The media are sheep – any thoughts on that?

Guest post by Willis Eschenbach

In typical alarmist fashion, the Seattle Times published an article describing how dire “rising sea levels” are forcing the Quinault Nation to relocate their main town, Tahola.

Seeing this, I decided to review what was said about Taholah. A Google search for “Taholah sea level rise” found more than 80 media outlets claiming that “sea level rise” is threatening Taholah. A search for “Tahoula climate change” will reveal more. A Bing search for “Taholah” and “Rising oceans” yields no fewer than 1,830 articles. They all sing the same hymn about seawater invading towns and raving that rising sea levels are the cause…but None of them took the time to investigate the facts.

Here's an overview of Tahola's location, located on the Olympic Peninsula near the Canadian border and as far north as Seattle.

Figure 1. Overview of the location of Taholah, the main town of the Quinault Nation

Let me start with an important question. Do the good people of the Quinault Nation need to relocate their largest town?

Yes, they absolutely do, but Not because of climate change or rising sea levels.

What is the real reason they need to move? because when, not if, but when the next tsunami comes, they will disappear from the map. Most of the town is less than sixteen feet (five meters) above sea level.

Oddly enough, the geological forces that cause tsunamis also mean that sea levels don't even rise in Tahora…I'll come back to this topic later. First, let’s take a closer look at tsunamis.

Geological evidence shows that the Cascadia Subduction Zone (CSZ), which stretches from Northern California to Vancouver Island in Canada, generates large tsunamis that threaten the coasts of Washington, Oregon, British Columbia, and Northern California on average every four to five hundred years. . It's been a while since the last major event in 1700… we're about to expire. that's why i say when The tsunami is coming instead if The tsunami is coming. This is inevitable. A NOAA article on the subject said:

“More than 300 years have passed since the event of 1700. At this time, the pressure between the plates is increasing. There is evidence that it may not be long before the next major earthquake shakes the region.

We don't know when that will happen. It could be tomorrow, or it could be many years from now.

It could be a “complete tear” with a magnitude of 9.0 or a partial rupture (magnitude 8+). Both can have a significant impact.

In my opinion, this is a good enough reason to move Taholah to higher terrain, no more excuses needed…

So what is the connection between tsunamis and sea levels? Well, the CSZ is where the Juan de Fuca, Explorer, and Gorda plates subduct beneath the North American Plate. The collision of tectonic plates causes earthquakes, which cause these massive tsunamis.

In the ongoing slow collision between the plates, the North American plate is constantly being forced to move upward fast enough that in some coastal areas of the Pacific Northwest, sea levels are actually falling. Below are local NOAA tide stations. The blue arrow shows where sea level fell.

Figure 2. The closest NOAA tide station to the Quinault Nation town of Taholah.

Note that of the three monitoring stations on the coast closest to Tahola, two of them show sea level fall and one shows sea level rise…this is the sea level rise at the first monitoring station south of Tahola.

Figure 3. NOAA sea level trends, Point Tok, Washington.

Now, there's something interesting about this record. The uncertainty (± 0.71 mm/year) is larger than the trend (0.43 mm/year). When this happens, statistically we can't even tell whether sea levels are rising or falling – it could be one or the other.

Next, here's the sea level drop in Astoria, Oregon, the next tidal station south of Tok Point.

Figure 4. NOAA sea level trends, Astoria, Oregon.

Although this record is much longer than the Toke Point record above, it also illustrates the same thing – uncertainty is greater than trend. So again, statistically we cannot tell whether sea levels in Astoria are rising or falling.

However, we can say that it is extremely unlikely (about 2.5% chance) that sea level rise will exceed the trend plus uncertainty (0.15 mm per year). This highly unlikely scenario is about 15 millimeters (0.6 inches) per century… Be quiet, my beating heart…

Finally, here's a record of Neah Bay taken from the northern tip of the Olympic Peninsula.

Figure 5. NOAA sea level trends, Neah Bay, Washington.

Here, the uncertainty is much smaller than the trend, so statistically we can say that the sea level around Neah Bay is come down As the land is forced to move upward faster than global sea levels are rising.

So why is Tahora seeing water invading the town, given that sea levels are not rising around Tahora?

That's because they built their towns on the loose estuarine silt and soil of the Quinault River Delta…which inevitably compacted and sank over time, taking the towns with them. It's tragic, sure, but it has exactly zero bearing on sea level rise.

Figure 6. Close-up of the Tajola and Quinault River deltas.

in conclusion: South of Tahola, sea levels are not rising or falling statistically significantly, while north of Tahola, sea levels are falling.

Of course, all this means is that the dozens of articles claiming Tahola is threatened by rising sea levels are… well… let me call them “ridiculously misleading” and leave it at that.

What is the conclusion drawn from this?

You absolutely cannot trust the modern media to provide the simplest verification of factual claims. Even if they agree, you can't believe it – the media's consensus is as meaningless as the so-called “scientific consensus”. What follows are more than a hundred articles from various print, online, and television outlets around the world, all of which passionately and forcefully repeat the same easily-censored lies.

In the days before the internet, this would have been acceptable to some extent, but I spent a total of about fifteen minutes looking up local sea level rise conditions and learned that Tahola was unlikely to be threatened by sea level rise, because No sea level rise around Tahola.

Finally, I wish the good people of the Quinault Nation all the best in their plans to move to higher ground. Moving an entire town is no easy task, but as the saying goes, “Necessary when the devil drives you” … A giant tsunami is definitely the devil in my book.

My best wishes to everyone, best wishes to all the wonderful people in the media…do your damn homework, because come 2024, you can be sure that if you don't, someone else will too meeting…

w.

Attached: It's also clear from these sea level records that the rate of sea level rise is not accelerating…but that's a separate issue.

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