Sea Level Rise Slowing?

The Angry Poodle Barbecue’s “No Surly Curs Need Apply” should have its math checked. As written, it would be extremely difficult to make believers of climate change deniers. A high ranking administrator of a state agency is quoted about rising sea levels: “Off Golden Gate Park, it’s increased eight inches in the past century; off La Jolla, it’s five inches in 80 years. Snow pack is shrinking, glaciers are melting, and wildfires are both more frequent and intense. Trees are dying, marine species being evicted from their traditional habitats. You get the drill.” Later, the column states, “Back about 20,000 years ago, the sea level here was about 360 feet lower.”

Well, that would mean an average of 180 feet in 10,000 years, or an average of 1.8 feet in a hundred, or 21.6 inches a century, the figures cited by the high ranking state administrator being woefully short of even the average century sea level rise during the last 20,000 years.

So something is askew here, perhaps a digit or two misplaced, but if those figures are correct, then using anthropological global warming and rising CO₂ levels as a catalyst for sea level rise is fallacious. In fact, based on those figures, sea level rise is slowing not accelerating.