WHAT WAS CLAIMED
Sea levels aren't rising.
OUR VERDICT
False. Sea levels have risen 15-25cm since 1901.
AAP FACTCHECK - Global sea levels are rising, and at an increasing pace, despite claims they haven't changed in thousands of years.
Decades of data and evidence show sea levels are 15-25cm higher than they were in 1901.
The claim appears in a Facebook video claiming the Australian government's spending to help low-lying nations cope with sea-level rise is a waste of money.
"Ocean levels aren't rising, Mr Albanese, and have not risen since the last ice age, which was six million years ago," a man in the clip states.
"And you can spend trillions and trillions on that, but it's not going to make any difference. The climate change has always been a hoax."
The claim that ocean levels aren't rising is false.
The global mean sea level (GMSL) has climbed by 15-25cm since 1901, and at an accelerating rate, according to the 2021 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report (Section 2.3.3.3).
"The rate of GMSL rise since the 20th century is faster than over any preceding century in at least the last three millennia (high confidence)," the report states.
By 2050, sea levels are likely to have risen 24-32cm above 2000 levels, the IPCC estimates.
By the end of the century, it predicts, they could be 43cm to 1.1m higher.
Jody Webster, a University of Sydney expert on past sea levels, says the evidence shows they're rising by about 3-4mm per year on average.
"[There is] a wealth of scientifically valid observations (tide gauges, satellite records, etc.) that show that on average global sea levels are rising," she told AAP FactCheck.
Professor Webster also pointed to NASA satellite data showing oceans levels had climbed more than 10cm since 1993
The claim that oceans have not risen "since the last ice age" is also incorrect.
While the person in the clip claims the last ice age was six million years ago, the "last glacial period", which most people think of as the "ice age", actually ended about 11,000 years ago, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
During interglacial cycles, driven by changes in solar radiation, sea levels can shift by more than 100m, according to CSIRO.
Ocean levels have risen by more than 120m since the last glacial period, then stabilised over the last few thousand years, with little change between 1AD and 1800, according to CSIRO.
Sea levels then began climbing again in the 1900s, and have done so at an accelerating rate since the early 2000s, it said.
The CSIRO's analysis aligns with a table (Section 9.6.2) in the 2021 IPCC report stating that sea levels rose about 125-134m between the last glacial period's peak, 19,000 to 21,000 years ago, and the year 2000.
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