Remember when sea level was stable?

Some of the exposed infrastructure in the as-yet still remarkably stable San Francisco Bay.

The SF Bay Area, whence I sprang more than a few springs ago, is being threatened by catastrophic climate change in the form of rising sea levels. That is, if you believe this. Not surprisingly, I don’t.

There has not, so far, been a geologic period with stable sea level, meanwhile. The sea is, literally, always rising or falling, which is what is in the nature of water, to do, i.e. change in every conceivable way. What climate change fearmongers rely on, however, is human ignorance of the fact that sea level is never stable, and on the profound human desire to be in control of one’s environment.

Guess what? You ain’t.

I know it hurts that infrastructure and property have been put in the way of rising waters. But building them there did not convey permanent control of the climate system upon humanity. I’m sorry about that.

And, again, the Bay Area has not seen meaningful sea level rise. Period.

About Harold Ambler

I am a lifelong environmentalist. I started my journalism career at The New Yorker, where I worked as a copy editor. Since then, my own work has appeared in The New York Daily News, The National Review Online, The Atlantic Wire, The Huffington Post, The Berkeley Daily Planet, The Providence Journal, Brown Alumni Monthly, The Narragansett Times, Rhode Island Monthly, and Providence Business News.
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1 Response to Remember when sea level was stable?

  1. Mike Bromley says:

    It is an all-important tenet of CAGW that sea level be like a billiard table. This fact is so fundamental to their arguments as to render them useless. The response is often “it’s the rate of change”. Relative to? We don’t have a long-term record of rates of change, so that is just more smokescreen. So, yes, build on a “floodplain” and you’ll get….flooded.

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