Tasmania’s Littoral Doom

The Climate Commission, the Government’s mystagogic office for the propagation of the faith in Global Warmism, has released its latest mendaciously misleading, and ill written report, The Critical Decade: Tasmanian Impacts and Opportunities:

Tasmania is particularly vulnerable to sea-level rise because most Tasmanians live close to the coast.  For instance, in some places a 50 cm sea-level rise could [could!] result in a present 1-in-100 year event becoming an annual or more frequent event by the end of the century. [p. 2]

Global average sea level has risen by about 20 cm since the late 1800s, and at an increasing rate since the early 1990s.  Sea levels have also risen around Tasmania, although at a slightly slower rate than the global average.  Over the next century, global sea levels are projected to increase by at least 0.5 m and perhaps [perhaps!] by as much as 1.1 m.
Tasmanian communities are vulnerable to the impacts of sea-level rise because 75% of the population lives in coastal areas (DCC, 2009).  An estimated 8,700–11,600 houses, with a value of up to $3.3 billion, may be at risk of flooding towards the end of this century [...], assuming a sea level rise of 1.1 m which is at the higher end of projections (DCC, 2009).
The impacts of sea-level rise are felt most acutely during severe storm events.  Even small rises in sea-level lead to very large increases in the frequency of coastal flooding when combined with a storm surge and high tide [what, just the one surge and high tide?].  In some locations in Tasmania, a half metre sea-level rise would [would?] result in a present 1-in-100 year event becoming an annual or more frequent event by the end of the century (Church, 2008; Hunter 2011).  [p. 4]

The cover’s image: giant whirligigs obliterate all of Tasmania’s islands.

It is true that many Tasmanians “live close to the coast”, and I am one of them—the beach, for me, is only a stone’s throw away, littorally—; but my dwelling is several metres above sea-level so, though I am part of the “75% of the population [which] lives in coastal areas”, I will surely be quite safe.  In fact, even if the oceans did rise by half a metre, and even if governments neglected to undertake simple, prudent measures such as building seawalls, the majority of Tasmanians would be safe because, though the commission avoids mentioning the fact, most Tasmanians who live near the sea also live well above sea-level.

The projections of any rise of sea-level are based on an incorrect assumption—from either incompetent or willful ignorance of the latest research—that the slight, modern rise of sea-levels will continue; however, as Stuart Rintoul revealed last year, despite our Government’s hyperbolic claims, such rises are decelerating:

Mr [Phil] Watson’s analysis of the four longest continuous Australian and New Zealand records is consistent with the findings of US researchers Robert Dean and James Houston, who analysed monthly averaged records for 57 tide gauges, covering periods of 60 to 156 years.

The US research concluded there was “no evidence to support positive acceleration over the 20th century as suggested by the IPCC, global climate change models and some researchers”. 

Houston and Dean demonstrate that “the current sea-level trend of about 1.7 mm/y will produce a rise of about [19 cm] over 110 years from 1990 to 2100.”  For aught we know, of course, sea-levels may yet descend just as average global temperatures may decline in future decades.

The commissioner of the Climate Commission, the very silly Prof. Tim Flannery foresaw that currently flooded areas would never again see rain but our Earth would soon be revealed to be a living, physical manifestation of Gaia, an earth-mother goddess of the Ancient Greeks.  The inept Climate Commission’s ridiculously contrived, pseudo-scientific report on the conjectured effect of supposed global warming on Tasmania has even less value than its fatheaded commissioner’s far-fetched and hysterical prognostications.