Sea Level, Surge or Subside

 

A true story: in early summer 1975 I was a teacher of A-level Geology in Manchester and had just got a new job, in Blackpool, to teach Geology and establish new courses in Environmental Science.

We had to find a new house and, never one to move house if I didn’t have to, I assumed we’d be in it a long time. Born in Fleetwood, well aware of its low-lying geography and its risk of storm flooding and geologically clued in to the part played by isostatic readjustment in sea level changes, I pored over my textbooks and found a map very much like the one shown here, after wondering how many years it would be till the sea flooded into our front room 😊.

I needn’t have worried, we were OK. Blackpool, in the green area covering Scotland and North Western England, had been underneath the thickest ice during the Ice Age and has been rising back up ever since. Despite the worldwide rise in sea level overall, in these areas local sea level was actually falling, and it still is. You’d expect a geologist to know this of course, but it’s rarely mentioned in media commentary.

In a recent DM exchange with a respected member of our SolarComment group, having lazily described myself without explanation as a ‘climate change sceptic’, I needed to clarify – not least because I believe scepticism is essential to decision making, including being for/against GNRSP. I explained (please note the distinction I make between ‘climate change’ and ‘Climate Change’) …

… “‘sceptic’ doesn’t mean ‘denier’ – for me as a geologist ‘climate change’ is a given (a never-ending process), my scepticism is about what I see as an over-simplistic fixation on the fossil fuel elimination response to ‘Climate Change’ (a perceived problem). As it happens, that scepticism puts me right in the middle, sitting on the fence,in respect of this GNRSP project.”

A video titled Geologists See Climate Change Differently helps set the context for my clarification … acknowledging the existence of ‘climate change’, a planet-long process, is simply fundamental to a geologist's point of view. The pretty obvious point (at least to a geologist) that Lindzen makes about sea-level change points to the risk that the general public may swallow the myth that “the burning of fossil fuels” has uniquely caused sea-level rise long-term – it certainly didn’t cause the 125 metre rise in sea level that drowned Doggerland since the last glacial advance, and if you listen  

For a thoughtful justification for being sceptical about ‘Climate Change’ [note the CAPS], I urge you to listen to the whole 5 minutes of Richard Lindzen, noting his cautionary statement that “When you hear a scientist saying the science is settled, you know that person has stepped out of the science”.

YouTube now puts the trigger warning below on every item it perceives as possibly ‘contrarian’ to the Climate Change approved thinking, in this case  a definition that the science it presumes is at the very least incomplete and misleading .... and closer to dogma that has left scientific objectivity behind.