By Steve Goddard
The World Cup was bad news for Holland, but that isn’t what I am talking about.
The world’s preeminent climatologist Dr. James Hansen (who is well known for quiet understatement) has forecast that Holland will drown in the next century. Looks like East Anglia is doomed too. Is that a bad thing?
If that isn’t bad enough, NASA’s Cape Canaveral, Key West, and Miami are toast!
Dr. Hansen says :
I find it almost inconceivable that “business as usual” climate change will not result in a rise in sea level measured in metres within a century.
According to the University of Colorado, sea level has been rising at 3.2 mm/yr since 1994, and has generally been slowing down over the last five years (except for the El Niño spike.)
http://sealevel.colorado.edu/current/sl_noib_global_sm.jpg
That means it will only take 312 years to rise one metre. Which is not far off from what it has been doing for the last century.
It is imperative that we make plans to protect Holland. First step is to hire Hansen to put his finger in the dike. Second step is to teach their strikers how to kick the ball somewhere besides straight to the goalkeeper.
At least they didn’t lose a penalty shootout this year.
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I, for one, will miss Holland.
On the bright side, rising sea levels will mean either Antarctica or Greenland will be available for summer holidays. I like holidays.
Whilst Hansen is OTT as usual, it is a serious problem in the long term for many places, and we can expect 150mm of sea level rise in the next 100 years. The Somerset levels in the UK are already experiancing problems. People will have to adapt, the question is when, now or in 200 years?
Jimmy’s set a bit of a riddle
Are GISS temps a fact or a diddle?
Model E is a fail
But the check’s in the mail
So he’s happy just taking the piddle
Intresting picture, but where is the “IJsselmeer” and the “Wadden zee” in the 2007 picture? I know that it is an engineers wetdream to turn these bodies of water into fertile farmland, but last time i looked it was still al water.
stumpy says:
July 12, 2010 at 12:15 am (Edit)
it is a serious problem in the long term for many places, and we can expect 150mm of sea level rise in the next 100 years.
Oh Noes! SIX INCHES.
To the hills!
“I find it almost inconceivable that “business as usual” climate change will not result in a rise in sea level measured in metres within a century.”
Not, surely, as “inconceivable” as the fact that this wearly old charlatan can still find somebody keen to publish his shroudwaving beliefs.
He reminds me of those shambling old figures you always used to see with billboards announcing “The End of The World is Nigh.”
Perhaps the nice people from NASA should sit him down and show him:-
http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/2012.html
just to calm him. That should assuage his immediate anxieties.
Then, when the men in white coats show up they could coax him to work through:-
http://www.randi.org/encyclopedia/appendix3.html
So, what the sea level was when the big flood struck in 1953, 20cms lower?
IF sea level is rising, has he considered the continuous flow of solids flowing from the land and settling on the ocean floor? How about the growth of volcanic islands? How about the huge ships, which have been floated and when loaded, displace a tremendous volume of water? How about the increases in land, added in Taiwan, Japan, HOLLAND, etc..? How about the massive amounts of water pulled from the ground, which adds to surface waters through run-off (including dissolved minerals)?
Again, IF sea level is rising, I think we need to set up siphons from ocean to deep valleys (Dead Sea, Death Valley) and fill them with sea water. As evaporation removes the water, more will siphon in. More evaporation will create more clouds, rain and errotion and volume of the oceans… oh well, never mind. 🙂
Stuff changes. Too many people think the world is supposed to remain the same forever, except for all the changes which happened in the past (“pre-historic”).
Science has a god-complex – we must be xausing everything and we must fix everything.
“People will have to adapt, the question is when, now or in 200 years?”
As I can’t swim, I have already adapted by choosing to live on the top of a hill. At the current rate, Star Trek will be a reality long before my coffin floats off in the encroaching tide.
What I find intriguing about the warmistas is that any mention of real problems, such as the Gulf oil spill, the potential collapse of the Euro, global Jihad, Katla, etc etc, tend to get shrugged off as irrelevancies.
We are not dealing with rational people.
Typo correction in my last sentence:
Science has a god-complex – we must be everything and we must fix everything.
🙂
What happened? I must fix this[!]
Typo correction in my last sentence:
Science has a god-complex – we must be CAUSING everything and we must fix everything.
🙂
The Dutch have a saying: “God created the world in seven days, and the Dutch created the Netherlands.” I guess that they will go on creating it, mm by mm.
Coastlines change over the centuries and millennia. This is a fact regardless of AGW. Should we try to change the global weather to protect the current coastline, or should the problems be resolved locally? Or, more to the point: Should we adapt nature to suit our needs, or should we adapt ourself to nature?
Al Gore says the water-level will rise at least 1974 meters.
http://sapientsparrow.wordpress.com/2009/11/20/al-gores-newest-climate-horror-book-a-scary-fairytale/
Cuba and neighbourhood submerged, Panama transformed to international waters and more than 60 countries will be flooded.
Anthony, you’ve won! I know it doesn’t look like it just yet, but it’s pretty obvious from the news statistics. The Russel-whitewash was their last hope of regaining the heady heights of media interest in 2007 and yes it gained 20% extra interest, but that interest has flopped post whitewash publication. Except for the story itself, there’s been no revival in global warming hysteria and more than likely this marks an increasing slide into oblivion for the warmist cult.
And the one thing that never occurred to me being “past it”, is that the death knell of any fashion fad amongst the young “anti-establishment” generation is to find that now your fashion fad is being championed by deep-throat establishment like Sir Muir Russell (soon to be Lord).
Andrew Marvell (1621-1678)
The Character of Holland
Holland, that scarce deserves the name of land,
As but th’ off-scouring of the British sand;
And so much earth as was contributed
By English pilots when they heav’d the lead;
Or what by th’ ocean’s slow alluvion fell,
Of shipwrack’d cockle and the mussel-shell;
This indigested vomit of the sea
Fell to the Dutch by just propriety.
My observation, as a result of living by the sea for 70+ years in Northern Australia, is that the 3mm/year as detailed above is probably accurate. The “experts” from the Southern Hemisphere “peer reviewed society” have told the Australian people the rise will be 2 metres or more within the next century, and that increase will warrant major changes in land use.
I recall a major Queensland newspaper quoting a retired State Premier as saying that the Gold Coast high rise buildings may need to install lifeboats on their 3rd. floor, and make ship like prepartations. Of course we have Tim Flannery in Australia guiding some of our politicians, the national broadcaster ABC, and some school principals.
I really feel sorry for the children that these people influence.
How do we change this direction.?
Academics beat observers every time if no PhD qualifications are quoted by the sea observer. I have a senior medical doctor friend, who has also a geology degree as well. He went to Anthony’s presentation in his home city, and he said that he was ashamed
by the way that some of the AGW demonstrators tried to high jack the media interested in covering the meeting with stunts and abuse.
Fear not, simply make and wear huge wooden cloggs. Problem solved.
I’m beginning to suspect that Hansen may be a frustrated stand up comedian desperately trying the get out of the closet. Unfortunately he only knows one joke and it’s wearing very thin.
I’m from East Anglia. It is made up of mainly dull and flat sugar beet fields. Large chunks of land were reclaimed from the sea by Dutch engineers……..
In conclusion: I agree we wouldn’t miss much if it fell below the waves and became the sea again.
Oh dear…best to put our house in the Netherlands on stilts to prepare for the pending doom. 😉
As someone who lives in east anglia, norwich actually, although I see the joke, no it would not be a good thing. The land lost is would be the low lying agricultural fens, which would halve uk food output. So let’s hope hansen is wrong.
I find it almost inconceivable that “business as usual” climate change will not result in a rise in sea level measured in metres within a century.
I find it inconceivable that Hansen still has a shred of credibility left.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/10/22/a-little-known-but-failed-20-year-old-climate-change-prediction-by-dr-james-hansen/
Warning! Non-peer-reviewed anecdotal personal observation follows! I grew up on Long Island’s north shore, and there were two car-sized boulders (souvenirs of the last glacier) on an isolated section of the shoreline that marked the high point of a spring tide — the water just touched the base of the larger.
Skip ahead fifty years.
I visited the boulders three years ago at the apex of a spring tide and the water level was one sixteenth of an inch above the base of the larger rock. If the water level continues to rise at that rate, in another hundred years, the base will be inundated by a full three-sixteenths of an inch.
Poor Netherlanders. I don’t know how they’ll cope with it…
I thought if you took the Dykes away most of the Netherlands would be under water?