Concerning the 140-page Climate Working Group (2025) A Critical Review of Impacts of Greenhouse Gas Emissions on the U.S. Climate., when you put the scientific reporting of Climate Change into the hands of a ‘Climate Working Group comprising the likes of John Christy, Ph.D., Judith Curry, Ph.D., Steven Koonin, Ph.D., Ross McKitrick, Ph.D. & Roy Spencer, Ph.D., such a report CCKMS25 will surely need critical analysis to check it isn’t just a pack of deluded lies.
My attention is drawn to the CCKMS25 coverage of Sea Level Rise, this being something where deluded lies are less easy to cover-up with layers of obfuscation. Thus the ‘Summary’ of CCKMS25 covers SLR thus:-
Global sea level has risen approximately 8 inches since 1900, but there are significant regional variations driven primarily by local land subsidence; U.S. tide gauge measurements in aggregate show no obvious acceleration in sea level rise beyond the historical average rate [Chapter 7].
This statement is dodging the very obvious global SLR acceleration and the “no obvious acceleration” is thus the first sign of the employment of scientific dishonesty as the statement can apply only to US tidal gauge data and depends on how obvious CCKMS25 means by “obvious.”.
CCKMS25 ‘Chapter 7 runs to three sections looking at ❶ Global, ❷ US & ❸ Projected SLR respectively, the US section 7.2 accounting for 80% of the pages, mainly due to the graphical presentations.
❶ 7.1. Global
Perhaps echoing my own thoughts Sec 7.1 starts telling us “Global sea level rise is arguably the most important climate impact driver that is unambiguously associated with increasing temperatures.” And perhaps this also excuses the shortness(250 words) of CCKMS25 7.1 although its ‘shortness’ is not matched by any apparent‘sharpness’.
CCKMS25 7.1 first considers, ☻ unquantified factors impacting SLR which are listed (mostly) and then ☻ correctly reports the 8″ GM SLR 1901-2018 finding of IPCC AR6 SLR 1901-2018 along with an unquantified ‘acceleration on recent decades’. (Note this accelerating rate of SLR makes the statement in the ‘Summary’ saying SL has ‘risen approximately 8 inches since 1900’ wrong for a 2025 report.) ☻ The variability of SLR globally is acknowledged and ☻ the average rate of GM SLR is presented, saying:-
The rate of global sea level rise is estimated to be 0.12 inches/year, about the height of two stacked pennies (NASA, 2020).
This sounds a bit odd as 0.12″/y = 3.05mm/y is very low for a 2025 report. Even IPCC AR6 WG1 (2021) reports the rate at 3.7mm/y [3.2 to 4.2] for the period 2008-18 while a 2025 NASA report talks of an “unexpected” annual 2024 SLR of 5.9mm when 4.3mm/y was expected.
With such inconsistency, attention thus switches to the CCKMS25 reference NASA 2020 = >‘NASA sea level rise portal: 2020 edition’ and the URL link – https://www.nasa.gov/specials/sea-level-rise2020/ – which is actually dead but the report manages to re-direct the URL to a 2023 NASA video Rising Waters – Sea level & NASA infrastructure. This video does mention two values of projected SLR (given geographical SLR variability, this mention is ambiguous), a “conservative” 15″ 2020-80 (=6.3mm/y) and a “more extreme” 49″ 2020-80 (=20.7mm/y). So the CCKMS25 cites a fake reference which then doesn’t support the assertion presented. (The proper NASA SL Portal would surely be here which holds a report on Hamlington et al (2024) ‘The rate of global sea level rise doubled during the past three decades’ giving global SLR 2023 at 4.5mm/y.
A final paragraph talks of ☻ the more accurate satellite record and the longer tidal gauge record and that ☻ tidal gauge data shows SLR began rising during the period 1820-60 (which is half right), this initiation of SLR CCKMS25 describes as “following the end of the Little Ice Age” and “well before most anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions.” CCKMS25 does not mention (as AR6 2.3.3.3 does) that the 19th century SLR began “a sustained increase of GMSL that … has continued to the present day. New analyses demonstrate that it is very likely that GMSL rise over the 20th century was faster than over any preceding century in at least 3 kyr (IPCC AR6 WG1 Figure 2.28)”. Of course if you are a Little Ice Age Revivalist you will be unlikely not to mention the quite irrelevant LIA.
❷ 7.2. U.S.
As CCKMS25 is titled ‘A Critical Review of Impacts of Greenhouse Gas Emissions on the U.S. Climate’, it perhaps excuses the relative lengthiness of Section 7.2 although the apparent absence of accelerating SLR in the tidal gauge data as presented may also be a reason. The fifth of the five exemplar tidal gauge records is that of The Battery N.Y.
❶ 7.3. Projected
The CCKMS25 message concerning projected SLR is again short but not very ‘short & sharp’ or in this case not even ‘short & Sweet’.
The CCKMS25 message is that the projections given by an authoritative-looking Sweet et al (2022) ‘Global and regional sea level rise scenarios for the United States/ are seen as unbelievable (they use the word “remarkable”), this based on the assertion that:-
As shown in Figure 7.6, it (the SLR projection) would require a dramatic acceleration beyond anything observed since the early 20th century (the data used only stretching back to 1893). But even more noteworthy is that Sweet et al. (2022) say this rise is “locked in**”—it will happen no matter what future emissions are. We should know in a decade or so whether that prediction has legs.[My bold][** These not words used by Sweet et al.]
CCKMS25 Fig 7.6 shows the rate of SLR (30-yr trailing trend) at this particular site (The Battery, NY.), and these a much smoothed set of values, with the most-recent 30-yr SLR rates almost topping 2″/decade, this rate a tiny-bit higher than the 30-year SLR rate back in 1955. And CCKMS25 put the 2050 SLR projected by Sweet et al (2022) at this NY site as “by 2050 … one foot … (relative to 2020), … more than twice the current rate and about three times the average rate over the past century..”
Sweet et al (2022) is perhaps more concerned with tidal surge analysis that SLR per se and in Fig 4.2 sets out an “upper bound” base-line for projected SLR in 2060 relative to 2006 with The Battery NY = 0.5m. That would equate to an 11.5″ rise 2020-2050 and thus in accordance with CCKMS25 giving a rough average SLR rate of 4″/decade. And if you are not in denial of the acceleration in the SL data at The Battery, you would be seeing the current rate at something like 3.3″/decade. Thus SLR acceleration will need to continue for that 1ft of SLR 2020-50, perhaps increasing to 5.1″/decade by 2050.
So the projected SLR is actually not “more than twice the current rate” and there is no need for “a dramatic acceleration beyond anything observed since the early 20th century”: such acceleration is already occurring, enough to provide the SLR projected by Sweet et al.
And lest we forget, “locked in” SLR does not stop at 2050 but continues for centuries.
The level of scholarship presented by CCKMS25 in their chapter 7 can be seen to be woefully deficient. The other chapters are potentially as flawed and thus CCKMS25 could not in any way form an analysis adequate for advising US policy-making concerning “anthropogenic carbon dioxide (CO2) and other greenhouse gas emissions.”