A New Study Shows U.S. East Coast Has Expanded Since 1960, Not Eroded

A little over a week ago, I wrote an article talking about how there was no link between extreme weather phenomenon and man-made climate change. Well, today, let’s talk about another ridiculous claim that the Left often makes: climate change leads to rising sea levels and will mean coastal cities will be flooded in a certain amount of time unless we employ more and more socialistic policies to “turn this around”.
 
When you put it that way, it’s hard to deny how much it looks like a scam… because that’s precisely what it is. And yet, many people buy into the idea that we are killing our planet through our cars and our air conditioners and our capitalism (somehow, despite China being one of the most egregious polluters in the world) and that in a certain amount of decades, places like Los Angeles, New York City, Miami, etc. will be uninhabitable for humans and land animals because they will be flooded.
 
This sort of cycle continues, as we still hear about this idiocy despite the fact that people have made predictions for today that are exactly like that and have failed to come true, such as Dr. James Hansen predicting back in the late 1980s that New York City’s West Side Highway would be under water within 20 years. Not quite sure why he chose to be so specific, but whatever the reason may be, he was obviously very wrong as it has been about 30 years since the late 1980s and no such thing has happened.
 
However, a recent study has shown that “trends in recent rates of shoreline change along the U.S. Atlantic Coast reflect an especially puzzling increase in accretion, not erosion,” according to Armstrong and Lazarus (2019) in a newly-published paper.
 
Notice the sort of language these guys are using. They are totally baffled at the idea that shorelines are actually expanding, because they are under the belief that sea levels are rising, which would naturally lead people to believe that shorelines would have to be decreasing. The authors try to attribute this “enigmatic pattern” to “beach nourishment” or infrastructure development to explain how this is happening even though sea levels are supposed to be rising.
 
As Climate Depot notes, “From 1830 to 1956, shorelines eroded at the rapid rate of -55 cm per year on average. Since 1960, the U.S. Atlantic coast has been expanding (accretion) at a rate of +5 cm per year.”
 
The real reason for this happening is not “beach nourishment” but rather because any scientist who is not paid off to spew Leftist garbage knows that geophysical processes are the reason for such sea-level variations throughout the entire world, not idiotic beliefs like glaciers melting causing there to be more water in the ocean.
 
Which really brings us to the main point this article is meant to tackle: the idea that melting ice caps (which are actually doing the opposite of melting) would cause sea levels to rise and coastal areas to get flooded. Anyone who has passed 6th grade science ought to know that ice is water in a different form and that melting of ice does not cause there to be more water out of nowhere.
 
For example, fill a glass with ice and then fill it with water just before it begins to overflow. Leave that glass of water with ice alone until the ice melts (or put it in the microwave if you’re impatient) and see the results. According to the Left, the glass will overflow because the ice will melt. However, what we notice is something entirely different: the glass is still just as full as it was before, there was no overflow, but now there’s just no ice. That is because ICE IS WATER TOO! It’s just in a different physical state, but it will still take up the exact same amount of space. Whatever space the ice cube was filling before is replaced with the water that the cube was composed of. There is no displacement of water, so there is no overflowing of the glass.
 
How then, if the ice caps were to melt, would the world get flooded when all the melting of the ice does is change the physical state of the ice from a solid to a liquid?
 
What’s more, has any of these Leftists ever heard of the water cycle? You know, the cycle where water evaporates, goes into the atmosphere, precipitates as rain or snow (depending on the temperature), goes down into sewers, rivers, etc., makes its way back to the ocean and begins the cycle anew? Well, if the ice caps were melting, that means some of the ice would be turned into a gas too, go into the atmosphere and go through the process we just described, so there technically would be a little bit less water than when it was in its ice form anyway.
 
But returning to my main point, it is ridiculous to suggest that the ice caps melting (which isn’t even happening, for God’s sake) would in turn lead to coastal cities to get flooded. That’s not how any of this works.
 
If you don’t believe me, just ask Christopher Piecuch, Peter Huybers and literally six other scientists saying: “the majority of large-scale spatial variation in long-term rates of relative sea-level rise on the US East Coast is due to geological processes that will persist at similar rates for centuries.”
 
Climate change does not lead to rising sea levels. Trends in sea levels, whichever way they may go, have more to do with geological processes than climate change.
 
And if the study by the seemingly baffled scientists is in any way accurate, then we can clearly see this to be the case. Now, if you were to ask me exactly how it’s happening, then I have no clue. I’m not a geologist by any means. But I do understand enough about the world to know that it’s completely asinine to say that melting ice caps and glaciers, etc. would lead to massive cities getting flooded. Science itself denies that this is at all possible, never mind that shorelines around the world have been in a trend of growth for a number of decades.
 
Between 1985 and 2015, satellite observations showed that coasts all over the world have gained roughly 13,000 km2 more land area than it had lost to the ocean, according to scientists back in 2016. So all over the world, coasts have only gained land, not lost to the ocean.
 
Now just watch as the Left will spin that as “we are warming the planet up so much, we are drying up the oceans”. I wouldn’t put it past them to start claiming such a thing.
 
Psalm 36:3
“The words of his mouth are trouble and deceit; he has ceased to act wisely and do good.”
 
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Author: Freddie Marinelli.