You Almost Got It Right, New York Post, Subsidence Is Sinking Coastal Cities, Climate Change Isn’t R

[rangerrebew]

You Almost Got It Right, New York Post, Subsidence Is Sinking Coastal Cities, Climate Change Isn’t Raising Seas
14 hours ago 

A recent New York Post (NYP) article, “Scary Map Reveals Major Coastal Cities Rapidly Sinking into Sea”, reports that a study from NASA claims that several major coastal cities are sinking at alarming rates due to a combination of land subsidence and rising sea levels. The NYP specifically mentions sea level problems in New York City, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and other cities, suggesting that their problems are due to a combination of subsidence and rising seas, the latter exacerbated by climate change. The latter point is misleading. Land subsidence is a well-documented problem in some cities, largely driven by local human activities such as groundwater extraction, poor urban planning, and natural geological processes. Subsidence is not due to climate change. However, despite NASA’s claim, long-term sea-level rise trend data does not support claims that seas are rising at historically unusual rates. In fact, seas have been rising at a modest and steady rate for over a century, with no significant acceleration linked to human-caused emissions.

https://wattsupwiththat.com/2025/03/15/you-almost-got-it-right-new-york-post-subsidence-is-sinking-coastal-cities-climate-change-isnt-raising-seas/

[Smokin Joe]

Well,  this has been around for a while. For one: https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2023/04/10/sea-level-rise-southern-us/

Why would sea levels rise faster in one part of the ocean than another?

(After all, it has been noted (for a few thousand years) that "Water seeks its own level".)

Well, because the change is not the sea rising, but the land subsiding. Rates of change in the northeast US (primarily underlain by crystalline basement (igneous/metamorphic) rock), are only a third (or less) than those of the southern Coastal Plain and the Gulf Coast, underlain geologically by relatively recent and soft sediments. The latter are still dewatering, engaged in lithic compression and consolidation, and subject to compaction, which means (especially when you stack millions of humans and their stuff on them), the land and its underlying rock actually becomes compressed on a regional scale, and relative to mean sea level, drop in altitude.   

Climate has squat to do with it, unless it is eroding the land away.