8-30-25 The Weekend Hour 3: What Sea Level Rise?

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
The night Michael Brown joins me here the former FEMA
director talk show host Michael Brown. Brownie, no, Brownie, You're
doing a heck of a job. The Weekend with Michael
Brown broadcasting life in Denver, Colorado on Labor Day weekend
is the Weekend with Michael Brown. Glad to have you
joined the program today. Text lines open as it always is.
They don't take a vacation. The number on your message
app is three three one zero three three three one

(00:23):
zero three. Key word is Michael and Michael. Tell me anything,
ask me anything, Do me a favor. Go follow me
over on x formerly Twitter at Michael Brown Usa. We
have a lot of fun over there. It's kind of always,
kind of interesting, and I have a lot of interesting
followers that I'll repost and I think you'll enjoy what
a lot of them have to say. Let's get started.
If if you've been following like I do, the climate

(00:45):
conversation for any length of time, you know, let me
just say this plaguely, what step further? Why do I
follow the climate conversation so closely? Because it's not about
the climate. Those congregants in the Church of the climate
activists are don't get me wrong. There are some true believers,

(01:09):
and those true believers have their deity, Their god is
this planet, and if they had their way, they would
eliminate humankind. I think they have to eliminate animals too,
so that, you know, the earth could just flourish as
it was, you know, as they believe it was naturally intended,
which I always find kind of interesting because theologically I

(01:30):
thought we had dominion over the animals and the land
and the seas and all of that. But I digress.
I follow it closely because the climate conversation is not
about the climate. It's about taking away individual liberties and
individual freedoms. It's about someone else, the Marxist in government,

(01:53):
the Marxists in the NGOs, the Marxists in all of
these charitable foundations and private foundations, who believe that they
know better than you how you ought to live your life.
So they want to influence or control, and I think
control is the better word. What you eat, how you live,

(02:14):
how you drive, how you get from one point to another,
how you protect yourself, how you close yourself, everything that
we do. They want to control that, and it is
about control. That's why I follow it so closely and
That's why I talk about it so much, because it's
so easy if you don't stop and think critically about

(02:35):
the arguments that they make in favor of more control,
disguised as trying to save the planet, trying to stop
you know, you know, think about just the phrase we've
got to get to net zero by twenty thirty, meaning
we've got to reduce the amount of CO two carbon

(02:57):
dioxide in the atmosphere so that it's a that zero
increase by twenty third. Why do you ever stop to
ask why? Particularly when the concentration of CO two based
on parts per million is less today than it was
centuries before, prior to the Industrial Revolution. So does that

(03:21):
mean that there is no effect on the climate. No,
But if you analyze it on a cost benefit of analysis,
there's absolutely no reason to be concerned about it. One
of the concerns that they keep pushing is about sea
level rise. And I thought about that this week because
in several of the documentaries memorializing the twentieth anniversary of

(03:45):
Hurricane Katrina, there was a couple of professors talking about, how,
you know, the repair of the levies is again inadequate
because of sea level rise. Data shows a shocking acceleration
and sea level rise, which validates climate predictions, improves that

(04:09):
human activity is driving global change. Right, Well, that's the claim.
You've seen the headlines headlines like satellite data reveals shocking
acceleration the sea level rise what I just said, or
global sea levels are rising faster and faster. That's designed

(04:30):
to do several things. First, remove any doubt because well
as most people do, because most people suffer from adhd
they read the headline. It's in the news, so therefore
it must be true. They never get into the details,
and even if they got into the details, they never
critically analyze the details, so they just accept that it's true.

(04:53):
But there's something crucial missing from those headlines. How do
we measure sea level? Have you ever even thought about that?
We measure sea level based on tide gauges. Tide gauges
are instruments. They're bolted to coastal shorelines that measure the

(05:15):
water where people actually live. It is the oldest and
most direct record of local sea level. Well, there's a
new peer reviewed paper that compares local projections with local
observations and tests for acceleration at sites all around the world.

(05:36):
The authors of this peer reviewed study find that about
ninety five percent of suitable tide gauge records show listen
closely know statistically significant acceleration in the rate of sea
level rise. Now, there are a few sites that do
show acceleration, and that's possibly explained by local non climate

(06:01):
factors like land movement. You know the Earth moves, right,
let me rephrase that. You know that land masses move, right,
I mean, of course we know the Earth moves, but
land shifts moves. You have erosion, you have dirt that moves.

(06:21):
You have mountains that Oh you think the mountains don't move, Yes,
they shift. Well, the few sites that do show acceleration
are explained by land motion, so that on average, the
projections that are used for design are biased high biased

(06:44):
in favor of high levels by about two millimeters per
year compared with what the gauges themselves actually record. This
whole use of projections and modeling is really great for weather.
You can you know we look at weather forecasters. Now

(07:07):
we know that weather forecasters are the weather forecast from
my home last night and in fact, my automatic sprinkler
system sent me a notification we were not going to
water your yard. This morning. That was last night because
rain is expected, and I looked on the local weather

(07:29):
app and sure enough, there were thunderstorms building to my west,
and it showed somewhere between seven and nine o'clock last night,
I could have gotten about a quarter of inentchure rain.
Guess what happened. It didn't rain. Weather forecast was wrong.
Then I get to notice this morning that, oh, because
of a change in the weather, your sprinkler system did

(07:50):
come on this morning at four o'clock or whenever it
came on. Weather forecasts are invariably based upon all the
models that they look at, and then they use their
expertise and their experience to look at the models and
project what they think the forecast is going to do.
And while some are pretty good at it, they're not

(08:12):
always perfect. That single result should matter to anybody that
cares about sound, risk and honest planning. It also sits
very awkwardly next to the most amplified satellite analysis about
sea level rise. There is a widely ciited satellite study

(08:32):
that claims that the global rate has more than doubled
since the early nineteen nineties and projects about one hundred
and sixty nine millimeters more increase by the middle of
the century, if big if that trajectory continues from nature
yet to nature. You can find the article the rate

(08:52):
of global sea rise level doubled during the past three decades.
You can read the abstract. Recent commentary argues that because
acceleration in the satellite era is firmly established, the early
IPCC projection track from the mid nineteenth century was remarkably close,

(09:13):
they claim, and should inspire confidence in model based projections. Well,
those are huge claims, so you would think that an
inquiring mind would say, maybe we ought to carefully look
at that, especially when the instruments on the coast, the
ones where we actually make the observations, don't show that.

(09:39):
What did the gauges measure? These tide gauges. Have you
ever thought about what they measure? I had not. I
just you know, it's a tide gauge, so it just measures,
you know, where, on any particular morning or evening, when
the tide comes in or tide goes out, it just
measures that level. Well, a tie gauge is kind of

(10:05):
described as a long running horizontal ruler for the sea
at a very specific location. It'll tell you how the
water level at that pier or that harbor has changed
over time. Tie gauges are actually affected by vertical land motion,

(10:25):
and that's why technicians correct for sinking or rising ground
when they want to separate the ocean signal from the
local geology. So imagine that. So the tie gauge is
a rod and it's sitting out here on you know,
bolted into the ocean to this ocean floor, and over

(10:48):
here is another rod that is bolted onto land, and
the surveyor's level measures that change. Well, as the tide
comes in and out, that rod will go up and down.
But what they don't and fail to account for, is
as the dirt as the surface moves over here on land,

(11:11):
that surveyor's level where there's another rod is often ignored.
And there's where you get the discrepancy. It's the Weekend
with Michael Brown. Happy Labor Day weekend. Text line as
usual is always open. I'll swain more next. Welcome back

(11:32):
to the Weekend with Michael Brown. Glad to have you
with me. We're talking about sea level change and there's
a new article out a Global Perspective on local sea
level changes, and it piqued my curiosity. Earlier in the
week because of having watched one of the Katrina documentaries
where a professor from a retired professor from LSU talks

(11:57):
about how the current the new levies built in New
Orleans are going to once again fail because of climate
change and specifically because of the rise and sea level.
And I hadn't looked at sea level rise in a
long time. It's not one of my hot topics, but
it has to do with climate change, which is one

(12:18):
of my hot hot topics. So I started digging through
all of you know, I go on Lexus and nexas
and look for the you know, what's the latest news
about sea level rise? And there is this story or story.
It's actually a study submitted last June, this past June,
about a global perspective on local sea level changes. So

(12:39):
I read through it and then I talked to a
friend about it to help me understand exactly how this works.
So they start with a basic promise or premise that
I think we at all agree with. If you want
to know whether the rise the sea level rise at
a particular place is speeding up, you need a long

(13:00):
and consistent record for that particular location. So the authors
of this study picked gauges that had decades of measurements
that run close to what the present is, and then
they rebuilt the yearly values from the hourly recordings that
they took at those sites so that the shape of
the local tide didn't fool the math. So it's like

(13:26):
taking your daily heart rate and averaging it into a
calmer monthly signal. Before you start looking for a trend line.
You know how I feel about trend lines. A trend
line is as you draw that straight line from point
A to point B, you know that he goes up
and down. As the trend line either continues steadily upward

(13:49):
or steadily downward, you always have that noise of it
going up and down. But when you step away from
the noise and look at from going from point A
to point B, does does it go up forty five
degrees or thirty degrees or whatever, or does it go
down forty five degrees or even more so, To test
for the acceleration in sea level rise, they compare two

(14:13):
pictures of the same record. The first picture was that
straight line which I talked about, which is which says
the rise is steady. But the second picture, where you
start taking into account all of the noise or the
you know, the the zigs and zags up and down.
You get a more gentle curve which would show a
speed up, but a slower speed up. But then they

(14:36):
ask a guest or no question. Does the curved picture
that they get explain the history clear clearly better than
the straight one once you account for the normal ups
and downs that obviously exists when you're trying to find
a trend line. That's what statisticians call a significance test.
In Layman's terms, it means the curve only wins if

(15:00):
improvement or the change in the trend line is big
enough that chance is an unlikely explanation. Well, in most
places where they did this, the straight line one. Now,
a few sites showed a curve that looked real, but
when you actually look into those you find a local reason.

(15:20):
Because some harbors, you think about any harbor around the country,
some are slowly sinking because of groundwater pumping. You know,
you're pumping groundwater out and so the sea level bed
begins to sink as that dirt slowly moves in and

(15:41):
the sea level drops. Or you have soft sediment that
begins to build up and as it builds up that
will change the surface of the water. Right, So some
stations changed instruments or they moved them around a few meters,
and that can create a change, and then you have
natural swings. The North Atlantic oscillation can tilt the water

(16:05):
for a while and then it might relax. But none
of that is proof that the whole ocean suddenly shifted gears.
This is why the headline result matters. When you ask
the most direct question with the most direct data, the
answer at almost every suitable gauge is that a speed

(16:26):
up is not present, and those are the reasons why.
But nobody ever digs into that, even the scientists, because unfortunately,
I think science has been bastardized in our age. It's
like detectives. We've identified the suspect. Now let's go search

(16:48):
for the evidence to prove that that our suspect is
the guy. So now you've got your blinders on, and
now you refuse to look at evidence that's clearly in
plain sight, but you can't see it because of the
blood such as, oh wait a minute, let's stop and
realize that this harbor may be different because there's a
lot of groundwater pumping going on. Just you know, five

(17:10):
miles from the shore, and so that's causing the seafloor
to drop or another place. Use it's rising because the
sea level floor is increasing rising because of sediment settlement.
But when you don't take that into consideration, you realize that, oh,
when you do take it in consideration, the speed up

(17:34):
is not clearly present. So can we just stop the
fear mongering about sea level rise. Please, let's stop the
hyperbole in the fear mongering. It's the Weekend with Michael Brown.
Happy Labor Day weekend. Hangtight, text lines open. I'll be
right back tonight. Michael Brown joins me here, the former

(17:57):
FEMA director talk show host Michael Brown. Now, Browny, you're
doing a heck of a jumb The Weekend with Michael Brown. Hey,
welcome back to the Weekend with Michael Brown. Glad to
have you with me. Happy Labor Day weekend. I hope
everybody has a great and a safe Labor Day weekend.
The text line, as usual is always open three three
one zero three keyword Mike ro Michael please go follow

(18:17):
me on X and all the other social media on
exits at Michael Brown USA. So let's go from one
of my bugaboos. Climate change to another of my bugaboos,
and that's the constitutional authority of the president and the
constitutional authority of the Congress to appropriate and spend the
money that they forcunately take from us as taxes. There's

(18:41):
something that in nineteen seventy four, in the wake of Watergate,
that Congress enacted called the Impoundment Control Act of nineteen
seventy four. It sounds like a budget statue, but it's
actually a constitutional anomaly that you know, we tend to

(19:02):
flex the constitution based upon which I think is wrong,
but nonetheless we do it and historically have done it
based upon whatever the political you know, popularity, popular issue
is of the day. This Act, as I said, enacted
in light of Watergate, the Impoundment Control Act, was a

(19:26):
reactionary attempt to try to rain in Richard Nixon because
Nixon was refusing to spend some money. But when they
did it, I would argue that it stripped the presidency
of an authority that had been exercised by nearly ever
president before him. You go back to the early days

(19:47):
of this Republic, Thomas Jefferson refused to build what he
thought were unnecessary gunboats all the way up to Eisenhower's
deferrals aimed at trying to impose f discipline. Now, I
love the story about Eisenhower because that goes back to
nineteen fifty four, the pretty much getting close to the

(20:11):
middle to the end of the Baby boomers. That's how
long this has been going on, this fight back and forth.
The point being that all of these presidents understood that
under Article two are the powers granted to the executive branch,
that they could do what they needed to do to
safeguard the treasury, to safeguard the tax money that they collect. Now,

(20:37):
I want you to think about this for a moment.
I want you to think about the practicality of how
taxes are collected. It's done by the irs, right, which
is an executive branch function. So they gather the money.
It's kind of like, you know, they're the they passed
the collection plate that gunpoint in this country, and then

(21:01):
that money goes into the US Treasury. The Treasury tells
Congress how much money there is. Congress then decides, oh,
we've got a million dollars. That's great, thank you for
telling us. We're spending five million dollars. Congress authorizes and
appropriates the spending that's under their authority. So for almost

(21:24):
two centuries, for two hundred years, impoundment was an accepted practice.
It was a means for the executive to prevent the
runaway spending when the executive believed that Congress was overreaching.
And then boom comes along nineteen seventy four, and Congress

(21:45):
had a lot of overconfidence because they had a president
on his knees, they had a president backed into a corner.
They had a president that they had the votes to impeach.
So that was a good time to obliterate this time
honored check and balance on government spending. On August twenty eight,

(22:11):
two days ago, the President sent a letter to President
Trump sent this letter to the Speaker of the House
in accordance with Section ten twelve A of the Congressional
Budget and Empowerment Control Act of nineteen seventy four. By
the way, footnote, if you want to go see this act,
it's at two United States Code, section six eight nine.

(22:33):
If you want to go google or being of that
and read it. In accordance with Section ten or ten
twelve A of the Congressional Budget and Empowerment Control Act
of nineteen seventy four. I herewith Report fifteen recisions of
budget authority, totally four point nine billion dollars. The proposed
recisions affect programs of the Department of State, as well

(22:55):
as the United States Agency for International Development and International
Assistance programs. The details of these recisions are set forth
in the attached enclosure, and there's an enclosure attached to
the letter. So the President is basically saying, under this Act,
I'm going to not spend this money. I'm precision, I'm

(23:18):
cutting it out of the budget. The Empowerment Control Act
rests on the claim that Congress has absolute supremacy over spending,
so it forces the president to spend every time that
they appropriate, no matter how wasteful, no matter how obsolete,
no matter how absurd. It is the executive which is
charged with administering the laws, the one who collected the

(23:41):
money in the first place. The Congress now says, we
don't care what you have to spend every dime. Well,
in doing so, that severs the executive branch from the
president's role is the guardian of the laws, including a
duty not to squander our tax money. I don't think

(24:02):
that's how the Framers design the separation of powers, because
the Constitution gives Congress the power to appropriate, but it
tells the president to faithfully execute. I don't think that
faithfully executing means blind execution. I don't think that faithfully
executing the laws means that you just blindly do whatever

(24:23):
Congress says. It means you must use some judgment, discretion,
and when necessary, some restraint. Senator Mike Lee, who was
probably one of the foremost constitutional experts in the in
the Congress, in both the House and the Senate, I
think he's right when he calls the Empowerment Control Act

(24:44):
a Watergate era, a relic of misguided overreach, because he
claims there was not born of constitutional fidelity but out
of panic, and the result has been a half century
of ballooning deficits and without any effort or ability of
the executive to check out of control spending. Trump's recent

(25:05):
recision efforts I think exposed the futility and the urgency
to get this thing repealed. In July, just last month,
the Trump administration successfully clawed back about nine billion dollars
in spending through this formal recision process. That was historic,

(25:28):
absolutely historic. That was the first enacted recision package in decades.
Yet even here Trump was forced to play by Congress's rules,
with the Senate stripping out cuts to certain programs despite
the White House's objections. The process showed that whils recision
can be used, it is cumbersome, and it is deferential

(25:52):
to a legislation. This is absolutely addicted to spending. So
the Empowerment Control Act ensures that the president can only
win when Congress secedes and allows him to win, not
through his own constitutional authority. It's in that context that

(26:12):
Trump's precision this month, so called pocket recision, ought to
be understood. Here's what he did by withholding four point
nine billion dollars and four in aid funds at the
close of the fiscal year. We're coming up on the
end of the physical year. Trump revealed that the only

(26:32):
way left for presidents to exert any real physical discipline
under the ICA the Impoundment Control Act is by just
saying I'm going to pucket that money, keep it in
the treasury, and not spend it. Now, that starts a
forty five day review period for Congress to consider that

(26:54):
recision request. But if the clock runs out at the
end of the fiscal year, the fund's lap and the
funds don't get spent. Do you know who last did that,
or who, I should say last attempted to do that,
Jimmy Carter. And the last attempt by Jimmy Carter, I

(27:14):
think is entirely legal under the Empowerment Control Act. But
I think it's actually larger than that. It's a direct
challenge to the very logic of the Empowerment Control Act,
a demonstration that the presidency cannot and should not be
reduced to the role of just a bookkeeper. Oh, you
tell me to spend this, Okay, I'll just go do it.

(27:34):
And by timing his recision at the end of the
fiscal year, Trump's forcing the issue. And I think that's
one of the things that Trump's best at, forcing the
issue and challenging the very logic that the presidency must
not be reduced to that role of a bookkeeper. Does

(27:56):
the constitutional structure demand or allow or permit? I don't
care which way you want to look at it, But
doesn't the executive have some authority to guard against waste? Now?
Critics claim that this is a lawless gimmick. Of course
they do, because they think that everything that Trump does

(28:17):
is lawless, and the Government Accountability Office, which is never
shy about sighting on that they're always in the side
of Congress, has long insisted these kind of maneuvers defeat
the statute's purpose. But I think that's the point. The
statute's purpose is to suffocate presidential discretion completely. Do we

(28:38):
want him to have discretion or not? It's the Weekend
with Michael Brown. Text lines always open, three to three
wins evil three keyword Micha or Michael follow me on
ex at Michael Brown USA. Let's think about whether the
president should have that discretion or not. Next. Hey, welcome

(29:01):
back to the Weekend with Michael Brown. Glad to have
you with me. I know it's Labor Day weekend and
you've taken time out to listen to the program, and
I really appreciate it. Whether you're listening to it live,
an affiliate that delays it and plays it the next day,
are you listening on the podcast, whatever, I just appreciate
the fact that all of you come together and listen
on Saturday when we do this program, and I want you.

(29:22):
I'll never take you for granted. I will never do that.
So have a great Labor Day weekend. Be safe and
enjoy it, and then on Tuesday, get your butts back
to work. Although I'm not I'm gonna take some vacation now.
The critics of a pocket recision where a president just
announces to Congress that I'm not going to spend this money,

(29:46):
the critics say that's a lawless gimmick, and the Government
Accountability Office has consistently said that doing that defeats the
purpose of the statute. But I would argue that's precise.
See the point the statute's purpose is to take away
the president's discretion. So if the purpose of the Empowerment

(30:09):
Control Act is unconstitutional, then defeating it is not subversion.
It's actually restoring the president's authority to not spend money
when he thinks it's wasteful, like virtually every president in
the history of this country has done, except for the
past couple of decades. I think since Jimmy Carter, I

(30:31):
don't know that I should have thought about this before
I was going to say it, But I don't think.
I think Jimmy Carter was the last person who attempted
to do it. The Supreme Court has never ruled squarely
on the core provisions of this law. It has struck
down the line item veto, saying that's inconsistent with the

(30:54):
presentment clause, but it has not addressed whether the Empowerment
Control Act is in whether in permissively infringes on the
President's powers under Article two. So this Pocket decision may
be the case that forces the Court to finally decide
that the principal case against the Empowerment Control Act is

(31:18):
pretty simple, and I describe it this way. For nearly
two centuries, impoundment, not spending the money was recognized as
a core element of the executive function under Article two.
The framers expected Congress to authorize funds, but they also

(31:40):
expected the President to exercise judgment in the execution of
those spending of those funds. So if that means refusing
or declining to pour money into programs that have been
shown or in the President's opinion, are wasteful or harmful
because of changing circumstances, and sobeit to deny the president discretion,

(32:04):
I think can you can make a legitimate argument that
denies the president's constitutional role because the Empoundment Control Act
makes Congress not just the holder of the purse of
the purse holding all of our tax dollars, but the
spender of last resort. And I don't think that's a

(32:24):
power that the Constitution grants the Congress. And if you
want the practical effect of that, just look at the
growth in the federal debt since nineteen seventy four. That
underscores what happens when Congress's will for spending becomes absolute.
And it's not, I mean it's virtually not Virtually it

(32:46):
is unchecked, and it has been unchecked since nineteen seventy four,
and we've had this explosion in spending and a president
other than Carter who tried hasn't done anything. So it
seems that you can make an argument that restoring impoundment
power is not an affront to democracy. It's actually returning

(33:11):
equilibrium between the two. Remember, everything in this Constitution is
balanced for every ying. There's a yang for this, there's
a that it's perfect. Other than the seventeenth Amendment, which
changed the structure of the Senate, everything was imperfect equilibrium.

(33:32):
It was amazing and symmetrical. It was amazing how the
Founding Fathers were able to do that. Were they as
precise as I would like to have for them to
have been in their wording, probably not, but considering the
verbiage and the language and the way they spoke in
those days, and taking the plain meaning of that language today,

(33:53):
in other words, looking at originalism and looking at textualism. Yes,
the Founding father gave the power to spend to the Congress,
but they gave the executive the authority to faithfully see
or to see that the laws are faithfully executed. So

(34:13):
if faithfully execution means hey, guys, you you authorize one
hundred billion dollars for a program that we now know
is outdated, or it's ineffectual, or it's wasteful, I'm going
to rescind that spending and then we can have the

(34:36):
debate over that. You see, there's always an equitable remedy.
To use lawyer's terms, that if the Congress doesn't like
what the president's doing, then let the Congress vote and
override the president. Perfect ying and yang. But there will

(34:57):
be those that, since you know that, continued to insist
that since Congress can cancel spending, that only Congress can
cancel spending. And appropriations are law, and they are to
an extent because when Congress passes an authorization and an

(35:17):
appropriation bill that's a law. The laws must be executed.
An execution of the laws has always entailed discretion. Otherwise
the president just becomes a clerk. Oh, I'm just you know,
I got a green eye shade on and I'm just
doing what you tell me to do. No, he's actually
a coequal branch and he's charged with ensuring that governments

(35:40):
act in the public interest. So when Congress appropriates recklessly,
the president I think has a duty to resist. I
know that makes many people uncomfortable, and it makes people
uncomfortable because it means that, Oh, is he trying to
be a king? Is he trying to be a dictator? No,

(36:00):
he's trying to make sure that spending is appropriate. And
if Congress doesn't like it, the method is then vote
on it, look at what he did with the recision,
and then take another vote and go on record. See
Congress wants to never go on record unless they absolutely
have to. Why because voters might start holding them accountable.

(36:26):
Wouldn't that be a welcome change. I'd love to see that.
Thanks for tuning in. Appreciate you listening to the Weekend
with Michael Brown. Have a great Labor Day weekend, and
guess what talk to you next weekend.