Sea Level Rise Defies Alarmist Scare Tactics

Newsweek claimed US cities would be under water by 2050, they forgot the same predictions were made for 2000 and 2020. ⁽¹⁾

Willie Soon pointed out that after two world wars, 1.5 billion cars and 35 million planes a year, the rate of sea level rise is pretty much the same as it was in 1860 or so. ⁽²⁾

Researcher Hessel Voortman was shocked that no researcher had performed an analysis of real-world local data

According to 1,000 tide gauges, spread all over the globe, sea levels are rising slowly at around 1 mm a year. An intense study of 60 beaches in Northern Europe showed a similar rise. The Topex/Poseidon satellite sea level data also showed the same tiny rates of sea level change in the 1990s.

Researcher Hessel Voortman was shocked that no researcher had performed an analysis of real-world local data. He and his co-author reported that the average sea level rise in 2020 was only around 1.5 mm per year, or 6 inches per century. This is significantly lower than the 3 to 4 mm/year often reported by climate scientists in scientific literature and the media. ⁽³⁾

The startling conclusion: Approximately 95% of monitoring locations show no statistically significant acceleration of sea level rise. It was found that the steady rate of sea level rise, averaging around 1 to 2 millimeters per year globally, mirrors patterns observed over the past 150 years. The study claimed the models of the UN climate panel, the IPCC, significantly overestimated local sea level rise in 2020.

For decades, forecasts from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and widely cited media outlets suggested sea levels could rise three feet or more by 2100—with catastrophic consequences for low-lying energy hubs. This report challenges that assumption. ⁽⁴⁾

Political and Media Scares

Non-Sinking Islands

Tuvalu’s Climate Change Minister calls for urgent climate finance and help to build seawalls to keep the islands above water. This is simply false.⁽⁵⁾

Multiple peer-reviewed studies show that Tuvalu is not sinking, it is growing. Recent satellite and aerial analyses reveal that Tuvalu’s total land area has increased by 2.9 percent over the past four decades, with 74 percent of its islands expanding in size. Rather than drowning, Tuvalu’s natural processes of sediment deposition and coral accretion are exceeding the local rate of sea level rise. ⁽⁶⁾

Even the New York Times, no stranger to climate alarmism, recently acknowledged that many Pacific islands are growing, not vanishing. ⁽⁵⁾

Repeated studies show that island nations such as Tuvalu, Kiribati, the Maldives and Marshall Islands are actually growing in size, not shrinking beneath the seas. In addition, the actions of their governments and private industries, such as increased infrastructure and commercial development, suggest they believe the islands will continue to exist and prosper even amid modestly rising seas.

Due to a growth in height, accretion along their coasts as they add sand, or both, each of these nations have expanded. For example, a recent peer-reviewed study found eight of Tuvalu’s nine large coral atolls have grown in size during recent decades, and 75 percent of the island nation’s 101 smaller reef islands have increased as well.

Concerning the Maldives, not only are all 1,196 islands that comprise the nation still there, but the Maldives population has doubled during the past 20 years. People are flocking to the Maldive islands, not fleeing them. The Maldives are absorbing political refugees, not spawning climate refugees.⁽⁶⁾

In the face of growing populations and tourism each of the island nations have seen long-term, large-scale investments on their islands in recent years. They have new hotels, water development, tourism centers, and public buildings and roads.

It’s hard to believe that governments and for-profit companies would make long-term, multibillion dollar investment, erecting structures and related infrastructures, if they thought it would all be wasted away before paying off their loans, much less turning a profit. ⁽⁶⁾

Hawaii

Oceanographic Magazine (OM) recently published the article “Most people in Hawaii are already experiencing the impacts of rising sea level rise” asserting that Hawaii residents are already experiencing the impacts of rising seas and that it is accelerating. This framing is false, unsupported by local data. The actual long-term measurement record at Honolulu shows that sea levels are rising at less than half the rate that OM claims. ⁽⁷⁾

These claims are debunked by actual data, and thus the people’s fears of catastrophe are unwarranted. The rate of sea level rise has not measurably increased during the recent period of modest warming, and is far below, less than half in fact, of the 3.6mm rate of rise in the last decade claimed by OM.

Scare tactics based on computer models

A CNN headline reads, “Scientists find sea levels are already much higher than we thought.”

The New York Times likewise insists that “Sea levels are already higher than many scientists think.” ⁽⁸⁾

How did this happen? The vast majority of studies of sea levels were based not on measurements but on computer models that were widely inaccurate.

A new study has found that the vast majority of research on sea level rise, around 90%, has relied on computer models and assumptions rather than real world measurements of coastal water levels. This methodological blind spot has resulted in widespread underestimations of how high sea levels already are and how many people are at risk from coastal hazards. ⁽⁹⁾

This revelation raises serious questions about the reliability of much of the existing research on sea level rise and its impact. If the science is based primarily on models rather than direct observations, it calls into doubt the accuracy of projections about future sea level rise and threat it poses to coastal communities around the world.

The study analyzed 385 peer reviewed studies on sea level rise published over the past 15 years. ⁽¹⁰⁾

References

1. Anthony Watts, “Newsweek claims US cities would be under water by 2050, forgets the same predictions were made for 2000 and 2020,” wattsupwiththat.com, December 12, 2024
2. Jo Nova, “Shh. Don’t tell the children sea levels were higher,” joannenova.com.au, February 28, 2025
3. Hessel G. Voortman and Rob De Vos, ‘A global perspective on local sea level change,” J. Mar. Sci. Eng., August 27, 2025
4. Mark Hertzog, “Seal level rise not accelerating: new global study,” bicmagazine.com, September 3, 2025
5. Stephen Heins, “Al Jazeera supports climate grift, Tuvalu’s islands are growing, not disappearing,” stephenheins.substack.com, October 16, 2025
6. Sterling Burnett, “Get the facts straight, the independent, Island nations are growing, not sinking into the sea,” climaterealism.com. September 8, 2025
7. Anthony Watts, “Wrong, Oceanographic Magazine, sea level rise in Hawaii is not a looming catastrophe,” climaterealism.com, February 23, 2026
8. Climate Discussion News, “The latest absurd media claims about sea level rise,” principia-scientific.com, March 20, 2026
9. “New study finds 90% of sea level research relies on models, not real measurements,” nationaltoday.com, March 13, 202610.
10. Katharina Seeger and Philip S. J. Minderhoud, “Sea level much higher than assumed in most coastal hazard assessments, “ Nature, March 13, 2026