That could spell trouble for the future". How the Dickens, you might reasonably cry, could they be higher than we thought? [some emphasis, links added]

As in "more than 3 feet in some regions"? How could you be wrong about whether the water was up to your ankles or your chest?

The New York Times likewise insists that "Sea Levels Are Already Higher Than Many Scientists Think, New Study Shows—Researchers found that a majority of studies on coastal sea levels underestimated how high water levels are, and hundreds of millions of people are closer to peril than previously thought."

So why didn't they notice? And the answer turns out to be worse than the question. See, the vast majority of studies of sea levels were based not on measurements but on wildly inaccurate models.

Leading to the conclusion, CNN would have us believe, that the science is settled, and worse than we thought, "raising alarms that the world is underestimating the extent of the threat and how quickly coastlines could disappear," but this time they've got it right, for sure.

If you had just discovered that something you had firmly believed to be fact was pretty much just made up, surely the appropriate response would be a pause for reflection on all manner of topics, including, painfully, your own gullibility and dogmatism. But no. Rather, the piece immediately shrills:"Sea level rise is one of the most visible and alarming impacts of the human-driven climate crisis, threatening hundreds of millions of people who live along global coastlines. Scientists estimate we're already locked into around 6 inches of global sea level rise by 2050."

Now this passage is tosh. First, because the scientists who estimate say no such thing. NOAA, for instance, makes the possibly overheated claim that:

"The rate of global sea level rise is accelerating: it has more than doubled from 0.06 inches (1.4 millimeters) per year throughout most of the twentieth century to 0.14 inches (3.6 millimeters) per year from 2006-2015."

But even so, 0.14 inches per year is only 1.4 inches per decade. And since we have less than 2.5 decades between now and 2050, we get less than … uh, can anyone in the newsroom do math even with a computer? Yup, it'd be 1.4 times 2.5, which is… hang on… 3.5 inches. Not six. Dang.

Oh well. Math is hard. But what makes that statement really insolent rubbish is that it's exactly what journalists have been saying scientists were saying for decades now.

And what's the point of a dramatic new finding if it changes nothing, not even the verbiage?