I know you know that, but this is one of the stupidest things he’s ever said
“The biggest threat is not global warming, where the ocean’s going to rise one, one-eighth of an inch over the next 400 years. The big — and you’ll have more oceanfront property, right?”
Donald Trump
Trump said that speaking to Elon Musk in his X “interview” the other day. Philip Bump breaks it down:
Trump often dismisses the threat posed by rising sea levels by suggesting that they are minor or insignificant. Speaking to Musk, it was an eighth of an inch over 400 years; how could anyone be worried about that?
But that is nonsense.
“Global mean sea level increased by 0.20 (0.15 to 0.25) m between 1901 and 2018,” the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change wrote last year. “The average rate of sea level rise was 1.3 (0.6 to 2.1) mm yr between 1901 and 1971, increasing to 1.9 (0.8 to 2.9) mm yr between 1971 and 2006, and further increasing to 3.7 (3.2 to 4.2) mm yr between 2006 and 2018 (high confidence).”
Putting that in American, sea levels rose nearly eight inches from 1901 to 2018. From 1901 to 1971, the rise occurred at a rate of about 0.05 inches a year. That increased to 0.07 inches until 2006 and since has jumped to 0.15 inches. In other words, sea levels are rising at more than an eighth of an inch annually, not over the next four centuries.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration explains that “about 2 feet (0.6 meters) of sea level rise along the U.S. coastline is increasingly likely between 2020 and 2100 because of emissions to date. Failing to curb future emissions could cause an additional 1.5 – 5 feet (0.5 – 1.5 meters) of rise for a total of 3.5 – 7 feet (1.1 – 2.1 meters) by the end of this century.”
The “emissions” being referenced, of course, are greenhouse gas emissions, releases of carbon dioxide, methane and other gases that help trap heat in the atmosphere. The rise in the rate of increase in sea levels reflects that trapped heat in two ways. First, warmer temperatures accelerate the melting of glaciers and other ice that then flows into oceans. Second, warmer temperatures increase ocean temperatures, and warmer water occupies more volume than colder water.
As shown in this NOAA graph:
But what about Trump’s claim that we will just have more oceanfront property which will be fabulous? Obviously not
Believe it or not, Trump is wrong again. If you have a defined area of land that’s surrounded by water, an increase in the height of the water means that it covers more land. The result is less land touching the ocean, not more.
There are 95,471 miles of shoreline in the United States, including outlining American territories. Imagine, for the sake of simplicity, that’s a big circle, as above. The 95,471 miles would be its circumference, the distance around its outside edge. Its diameter — its width across the middle — would be about 504,086,880 feet. Now slice off two feet at each end, marking the anticipated sea-level rise by 2100. (A rise of two feet in sea level doesn’t necessarily mean that it eats into the shore two feet, but this is just an example.) Now the circumference (the diameter times pi) is 504,086,867 feet. About 13 fewer feet of shoreline!
It’s so obvious, you really don’t need any kind of expertise or math to know this. And yet, the alleged stable genius said it and the alleged techno genius didn’t say a word.