On September 22, 2007, the Associated Press ran an article, “Rising Seas Likely to Flood U.S. History.” Essentially it asserted that the oceans were rising at such an astonishing rate that you could kiss Florida goodbye and every other city with a view of the ocean. My first reaction was to dismiss it as just another scare-mongering piece of twaddle, but for many scientists it was so idiotic they joined together to denounce it.

“Global warming—through a combination of melting glaciers, disappearing ice sheets and warmer waters expanding—is expected to cause oceans to rise by one meter, or about 39 inches,” wrote Seth Borenstein, an AP science writer. Run for your lives! Sell your beachfront home! Be afraid. Be very, very afraid.

If I had to denounce each and every article of this kind, I would be doing it fulltime every day with time out to eat, do the household chores, and pick up my laundry. The “journalists” who write this stuff are rarely, if ever, taken to task for such deliberate misrepresentation of facts, such sloppy referencing of unidentified “leading scientists say” or just for propagating fears.

This latest article conveniently occurred just about the time the United Nations and the White House was set to spew the usual babble about global warming. Gentle reader, the earth has been warming, ever so slightly ever since the end of the last mini-ice age ended in the 1800s. That’s what the earth has done after every previous ice age.

The article also occurred at the same time an international treaty to protect the ozone layer turns twenty. It is the 1987 Montreal Protocol on Substances That Deplete the Ozone Layer. It came about the same way that global warming is constantly shoved in our faces. Preceding the Protocol there was an avalanche of scare-mongering articles that chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) and other compounds were rising into the stratosphere and destroying ozone molecules. These articles ignored the fact that solar radiation creates and destroys billions of ozone molecules all the time.

The culprit was a “chemical” and we all know that chemicals are bad, bad, bad. The particular chemical was Freon, one of the greatest discoveries of modern science because it was primarily used for refrigeration, thus permitting us to protect food in a way that did not involve a metal-lined box in which a block of ice was placed every few days. The term “ice box” meant exactly that and into the 1940s, was what most people used. The play, “The Iceman Always Rings Twice” reflects that early form of refrigeration. My family had one.

Freon changed all that. It also was a terrific fire retardant and was widely used in fire extinguishers. In countless other ways it served our needs cheaply and effectively until the Montreal Protocol banned its use. That Protocol, just like the other United Nations invention, the Kyoto Protocol, should not be renewed.

Wise to the way lies about the environment are used to foment bad laws, a phalanx of climatologists and meteorologists weighed in on the Associated Press article. By the time they were through, their comments filled eight-pages.

Here are just a few comments. Dr. Richard S. Courtney, a climate and atmospheric science consultant and one of the UN reviewers of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, said, “Rarely have I read such a collection of unsubstantiated and scare-mongering twaddle.”

“Global sea level has been rising for the 10,000 years since that last ice age and no significant change to the rate of sea level rise has been observed recently,” said Dr. Courtney.

Dr. John Christy, a University of Alabama climatologist who was quoted in the AP article objected that his “discussion (with the AP reporter) was primarily about the storm surges which come from hurricanes—that’s the real vulnerability. The sea level is rising one inch per decade, but sea level is like any other climate parameter—it’s either rising or falling all the time.”

If Florida, as asserted in the article, will be under water the State Climatologist, Dr. Jim O’Brien of Florida State University, disputes that saying, “Everyone agrees that there is no acceleration” in the rise of water levels, adding that “If you increase the rate of rise by four times, it will take 146 years to rise to five feet. Sea level rise is the ‘scare tactic’ for these guys.”

A retired Senior Research Scientist and Coordinator for national and international marine geological research at the Geological Survey of Finland, Dr. Boris Winterhalter, said, “Even the worst case scenario is half of that quoted by Associated Press. This is hype of the worst order.”

As to the computer models cited in the AP article, Geophysicist Dr. David Deming of the University of Oklahoma, said that, “These models cannot even be tested. Their validity is completely unknown. In short, predictions of future sea-level rise are nothing but sheer speculation.”

A newswire that enjoys the reputation of the Associated Press needs to reexamine its obligation—particularly as regards any purported science reporting—to uphold the best journalism standards and strive to avoid publishing speculation and B-movie theatrics masquerading as science. Twisting the facts to create “a good story” just cheapens journalism and, worse, it ends up telling something that is not the truth.

The truth is that the seas are not rising rapidly and are not going to rise dramatically in the decades and centuries to come.

Alan Caruba writes a weekly column, “Warning Signs”, posted on the Internet site of The National Anxiety Center, www.anxietycenter.com. He also posts on a daily blog at http://factsnotfantasy.blogspot.com.

© Alan Caruba, October 2007