Water's Rising Because It's Getting Warmer

Ice crevasses near the coast of West Antarctica. (Photo: Mario Tama/Getty Images)

Water's Rising Because It's Getting Warmer

That research shows that sea levels are rising and human-caused climate change is the cause. Don’t just take our word for it; help yourself to the mountain of scientific literature showing as much.

Would the Journal run the op-ed "Objects Are Falling, but Not Because of Gravity"? That's pretty similar to climate contrarian Fred Singer saying The Sea Is Rising, but Not Because of Climate Change" (op-ed, May 16).

No, ice is not accumulating on Earth--it is melting. No, Antarctica isn't too cold for melting--warming oceans are eroding the ice from beneath, destabilizing the ice sheet. And no, legitimate scientific conclusions are not reached in op-ed pieces, but through careful peer-reviewed research.

That research shows that sea levels are rising and human-caused climate change is the cause. Don't take our word for it; help yourself to the mountain of scientific literature showing as much. When water warms, it expands. When ice warms, it melts. To deny these facts is not just to deny climate change. It is to deny basic physics.

New York City experienced an additional 25 square miles of flooding from the approximately one foot of sea-level rise that has occurred due to human-caused warming. Without concerted efforts to reduce carbon emissions, it could experience as much as eight feet by the end of the century--permanently inundating most of Wall Street.

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