So, I&#x27;ll reply to your argument and then make a point about the meta argument.<p>1:<p>So either:<p>you believe that comparing a point-in-time value today to a point-in-time value 23 years ago is a legitimate way to talk about sea levels being &#x27;unchanged&#x27; (it&#x27;s not)<p>or<p>you believe that the ~10cm change in the average (over various periods) is a legitimately &#x27;unchanged&#x27; mean, in that it lies with, say, a couple standard deviations around the mean and is therefore not indicative of a trend.<p>The second is a legitimate stance, so I&#x27;ll respond to it: I&#x27;m pretty sure your intuition is misleading you badly here. First, note that the existence of the islands and their habitability depends on the high point, not the average or the current value (okay, that&#x27;s my intuition at least). The high point in 1992-95 was about 1cm; the high point in 2012-2015 was about 20cm. [I chose those bounds to try to avoid the dip in 1998 that we may be entering again - not sure how to interpret that without more historical data.] Second, they only have about 180cm of leeway, so that&#x27;s ~1&#x2F;10th of the way there. On a scale of 0-180, I think a shift of about 20 over 23 years is significant.<p>Meta point:<p>The whole reason I initial responded to you was that you were badly failing to argue your point. You wrote a couple posts above &quot;Why then did you explicitly call me out, and call me a crackpot, for not defending that claim? If you agree with it?&quot;. Do you not see the difference? I called you a crackpot <i>precisely</i> for not defending it, and just insisting it was true several times despite challenges. It has nothing to do at all with whether I agree with it. (I don&#x27;t, actually, but as above - that seems to be a difference of interpretation. I would need more data to be confident either way though.)