Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Matt Wilicky back on the show for the fifth or
sixth or seventh time or whatever. Matt is the proprietor
of a fantastic substack called Irrational Fear Irrationalfear.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
Dot substack dot com.
Speaker 1 (00:11):
He's a phdgo Chemistry's a former professor at the University
of Alabama, and he is now magically able to make
a living by telling the truth and not having to
be cowed by some you know, woke dean at the
university tell him what he can and can't say.
Speaker 2 (00:28):
And so one of the things you're going to get.
What you get a lot.
Speaker 1 (00:30):
Of at the Irrational Fear substack is actual data about
things that are going on in the world, specifically regarding
climate and things around climate.
Speaker 3 (00:40):
And you will learn things at.
Speaker 1 (00:42):
Matt substack that you just won't hear anywhere else, with
the possible exception of sometimes with our mutual friend Roger Pilka.
Speaker 2 (00:51):
But Matt really just jumps in.
Speaker 1 (00:53):
And I saw a story a couple of days ago
entitled the sea level Story you are not being told.
Speaker 2 (00:59):
And you know, when when.
Speaker 1 (01:00):
You get these climate alarmists, one of the there are
two main things they seem to pound the table on
all the time, right, one of them is sea level
rise and another one being that basically we're we're all
gonna die and we're going to focus on the sea
level for today. So, Matt, what is the sea level
story that we are not being told?
Speaker 3 (01:20):
Hey, Ross, thanks for having me on.
Speaker 4 (01:22):
So you know, we're constantly pounded with the narrative that
global sea levels are rising, they're rising faster and faster
as our anthropogenic CO two emissions are going out, and
this is gonna flood little island nations and coastal cities.
We're gonna have to move New York and so you know,
it spells this doom and gloom. And the way you
kind of introduce my substack is exactly what's happening. Is
(01:44):
the science is nowhere near as settled or even pushing
in the same direction. Yet one side is completely ignored
and one side is amplified in the headlines. CNN ran
a headline just a couple months ago, global sea levels
are rising faster and faster. It spells catastrophe for coastal
towns cities. Well, unfortunately, just last month or just a
couple weeks ago, there was a new paper that came
(02:06):
out that focused on looking at title gauges. So a
lot of these headlines are looking at satellite data, but
really you need a lot more time than that to
identify acceleration.
Speaker 3 (02:16):
There's a lot of natural variability.
Speaker 4 (02:18):
The coastal land mass is moving up and down sometimes,
and so you have to have a long time period.
And so what they did was they looked at title gauges.
We've had title gauges for centuries at a lot of
these coastal cities, and what they found was ninety five
percent of them had no evidence of acceleration. The five
percent that had evidence for both acceleration and deceleration were
(02:38):
clearly attributable to local factors and not some global phenomenon.
And so it's completely the opposite of the headlines. And
this is something that just recently, the climate experts tried
to make a rebuttal for the Department of Energy report
that came out about trying to get rid of the
engangement finding, and they claimed sea levels are rising faster
and faster. They completely omitted this paper. It just came
(03:00):
out a couple of weeks ago. They must have known
about it, they must have read it, and they completely
omitted in their findings, and so it's just the same story.
You hype up the narrative side, you make it sound
more extreme, you ask for more money, and you suppress
all of the data that argues against you.
Speaker 1 (03:17):
Okay, So just as I wildly object to the alarmist
habit of cherry picking data, I want to just test
you on this. How confident are you in the robustness
of the findings of this particular paper and why do
you have that level of whatever level of confidence you have.
Speaker 4 (03:36):
So I have more confidence than I do in the
satellite data. I wrote a piece about this on my substack.
Every time a new satellite went up, they have to
change and tweak the algorithms a little bit. And you
had an inflection point on the acceleration for the sea
level rise each new satellite that went up. That makes
me very That kind of makes my spidy sense go off,
because that seems like too much of a coincidence. So
(03:59):
title gauges our ground set. They don't have any They
don't need any of these corrections like you need with
a satellite going around the Earth and all the altimetry
and all the cloud corrections and things like that. There
are much longer data sets, and so I just have
I put a lot more faith in that. I never
would claim this is a smoking gun or not, but
clearly it's it's arguing very opposite of what the satellite
(04:22):
data is, and this type of data should be included
when we're talking about climate science and the policies that
some of these coastal towns are going to be implementing,
because if you go by what the headlines are telling you,
you've got to start building seawalls and spending all this money.
And if you go by what the title gauges are
telling you, well, it's probably much more manageable than what
they're saying.
Speaker 1 (04:42):
So if I understand your piece right over at irrational
fear dot substack dot com, folks, that's where you want
to go to read this Irrationalfear dot substack dot com.
This paper that you have a fairly high level of
confidence in shows that this sea level, and I want
to word this carefully, appears to be rising based on
(05:04):
the title gauges in some places, but not every place,
and in fact not even most places. So would it
be true as a matter of basic life and correct
me if I said that wrong? But would it be
true as a matter of basic logic that if sea
levels appear to be rising in some places but not
(05:25):
in at least many other places, then it can't be
a global phenomenon.
Speaker 3 (05:30):
Yeah, that's right. So I would word it a little
bit differently.
Speaker 4 (05:33):
They are rising in most places, not every place like Oslo,
Sweden for example, or Oslo, Norway for example. Is it's
dropping there because it's still rebounding from the last glacial cycle,
But it is rising in most places as we come
out of the little ice age. What we're talking about
is is it rising faster and faster? Do we see
an acceleration to the sea level rise?
Speaker 3 (05:51):
It's really slow.
Speaker 4 (05:52):
We're talking about, you know, millimeters, something on the order
of about eight inches in the last one hundred and
fifty years. That's much less than the tidal range just
daily on the coast. So but the argument is that
it's going to be rising faster and faster and faster,
and so pretty soon it's going to be uncontrollable.
Speaker 3 (06:07):
And that's what we're not seeing.
Speaker 4 (06:09):
We're seeing that in ninety five percent of the title
gauges there is no acceleration detectable that's statistically significant, And
in the few places where there is some weird stuff
going on, it's local factors. It's ground motion subsidence. We
see this on the East coast where a lot of
the towns have been built. The land is sinking a
little bit. But you know, the alarmists will attribute that
that's sea level rise. That's not land subsidence, that's sea
(06:31):
level rise.
Speaker 3 (06:31):
No, it's not.
Speaker 4 (06:32):
That's the land sinking because we built giant skyscrapers on.
Speaker 1 (06:35):
Mushy ground, and in some other places you have the
opposite effect. Maybe not so much land rising, but some
of these small Pacific islands where you've got waves pushing
more crushed coral up onto the shore, and so that
actually looks like sea level drop. Like the land mass
is increasing, which might not be identical to sea level dropping,
(06:56):
but land mass is increasing. When they told us, actually
it was going to be subsumed by water and we're
gonna have to move everyone somewhere else.
Speaker 4 (07:03):
The Maldives were the poster child of this, and they
just built a brand new international airport. They have more
land area for more resorts. I remember the Prime Minister
standing in knee deep water saying our island. You know,
we're gonna lose our island, and clearly that has not happened.
If you do, if you just do an analysis of
most global shorelines, there what we call pro grading, meaning
(07:23):
they're moving out towards the sea as opposed to the
sea encroaching in on the land. And that's a lot
to do with human engineering and innovation and things like that.
Speaker 1 (07:32):
Matt Wiloki's great new post at irrational Fear dot substack
dot com is called the Sea level Story You are
not being told. He actually just posted another one today
about the Department of Energy and the so called climate experts.
But you'll have to go read that yourself. Irrationalfear dot
substack dot com. Become a paid subscriber, as I am.
(07:52):
It is well worth a few bucks of your money
every month. You will be smarter and entertained. Matt, thanks
so much for spending time with us. As always, thanks
for us me all right, that is irrational Fear dot
substack dot com.
Speaker 3 (08:04):
We'll be right back
Matt Wilicky back on the show for the fifth or
sixth or seventh time or whatever. Matt is the proprietor
of a fantastic substack called Irrational Fear Irrationalfear.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
Dot substack dot com.
Speaker 1 (00:11):
He's a phdgo Chemistry's a former professor at the University
of Alabama, and he is now magically able to make
a living by telling the truth and not having to
be cowed by some you know, woke dean at the
university tell him what he can and can't say.
Speaker 2 (00:28):
And so one of the things you're going to get.
What you get a lot.
Speaker 1 (00:30):
Of at the Irrational Fear substack is actual data about
things that are going on in the world, specifically regarding
climate and things around climate.
Speaker 3 (00:40):
And you will learn things at.
Speaker 1 (00:42):
Matt substack that you just won't hear anywhere else, with
the possible exception of sometimes with our mutual friend Roger Pilka.
Speaker 2 (00:51):
But Matt really just jumps in.
Speaker 1 (00:53):
And I saw a story a couple of days ago
entitled the sea level Story you are not being told.
Speaker 2 (00:59):
And you know, when when.
Speaker 1 (01:00):
You get these climate alarmists, one of the there are
two main things they seem to pound the table on
all the time, right, one of them is sea level
rise and another one being that basically we're we're all
gonna die and we're going to focus on the sea
level for today. So, Matt, what is the sea level
story that we are not being told?
Speaker 3 (01:20):
Hey, Ross, thanks for having me on.
Speaker 4 (01:22):
So you know, we're constantly pounded with the narrative that
global sea levels are rising, they're rising faster and faster
as our anthropogenic CO two emissions are going out, and
this is gonna flood little island nations and coastal cities.
We're gonna have to move New York and so you know,
it spells this doom and gloom. And the way you
kind of introduce my substack is exactly what's happening. Is
(01:44):
the science is nowhere near as settled or even pushing
in the same direction. Yet one side is completely ignored
and one side is amplified in the headlines. CNN ran
a headline just a couple months ago, global sea levels
are rising faster and faster. It spells catastrophe for coastal
towns cities. Well, unfortunately, just last month or just a
couple weeks ago, there was a new paper that came
(02:06):
out that focused on looking at title gauges. So a
lot of these headlines are looking at satellite data, but
really you need a lot more time than that to
identify acceleration.
Speaker 3 (02:16):
There's a lot of natural variability.
Speaker 4 (02:18):
The coastal land mass is moving up and down sometimes,
and so you have to have a long time period.
And so what they did was they looked at title gauges.
We've had title gauges for centuries at a lot of
these coastal cities, and what they found was ninety five
percent of them had no evidence of acceleration. The five
percent that had evidence for both acceleration and deceleration were
(02:38):
clearly attributable to local factors and not some global phenomenon.
And so it's completely the opposite of the headlines. And
this is something that just recently, the climate experts tried
to make a rebuttal for the Department of Energy report
that came out about trying to get rid of the
engangement finding, and they claimed sea levels are rising faster
and faster. They completely omitted this paper. It just came
(03:00):
out a couple of weeks ago. They must have known
about it, they must have read it, and they completely
omitted in their findings, and so it's just the same story.
You hype up the narrative side, you make it sound
more extreme, you ask for more money, and you suppress
all of the data that argues against you.
Speaker 1 (03:17):
Okay, So just as I wildly object to the alarmist
habit of cherry picking data, I want to just test
you on this. How confident are you in the robustness
of the findings of this particular paper and why do
you have that level of whatever level of confidence you have.
Speaker 4 (03:36):
So I have more confidence than I do in the
satellite data. I wrote a piece about this on my substack.
Every time a new satellite went up, they have to
change and tweak the algorithms a little bit. And you
had an inflection point on the acceleration for the sea
level rise each new satellite that went up. That makes
me very That kind of makes my spidy sense go off,
because that seems like too much of a coincidence. So
(03:59):
title gauges our ground set. They don't have any They
don't need any of these corrections like you need with
a satellite going around the Earth and all the altimetry
and all the cloud corrections and things like that. There
are much longer data sets, and so I just have
I put a lot more faith in that. I never
would claim this is a smoking gun or not, but
clearly it's it's arguing very opposite of what the satellite
(04:22):
data is, and this type of data should be included
when we're talking about climate science and the policies that
some of these coastal towns are going to be implementing,
because if you go by what the headlines are telling you,
you've got to start building seawalls and spending all this money.
And if you go by what the title gauges are
telling you, well, it's probably much more manageable than what
they're saying.
Speaker 1 (04:42):
So if I understand your piece right over at irrational
fear dot substack dot com, folks, that's where you want
to go to read this Irrationalfear dot substack dot com.
This paper that you have a fairly high level of
confidence in shows that this sea level, and I want
to word this carefully, appears to be rising based on
(05:04):
the title gauges in some places, but not every place,
and in fact not even most places. So would it
be true as a matter of basic life and correct
me if I said that wrong? But would it be
true as a matter of basic logic that if sea
levels appear to be rising in some places but not
(05:25):
in at least many other places, then it can't be
a global phenomenon.
Speaker 3 (05:30):
Yeah, that's right. So I would word it a little
bit differently.
Speaker 4 (05:33):
They are rising in most places, not every place like Oslo,
Sweden for example, or Oslo, Norway for example. Is it's
dropping there because it's still rebounding from the last glacial cycle,
But it is rising in most places as we come
out of the little ice age. What we're talking about
is is it rising faster and faster? Do we see
an acceleration to the sea level rise?
Speaker 3 (05:51):
It's really slow.
Speaker 4 (05:52):
We're talking about, you know, millimeters, something on the order
of about eight inches in the last one hundred and
fifty years. That's much less than the tidal range just
daily on the coast. So but the argument is that
it's going to be rising faster and faster and faster,
and so pretty soon it's going to be uncontrollable.
Speaker 3 (06:07):
And that's what we're not seeing.
Speaker 4 (06:09):
We're seeing that in ninety five percent of the title
gauges there is no acceleration detectable that's statistically significant, And
in the few places where there is some weird stuff
going on, it's local factors. It's ground motion subsidence. We
see this on the East coast where a lot of
the towns have been built. The land is sinking a
little bit. But you know, the alarmists will attribute that
that's sea level rise. That's not land subsidence, that's sea
(06:31):
level rise.
Speaker 3 (06:31):
No, it's not.
Speaker 4 (06:32):
That's the land sinking because we built giant skyscrapers on.
Speaker 1 (06:35):
Mushy ground, and in some other places you have the
opposite effect. Maybe not so much land rising, but some
of these small Pacific islands where you've got waves pushing
more crushed coral up onto the shore, and so that
actually looks like sea level drop. Like the land mass
is increasing, which might not be identical to sea level dropping,
(06:56):
but land mass is increasing. When they told us, actually
it was going to be subsumed by water and we're
gonna have to move everyone somewhere else.
Speaker 4 (07:03):
The Maldives were the poster child of this, and they
just built a brand new international airport. They have more
land area for more resorts. I remember the Prime Minister
standing in knee deep water saying our island. You know,
we're gonna lose our island, and clearly that has not happened.
If you do, if you just do an analysis of
most global shorelines, there what we call pro grading, meaning
(07:23):
they're moving out towards the sea as opposed to the
sea encroaching in on the land. And that's a lot
to do with human engineering and innovation and things like that.
Speaker 1 (07:32):
Matt Wiloki's great new post at irrational Fear dot substack
dot com is called the Sea level Story You are
not being told. He actually just posted another one today
about the Department of Energy and the so called climate experts.
But you'll have to go read that yourself. Irrationalfear dot
substack dot com. Become a paid subscriber, as I am.
(07:52):
It is well worth a few bucks of your money
every month. You will be smarter and entertained. Matt, thanks
so much for spending time with us. As always, thanks
for us me all right, that is irrational Fear dot
substack dot com.
Speaker 3 (08:04):
We'll be right back
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