Trump, For Some Reason, Thinks Rising Sea Levels Will Create More Oceanfront Land

Donald Trump, who famously called climate change a “Chinese hoax,” has now embraced a supposed benefit of rising oceans that defies both topography and common sense: that higher sea levels will somehow create more oceanfront property.

“Which gives you a little bit more waterfront property if you’re lucky enough to own it,” he said about sea level rise at a rally in Chesapeake, Virginia, back in June.

“You’ll have more oceanfront property, right?” he said during his online conversation with billionaire Elon Musk on Aug. 12 when the topic came up.

And at his rally on Saturday in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, Trump again dismissed climate change and its associated sea level increase, saying that it “will give you slightly more beachfront property if it happens.”

Trump’s campaign did not respond to HuffPost queries about where he might have gotten the notion that rising oceans will somehow create more oceanfront land rather than less.

“I would have told him that doesn’t make any sense,” said one informal adviser who spoke on condition of anonymity, adding that Trump had not sought out his opinion on the matter. “He just says crazy shit.”

Why he would insist on repeating such a plainly absurd assertion is unclear.

The big island of Hawaii, for example, rises more than 13,000 feet above sea level and has 266 miles of coastline. If, hypothetically, the ocean were to rise 5,000 feet, the island would have dramatically less shoreline, not more.

Closer to Trump’s heart, his Mar-a-Lago country club in Palm Beach, Florida, has elevations ranging from sea level to just over 20 feet between the Atlantic Ocean to the east and Lake Worth Lagoon to the west, according to topographic maps of the area. A sea level increase of 10 feet would