A couple of days ago I went to the dentist, and while waiting my turn in the chair, picked up a copy of the latest issue of National Geographic (see image on right). I was disgusted with the alarmist article about how "fossil fuels" are causing sea levels to rise at an incredibly fast rate, threatening coastline communities and soon to drown us all. The cover of this issue shows an absurd depiction of the Statue of Liberty waist-deep in the mythical rising sea. Another website, C3, states that the current rise of sea levels is 2.77 millimeters per year. At that rate (assuming it never stops or reverses), it will take 23,500 years before the seal level reaches Lady Liberty's waistline.
However, a newer study, the Grace study, has revised that prediction downward, stating that the sea level rise is only 1.7 millimeters per year, or about 6.7 inches per century. Over the past seven years, the rise has only been 1.1 to 1.3 millimeters per year, or 5 inches per century:
The paper corroborates the NOAA 2012 Sea Level Budget which finds sea levels have risen at only 1.1-1.3 mm/yr over the past 7 years from 2005-2012 [less than 5 inches/century], and the paper of Chambers et al finding “sea level has been rising on average by 1.7 mm/year over the last 110 years.”The conclusions are obvious: National Geographic is now in the propaganda business of junk science, and is not to be take seriously on the question of climate change.
Here's irony for you:
ReplyDeleteLast year (or maybe the year before that), National Geographic had a cover story on the world's population growth: 7 billion and ever rising! I skimmed the piece (in a dentist's waiting room also, as I recall). Now here is the one real environmental urgency the human race had better deal with pronto or school's out for good.
Would the National Geographic take on the overpopulation crisis? Nah. The most it would admit that it posed new "challenges" (a word that should be placed in a toxic waste dump and sealed in concrete). Mainly a challenge for the "developed nations" to ensure that the "developing nations" got their fair share of the world's infinite land area and resources.
You see, the fastest growing countries mass producing their own poverty have Arab, black, and brown people. Who are we to tell them to limit their birth rates? That's racism!
The National Geographic Society is based in downtown Washington, D.C. That's all you need to know.