Five thousand homes are at risk, says the article published by KIRO 7 News. Sea level rise, caused by human-induced climate change, is the cause. If sea levels rise by six feet, says the report, “the prediction would be for 5,000 underwater homes across Puget Sound.” Zillow Senior Economist Aaron Terrazas told KIRO 7, “one of our aspirations is to bring awareness of the risk of climate change to the real estate community and to homebuyers.”

There is a big problem though. Their projections are, essentially, made up.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is frequently referred to as the “climate consensus,” used by Al Gore and others on the left to show the risk of climate change.

The most recent report from the IPCC includes this graph. It says the highest possible sea level increase by the year 2100 is one meter, about three feet. The most likely scenario is about one-and-a-half feet. Zillow’s projection of six feet is four times the likely projection in the climate consensus.

Zillow doesn’t use IPCC data – a move that would get others called a “denier” by the left – choosing instead to use the Climate Science Special Report from U.S. government agencies. Here is what that report says about likely sea level rise: “Relative to the year 2000, [global mean sea level] GMSL is very likely to rise by…1 to 4 feet (30-130 cm) by 2100” with “low confidence in upper bounds for 2100” (emphasis theirs). In other words, they admit this is speculation and have almost zero confidence in these numbers.

When Zillow’s senior economist speculates about sea levels rising to six feet, not only does he use a number that is 50 percent higher than the maximum projection from their own preferred source, but even that maximum projection is flimsy, with a “low confidence” of accuracy.

Put simply, Zillow used dubious projections and then significantly padded even that exaggerated number.

They justify this invention because their source says a projection of eight feet “cannot be excluded.” By that logic, neither can a major asteroid strike, but everyone would recognize that a report on the risk to homes from such a projection would be ridiculous.

It is remarkable how often we are lectured about following the science on climate change by those who make no effort to accurately present the data in that science. The same people who lecture others about “following the science” do not do so themselves. They preach that science is absolute and should be treated with reverence, yet manipulate and inflate the data to fit a preferred narrative.