A new Policy Brief from The Heartland Institute shows there is no evidence of acceleration in the rise of global sea levels since the 1920s and concludes the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) concerns over this issue is “without merit.”
The Policy Brief, titled “Global Sea Level Rise: An Evaluation of the Data,” co-authored by Dr. Craig Idso, chairman of the Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change, Dr. David Legates, professor of climatology in the Department of Geography at the University of Delaware, and Dr. S. Fred Singer, is taken from a chapter of Climate Change Reconsidered II: Fossil Fuels, a report from the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC).
According to IPCC’s Fifth Assessment Report, “it is very likely that the rate of global mean sea level rise during the 21st century will exceed the rate observed during 1971–2010 for all Representative Concentration Pathway (RCP) scenarios due to increases in ocean warming and loss of mass from glaciers and ice sheets.”
However, Idso, Legates, and Singer argue “sea-level rise is a research area that has recently come to be dominated by computer models. Whereas researchers working with datasets built from long-term coastal tide gauges typically report a slow linear rate of sea-level rise, computer modelers assume a significant anthropogenic forcing and tune their models to find or predict an acceleration of the rate of rise.”
They note local sea-level trends “vary considerably because they depend not only on the average global trend, but also on tectonic movements of adjacent land. In many places vertical land motion, either up or down, exceeds the very slow global sea-level trend. Consequently, at some locations sea level is rising much faster than the global rate, and at other locations sea level is falling.”
For example, in Stockholm, Sweden, sea-level rise is “negative due to regional vertical land motion.” The water intrusion problems around the Chesapeake Bay in Virginia and Maryland are also not due to sea-level rise, but instead to land subsidence (the sinking of the land surface) from human activity such as groundwater depletion.
Instead of accelerated sea-level rises, the authors find “the best available data” shows “evidence is lacking for any recent changes in global sea level that lie outside natural variation.” They point out that if the negative effects of the claimed accelerated rise in sea level, such as a loss of surface area, were to be visible anywhere, it would most likely be in the small islands and coral atolls in the Pacific Ocean. However, research indicates many of these islands and atolls are actually increasing in size. Simply, they are “not being inundated by rising seas due to anthropogenic climate change.”
Fears of an accelerated rise in sea levels caused by anthropogenic climate change are misplaced and overblown. Further, this fearmongering should not be used by policymakers in coastal states and cities to advocate for policies that would seek to limit or eliminate carbon dioxide emissions.
What We’re Working On
Budget & Tax
Lawmakers Can Improve Job Opportunities for Michigan’s Ex-Offenders by Reforming Occupational Licensing
In this Research & Commentary, Senior Policy Analyst Matthew Glans examines a series of bills in Michigan that would increase transparency requirements on licensing authorities and limit the ability of licensing agencies to deny a license for a past criminal offense.
Education
Child Safety Accounts Would Offer Lifeline to Thousands of DC Children
This Research & Commentary from Policy Analyst Tim Benson looks at new Child Safety Account (CSA) legislation introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives. Under the proposal, CSAs would be available to all DC students facing a “safety issue” at school after their parents file a request with school administrators. These issues include bullying, sexual misconduct, harassment, abuse, fighting or physical assaults on the student, and concerns over gang activity or drug use at school. CSAs would allow parents to pay tuition and fees at qualified private schools, as well as for tutoring services, textbooks, transportation costs, and therapy costs to cope with a safety incident.
Energy & Environment
The Green New Deal and Beyond, Carbon Dioxide Restrictions are about Government Control of the Economy (Guest: Kevin Dayaratna)
In this episode of the Heartland Daily Podcast, Senior Fellow H. Sterling Burnett is joined by The Heritage Foundation’s Senior Statistician and Research Programmer, Kevin Dayaratna, to chat about the Green New Deal. They discuss how this program and other less intrusive but still costly restrictions on fossil fuel use, like carbon dioxide taxes and cap-and-trade proposals, are not intended to protect the environment but rather are efforts by the federal government to exert more control over the economy and how people live.
Healthcare
Medicaid Expansion is Antithesis of Conservative Policy
In this Research & Commentary, Senior Policy Analyst Matthew Glans examines Medicaid expansion efforts in North Carolina and why the state should continue to resist calls to expand. “Medicaid expansion would produce disastrous economic and social consequences for all North Carolinians. For example, it would reinforce government dependency, sap self-reliance, and balloon the state budget. North Carolina lawmakers should continue to reject Medicaid expansion” wrote Glans.
From Our Free Market Friends
https://www.edchoice.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/2019-4-Arizona-Parent-Survey-by-Andrew-Catt-and-Albert-Chang.pdf
Arizona has one of the most robust, diverse school choice environments in the nation, featuring charter schools, a tax-credit scholarship (TCS) program and education savings accounts (ESA). In this EdChoice report, authors Drew Catt and Albert Cheng survey approximately 3,500 parents across all sectors to learn more about their school climate, satisfaction, levels of parental involvement, schooling preferences and trusted sources for educational decisions.
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Tim Benson joined The Heartland Institute in September 2015 as a policy analyst in the Government Relations Department.
