Images spanning 130 years show non-effects of sea level rise
By Steve Goddard
Above, imaginary alarmist imagery: London Drowning from the BBC
One of my favorite CAGW climochondrias is worry about sea level. From Wikipedia:
Hypochondriasis (or hypochondria, often referred to as health phobia or health anxiety) refers to an excessive preoccupation or worry about having a serious illness. Often, hypochondria persists even after a physician has evaluated a person and reassured them that their concerns about symptoms do not have an underlying medical basis or, if there is a medical illness, the concerns are far in excess of what is appropriate for the level of disease.
Warming to Cause Catastrophic Rise in Sea Level?Stefan Lovgren for National Geographic NewsUpdated April 26, 2004Most scientists agree that global warming presents the greatest threat to the environment. There is little doubt that the Earth is heating up. From the melting of the ice cap on Mount Kilimanjaro, Africa’s tallest peak, to the loss of coral reefs as oceans become warmer, the effects of global warming are often clear. However, the biggest danger, many experts warn, is that global warming will cause sea levels to rise dramatically.
The esteemed Dr. Hansen has made the threat clear :
a study led by James Hansen, the head of the climate science program at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York and a professor at Columbia University, suggests that current estimates for how high the seas could rise are way off the mark – and that in the next 100 years melting ice could sink cities in the United States to Bangladesh.
That sounds serious. New Year’s Eve in Manhattan could be rough if Times Square was underwater.
But I keep thinking that if sea level was rising significantly, some of the billions of people who live along the coasts might have noticed? My favorite snorkeling beach in California is The Cove in La Jolla. I first went there around 1960, when Raquel Welch (Tejada at the time) was named Homecoming Queen at La Jolla High School. I went snorkeling there again last summer. The beach is still there and hasn’t changed. Below is a photo of The Cove from 1871.
https://www.sandiegohistory.org/timeline/images/80-2860.jpg
And a recent photo :
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/da/090207-LaJollaCove.jpg
And here is the animation with the two images matched to scale and overlaid:
(click on the image to see animation if is is not visible)
A lot of erosion has occurred over the last 130 years. In the blink animation above (click on the image to see animation) note that the rock under the three people standing on the right in the 1871 image is gone, and has formed a small island of boulders with three people sitting on it in the recent image. There is no evidence that sea level has risen.
A few Palm Trees have been planted, but the sea appears to be in exactly the same place it was 130 years ago. In fact the rocks on the upper right are higher above the water now than in the earlier picture (high tide.) There is no glacial rebound in San Diego, and the faults in the region are strike-slip (horizontal) faults. They don’t cause vertical movement. Prior to the March quake this year, the last large quake to hit the region was in 1862.
http://quake.usgs.gov/recenteqs/FaultMaps/117-33.gif
The land in La Jolla hasn’t moved up or down in the last 130 years. Neither has the ocean. Where is this sea level catastrophe happening? On a sandbar? At current melt rates, it will take 300,000 years for Antarctica to melt.
Often, hypochondria persists even after a physician has evaluated a person and reassured them that their concerns about symptoms do not have an underlying medical basis or, if there is a medical illness, the concerns are far in excess of what is appropriate for the level of disease.
WUWT has hundreds of thousands of readers around the world. If any of you have personally seen sea level rise at your favorite beach over the last few decades, please speak up!
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Hide the Incline!
If a single cool day/month/year/decade doesn’t invalidate AGW, can we also be told that a single site where the sea didn’t rise doesn’t invalidate the rising of the oceans? Or did the president keep his campaign promise to stop the seas from rising?
Bridges and wharves are a good reference point.
I go a bridge out on an estuary fairly regularly (Raglan, NZ). I caught fish off it nearly 40 years ago. If the sea level has risen in that time, it has been very minor.
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Current_sea_level_rise
“Current sea level rise has occurred at a mean rate of 1.8 mm per year for the past century.” This explains why people haven’t noticed it. The concern is for the future. If this rate remains constant there is indeed little to fear. But, it is not constant. Hansen’s views are extreme however, but that does not mean he is wrong.
REPLY: Actually he’s dead wronger than wrong about sea level rise prediction, at least in his own back yard. See this prediction from the good doctor twenty years ago that we covered last year. It was a prediction about New York City, just a couple of blocks from his office. Hansen said:
See this: A little known 20 year old climate change prediction by Dr. James Hansen – that failed badly
Of course you won’t see the NYT or the Guardian mention his big dead wrong prediction. Only here – Anthony
Why are you confusing the issue with the facts? LOL – Great animation! Looks like the cove actually gained some real estate since the 1800’s.
Wonder if Gore’s new ocean front digs are going to suffer the same fate?
In South Bethany Beach, Delaware there is a network of canals that are connected to the ocean through a series of bays and channels. These filter out the tidal variation like RC low-pass circuits — the daily tides do not impact these canals at all. Thus, no one builds floating docks and everyone knows that sea level hasn’t changed appreciably in decades.
This only goes back far enough but it’s a start.
Then there’s this:
http://www.john-daly.com/deadisle/index.htm
Mike
You claim that sea level rise is not constant. From these images it appears to be very close to a constant – i.e. zero.
The problem really is that the sea level signals is so small in reality, that you’d be unable to detect it without careful monitoring.
And of course, where there are large signals, it isn’t due to global warming (whether catastrophic and man-made or not) but geological processes.
Dunster Castle
Dunster Castle is the historical home of the Luttrell family located in the small town of Dunster, Somerset, England There has been a castle at the top of the hill at Dunster for more than 1,000 years. The Domesday Book records one on this location before 1066. During the early medieval period the sea reached the base of the hill offering a natural defence, and strong walls, towers, ramparts and outworks protected the other sides. By the 15th century the sea had receded and the Luttrells created the deer park.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunster_Castle
Dunster Castle is now about a mile from the sea:
http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?hl=en&q=dunster%20somerset
“But, it is not constant.”
Ah, the myth of increasing sea level rise – yet another measurement artifact from stitching together two data series from different systems. Use the same series over the entire record, and the increase goes away. See, eg, here
That picture scared me! Thought inmediately the Clown of Wales had drowned…
I’ve been following the CAGW story for about 30 years. At some point even a true believer might expect to see some actual evidence. A claimed global temperature rise of a few tenths of a degree somehow doesn’t keep me awake at night.
Oh yea, I forgot about the Arctic death spiral.
http://arctic-roos.org/observations/satellite-data/sea-ice/observation_images/ssmi1_ice_area.png
Anthony, heads-up: [thanks, I’ll look for it, check your email]
Mike,
1.8mm/yr over 130 years translates to 234 mm, about 9.2 inches. Most places that swing will get blurred by the tidal swings, but the evidence for even this amount of increase is not that good.
Coastal silting and post glacial rebound complicate the trustworthiness of the older measurements, but in Europe, many formerly great ports are now landlocked cities, not harbors.
The late John Daly used a mean low water mark on the Tasmanian shore chiseled into the rock in 1854 as the frontispiece of his website http://www.john-daly.com/
It indicates the sea level has fallen about one meter since the mark has set, or the island has risen as much.
This is the daily MSL from Halifax, Nova Scotia from 1920-2009. It looks like sea-level rise to me.
Couldn’t we begin reclaiming some of the topsoil from the Mississippi River delta by dredging the sediment, putting it on the empty unit trains that haul coal down from Montana and Wyoming to powerplants in the South, and thereby reduce this startling rise in sea level? I bet we could dig fast enougth to offset the increase. Sounds like a win-win to me; I don’t want to see New York City or London flooded for that matter. Name the project Urgent Sea Soil Reclamation (USSR). Plant some trees; sequester some carbon; charge the taypayer.
44 years ago, when I was about 12 my parents used to take me to King Island off Wellington point (search for “king island conservation park” on Google maps). We walked along the sandbar to the island at low tide but had to get back before high tide when the water would be waste deep on an adult. I took my son there and it was the same. I’ve been there recently and there’s no noticeable difference. The steps down to the sand and the rock wall are unchanged.
The only examples I’ve read about of significant sea level rises are coral atolls and mud islands in estuaries.
We’ve been trying to buy waterfront land near Wellington Point, but despite Global Warming, it’s all too expensive. Obviously most people around here don’t believe Gore.
I thought everyone knew by now that the only place seal-level is a problem, is in the IPCC models. In the real world it doesnt seem to be reason for alarm.
http://www.climatechangefacts.info/ClimateChangeDocuments/NilsAxelMornerinterview.pdf
Ken Gotski
Water is extremely fluid. It isn’t very good at forming hills.
If the volume of the ocean is increasing, it has to be a global phenomena.
Popoia Island (Flat Island) off Kailua beach on the Island of Oahu in Hawaii is a flat island. It does not look different now than it did when I lived there in 1956. If ever there were a bit of world at risk by sea level rise it would be this spot. Yet it is still a nesting spot for sea birds and will be for a long time to come.
On the other hand, the sea walls built along Lanikai have created a mess – the sandy beaches are gone, not because of sea level rise, but because sea walls cause the ocean to scrub away the beach leaving nothing behind but the wall.
Take the tour with Rabb: http://www.hotspotshawaii.com/irhpages/whereslanikaibeach/index.html (DSL connection – can be slow!)
Real scientists use many precise ways of measuring sea level. Yours is not one of them.
REPLY: Ah but see you are projecting there, nobody suggested that it was precise, simply not noticable. OTOH tides gauges have their problems too.
http://www.ngs.noaa.gov/GRD/GPS/Projects/CB/SEALEVEL/sealevel.html
Thank you Steve:
Thank you, thank you, thank you.
First I have seen someone else do this.
My comparison is Shelter Cove, CA 194x-2009:
http://www.robertb.darkhorizons.org/WhatGlobalWarming.htm
You beat me by 70 something years.
If it’s okay with you, I’ll place your comparison below Shelter Cove on my site.
The ice that’s melting in Canada must be letting the entire North American continent rise by the exact same amount to compensate… either that or North America is floating in the ocean.
[:)]
This article deserves the John Daley Award for Sea Level Observation.
Do you ever wonder why scientists prefer to use tidal gauges rather than photographs to measure sea-level rise?
REPLY: You mean like the ones that sink? Like these?
http://www.ngs.noaa.gov/GRD/GPS/Projects/CB/SEALEVEL/sealevel.html
It’s all relative to the position of the gauge, which often isn’t static. -A