A recent Letter to the Editor in Villages-News.com, entitled “Join Villagers who are concerned about sea level rise,” raises important issues, but the letter is very misleading.
It’s misleading because this group thinks they can alter earth’s geophysical forces. They want to “stem the tide of sea level rise.” This is not possible. This is just as foolish as trying to stop the sun from rising. The scientific record clearly shows sea levels have been going up and down, hundreds of feet at a time, for more than a million years during ongoing Ice Age cycles. More recently, about 20,000 years ago, during the last Ice Age glaciation, ocean levels were a jaw-dropping 400 feet lower than today. Back then, the climate alarmists were all in a tizzy about trying to save the fish because the oceans were dwindling — all because those menacing glaciers were growing.
Today, however, we’re currently in a glorious Interglacial Warming Period and the oceans are thankfully rising again — and the fish are delighted — because the now melting glaciers are making the oceans great again. This is Mother Nature in action, and there’s nothing we can do to stop it. It’s not a big deal — if you use your brain. Years ago the local natives handled it very easily. They just picked up their huts and move them inland. They were the smart ones. Today, however, we have people like Obama, who say “No challenge poses a greater threat to our future and future generations than a change in climate.” Really? Then why did he and other climate critics (like Bill Gates) buy luxury homes on the oceanfront? Answer — because they can afford to move their huts inland.
Obama and other alarmists aren’t dumb, because they know what the data actually says. The data says … sea levels are currently rising at rates of 1 to 2 millimeters a year. Even though Obama once claimed credit for saving the world by saying, “This was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow…”, the data says otherwise. Even the referenced Villages-News.com Letter to the Editor got it right … sea level rise is indeed accelerating. Within the last 50 years it has accelerated from about 1.5 to a mind-boggling 2 millimeters a year. At that rate, millions of beach-goers will perish each year by the relentless onslaught of an insidious liquid monster — the millimeter tidal wave. Worse yet, they’ll never see it coming.
Knock-knock. Open your eyes, smell the sea-breeze, and identify the real problem — climate alarmism — assisted by a complicit educational system and supported by greedy coastal city planners and politicians. The science community has known for a long time that Ice Age cycles come and go every 100,000 years or so. With each cycle, global temperatures rise and fall, and so do sea levels. More importantly, it is also known that we have not yet reached the high temperatures experienced during the last Interglacial Warming Period — and we also know that the oceans were about 20-25 feet higher than they are today.
So expect more sea level rise until Mother Nature decides to plunge us into another cold and harsh environment of the next Ice Age. In the meantime, enjoy global warming while it lasts, and remember this … you are the smart ones, since you’ve already moved your huts to The Villages. Even if the oceans do rise 20 feet or more, we’ll be high and dry since our communities sit 60 to 120 feet above mean sea level.
Villager John Shewchuk is a frequent contributor to Villages-News.com.
