Here in New Orleans , we are not climate deniers. For more than 300 years, New Orleans has defended its unique position, most recently with a $15bn storm wall system that kept the city bone-dry during a category five storm. That is why it was frustrating to read the Guardian’s unquestioning coverage of a recent Nature Sustainability perspectives paper by Torbjörn Törnqvist and colleagues ( ‘Point of no return’: New Orleans relocation must start now due to sea level, study finds, 4 May ). Rather than science, the study is an ideologically driven policy argument dressed in the guise of geological inevitability. The paper is rife with flaws. Its central scenario, 3 to 7 metres of sea level rise pushing the shoreline 100 kilometers inland, is extrapolated from conditions 125,000 years ago, and with no future timeline – an indefensible basis for advocating for mass relocation. Yet the paper is also self-fulfilling.…