Depending on who you talk to, Delaware’s current work on sea-level rise (SLR) is either ground-breaking research that will be emulated by other states, or a set of exaggerated projections based on faulty assumptions and poor science.
Some climate-change professionals say the state’s work on assessing and adapting to the threat of rising seas is leading the charge among states that are beginning to grapple with the anticipated effects of climate change.
But detractors contend that the official forecast for three feet or so of sea-level rise by the end of the century is overblown and is the result of a failure by the Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control to do a legitimate scientific analysis of SLR.
They accuse DNREC of ignoring evidence from a leading global climate-change report that suggests oceans will rise much less than Delaware’s official forecast – which officials say could result in up to 11 percent of the state’s land mass being lost to rising seas by 2100.
The skeptics were out in force in Georgetown on Monday night when about 200 people attended a meeting titled “The Truth About Climate Change – It’s Not What You’ve Been Told,” organized by Delaware’s free-market think-tank, the Caesar Rodney Institute, and the Positive Growth Alliance, a Sussex County-based group that champions low taxation and limited government.
David Legates, a University of Delaware climatologist and a member of Caesar Rodney’s advisory board, argued that the official projection for sea-level rise by the end of the century is within a normal tidal range of plus or minus three feet, and that any rise around the Delaware coast is occurring not because the oceans are rising but because the land is subsiding.
Adjusted for land subsidence since 1970, sea-level rise is “virtually none,” said Legates, a former state climatologist who who was asked by former Gov. Ruth Ann Minner in 2007 to discontinue using that title when discussing public policy because his views on climate change were at odds with those of her administration. He stepped down as state climatologist in 2011.
The DNREC projection is inconsistent with global SLR forecasts from the widely quoted United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate change (IPCC), Legates argued. He said the Delaware projections have been greater than those in successive IPCC reports in 1995, 2001 and 2007, and argued there’s no evidence that sea-level rise is accelerating.
Legates, a long-time critic of global warming theory, said DNREC imposed a “settled” range of SLR forecasts on its Sea Level Rise Advisory Committee -- a 24-member group representing government, academia, business, the environmental community, and private citizens -- without discussion.
He argued that the committee’s forecast reflects its lack of scientists. “The scientists are missing,” he said.
Legates also criticized government efforts to reduce heat-trapping carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, saying they won’t lessen the likelihood of storms such as Hurricane Sandy, or stop the subsidence of the Delaware coastline, which is resulting in local sea-level rise of about twice the global rate.
“Anything we do with C02 isn’t going to make hurricanes and nor’easters disappear,” he said. “If you are going to address CO2, you are not going to stop the land sinking.”
Susan Love, a planner with DNREC’s Coastal Programs unit, and a leader of its SLR work, dismissed Legates’ claim that the committee has no scientists. She said the panel includes Chris Sommerfield, an oceanographer from the University of Delaware; Rick Perkins, a toxicologist from the Department of Heath and Social Services; Chad Tolman, a retired DuPont chemist, and Bob Scarborough, who holds a PhD in climatology.
She also rejected Legates’ assertion that there has been almost no sea-level rise in Delaware since 1970 after allowing for the effects of land subsidence. Data reported by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration show sea-level rise of 3.2 millimeters a year at Lewes and 3.46 millimeters a year at Reedy Point, Love said.
“The observed data indicates that his claim is incorrect,” she wrote in an email.
Love acknowledged that DNREC’s SLR forecasts are higher than those of the 2007 IPCC report which she said reduced its projections because of uncertainty about the effect of melting ice on global ocean levels. DNREC based its own assessment on IPCC and several other reports including those that took melting ice into account, and the department’s forecasts have since matched others, she said.
DNREC’s assessment is based on IPCC and several other reports including those that took melting ice into account, as well as on the subsidence that is causing seas along the mid-Atlantic coast to rise at about twice the global rate, she said. The department’s forecasts have since matched others.
“Recent national and regional reports indicate that Delaware’s SLR scenarios are on target and are also similar to those in adjacent states,” Love said.
But she said Legates is correct in arguing that there is no evidence that the rate of sea-level rise in Delaware is accelerating.
And she said she “wholeheartedly” disagrees with Legates’ assertion that reducing carbon emissions wouldn’t influence sea-level rise in Delaware.
“Global climate change is what will drive Delaware’s future sea levels,” she said. “Any actions that can be taken at a local, state, national or international level to decrease carbon inputs and decrease the effects of climate change will have tremendous benefit for Delaware’s coastal residents and coastal resources.”
More criticism of DNREC’s work came from Willie Soon, an astrophysicist and consultant to the Caesar Rodney Institute, who told the Georgetown meeting that the state’s projections are based on “bad science”.
He argued that sea level has been rising at 3.2 millimeters a year since 1980, or about a foot over 100 years, roughly a third of the rate that is the state’s central projection.
“DNREC’s projection is completely impossible,” said Soon.
He argued that measurement of sea level by satellite, as cited by some SLR studies, was too inexact to be credible, and said oceans are getting saltier, rather than more diluted, as would be expected if polar ice caps were melting as many climate scientists report.
“If you dig very, very deep, you will find that the explanation is that we don’t know,” he said.
Soon, a well-known climate change skeptic, received more than $1 million from oil industry groups including the American Petroleum Institute and Exxon Mobil, according to media reports in 2011. The Reuters news agency quoted Soon as confirming he did receive the payments but denying that they influenced his work.
After listening to Legates and Soon, some audience members at the Georgetown meeting said they are even more skeptical about SLR.
Mark Houlihan, 57, a realtor from Dover, said he believes DNREC’s forecast is “heavily overstated.”
Asked why DNREC would spend several years on its SLR work if it didn’t have a sound basis for doing so, Houlihan said the project looks like a government job-creation program.
“These are bureaucrats and they want to create more jobs,” he said. “Global warming is a growth industry.”
He said the government should continue to study climate change, but said the skepticism expressed by Legates and Soon matched his own reservations. “It confirms a lot of what I already believed,” he said.
David Brannon, 63, a retiree from Milton, said the presentations at Monday’s meeting showed sea-level rise for “the big hoax it really is.” He added: “We have very little sea-level rise, most of it is erosion.”
Brannon said he believes the real aim of the state’s SLR work is “so that they could tax us on it.”
Despite such criticism, some observers praise Delaware’s work on sea-level rise, calling it a leader among states.
“Based on my experiencing in working across a number of states and localities, Delaware is relatively unusual in terms of the breadth and the depth of its planning,” said Peter Schultz, a principal with ICF International, a Washington, DC-based consulting firm that works on environmental and other issues. “That’s evident in the vulnerability assessment that they conducted. It’s evident in the list of adaptation options that they constructed.”
Schultz called the state’s SLR preparations “exceptional” in relation to the work some other states are doing.
Schultz, who spearheads ICF’s sea-level rise studies, commended DNREC for drawing on a wide range of knowledge, from technical experts to private residents, a combination that he said is not matched by some other states.
“It covers a wide range that is not always evident in state-level planning,” he said in an interview.
Delaware’s progress may reflect its small size, which means it has “fewer hoops to jump through” in formulating a wide-ranging policy such as sea-level rise, Schultz said.
With its vulnerability study complete and the adaptation phase nearing a conclusion, the next test of Delaware’s ability to maintain its eminence in SLR planning will be implementation, Schultz said. If it is able to allocate budgets to put the adaptation plan into action, it will continue to distinguish itself from other states that have yet to do so, he said.
Schultz, whose firm is a consultant to the one of the largest federally funded SLR adaptation project – in Mobile, Ala. – said DNREC’s projected range of 0.5-1.5 meters in sea-level rise is “very reasonable” and may in fact be conservative. He noted that its upper end is lower than the federal government’s upper limit of two meters by the end of the century.
Michael Mann, Distinguished Professor of Meteorology at Pennsylvania State University, said Delaware’s SLR projection is based on good science and is consistent with many other projections.
“Two meters of global sea-level rise by 2100 is not out of the question,” said Mann, a prominent advocate of measures to curb carbon emissions. “One meter is a good mid-range estimate of what we might expect given business-as-usual fossil fuel emissions.”