Special focus: The problems with "These haunting underwater photos portray climate change in a new way"

 Some people can be gullible. All artists are people. Some artists can be gullible. 

A tidy little syllogism, but real-world examples abound. Consider the recent article These haunting underwater photos portray climate change in a new way Photographer Nick Brandt did a series of photos underwater to draw attention to the supposed dangers of climate change, one photo essay in a series he is doing. Here is a sample photo.

From the article (bold is added):

The stunning portrait is one in a series of images in “SINK / RISE,” the latest project from fine art photographer Nick Brandt. The photos feature South Pacific islanders representing people who are on the brink of losing their homes, lands and livelihoods due to climate change. And despite the difficulty of photographing them on the ocean floor, Brandt knew that’s what he had to do.

The dramatic and devastating impact sea level rise will have on the lives of millions of people can be difficult to see and grasp in real time, he says. So Brandt came up with a way to show it symbolically.

“Somebody said it was quite post-apocalyptic. And I said, ‘No, it’s pre-apocalyptic.’ Because it hasn’t actually happened to these people yet,” Brandt says.

The article's author, like the artist, appears to have accepted claims of man-made apocalyptic climate change without doing due diligence. let's dig into some of the claims made in the article to provide the missing due diligence, then revisit the photography. 

The first thing to look at is the concern about the possibility of sea levels flooding tropical islands. The key questions to ask are: are sea levels rising and is this outside natural variability, and is this a danger for tropical islands. A few facts for context:

1. The Earth is in an interglacial phase of an ice age. During the last glaciation ice hundreds of meters thick covered much of North America and of course much of the world. During such a glaciation sea level of course falls as some of the water remains as ice on land. 
2. When the glaciation phase ends (caused by Milankovitch cycles of planetary motion), ice melts and sea levels rise. The graph below shows a change of about 130 meters from the last glacial maximum 20,000 years ago. 
3. 
4. Sea level change follows an S-curve and has almost flattened out over the last 8,000 years and is very gradually rising at a steady rate compared to historical changes.
5. Over the last two thousand years sea level fluctuated a little along with global temperature cycles and we can see in the graph below how the Medieval Warm Period and little Ice Age are prominent, and that we are presently approaching a level similar to that seen around the year 1200.
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So we can see from the long-term records that sea level change is at a plateau when compared to the last 20,000 years, but what about recent changes to sea level? Could recent changes be more dramatic and lead to islands being submerged? There are two parts to answering this question: what change in sea level has been measured, and what impact is this having on islands?

As I write this I happen to be on vacation in Florida, an area well known for its exposure to tropical storm, flooding, and exposure to risk of sea level rising. It's not an island but it likely has more economic value along its shoreline that most any island does, and it's the same sea after all, right? 

The graph below is provided by NOAA and it shows a very steady and slow rate of change for the last hundred years, with a trend rate of 0.84 feet in 100 years. Yes, that's less than one foot in one hundred years. For context, one hundred years ago there was almost no economic infrastructure in Florida compared to today. Also, Floridians will be much wealthier in 100 years. Does anyone thing that people will simply sit by and let damage occur? Or perhaps will then make gradual changes to protect their assets over the long term?

So, is the article correct and people are:

• "on the brink of losing their homes, lands and livelihoods"
• due to the "dramatic and devastating impact sea level rise will have"
• and is it "pre-apocalyptic"?

No, actually, the science shows that none of these scary statements is remotely true. Isn't it amazing how people accept apocalyptic statements and then go about their lives as if they were remotely true? Most people, including most investment management firms it seems, never bother to do proper due diligence on such claims, and artists are certainly no exception.