By Jo Nova
A candidate for this years Cult Science Oscar:
The Coal Plant God is at it again — causing the oceans to swallow South Africa on the one hand and lifting up the land by 2mm a year with the other. (A lucky coincidence that disguises the horrors of rising seas, eh?). Apparently we used to think the land was rising due to hot plumes of magma far below, but now researchers say its because a drought has made the crustal plate lighter.
Even though no model can predict rainfall, everyone reading the tea-leaves, and editing newspapers, can see that climate change caused the drought.
Satellite data reveals climate change is lifting South Africa out of the ocean
Joshua Shavit, BrighterSide
Instead of heat from below, the Earth’s crust in parts of South Africa appears to be lifting due to water loss above. When surface and underground water vanish, the weight on the land decreases. That loss of pressure lets the land subtly spring upward, like a sponge expanding after being squeezed.
The precambrian crust under South Africa is some of the oldest in the world, and the research team proudly tells us they “analyzed satellite and climate data spanning nearly a decade.” That much?
This groundbreaking conclusion comes from researchers at the University of Bonn…
The researchers used GPS measurements, satellite data, and hydrological models to study the correlation between areas experiencing severe droughts and significant land uplift.
Not to knock the detailed and creative work of said researchers but this is typical of Big Government strangled science. It must have cost a lot of money, involved many salaries and much high-tech equipment, but in the end all conclusions are tortured to blame “climate change”.
The paper itself only mentions anthropogenic climate change once, but the press release and news stories turn it into a horror show, and none of the experts at universities around the world will be able to say a damn thing about how absurd that is.
And none of the government funded science journalists at the ABC-BBC-CBC science units will think to ask if solar cycles affect rainfall in South Africa instead. Even though we know solar activity affects Central European floods, Australian-Asian monsoons, and groundwater levels in China.
All science serves The Blob, and The Science can never be wrong. If the ocean does or doesn’t swallow Cape Town, it’s because of climate change.
REFERENCE
Mielke et al (2025) GNSS Observations of the Land Uplift in South Africa: Implications for Water Mass Loss, Journal of Geophysical Research: Solid Earth, 09 April 2025 https://doi.org/10.1029/2024JB030350
That is strange. In New Orleans, after Katrina, it was stated that some of the flooding was caused as a result of some sections of the city sinking. Why were they sinking? Because of the extraction of groundwater under the city. It was also stated that some Pacific islands were not being effected by sea level rise but rather overpopulation. The islanders draw their fresh water from fresh water lens which overlay salt water and are refilled by rainfall. Apparently the increase in population is exceeding the capacity to refill the lens. So it is strange that a drawdown of fresh water causes the land to sink everywhere except in Africa where the research says the opposite. Only in climate land.
340
Jakarta is also sinking because of extraction of groundwater – do these climate alarmist numpties ever think things through? Yes, a rhetorical question.
230
Don’t discount the weight of industry and construction on those Pacific Islands. It’s as if hundreds of tonnes of steel and concrete have zero effect on the land masses.
90
Is it not just a matter of different forces? Pressure below the plate vs weight on the plate leading to elevation in drought. Compaction when excessive ground water is removed due to overlying structures? Am I too simplistic?
00
Getting a grant to write crap must be so much easier than working and doing something useful.
10
Extraction of fresh water by the industries of nearby Port Marghera was a factor in causing Venice to sink somewhat a few decades ago, worsening the floods there.
10
From reports I have seen on the internet on the rapidly decaying South Africa, the biggest threat is rapidly becoming a third world country. And the chant Kill the Boer has been determined by their Supreme Court to not be hate speech, which shows the state of the court system. A bit like Gas the Jews determination in Sydney. Nothing to see here, folks.
I have met many white South African families who have fled for their lives. Black Lives don’t matter in South Africa. And certainly not White ones. There is a likelihood South Africa will split on tribal lines. Meanwhile the kleptomaniac government is pursuing its absurd attack on Israel in the UN.
Sadly Civilization Collapse, not Climate Change is the biggest problem. And the useless United Nations does nothing, says nothing. As in Ukraine and Gaza and Sudan. If anything, the 80,000 UN people are the problem along with their fantastic, ridiculous story of man made Climate Change and changing sea levels.
370
It was an interesting comment by the 98 year old David Attenborough on his latest work on the ocean. He has realized that despite his years studying life on land, the ocean is where he should have been working. I would apply that to the world’s climates. The ocean receives 75% of all incident solar heat and at 3.5km deep has a mass 350x that of the thin air above and 1400x the heat capacity and is not turbulent. Hot water does not rise the explosive way hot air rises, so the oceans are full of gas and heat.
And if we want to understand the climates of the world, we should be studying the ocean heat and gas and circulation systems. So what do Climate Change Scientists study and model? The air. What do we know about ocean behaviour, very little. And worship unpredictable El Nino and the EMO/PDO as dominating our world randomly. Climate Science cannot progress by childishly examining effects not causes.
But since the UN invented the Climate Change committee IPCC in 1988, it isn’t really interested in anything more than money and power. Poor South Africa is being destroyed as an advanced civilization and we hear about a theory of man made sea levels? Mankind was created by the oceans, the sun and carbon dioxide. And we are legislating against carbon dioxide as we too slide back into a world of superstition.
300
More laughable lunacy from the CC extremists and it could be the Sun or magma or some natural phase that probably has been going on for thousands of years.
And of course more modelling to help the cause again. Who pays for this stuff and who takes any notice?
190
Taxpayers pay for it, and ambitious and unscrupulous politicians use it to enrich themselves and advance their sleazy careers.
70
Again we’re now living in a much cooler interglacial and the previous Eemian was 8 C warmer than today and SLs were 6 to 9 metres higher than present levels in 2025.
And what do we fret over about the last full glaciation that lasted for 90,000 + years and SLs then were 100 metres lower than today?
Again, why is or was it so?
80
Black smoke… white smoke…
Folk fret over the most ephemeral things.
80
The drama…. they’ll drag it out as long as possible, no one cares anymore.
70
The Catholic Church is built on fatalism. Of course people care but they have no say. The Church is built in the manner of the Roman Empire so it’s not a democracy but a real power struggle presented as democratic.
60
God has had plenty of opportunities to improve the system.
30
God knows he takes his time.
10
I saw a comment on a USA page hoping the smoke would be orange.
( no doubt inspired by the AI generated image of “ Pope “ Trump)
40
Again, here’s the Co2 Coalition’s link to the 8 C warmer Eemian interglacial and the Polar bears also survived quite nicely.
https://co2coalition.org/facts/the-last-interglacial-was-8c-14f-warmer-than-today/
80
Neville:
The world wasn’t 8℃ warmer in the Eemian, only Greenland.
Yes, sea levels were much higher, even nearer the Tropics (known since 1970 or earlier).
Also (as I reported before) fossils show lions, elephants and giraffes in the Thames Valley. So definitely warmer there too.
Try https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/
May 7, 2025
Antarctic ice melting – you might be interested in the 2 graphs (one alarming) and the other with a change of axis.
40
Great site. Lots of interesting stuff.
“Users of the parliamentary estate have been informed that from tomorrow they won’t be able to charge their electric vehicles in New Palace Yard’s underground car park. The charging points are due to be removed on health and safety grounds following a review by the Safety and Fire teams”
The creation of an air of impending doom, as in South Africa, is essential for pushing the UN agenda and therefore funding. And with it China’s dominance of the world stage, even if the US is paying all the bills. Does the UN actually care about peace? Not if the actions of the UNWRA in Gaza are any indication. Employees participating in a massacre of innocents while on wages? How is that defensible? And how can South Africa continue to demand the arrest of the President of the only democratic country in the Middle East?
130
Graeme no 3 I linked to the much warmer conditions in Europe during the Eemian years ago and also the same animal bones found when digging foundations for Nelson’s column etc.
Hippos swam in the Rhine and Thames then for thousands of years, so certainly much warmer than today in the 21st century.
50
Agreed, but if there was a shift in ocean current/ atmospheric heat transfer the northern hemisphere would be warmer.
Much as the recent finding that about 400,000 years ago Greenland wasn’t under a kilometre of ice but with grass and shrubs growing.
And both times we are told that CO2 wasn’t any more than 285-295 p.p.m. (from Vostok).
It makes you sceptical about the current theory that it’s all about CO2. I have to write a reply to the local paper where someone thinks that Insurance Companies increasing charges is a sure sign of Global Warming due to CO2, not an excuse for more money.
20
Geological movement, amazing. That must be unprecedented.
120
Thanks to climate alarmists, the use of the word unprecedented in recent times is unprecedented.
40
It’s amusing that they do these long and expensive studies when they already have the answer firmly locked in before they start.
100
What a load of crap- Any Aussie can tell you that the lawn levels shrink in a drought and expand when the drought breaks! Oh wait, it might be like their oceans, the concrete paths expand upwards in a drought and shrink lower in the rains.
90
Back in the day, continents and regions of continents were known to rise or sink as the continents “float” on the mantle due to continental isostasy.
During periods of glaciation continents would sink due the weight of the ice (isostatic depression) and when the ice melted they would rise again (isostatic uplift) and many areas glaciated during the Last Glacial Maximum which peaked 20,000 years ago are still rising.
Now, South Africa hasn’t been fully glaciated since it was located near the south pole during the Late Paleozoic Ice Age (370-260 million years ago) so is unlikely to be still undergoing isostatic uplift for that reason. But it can still rise for other reasons like processes within the mantle such as magma plumes.
In fact, a magma plume has been discovered under southern Africa:
https://www.livescience.com/8307-magma-plume-discovered-southern-africa.html
This surprise that the Left continue to have about any variation in the Earth system is the source of their anxiety because they think that the world is static and never-changing, which was the view of Aristotle.
We now know that the earth is ever changing, temperatures rise and fall, continents rise and fall, there are floods followed by droughts, islands appear and disappear, grapes grow in Britain and then they don’t, there are Ice Ages and then they go, etc..
It’s all part of the natural variation of the Earth.
Meanwhile the Leftoids are strangely silent about China’s Three Gorges Dam. The redistribution of Earth’s mass (water) that that caused shifted Earth’s axis of rotation by about 2cm and increased the length of day by about 0.06 microseconds.
130
And it is now a target for all the enemies of China. The collapse of the Three Gorges dam would devastate half the country and ruin the rest. In creating this engineering marvel China has inadvertently put itself in the same position as Egypt, total dependence on a single dam. Almost all Egyptians live in the narrow chasm which is the valley of the Nile or on the flood plain of the Nile delta. Meanwhile the Greens want to destroy the dams anyway
South Africa in swapping democracy for tribalism may destroy itself. It is silly to be worrying about sea level when people are chopping down the traffic lights to get the copper wires. And learning like Rhodesia/Zimbabwe that if you seize all the farms, you have no food. And in Uganda if you chase out all the Asians, no one does any work and the shops are empty.
Climate Change/Global Warming/Drowning world are UN scares to generate a river of cash. There is no agenda for world peace. Like all the millions in the Climate Industry world wide, it’s about keeping the cash flowing. And damn the consequences. I’m all right Jack.
It’s odd that the anti progress people call themselves progressive? They are universally regressives. The People Against Everything, people who want the dark ages back, not least in South Africa.
160
The omni-potent force of carbon dioxide knows no bounds
110
Taxing it is not enough. It should be bottled and buried. Of course that will take a lot of energy and generate a lot more CO2, but it’s an ideal.
80
By the look of this CO2 must have found the place that was going to let that bloke Archimedes move the world with his lever?
60
I would have thought that with all the underground mining for Gold, Diamonds, Coal, etc, etc, that there would be subsidence here and there in South Africa.
Then there are the droughts which would dry out the land and deplete the ground water I would have thought. More subsidence?
Swaziland is surrounded by SA. Any impact there? And neighbouring Botswana? And other Countries close by?
Any impact on Buildings, roads, railways, bridges, Power Plants, sports grounds and all that with this rising ground? Any broken water pipes, gas pipes, oil pipes, Transmission Towers leaning over and all that with this rising ground?
Does this Climate Madness respect Man Made Borders?
How strange.
130
Everything is someone’s fault. And taxation will fix it. And who gets all the cash? The people who discovered the problem.
120
For eastern Australia, there’s also this:
https://www.authorea.com/doi/full/10.1002/essoar.10510770
Time-series analysis of extreme rainfall and flood events in two water catchments of Eastern New South Wales shows an indicative link to Gleissberg 87 yr cycles
“Two sites in adjacent catchments located in eastern NSW provide hydrological data over 200 years since European settlement: (a) height of the Hawkesbury River at Windsor, within the Sydney Basin (HR); (b) level of the ephemeral Lake George, sited 100 km inland (LG). HR has experienced 43 moderate to major floods since 1799 with the timing of floods grouping into approximate 40-year segments of greater or lesser flood frequency. LG has a reconstructed history of annual levels (Short et al, 2020) which shows obvious spacings with range 50 to 80 years. Three features are clear. The close correlation in time between HR floods, and the deep LG records, in separate hydrological catchments, suggests that these were not random occurrences. The sunspot record shows clear correlation in timing of occurrence (but not of amplitudes) of anomalously weak sunspot maxima with high rainfall/flood-prone segments. High sunspot maxima are associated with dryer 40 yr segments. []”
Note that Lake George was full in the late 1970s, then grazing land until a few years ago, and is now full again.
100
These indoctrinated researchers go along for the ride, the money and the relevance that goes with getting your name published in a paper. Science has reached entropy and it’s time to analyse the entrails of low flying ducks.
70
Meanwhile, due to management incompetence of its fleet of coal power stations, South Africa can’t keep the lights on and has regular load shedding.
The only stable source of power is the Koeberg Nuclear Power Station which produces about 5% of SA’s electricity. Fortunately that is managed by European contractors who keep it going.
100
From the videos I have watched, South Africa gets about 8 hours power a day. The country is imploding. It’s what the Greens want for Australia and New Zealand.
140
The study would have benefitted greatly with the addition of a geological map showing the locations of South Africa’s sedimentary basins.
If their hypotheses holds true, one would expect greater land movement in sync with rainfall/drought in sedimentary environments compared with the “stability” of hardrock surfaces where the water just runs off. If this is not the case, then there is another reason for the observed land movement.
The advent of satellite altimetry has opened up new insights in vertical precision of land movement. We had to rely on comparisons with tide gauges in the past – also fraught with problems – is the sea rising or the land sinking?
Figure 3c in the report shows Refined daily height time series and its first reconstructed component (RC1, red line), representing a long-term non-linear trend for a Cape Town station. The readings sure look to have a “tidal” range. Therefore, could the long term trend be down to changing solar system gravitational effects and nothing or little to do with hydrodynamics?
60
At the central and northern African continent we’ve seen extreme Nile flooding after the end of the last glaciation about 20,000 to 12,000 years ago and Nile was then up to 120 feet higher than present levels.
https://youtube.com/shorts/jXZnlRSCBFk?si=TExfvfHnLnMPJf_q
50
The news from South Africa is dramatic,
As the land has become isostatic,
But hey, they’re in luck,
As a balance is struck,
By a climate-change sea rise eustatic.
130
All this examination of geological history and endless versions of Armageddon have really only become mainstream because of the United Nations.
Overall almost none of it was generated by actual scientists with actual concerns. It is the perversion of science to create a threat and use that threat for political power. It used to be the threat of Hell fire. Or a vengeful Greek God. Now it is various people arguing that the seas will drown all the beaches. And from the UN to your local council, it is enough to introduce taxes and take control of society. 15 minute cities for example. Or major works projects like Malcolm Turnbull’s total waste of at least $12 BILLION on Snowy II, which was supposed to take 2 years and $2.5Bn. They are now talking of ten years, subject to Union pay rises.
And real scientists are told to shut up and go away. The UN is right, the teachers, the politicians. We must look after the situation with South African sea rising and falling. Who cares if the country is falling apart at the seams. The politicians are saving the planet and South Africa’s ANC is protecting South Africa from Jewish people in the Northern Hemisphere in a country which has nothing to do with South Africa.
The real problem facing the world is not nuclear war between India and Pakistan. It is Climate Change. Please send money. Or vote progressive and we will take it anyway.
110
Interesting than Dr Benny Peiser of the GWPF in the UK introduced Dr Steve Koonin a few years ago by reminding us about the “consensus” that only a chosen few could interpret the Bible 500 years ago.
So when William Tindale translated the Bible into English he was burned at the stake. See at about 1 minute 20 seconds. BTW the audience loved it, but I don’t think Tindale would’ve seen the joke.
Also Dr Koonin showed the Nile graph of water depths from about 630 AD to 1450 AD and very low depths in about 770 AD. See from about 19 minutes 35 seconds.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Tz1MiX1p5I
30
Get ready for more of this rubbish in Australia. With the re-election of Labor, everything will be blamed on CLIMATE CHANGE. (have to use capitals to make it sound more scary) Plus probably still a blame game towards the LNP, because they’re such a bunch climate skeptics and did nothing – NOT!!! So far in South Eastern Australia this year has been dry. Lack of general good rain, no Autumn break so far and the long range is for below average rainfall. That dreaded “D” word maybe- drought. Haven’t had a biggie in quite a while and we are overdue. But, the blob which are the so called scientists and the bureaucrats will claim it’s all due to CLIMATE CHANGE.
40
That’s a really bad study. It starts out questioning whether movement in GPS base stations correlates with other hydrologic models, and then after finding a weak correlation concludes that the gps results confirm the existing hydrologic models must underestimate water loss!
Worse than that, they throw out 1/3 of the data before even starting because it contradicts the correlation they’re trying to make!
110
That sounds a bit like the BoM’s “homogenisation” to get the politically desirable results they’re looking for.
80
And so, alleged ‘climate scientists’ have ignored the elephant in the room… natural erosion.
51
Yes, yes, these findings are all well and good, but the key point they neglected to mention was whether or not South Africa was sinking and rising six times faster than anywhere else in the world.
40
It’s nice to know that with all our good works, net zero and good intentions, Australia will be spared the worst of Climate Change, floods and droughts and sea level rise. And the Climate Heathens will be punished. Especially Donald Trump.
10
Settled Science Update: Rather than an upcoming Grand Solar Minimum, maybe there will be an increase in solar activity because of the resurgence of the 100-year Gleissberg Cycle. Maybe.
“Plain Language Summary
“The Earth’s inner radiation belt, dominated by high-energy protons, is influenced by solar activity. Studies have shown a correlation between the 11-year solar cycle and the proton population, with lower solar activity leading to increased proton flux. We analyzed data from NOAA-15 and NOAA-19 satellites to monitor the proton population above the South Atlantic Anomaly. Our findings indicate that the recent increase in solar activity, causing a significant decline in the proton flux, is correlated with the turnover in the Centennial Gleissberg Cycle, a longer-term modulation of solar activity spanning approximately 80–100 years. As solar activity continues to rise over the next few solar cycles, we anticipate a further decrease in the proton population. This changing space climate will have implications for the design and operation of future satellite missions.”
https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2024SW004238?campaign=woletoc
10