that the models suddenly diverge from current extrapolations (ain’t that the darndest thing?). So there is a lot riding on the reliability of these models, and the situation is not helped by the paper’s apparent failure to quantify the likelihood of the three model projections upon which it is based. For all I know, the low scenario is actually the most likely, and even if it isn’t, we all know that you can’t play the median and percentile game when dealing with model ensembles — modelling is not measurement!

    LikeLiked by 2 people

32. Mark,

    Some further thoughts, this time focusing upon the Guardian article and the spin it applies. The subheading of the article reads:

    Floods could leave coastal communities in states like Florida and California unlivable in two decades

    However, I could not find anything in the cited paper that makes any reference to ‘unlivable’ coastal communities. Yes, there are plenty of statistics indicating challenging conditions, but the purpose of the report is to highlight what is necessary to manage the increased flood risk. In the words of the paper’s conclusion:

    There is a narrow window of time for federal, state, and local policymakers to provide funding and resources and for local decision-makers to use this backing to implement changes in their communities in preparation for an inevitable increase of regular disruptive flooding. And while our analysis shows that the scale of the challenge is daunting, it also points to actionable, science-informed steps that can and must be taken to protect vital infrastructure and services.

    I imagine that similar constructive statements of adaptive planning could apply to the risk posed by subsidence.

    Secondly, the Guardian article states:

    The world’s oceans are rising, and every year seawater reaches farther inland, which poses an ever-increasing threat to homes, businesses and critical infrastructure.

    This is true, but the observed data does not point to any hugely significant acceleration that can be blamed on anthropogenic climate change-driven sea-level rise. That situation only arises when you look at what the models predict for the future (see fig. 1 of the report). The Guardian article reads as though the problem is already present. It isn’t. The statistics quoted in the cited study are a prediction based upon a sudden acceleration due to start in the next two decades – it is not an extrapolation of current trends.

    Finally, I still can’t find any statements in the cited study regarding projection likelihoods. The only one I have found relates to the high scenario, which they say ‘is presently thought to have a very low probability of coming to fruition’. The bulk of the report is based upon the so-called medium scenario. But this would need to have a 100% likelihood in order for the Guardian article to be justified in saying “Almost 1,100 critical infrastructure assets that sustain coastal communities will be at risk of monthly flooding by 2050”.

    LikeLiked by 2 people

33. I think this may be another example from the BBC:

    “Heat and strikes piling pressure on NHS – bosses”

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cq55j4zrrjdo

    Where I live the NHS strikes are an ongoing issue, and have been for some time – unlike heat. I think we may have seen 24C briefly on Monday, and today is forecast to reach 22C after a cooler day yesterday. After that the top temperature forecast here is 14 or 15C until well until July, when we are forecast to reach the dizzy heights of 17C. My suspicion is that heat represents less than 1% of the NHS’ problems and the strikes are a huge issue. Is 1 as big as 99?

    LikeLike

34. Mark,

    Indeed, I agree that this is another example of implicit climate change accountancy in which 1 may very well be greater than 99, although I suspect the ‘1’ may be a generous guess on your part. It just looks like a horribly contrived conflation of issues.

    Also, these strikes have been going on all year round and yet I don’t recall any ‘Cold and strikes’ headlines.

    LikeLiked by 1 person

35. Bjorn Lomborg is another climate denier getting his basic numbers wrong according to a valiant MSM fact-checker:

    Everything wrong about mainstream media:

    My book in Italian is “fact-checked” by a bad-faith journalist for @repubblica who can’t get the facts right

    Solar PV and wind deliver 1.7% of global energy supply according to https://iea.org/world

    The journalist claims “the truth” from IEA is 10.1%, and that I’m a climate denier

    10.1% is electricity (https://iea.org/world/electricity…) which makes up just 20% of global energy

    In the interview, I already said the 10%+ was wrong for energy, and explained the difference between electricity and energy

    Hey @repubblica, maybe get a fact-checker who understands the most basic facts?

    — https://x.com/BjornLomborg/status/1805661090451538115

    This interview about the book only got published to YouTube yesterday. The Dane is as usual on top of a whole lot of numbers that I for one didn’t know but should have done:

    LikeLiked by 2 people

36. John – H/T to HaroldW JUNE 28, 2024 AT 4:00 PM over on Lucia’s blackboard for this link –

    The Island Known as the Birthplace of Apollo Is Sinking | Smithsonian (smithsonianmag.com)

    “Researchers say climate change is to blame for the Greek island of Delos’ slow demise

    Sonja Anderson Daily Correspondent June 28, 2024

    Partial quotes –

    “Today, rising sea levels caused by climate change are putting the ancient site at risk. As Newsweek’s Aristos Georgiou reports, researchers from EFA have been studying Delos for 150 years, and recent surveys have revealed damage that’s already been done.

    According to AFP, the sea level has risen nearly 70 feet in some parts of Delos in just the past decade. At the same time, the island is “​​progressively sinking” because of “the movements of tectonic plates in the region,” writes Newsweek.“

    “All coastal cities will lose significant areas currently located at sea level,” archaeologist Athena-Christiana Loupou, a tour guide at the site, tells the news agency. “We replaced plastic straws with paper straws, but we lost the war.”

    LikeLiked by 1 person

37. ps – maybe that explains the Atlantis myth.

    LikeLike

38. Dfhunter,

    “Researchers say climate change is to blame for the Greek island of Delos’ slow demise”

    Some would say that 70ft sea level rise in only a decade isn’t a slow demise! But where has this figure come from? If you read what the researcher actually said (which the journalist obviously didn’t do) this figure is for a shoreline advance at a particular location (presumably a shallow shelving beach). Besides which, the actual figure given by the researcher was ‘up to 65ft’. I think we can safely say that this journalist is an idiot.

    But what of the claim that the encroachment is due to climate change when, by their own admission, the island is also sinking due to tectonic activity? The article is typical in that it gives no clue as to the extent to which vertical land motion (VLM) is contributing to relative sea level (RSL) rise. So I’ve had to do a little digging to find this:

    Past and Future Impacts of the Relative Sea Level Rise on the Seafront of Ancient Delos (Cyclades, Greece) and Flooding Scenarios by 2150

    https://www.mdpi.com/2077-1312/12/6/870

    The paper adopts the standard narrative, i.e. climate change-driven sea-level rise is the basic problem but one has to correct for effects such as subsidence before one can quantify just how big a problem it is going to be for any particular location. In the case of Delos, the correction for VLM is −1.736 ± 0.752 mm y⁻¹. That sounds like a big correction to me, so let’s see how that pans out between now and 2150.

    To do this we need to look at fig. 5 of the study, which shows a pair of graphs for the RSL projections, both with and without the VLM correction. Taking the IPCC scenario SSP2-4.5 as the most likely, we would then have an RSL of 0.3m by the year 2150, which corrects to 0.7m following the VLM adjustment. That’s a 133% upward adjustment. But given that the climate change-driven component is deemed to be primary (remember, “climate change is to blame”), that must mean that 133 has to be much less than 100.

    Just to add to the mix, here we have seen a study whose detail reveals that subsidence is likely to be the dominant problem when considering the most likely climate change scenarios, and yet it opens with a statement that gives no hint of this dominance:

    “Sea level rise due to global warming is a continuing and, disappointingly, accelerating process which has already affected and will further impact coastal lowlands and the social and economic activities in these areas.”

    Having then treated the dominant contribution of subsidence as if it were just a calibration adjustment, the study then concludes with the following recommendation:

    “It is important for scientists and journalists to be properly trained in the comprehensive communication of the complex aspects of the climate crisis.”

    A training that could start with the authors of this study learning how the English language should be used to summarise numerical results.

    LikeLiked by 2 people

39. John – thanks for highlighting the shortcomings of the article & linked paper.

    Just knew it would get you digging 🙂

    Liked this rather long quote from the paper –

    “The port became unsafe and the city fell into decline and was gradually abandoned. In the first few centuries AD, there was a Christian community there, but after the 7th century AD, Delos was completely deserted [8,9]. The coastal structures (sea defences and buildings) all along the seafront of the ancient city were gradually submerged due to the rising relative sea level (henceforth referred to as rsl) since the period they were initially constructed and used, as first reported by Négris in the early 20th century [10] and later studied in detail by relevant scholars (e.g., [11,12,13]).

    On the one hand, this paper aims to illustrate on very high-resolution digital surface models those areas on the seafront of ancient Delos at risk of flooding, evaluating both the—mainly anthropogenic—sea level rise under different climatic projections by 2150 and the ongoing land subsidence. On the other hand, through correlation of the determined rsl changes during the last 6300 years with ancient sea defences on the seafront of ancient Delos, a verification of future flooding scenarios is attempted, while also demonstrating the efforts of ancient societies to adapt to natural phenomena by making their structures resilient, and consequently conveying a message of effective sustainability when facing the challenges of modern climate change.”

    You just have to despair at how an interesting bit of Archaeology/ancient history has to have the obligatory reference “when facing the challenges of modern climate change”

    LikeLiked by 2 people

40. After a bit digging myself, we get the AFP link – Ancient Greek sanctuary slowly sinks into the Aegean Sea (france24.com)

    Partial quotes –

    “But within decades, because of rising sea levels brought about by climate change, the site known for its temples guarded by stone lions could be gone forever, scientists warn.

    “Delos is condemned to disappear in around 50 years,” said Veronique Chankowski, head of the French archaeological school of Athens (EFA), which has been excavating the site for the past 150 years under licence from the Greek state.”

    “In the space of 10 years, the sea level has risen by up to 20 metres (66 feet) in some parts of the island, added Chankowski.

    A study by Aristotelio University in Thessaloniki last year found that increasing temperatures combined with high levels of humidity can significantly affect the chemical composition of certain materials used in cultural heritage monuments.

    “Just like the human body, monuments are built to withstand specific temperatures,” study supervisor Efstathia Tringa, a meteorology and climatology researcher at Aristotle University in Thessaloniki, told Kathimerini daily earlier this year.”

    Mash that all together & I suppose you get “Researchers say climate change is to blame for the Greek island of Delos’ slow demise”.

    LikeLike

41. Dfhunter,

    You just have to despair at how an interesting bit of Archaeology/ancient history has to have the obligatory reference “when facing the challenges of modern climate change”

    Exactly. It all seems a little contrived – one might say grant-fishing. It looks like someone getting paid to research into historic, non-climate-related flooding of ancient civilisations, but only because they promised to link it somehow to what the IPCC has to say about the potential for climate-related flooding in the future.

    “monuments are built to withstand specific temperatures”

    I couldn’t agree more. That’s why the bid to build Stonehenge out of chocolate was rejected.

    But seriously, who gets to write this stuff?

    LikeLiked by 1 person

42. “High-rise buildings along Miami’s beachfront are sinking, study finds

    Subsidence affecting many new builds, raising questions about sustainability of skyscrapers in coastal areas”

    https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2024/dec/25/high-rise-buildings-miami-beachfront-sinking-study-finds

    ...Using satellite data gathered between 2016 and 2023, researchers observed between 2cm and 8cm of sinking of buildings along Miami’s beachfront area. One beachfront – Sunny Isles Beach – recorded continuous subsidence in more than 70% of its new builds. The findings, published in Earth and Space Science, show the majority of affected buildings were recently constructed high-rises. Which means it is possible the subsidence is a consequence of their own construction. The combination of hefty high-rise buildings, vibration from construction, groundwater movement and tidal flows are potentially triggering the subsidence, with the worst-affected areas being those with a sandy layered limestone underlying them.

    As well as concerns about building safety, the findings raise questions about the sustainability of high-rise construction in coastal areas. And it is not just Miami that has a problem: other coastal regions, including California, are suffering from similar sinking issues too.

    Not a word about climate change. Interesting.

    LikeLiked by 1 person

43. There has been much discussion on this thread about the tendency on the part of climate alarmists to insert climate change as a factor in pretty much everything that is going wrong, while failing to detail the extent to which something is attributable to matters other than climate change. In that regard, the Guardian has just brought to my attention a new paper titled “The global human impact on biodiversity”:

    https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-025-08752-2

    It analysed previous papers to ascertain the impact of humanity on nature, and not surprisingly it found that humanity is having a considerable negative impact. However, what interested me is that it sought to analyse the issue by reference to five separate factors, and included a table under the heading “ Impacts of human pressures on homogeneity and shifts in composition of biological communities“. OK, so this is only one area, but the key results support the sceptical view that when it comes to humanity’s impact on nature, climate change is probably bottom of the list. In order it found the following numbers of cases under the following headings:

    Habitat change: 1,198.

    Pollution: 1,197.

    Resource exploitation: 521.

    Invasive species: 418.

    Climate change: 333.

    It’s only one study, and to that extent doesn’t prove anything, but I applaud the attempt to weight the different factors, and I am not surprised that climate change is firmly at the bottom of the list.

    LikeLiked by 1 person

44. That’s why they’re shifting to the “polycrisis” narrative Mark. But apparently, we still have to keep up maximum effort to avoid the climate crisis – ranked 5th in importance. And anyway, they’re all connected; they just require us to bring down western civilisation and then everything will be fine.

    LikeLiked by 2 people

45. “Powerful earthquake could raise Pacific north-west sea levels ‘dramatically’ – study

    Likelihood of potentially devastating quake above 8.0 magnitude in next 50 years is 15%, study states”

    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/apr/30/earthquake-pacific-north-west-sea-level

    A massive earthquake in the Pacific north-west could rapidly transform areas of the coast from northern California to Washington, causing swaths of land to quickly sink, “dramatically” raising sea level and increasing the flood risk to communities.

    That’s according to a new study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, examining the potential impact of the “big one”, a powerful quake along the Cascadia fault that stretches from Canada to California….

    …A major earthquake could cause land along the coast to sink more than six feet and significantly expand the coastal floodplain with “lasting impacts to coastal populations, infrastructure, and ecosystems”, according the study. There is a 15% chance of an earthquake greater than 8.0 magnitude on the fault in the next 50 years, the study states.…

    …While climate-driven sea level rise happens gradually, these changes would unfold in an instant and persist over decades to centuries, Dura and the study’s other authors write. The most significant impacts would occur in “densely populated” parts of southern Washington, northern Oregon and northern California. And if the next major earthquake took place in 2100 – there is a 29% chance of one greater than 8.0 magnitude by then – with climate-driven sea level rise, some “low-lying” areas along the fault might never recover, according to the study.

    ...The last great earthquake along the Cascadia Subduction Zone took place in 1700 and brought sudden sea level rise of more than six feet in minutes and generated a huge tsunami that destroyed seaside settlements and created effects seen as far as Japan.

    Recent research suggests that a 9.0 magnitude quake on the Cascadia subduction zone could lead to more than 30,000 deaths, 170,000 damaged or destroyed structures on the coast, and economic impacts of more than $81bn. A 2022 study found that a tsunami caused by a major earthquake could exceed 200ft high.

    LikeLiked by 2 people

46. Mark,

    The study’s opening sentence doesn’t make for a good start:

    Climate-driven sea-level rise is increasing the frequency of coastal flooding worldwide, exacerbated locally by factors like land subsidence from groundwater and resource extraction.

    There’s that word again: ‘exacerbated’. I’m pretty sure the land subsidence in the areas affected will have been on a greater scale than any climate-driven sea-level rise, so the exacerbation would definitely be the other way round.

    They talk of the posited earthquake causing a 200ft tsunami. Presumable that would also ‘exacerbate’ the 10 inches of sea-level rise that will have happened between now and then!

    LikeLiked by 2 people

47. John & others on this thread. Found this relevant post by EM China Sinking – Groundwater Dropping | Musings from the Chiefio, move to another post if more appropriate.

    From the imbedded vid he quotes –

    “The hidden crisis: Why China’s big cities could end up underwater

    May 1, 2025
    Did you know that hundreds of millions of Chinese are sitting on a ticking time bomb? China’s largest cities—Beijing, Shanghai, and others—are sinking. And the speed is alarming. People aren’t just seeing it with their own eyes; they’re living this nightmare. Decades of excessive groundwater use are to blame. Even worse, while the cities sink, sea levels are rising. If this continues, China’s major cities could one day end up underwater.”

    His post is short & worth a read.

    LikeLiked by 1 person

48. This click-bait article caught my eye this afternoon:

    The facts about rising seas that climate campaigners leave out

    https://www.msn.com/en-gb/travel/news/the-facts-about-rising-seas-that-climate-campaigners-leave-out/ss-AA1E6p8D?ocid=msedgdhp&pc=EDGEESS&cvid=0275a582af984d71b513eef03a749d2f&ei=20#image=1

    How very refreshing, I thought. For once we have someone who seems to have done some homework and knows about the subsidence (and other important caveats). Then only two minutes later I found this from the same people:

    Top 10 most vulnerable US cities to flooding in 2024

    https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/world/top-10-most-vulnerable-u-s-cities-to-flooding-in-2024/ss-AA1E6fGG#image=1

    In all 10 cases the subsidence far exceeds the threat from climate-driven sea-level rise, but no mention is made of this important fact.

    Even worse, I then immediately found this piece of climate-porn dross:

    Rising sea levels: Implications for coastal populations and ecosystems

    https://www.msn.com/en-gb/lifestyle/lifestylegeneral/rising-sea-levels-implications-for-coastal-populations-and-ecosystems/vi-AA1Aodti?ocid=msedgntp&cvid=e4ede9b1efcd494f8265297337b83619&ei=69

    Oh dear.

    LikeLiked by 1 person

49. Here’s yet another example of the BBC seeking to blame the factors it wishes to blame, while failing to carry out any analysis of the relative weight of different factors. Nothing to do with sea-level rise, this time, but the methodological issues strike me as being the same:

    “UK car production falls sharply in April”

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/ckgrydlqqn8o

    The number of vehicles manufactured in the UK fell sharply last month, as tariffs and the timing of Easter hit production.…

    Is that the only reason? Er, no:

    …The Society for Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT) said a wider change in the industry as it shifts from petrol cars to electric vehicles (EVs) had also temporarily reduced output.…

    Temporarily? We’ll see. This seems to be the reality:

    …The group said the total number of vehicles manufactured in the UK for the first four months of the year was the lowest since 2009.…

    LikeLike

50. Rather better from the BBC than usual:

    “Cities around the world are sinking at ‘worrying speed’”

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/resources/idt-14d00552-9211-4dab-89d1-60e34e226e43

    They can’t resist climate change references:

    …The team studied subsidence in and around 48 coastal cities in Asia, Africa, Europe and the Americas. These are places that are particularly vulnerable to a combination of rising sea levels, which are mainly driven by climate change, and sinking land.…

    But the main thrust of the article is around sinking land (rather than rising seas), with particular emphasis on groundwater extraction, but with a discussion of other factors too.

    LikeLiked by 1 person

51. Mark,

    We must be thankful that they did not tag the article as ‘climate change’. Still, it is a shame that they couldn’t bring themselves to say that subsidence is not only a concern but a much greater concern than sea level rise. But there I go again with my denier’s obsession with the old-fashioned arithmetic.

    LikeLike

52. Here’s another one for you, John:

    “Kabul at risk of becoming first modern city to run out of water, report warns

    NGO says Afghan capital’s 7 million people face existential crisis that world needs urgently to address”

    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/jun/07/kabul-could-become-first-modern-city-to-run-out-of-water-report-warns

    Kabul could become the first modern city to completely run out of water, experts have warned.

    Water levels within Kabul’s aquifers have dropped by up to 30 metres over the past decade owing to rapid urbanisation and climate breakdown…

    My money’s on rapid urbanisation, rate of withdrawal from the aquifers and a population of seven million people being the overwhelming problems. There’s this, for instance, which seems like a big deal to me:

    …Kabul’s sevenfold growth from less than 1 million people in 2001 has drastically transformed water demands. A lack of centralised governance and regulation has also perpetuated the problem over the decades.…

    But climate breakdown just had to be mentioned, even though no subsequent information is offered about that, and absolutely no attempt is made to rate the extent of the contributing factors.

    LikeLiked by 1 person

53. “‘Entire neighborhoods will have to move’: growth collides with rising seas in Charleston”

    https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/sep/09/charleston-rising-seas

    So says the simplistic headline, but it’s a lot more complicated than that:

    …Charleston is also one of the most rapidly sinking cities in the United States, mainly because of groundwater pumping and the settling of natural sediments and filled marsh areas. That double threat – rising seas and sinking land – leaves the city increasingly exposed to flooding.…

    …Rapid development, meanwhile, is paving over forests and wetlands that once soaked up stormwater. Every new subdivision and strip mall replaces absorbent ground with impervious surfaces – asphalt, rooftops, parking lots – that send rainwater rushing into neighborhoods such as Rosemont.…

    …Long Savannah is expected to bring up to 4,500 homes. It’s one of several massive projects rising across Charleston county, including Magnolia Landing and Cainhoy, 4,000- and 9,000-home developments. The developers of Long Savannah have received approval to fill and excavate wetlands, which environmentalists say are crucial to soaking up rain and keeping flooding in check.…

    …“Charleston has a history of building in repetitively flooded areas,” said Robby Maynor, a climate campaign associate with the Southern Environmental Law Center, which, along with other environmental groups, contested a decision by state environmental officials to allow new development on wetlands in the Long Savannah project. “We absolutely must stop building in low-lying and flood-prone areas to avoid making an already difficult situation even worse.”…

    LikeLike

54. At least here in the UK, new developments should not contribute to surface water flooding. Each development has to have attenuation features sized for the amount of impermeable land, that absorb rainfall and release it slowly into the drainage system.

    LikeLike

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.