Yet another interview in my series on the “New Climate Denial” that we have seen resurrected in the Trump administration, in fact, Andrew Dessler was the first scientist I spoke to several months ago on this.
Above, we set the table a bit, and Dr Dessler did say that, at least, in the recent “Climate Working Group” report from Chris Wright’s Department of Energy, a motley crew of geriatric fossil fuel apologists admit grudgingly that a greenhouse effect exists, but that’s “a pretty low bar.. it’s like acknowledging that the Earth is round..”.
Below, Dessler mentioned another issue, the denial that Sea Level rise is accelerating, something that recent research has firmly established.
Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution:
A July 2025 report from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) claims that U.S. tide gauge measurements “in aggregate show no obvious acceleration in sea level rise beyond the historical average rate.”
However, a new study by Chris Piecuch, a physical oceanographer with the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI), reaches a dramatically different conclusion.
The study finds that the rate of U.S. coastal sea-level rise has more than doubled in the past 125 years, from a rate of less than 2 millimeters per year in 1900 to more than 4 millimeters per year in 2024, and that present rates are well above the historical average. This translates to a rise in U.S. coastal sea level of about 40 centimeters, or nearly 16 inches, over that time.
“This represents conclusive evidence that coastal sea level in the U.S. is accelerating, likely due to climate change,” according to the study, “The Rate of U.S. Coastal Sea-Level Rise Doubled in the Past Century,” published in the journal AGU Advances. Piecuch said the acceleration of U.S. coastal sea level is consistent with what is happening on a global scale related to ongoing ocean warming and expansion and to continuing loss of ice from glaciers and ice sheets.
The authors of the DOE report base their conclusion on analysis of data from five tide gauge records “that may be heavily impacted by local effects and not representative of true large scale aggregate RSL [relative sea level] behavior,” according to Piecuch’s study, which adds that the DOE report’s conclusions “should be treated with caution,” due to the small number of locations considered.
In contrast to the DOE report, the Piecuch study uses data from 70 tide gauges distributed along the contiguous U.S. coast. The data set comprises all active U.S. tide-gauge stations with more than 30 years of data.
Piecuch’s results “directly contradict” the claims made in the DOE report that are based on a cursory discussion of tide gauge time series from just a handful of locations, the study states. “U.S. tide-gauge records taken collectively do show an obvious RSL acceleration above the long-term historical average trend.”
“The DOE report paints an incomplete picture of the rates of sea level change by picking just a handful of locations that are subject to local effects and that are not representative of the large-scale aggregate relative sea level behavior,” said Piecuch.
The locations in the DOE report – including Grand Isle, Louisiana, and Galveston, Texas – are known to feature vertical land motion from human activity and geological processes unrelated to anthropogenic climate change, the Piecuch study indicates. For example, Grand Isle exemplifies several local and regional processes that can cause sea level change along the Gulf coast, such as long-term compaction and sediment transport related to the dynamics of the Mississippi River as well as oil and gas extraction, Piecuch said. “These local and regional processes are thought to have caused significant land loss and subsidence, or sinking of coastal land, particularly during the 1960s and 1970s.”
Piecuch’s study acknowledges that spatially variable vertical land motion is an important control on relative sea level changes. However, the study adds that it is unlikely that land motion explains the acceleration in sea level rise.
The DOE study’s conclusion “rests largely on cursory analysis of a small number of tide-gauge records that are known to be unrepresentative of large-scale RSL behavior,” the Piecuch study states.
“You can’t argue that U.S. sea level rates are not increasing by looking at just five cherry-picked sites,” Piecuch said. “When you consider all the available observations, the data point in the opposite direction—that U.S. coastal sea level is clearly on an accelerating course.”
These arguments (by the deniers) crack me up because even a constant acceleration translates into an ever increasing velocity (or an ever increasing sea level in this case). “I think” this fundamental lack of science literacy comes from the American automobile industry where some marketing guru decided to refer to “the velocity pedal” as “the acceleration pedal”.
where some marketing guru decided to refer to “the velocity pedal” as “the acceleration pedal”.
—-
Hail Pedantia!
In fact the most common version of the pedal on an ICE vehicle—and the default setting on most EVs—is the power pedal, since it doesn’t control the rotation of the wheels (velocity), but the amount of power the engine puts out. That is, if you hold the pedal at the same position the car will slow down on the uphill. Then carmakers added cruise control (where the car can be set to maintain a fixed speed* independent of the grade without touching the pedal.
A newer feature on EVs is to have the pedal control speed, such that holding the pedal at the same angle will cause the car to move the same speed whether on the flat, going uphill or going downhill. It’s essentially “variable cruise control” option. My Leaf has an option (E-pedal) to treat the pedal either as the traditional power pedal or the “variable cruise control” behavior.
________________
*I consider it a dangerous feature, at least for me, because I tend to slow down if I am distracted or tired, rather than maintaining a higher speed.
All sea level is local.
Total sea water volume could remain the same but lots of conditions affect how high the sea is against a particular part of shore.
1. Crustal rebound after a massive glacier loss happens much more slowly than it takes the ice to melt. Norway has been been rising (isostatic rebound) since the last glacial maxium, but locally it is perceived as sea level going down.
2. Mass/gravitational shifts around the earth affect local sea levels. As the great mass of Greenland and Antarctic ice melts, less ocean water is pulled via gravity to those parts of the planet.
3. Major currents moving away from shore tend to pull water away from coasts. Slowing of the AMOC contributes to higher sea level along the Northwest Atlantic coast.
4. Natural slump, as with unconsolidated settlement along the northern coast of the Gulf of Mexico, lowers land.
5. Damming of rivers reduces sediment flow that builds up coasts (seen in Texas).
6. Long term fluid extraction (water, oil, gas) makes land subside (e.g., Houston, Grand Isle).
7. Part of the Italian coast is over a fluctuating magma chamber that is the geological equivalent of a trampoline, such that sea level was “higher” there back in Roman times.
But with global warming, the total ocean volume is increasing, due to a combination of (1) land ice melting off, and (2) thermal expansion as oceans warm. Due to the other local effects, some places are seeing much higher sea level rise than the global average.