King Tides are a seasonal recurrence. Also seasonal in recent years are the attempts to explain the flooding caused by those tides as being due to rising sea levels. Among the media outlets at the forefront this year with the rising sea levels shtick is USA Today as you can see in this Monday story by their Climate & Environment correspondent Dinah Voyles Pulver, "Record high tides slam US coasts. Here’s what’s driving them."
Most of what Pulver says is "driving" the high tides makes sense:
The full moon on Oct. 26 is converging with warmer than normal waters, El Niño, offshore storms and other patterns to ramp up seasonal high tides, said Bob Oravec, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service Weather Prediction Center.
A new high tide record was set at Los Angeles Harbor on Oct. 26, and new records were set four of the last five days in Miami, meteorologists reported.
In California, water levels already were higher along the Pacific Coast thanks to a surge of higher sea levels from an underwater wave known as a Kelvin wave and warmer-than-normal sea surface temperatures in the region, Oravec said. Then the full moon arrived. By the weekend, rain is forecast.
A similar forecast may occur with the new moon in two weeks and throughout the winter, as a typical wet winter weather pattern associated with El Niño sets up, Oravec said. "We've already seen that in some of the forecasts out a week from now."
So far so good. Unfortunately the almost inevitable rising sea level explanation comes next:
Advocacy groups warning about the ongoing perils of the changing climate are pointing to the contribution of sea level rise on top of the other naturally occurring phenomenon pushing tides higher.
...The water levels forecast for Florida in the coming days are equivalent, under most sea level rise scenarios, to what could become normal later this century due to global warming, according to a statement from Erika Spangler, director of climate analytics for the Union of Concerned Scientists.
...Because king tides on top of rising sea levels will periodically collide with weather systems to drive unprecedented coastal flooding, Spangler said decision makers need to scale up measures to adapt and protect local communities.
The idea of rising sea levels has taken hold among the media and liberals to such an extent as to make them often look ridiculous. Here is astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson a couple of years ago taking a stab at playing climate expert predicting most of the state of Florida ending up underwater in the near future. Fortunately his prognostication comes with a highly appropriate response.
@neiltyson You believe gender is ‘on a spectrum’ Zero credibility.
— Amiri King (@AmiriKing) March 10, 2024
And those of you who are living in mortal fear of the rising sea levels should take a look at this clip of where the sea level was at Ft. Lauderdale beach 67 years ago when these opening credits of "Where the Boys Are" were filmed.
If you visit Ft. Lauderdale beach today you can see for yourself that the ocean is at pretty much the same distance from the AIA road running parallel to it back in 1959 as it is today. Oh, it might vary a bit closer or further depending on the tides, whether seasonal or not, but basically the same distance.
So who are you going to trust? Your own lyin' eyes or "gender is on a spectrum" Neil deGrasse Tyson and a host of media "climate experts?"
