Sea-level rise is perhaps the most well-known consequence of climate change. Global average sea levels rose by approximately 9.1 inches from 1880 to 2014, and the rate of increase has spiked to approximately an eighth of an inch per year in recent decades. While many of us understand melting glaciers and ice sheets to be the drivers of the rise, a quarter to a half of the surge experienced over the past half-century is in fact due to thermal expansion, which causes water to increase in volume as it increases in temperature.

Because of thermal expansion, we can expect the impacts of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions to far outlast their presence in the atmosphere. Researchers have understood for years that carbon dioxide, which has an atmospheric lifetime of up to 200 years, will continue to have climate-changing effects 1,000 years after its emission, owing in part to thermal expansion. But according to a new study, even GHGs with far shorter atmospheric lifetimes, such as methane, can have lasting impacts due to their ocean-warming effects. Paying special attention to the shorter-lived GHGs, the study’s authors modeled a scenario in which global GHG emissions continued as normal until 2050, and then ceased abruptly. Although methane lasts only about a decade in the atmosphere, the model projected that 75 percent of the its thermal expansion effects remained 100 years later, and 40 percent persisted after 500 years.

“The ocean never forgets — that’s the essential message of this paper,” said study co-author Prof. Susan Solomon.

Studies such as this make it more obvious than ever that we need to stop emitting greenhouse gases as rapidly as possible. And this context makes it all the more troubling that the nominee to head the Environmental Protection Agency is so devoted to stalling and even undermining progress on climate change. Scott Pruitt, whose confirmation hearings began this week, has referred to the global warming “debate” as one that is “far from settled.” “Scientists continue to disagree about the degree and extent of global warming and its connection to the actions of mankind,” he falsely says. He vehemently opposed the Clean Power Plan and EPA’s methane regulations, suing the EPA over both in his capacity as Oklahoma’s Attorney General, as he did for many federal environmental regulations.

Christine Todd Whitman, EPA Administrator under George W. Bush from 2001 to 2003, said of Pruitt, “I don’t recall ever having seen an appointment of someone who is so disdainful of the agency and the science behind what the agency does.” I agree.

I oppose his confirmation and I encourage others to do the same. The impacts of climate change are far too lasting and severe to let anti-science recklessness emanate from the highest levels of our government. I made similar arguments against Mr. Pruitt, Secretary of State nominee Rex Tillerson, and Department of Energy nominee Rick Perry in an article I penned this week for the Huffington Post.

We deserve better. And so do future generations.