Sunk by the data

A landmark Dutch study finds no evidence that global warming is raising sea levels

If a picture is worth a thousand words, a stranded polar bear atop a floating block of ice is shorthand for the narrative of catastrophic climate change.

In the early 2000s, climate alarmists turned the blubbery, seal-munching predators into a visually compelling and emotionally resonant symbol of receding ice and rising sea levels. Abstract data about atmospheric chemistry was translated into a visible threat to something cute and cuddly.

There is no firm evidence that polar bear populations have declined in the two decades since they became international movie stars in Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth.

In any case, the creatures are, by nature, socially withdrawn. They are also exceptional swimmers. Evolution has gifted them eyes near the top of their skulls for that purpose.

If melting ice caps and rising sea levels weren’t real, however, the climate movement would have to invent them, since it is difficult to scare people witless over the atmospheric concentration of an invisible, odourless gas.

Which is why a new peer-reviewed study of global sea levels will almost certainly be ignored by those who claim the science is settled and there is nothing more to discuss.

The study by Dutch hydraulic engineer Hessel Voortman and independent research Rob D Vos turns scientific orthodoxy on its head.

It finds that global sea levels have not continued to rise at the rates predicted by many scientists, and there is no evidence that climate change has contributed to any such acceleration.

The research found that the average sea level rise in 2020 was only around 1.5mm a year, or 150mm per century, well below the 3 to 4 mm a year customarily adopted in scientific literature and the media.

Voortman’s analysis is based on real-world local data rather than satellite images and computer modelling. He told Michael Shellenberger, “I started this research in 2021 by conducting a literature review. ‘Who has done the comparison of the projections with the observations?’ And there were none.”

The study examined 200 tide-gauge stations with reliable data spanning at least 60 years.

For the vast majority of stations, Voortman found no detectable acceleration in sea-level rise.

Mainstream climate research has long maintained that satellite data confirm a marked acceleration in global sea-level rise since the early 1990s.

Voortman disputes that interpretation. He argues that sea levels were at a relative low point around 1993 and a high point in 2020, and that once those natural oscillations are accounted for, there is no detectable upward trend.

Where his data does show notable increases, Voortman observes that nearby tide-gauge stations often record minimal change. It suggests that the pattern is driven by local effects rather than a global CO₂.

The authors call for a calmer, evidence-based discussion of sea-level change. They attribute most local variations to regional factors such as tectonic shifts, construction impacts, or post-glacial land movement, rather than to global warming alone.

Voortman, like every Dutch person, has skin in the game. A quarter of the Netherlands lies below mean sea level, and another 30 per cent or so sits only barely above it, meaning that as much as two-thirds of the country is vulnerable to flooding.

As a hydraulic engineer who runs a successful business advising clients on climate change mitigation, Voortman has a vested interest in highlighting the risks posed by rising sea levels.

Yet he writes in his report: “The construction of coastal infrastructure is costly and it is therefore crucial that sea level information used in design is credible or that possible uncertainties and/or bias are known.”

Sadly, not everyone who studies sea levels is as objective as Voortman.

The Manhattan flooding sequence in An Inconvenient Truth is one of the film’s most visually powerful moments. The water reaches the upper stories of the Statue of Liberty, leaving only her torch visible above the flood.

“If Greenland broke up and melted, or if half of Greenland and half of West Antarctica broke up and melted, this is what would happen,” says Gore.

“Here’s the Netherlands — one of the low countries that would completely disappear.

“Over a hundred million people around the world would be displaced.”

The use of the word “if” and the conditional tense does not disguise the implication that a disaster on this scale is likely and imminent.

The intention of Gore’s documentary was not to inform us about climate change but frighten us into compliance.

Almost 20 years later, we have every right to expect the alarmists to present more substantial evidence that climate change really is an immediate threat and that we have to throw every available resource into stopping it.

It’s been 38 years since the UN established the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, giving scientists decades of solid data against which to test their assumption of a hockey-stick rise in temperatures.

Perhaps by now they have actual pictures of an actual Pacific Island actually submerged, rather than relying on computer-generated imagery to generate a fake Armageddon.

Not if the recent report by the Australian Climate Service is anything to go by. The National Climate Risk Assessment used by the Albanese government to justify its aggressive emissions-reduction targets drew on the resources of its august partners —the Bureau of Meteorology, CSIRO, the Australian Bureau of Statistics, and Geoscience Australia — to establish the latest state of the science.

All it delivered was a somewhat wordier version of Gore’s narrative, rich in apocalyptic rhetoric but low on fact.

Sea level rises “will significantly impact coastal communities and cities,” we’re told. By 2050, more than 1.5 million Australians will live in areas that will experience sea-level rise and coastal flooding.

By the end of the century, we’ll be coping with a sea-level rise of almost a metre and coastal flooding 257 days a year. Not only will we risk getting drenched, but “chronic sea level rise is highly likely to challenge social cohesion and livability”.

Spare us the soothsaying and tell us what we actually know about climate change —the evidence we can observe, not predictions on a spreadsheet.

A genuine response to environmental risk demands engineering discipline and economic honesty, not the rhetorical architecture of fear.

Give us the evidence to disprove President Donald Trump’s assessment that climate change is “the greatest con job ever perpetrated on the world”.

The constant appeal to experts’ wisdom is wearing thin. In the words of the American writer W Edwards Deming, “In God we trust. Everyone else, bring data”.