I just read through both the ABC release and the UWA honours thesis, and I'm seeing what amounts to a relative storm in a teacup. Briefly:
(1) The thesis relies on the (2007) IPCC predictions of an almost 100 cm rise - that's 1 metre - in mean sea levels along the WA coast over the next century.
(2) One metre sounds rather extreme to me, but let's use this as a basis anyway for the chaos predicted by the Good Prof.
(3) He's predicting an historically large 25 cm rise from the current low point in the 'nodal cycle' mean sea level over the next 8 years.
(4) But the actual damage is predicated on there being (i) a strong La Nina coinciding with (ii) a storm surge coinciding with the highest water level.
(5) Even if all these events did coincide, most of the damage would be due to the surge (one would expect this to be a multiple of the nodal cycle increase) on top of the increase in mean seal level due to climate change over the period.
(6) Yet the increase due to climate change from the graph displayed in the thesis (and this is from the IPCC of 2007 vintage, remember) is - wait for it - a mere 3 cm.
So whilst the inundation of Perth in the next cycle is a possibility, putting this primarily down to climate change, as the ABC article is angling at, is false. Three centimetres doesn't cut it.
