A letter to the Recorder, “Our actions don’t determine climate” (Sept. 8), referred to a study by Deltares Research Institute in The Netherlands published in the journal Nature Climate Change. The study mapped global surface changes between land and water over the last 30 years, and found a net increase in global land surface area.

The writer quoted one sentence apparently from a BBC News article (August 2016) in which Dr. Fedor Baart from Deltares stated “We expected that the coast would start to retreat due to sea level rise, but the most surprising thing is that the coasts are growing all over the world.”

This out-of-context quote seems intended to imply sea-level is not rising, therefore global warming is a hoax. If the quote had included more of the BBC article the reasons for the study findings would have been clear. Dr. Baart continued, “We were able to create more land than sea-level rise was taking.” Also, “…changes (in land-area) are due to man-made interventions, natural variability, and climate change …” And, the study “… indicates the earth is getting drier, compensating for the loss of land because of sea level rise and more extreme rainfall.”

The study does not suggest sea-level is not rising (It is!), it simply indicates other things are going on as well, which presently result in an increase in dry land, both inland and coastal.

As two examples of man-made land creation the Deltares researchers found Dubai’s coast had been significantly extended, with the creation of new islands to house luxury resorts, and according to Dr. Baart “China has also reconstructed their whole coast from the Yellow Sea (in northern China) all the way down to Hong Kong (in southern China).”

According to the study, the largest increase in converting water to land has been the drying-up of the Aral Sea in Central Asia, once one of the largest lakes in the world. This has resulted from the diversion of rivers feeding Aral to farm land parched by drought. Also, Lake Mead, which is the largest reservoir in the United States, upon which millions of people depend, has lost 85 square miles of water, converted to dry land due to drought. These changes resulted from global warming.

Also, variability in coastal land includes the phenomena of rebound of earth’s crust from melting ice. Earth’s crust is rising and sinking as the enormous weight of melting glaciers is lifted and the glacial meltwater is redistributed around the globe, raising sea-level.

According to NOAA, “The last ice age occurred just 16,000 years ago, when great sheets of ice covered much of Earth’s Northern Hemisphere. Though the ice melted long ago, the land once under and around the ice is still rising and falling in reaction to its ice-age burden.” This phenomena continues today. The Smithsonian (Sept. 1) gives the example of southeast Alaska where “sea-level is dropping precipitously” due to this rebound effect.

Global warming/climate change deniers are always attempting to confuse the public with misinformation about the climate changes we are experiencing, while denying the scientific consensus of human-caused global warming.

In six independent studies between 2004 and 2016 of published, peer-reviewed climate scientists, those supporting the consensus of human-caused global warming ranged from 91 percent to 100 percent, with a 97 percent average, according to Environmental Research Letters (April 13).

As an expression of this consensus, and frustration with the lack of political action, on Sept. 20, An Open Letter Regarding Climate Change from Concerned Members of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences was signed by 375 scientists (including 30 Nobel Laureates) from major universities and institutions across the U.S.

The letter opens with: “Human-caused climate change is not a belief, a hoax, or a conspiracy. It is a physical reality. Fossil fuels powered the Industrial Revolution. But the burning of oil, coal, and gas also caused most of the historical increase in atmospheric levels of heat-trapping greenhouse gases. This increase in greenhouse gases is changing Earth’s climate. Our fingerprints on the climate system are visible everywhere. They are seen in warming of the oceans, the land surface, and the lower atmosphere. They are identifiable in sea level rise, altered rainfall patterns, retreat of Arctic sea ice, ocean acidification, and many other aspects of the climate system. Human-caused climate change is not something far removed from our day-to-day experience, affecting only the remote Arctic. It is present here and now, in our own country, in our own states, and in our own communities.”

Future generations will look back on this time of wasted opportunity and wonder how most Republican leaders, and other deniers of global warming and climate change could be so ignorant of basic science and the reality of the changing world in which they lived, and choose to do nothing.

William Gran, now retired, was an adjunct instructor at Greenfield Community College on global warming and climate change. He can be reached at whgran@gmail.com