(Substack)—For years, warnings about accelerating sea levels have dominated headlines, fueling calls for sweeping policy changes and massive investments in green energy. But a new peer-reviewed study challenges that narrative head-on, suggesting the rise is far more gradual than previously claimed.
Published in the Journal of Marine Science and Engineering, the research titled “A Global Perspective on Local Sea Level Changes” by Dutch hydraulic engineer Hessel Voortman and researcher Rob de Vos analyzed data from over 150,000 coastal locations worldwide. Their findings indicate that sea levels are rising at a rate of about 1.5 millimeters per year—translating to roughly six inches over the century—mirroring the pace seen in the previous 100 years. This contradicts projections from complex climate models that have forecasted rises of one to three feet by 2100, often based on limited Antarctic observations and assumptions about ocean responses to warming.
Voortman, who initiated the study after discrepancies arose in his flood-protection work for the Netherlands, expressed surprise at the lack of prior scrutiny.
“It is crazy that it had not been done,” he told journalist Michael Shellenberger. “I started doing this research in 2021 by doing the literature review. ‘Who has done the comparison of the projections with the observations?’ And there were none.”
He went on to detail the effort: “I had to do a lot of programming and automate data imports and data management. I organized it by using databases so that I really knew what I was doing. It was very structured because I was dealing with 150,000 locations and, on average, 100 years of data. That made one and a half million lines of data. I found myself for days working on things that I felt, ‘This is more computer science than civil engineering.'”
The study’s abstract underscores the implications for coastal planning: “On average, the rate of rise projected by the IPCC is biased upward with approximately 2 mm per year in comparison with the observed rate.” In 95% of suitable locations examined, there was no statistically significant acceleration, pointing to local factors like land subsidence or tectonic activity for the anomalies in the remaining 5%. As Voortman noted to Shellenberger, “The average rate of sea level rise in 2020 is (only) around 1.5 mm/year (15 cm per century). This is significantly lower than the 3 to 4 mm/year often reported by climate scientists in scientific literature and the media.”
This comes as a stark contrast to earlier predictions, such as the one from Princeton University’s Michael Oppenheimer in 2019, who forecasted sea levels would rise by more than 34 inches by the end of the century. The Dutch researchers’ work, described as the “first-ever global study of sea level rise,” highlights a gap in validation: until now, few had cross-checked model outputs against real-world tide gauge data spanning a century.
Experts outside the study echo these concerns. Sterling Burnett, director of the Arthur B. Robinson Center on Climate and Environmental Policy at The Heartland Institute, explained, “Overall, this study indicates that in most places, sea levels are not rising unusually quickly. In the relatively few locations where sea levels are rising faster than average, the cause is almost certainly local factors such as land subsidence or ground compaction. Global sea levels are currently rising more slowly than they have for much of the time since the last ice age ended—a period during which seas rose more than 400 feet. Any possible increase in the recent rate of rise compared with the past century is small, within the margin of error, and not outside historical patterns.”
Steve Milloy, a senior fellow at the Energy & Environment Legal Institute, added, “there are a lot of additional factors that can affect tide gauge measurements including geological changes, groundwater withdrawal, and land use. But climate alarmists falsely chalk up all changes to polar ice melting caused by emissions-driven ‘global warming.'”
The timing of this research couldn’t be more relevant, especially as “Climate Week” approaches later this month, where familiar dire warnings are likely to persist despite the evidence. Similar patterns have emerged with other claims: data shows no surge in extreme weather events tied to climate change, and reports of the Great Barrier Reef’s demise have been repeatedly exaggerated.
These overstated threats have driven policies aimed at achieving “net zero” carbon emissions, pushing reliance on intermittent wind and solar power while phasing out fossil fuels. Yet the costs are mounting. In Western Europe, such mandates have stifled economic growth, and in states like New York and New Jersey, energy bills have skyrocketed for consumers. Meanwhile, major emitters like China and India continue expanding coal-fired plants, recognizing the impracticality of abrupt transitions that could hinder development.
Voortman’s motivation stemmed from practical needs: “The construction of coastal infrastructure is costly and it is therefore crucial that sea level information used in design is credible or that possible uncertainties and/or bias are known so that practitioners can appropriately account for them.” By grounding projections in observed data, this study offers a more reliable foundation for decisions that affect billions in infrastructure spending.
As the debate rages on, this research serves as a reminder that not every environmental concern demands panic. Some would even argue that NONE of the concerns are legitimate. With sea levels rising at a predictable, historical rate, the focus should shift to adaptive measures that balance protection with economic reality, rather than chasing apocalyptic scenarios that don’t align with the facts.
Bypass Big Tech Censors
Two Storms, One Harvest
Every food crisis in living memory has been a one-shock event. The 2008 price spike was a commodity bubble. The 2020 shortages were a logistics failure. The 2022 grain scare was a war on one exporter’s ports. Each time, the system bent, adjusted, and recovered, and each time the experts assured us afterward that global markets are simply too big and too diversified to fail.
What nobody in Washington seems eager to discuss is that 2026 is shaping up to be something the modern food system has never actually faced. Two independent shocks, one climatic and one geopolitical, are converging on the same harvest cycle at the same time. Not sequentially. Simultaneously.
Start with the weather. The Pacific Ocean is currently building toward what forecasters now openly call a record event. NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center puts the odds of at least a strong El Niño near 88 percent, with roughly two in three odds it reaches “very strong” status, the tier reserved for perhaps three or four events in the entire satellite era. Every major global model now projects a median peak in Super El Niño territory, and most of them project it exceeding the 2015-16 event, which until now held the modern record. Sea surface anomalies were already brushing the super threshold in mid-July, months before these events normally peak. The atmosphere has already shifted into El Niño mode, and the event is forecast to crest in late fall and early winter.
This is not about “climate change.” It’s about the standard cycles of weather, and the cycle we’re currently in is one that has likely devastated societies in the past. We’re better prepared as a society today, but not all Americans are equally prepared.
Serious households have started doing the quiet math on their own. Grocery bills tell part of the story, and the forecast maps tell the rest, which is why long-term food storage has moved from fringe hobby to mainstream line item in the family budget, with established suppliers like Heaven’s Harvest seeing demand from people who five years ago would have rolled their eyes at the idea. That instinct is not paranoia. It is pattern recognition, and the pattern is worth walking through carefully.
Editor’s Note: Heaven’s Harvest IS a sponsor, but the warnings of this article are real and would be written even if we didn’t have a survival food sponsor. With that said, those who take advantage of what they offer can use promo code “Patriot” for 15% off.
The Fertilizer Clock Is Already Running
While the Pacific warms, the second shock has been unfolding in the Strait of Hormuz. The conflict with Iran turned the world’s most important energy chokepoint into a contested waterway, and the consequences reach far beyond the gas pump. Roughly a third of global fertilizer trade moves through Hormuz, and the disruption sent urea prices up 86 percent year over year by March, with a 53 percent jump in a single month.
The World Bank projects energy prices rising about 24 percent in 2026 and fertilizer about 31 percent. By its own accounting, fertilizer prices ran 35 percent higher in the first five months of this year than the same period last year.
Here is the mechanism the nightly news will not explain. Fertilizer is not a grocery item. It is a time-delayed input. The nitrogen a farmer in Iowa or Punjab could not afford to apply this spring does not show up as a problem this spring. It shows up as a thinner harvest six to twelve months later.
The World Bank’s own food security brief concedes that the effects of reduced applications earlier this season “are likely to become visible only later in harvest outcomes.” Translate that from institutional language into plain English and it means this. The damage is already done, it is already in the ground, and we are simply waiting for it to arrive on the shelf.
Now check the calendar. Six to twelve months from the spring planting season lands us squarely in late 2026 and early 2027. Which is precisely when the strongest El Niño in the instrumental record is forecast to peak, bringing its signature droughts to Southeast Asia, Australia, southern Africa, northern Brazil, and South Asia, the very regions that grow the world’s rice, sugar, and oilseeds.
The World Bank warns openly that a strong El Niño “could disrupt multiple crop belts simultaneously” on top of the conflict-driven input costs. Their baseline projection assumes the Middle East disruptions ease by autumn. What in the last two years of Middle East history suggests that assumption is safe?
The System Has No Slack Left
The comfortable answer is that global markets always adjust. But adjustment requires slack, and the slack is gone. Global cereal production is expected to decline from last year’s records even before El Niño does its work. The UN World Food Programme, hardly a den of right-wing preppers, is calling this the most significant disruption to its supply chains since Covid and the invasion of Ukraine, and its supply chain director put the stakes bluntly.
Today’s supply chain challenges are tomorrow’s hunger crisis.
There is also a political dimension that markets cannot price. When food gets scarce, governments do not behave like economists. They behave like politicians. Export bans, hoarding mandates, and panic buying at the national level turned the modest rice shortfall of 2008 into a global crisis, and analysts are already warning that import-dependent nations are the first dominoes.
The 2015-16 Super El Niño, a far weaker event than what is now forecast, threw tens of millions into food stress across Africa and Asia. This one is projected to be stronger, and it arrives with fertilizer already rationed by price and shipping lanes already contested by missiles.
What Joseph Knew
Scripture does not treat preparation for lean years as faithlessness. It treats it as wisdom delivered in advance to those willing to act on it.
Behold, there come seven years of great plenty throughout all the land of Egypt: And there shall arise after them seven years of famine; and all the plenty shall be forgotten in the land of Egypt.
Joseph did not respond to that warning with a hashtag or a committee. He stored grain during the years of abundance, and when the famine came, Egypt stood while its neighbors begged. The lesson is not that famine is certain. It is that the time to prepare is precisely when preparation still looks optional.
Nobody who filled a pantry in a year of plenty has ever regretted it, and nobody standing in an empty aisle has ever been glad he waited for certainty.
None of this calls for panic, and panic is the enemy of sound judgment anyway. It calls for the same unglamorous prudence our grandparents considered ordinary. Keep some cash margin, know your local growers, and put real food in deep storage while it is cheap and available, because the entire arc of this story is that cheap and available is a closing window.
Families looking for a straightforward place to start can visit Heaven’s Harvest and use promo code Patriot for 15 percent off long-term storable food. The forecasts may yet soften, the strait may yet reopen, and we should pray they do. But hope is a fine thing to hold and a foolish thing to eat.
