by Daniel Brouse
August 29, 2025
Here’s an example response you can use when confronting a climate denier—this one addresses the accelerating rise in sea levels and the collapse of the AMOC.
The climate denier said to me: “What an absolute load of BS. Sea level hasn’t changed to ANY verifiable degree in 2,000 years. Sit down, and STFU.”
I replied:
Wrong. Sea level rise has already accelerated far beyond your denialist talking point. For most of the past 2,000 years, sea levels were relatively stable. But since the industrial revolution, we’ve seen an exponential shift. Sea level rise was doubling at a rate of about every 100 years. A decade ago, that doubling time dropped to every 10 years. Now, it is doubling every two years. And that still doesn’t account for the compounding feedback loops currently destabilizing the system.
For example, the collapse of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) is slowing ocean circulation, heating the tropics, warming the Arctic, and accelerating polar ice melt—all of which cause faster sea level rise. Melting Greenland and Antarctic ice also inject massive volumes of freshwater into the North Atlantic, further destabilizing the AMOC in a reinforcing loop.
The same disrupted system drives Amazon drought and dieback, reducing its ability to recycle rainfall and store carbon. That adds more greenhouse gases to the atmosphere, which further accelerates warming, ice melt, and sea level rise. Meanwhile, the albedo effect from melting ice, brown carbon from megafires, and permafrost methane releases are amplifying the chaos.
To put numbers on it:
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Greenland alone holds enough ice to raise sea levels by ~20 feet, much of which is already destabilizing.
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West Antarctica could add another 10 feet within decades.
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Sudden “cork release” pulses of 1–3 feet per year are possible once key ice sheet thresholds break.
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The East Antarctic Ice Sheet, the true wildcard, holds ~170 feet of potential rise.
This isn’t speculation—it’s backed by observational data, paleoclimate records, and validated climate models. My own work, alongside colleagues, uses a probabilistic, ensemble-based climate model that integrates complex socio-economic and ecological feedback loops within a dynamic, nonlinear system. Our projections indicate global temperatures could rise up to 9°C this century—far exceeding earlier estimates. That level of warming virtually guarantees catastrophic sea level rise.
You can yell “BS” all you want, but physics doesn’t care about emojis and denial. The evidence is overwhelming, and if you’d like to attempt literacy, here’s a starting point:
👉 http://membrane.com/global_warming/Ignite-a-Domino-Effect.html