Edward Mendel – Chicago Historical Society
Guest essay by Eric Worrall
Sea Level Rise may displace up to 16 million Americans by 2100, according to researchers from the University of Georgia. But the study ignores history, technological progress, and the unreliability of climate models.
Sea level rise projected to displace 13 million in U.S. by 2100
A new study by University of Georgia researchers could help protect more than 13 million American homes that will be threatened by rising sea levels by the end of the century.
It is the first major study to assess the risk from rising seas using year 2100 population forecasts for all 319 coastal counties in the continental U.S. Previous impact assessments use current population figures to assess long-term effects of coastal flooding.
The study is based on analyses by Mathew Hauer for his doctoral work with the UGA Franklin College of Arts and Sciences; Deepak Mishra of the UGA department of geography; and Jason Evans, a former UGA faculty member now with Stetson University. It was published March 14 in the journal Nature Climate Change.
Based on year 2100 population forecasts, the authors report that a 6-foot sea level rise will expose more than 13 million people to flooding and other hazards from rising seas. Florida faces the most risk, where up to 6 million residents could be affected. One million people each in California and Louisiana also could be impacted.
…
Adaptation strategies are costly, and these are areas of especially rapid population growth, so the longer we wait to implement adaptation measures the more expensive they become,” Hauer said.
Read more: http://phys.org/news/2016-03-policymakers-sea.html
The abstract of the study;
Millions projected to be at risk from sea-level rise in the continental United States
Sea-level rise (SLR) is one of the most apparent climate change stressors facing human society1. Although it is known that many people at present inhabit areas vulnerable to SLR2, 3, few studies have accounted for ongoing population growth when assessing the potential magnitude of future impacts4. Here we address this issue by coupling a small-area population projection with a SLR vulnerability assessment across all United States coastal counties. We find that a 2100 SLR of 0.9 m places a land area projected to house 4.2 million people at risk of inundation, whereas 1.8 m affects 13.1 million people—approximately three times larger than indicated by current populations. These results suggest that the absence of protective measures could lead to US population movements of a magnitude similar to the twentieth century Great Migration of southern African-Americans. Furthermore, our population projection approach can be readily adapted to assess other hazards or to model future per capita economic impacts.
Read more: http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nclimate2961.html
Obviously anyone in immediate danger of flooding needs to address the problems they face. But is it really wise to spend large sums now, to protect property against a future rise in sea level, which might never happen?
Sea level rise has not accelerated, as climate models predicted. Until climate models demonstrate reliable predictive skill, it would be unwise to use them as the justification for large expenditures of public money.
For example:
Source: https://tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/sltrends/sltrends_us.htm
Even if the predicted sea level rise occurs, every year that preparations are delayed, substantially reduces the real economic cost per capita of action. Our economic, our engineering capabilities are growing geometrically. For example, new construction systems, such as gigantic “concrete printers“, robotic machines which create large continuous structures using scaled up 3d printing technology, are already being prototyped. Such robotic machines will dramatically cut the cost of building sea defences, when they become mainstream.
New York City has been able to keep up with sea level rise since it’s beginnings with simple technology, there is no reason to think future inhabitants won’t be able to.
Even if true, so what?
I have some breaking news for them.
Long before the year 2100 many more than 16 million Americans will have been displaced, and will have taken up residence in Heaven.
A much greater number will be in Hell, which is still classified as a displacement.
g
On second thoughts, Hell may not be considered a displacement from America, by the year 2100.
g
..Dang George, even I am a little more positive than that !
Being that (in song, at least) there is a Highway to Hell and only a Stairway to Heaven, that says something about the anticipated proportion of traffic in each direction.
Hi Big G
Hell is not such a bad place, some might prefer it to an early flight to Heaven.
http://static.messynessychic.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/birdgetohell.jpg
Is this Hell in Norway?
Yes, indeed it is. I heard of it many years ago from a work colleague who went up there for an ‘aurora viewing’ holiday.
Hell, Michigan. http://www.gotohellmi.com/
I already applied to go and sit by the fire with all of the lawyers. My application was rejected.
But I might give that Norway joint a jingle when the time comes. Well it’s a lot closer to Valhalla, and that’s where I’m going.
G
Thanx Vuc; glad to see the Vikings have a sense of humor. Pretty place it looks.
G
Big G
Perhaps you might first take a good look at Munch’s masterpiece , he may have done from the (old wooden) bridge while on his way to Hell /sarc off
You have a good part of the equation identified. Another part of the equation is all the people that will be moving into those same beach houses and building even more – right up to 2100. They anticipate a significant growth in the beach population that later has to migrate. If truly the seas were rising that fast, that shouldn’t happen. Unless the residents decided to build levees or dikes to protect their communities. That has been done before – well before 21st Century technology.
As is often identified on this site, the use of “could” shields the conclusion from serious discussion. It doesn’t mean anything since the premise is weak. Along the lines of “If my aunt had balls, she’d be my uncle.” Yup, but she doesn’t.
Well, the play on words should note that “hell” in Norwegian means good luck or happiness. In German it means bright, etc.
Vuc: Nice Highway to Hell. Looks like Hell could freeze over on a regular (annual?) basis, rather than a one-time catastrophe.
Jiminy Christmas, hasn’t anyone heard of Pontoons and House Boats and Docks and Pylons or anything???
Or Venice
Well the only art I know much of anything about is mathematics.
But I gotta say, that Munchkin pic, is one hell of a picture. It’s like how simple can you paint a picture in about 47 seconds flat.
You know Vuc, I have never looked at that picture before, but I’ve seen it everywhere.
It’s no “Blue Boy”, but how the hell did he make so much out of such little material. How big is the original ?
G
So speaking of German; when I was studying it for a year (so I could read Einstein); my German Prof told us a story about a rather famous German Poet, who wrote a very controversial poem (at that time), but then chickened out and decided it was too risky to publish (no not risqué).
But he came up with a clever idea and he went through the poem, and everywhere the word “Freiheit” occurred, he simply replaced it with the word “Freude”, and then published it.
Can any scholar confirm or pooh pooh that story.
If I’m not mistaken (often the case) a musical version of it was actually once performed in public with the original word restored. I think I even heard that performance. Might have been Seiji Ozawa with the sword in his hand.
G
Apparently there are four versions of “The Scream”, one pastel was sold for $119.9 million at Sotheby’s auction in New York, the world’s most expensive work of art to sell at auction by that time (May 2012)
http://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/02191/scream_2191573b.jpg
For one thing it is going to increase City, County, State, and US spending to either install barriers or move roads and other infrastructure- resulting in higher taxes.
“…or move roads and other infrastructure”
Will our current roads and infrastructure still be viable in 2100?
BTW, roads and infrastructure from the 1930’s hasn’t carried forward very well.
As we have pointed out to you before, there will be no need to move anything.
Just wait for the current infrastructure, etc to wear out, and rebuild it a few feet further inland.
I’m quite sure these figures are accurate – IF – there is a six foot rise in sea levels.
We are going through this in my city who is in the process of uprooting suburbs for an expected inundation of 1 Metre by 2115.
However I have taken the trouble to do all the background reading. Of course there would need to be a marked acceleration of sea level rise to achieve 100 cm in 100 years.
The catch is that only two of their sources mention the current acceleration of sea level rise around here and one explicitly states there has been no acceleration yet.
For the record, it is about 1.7mm per year where it has been since records began. That is – no acceleration has yet occurred – oops! – but that still does not stop the Christchurch City Council moving towards getting people off the (yet to be) wetlands.
Of course this is only part our council’s process to make my city into the worlds most sustainable city.
See my blog at http://www.thedemiseofchristchurch.com
Cheers
Roger
Roger. This stuff is mostly based on climate models that have never ever made one single correct (“skillful”) prediction. It is, of course, largely nonsense. However, these guys do have a point. Although population growth worldwide has moderated considerably from that experienced in the past century, it’s still impressively high. At the current 0.7% a year, the US will have 500,000,000 people in 2100. And a lot of them will doubtless want to live (too) near the ocean. It will, predictably, be someone else’s fault when a combination of subsidence, sea level rise, tides, and a storm with 100 plus kph winds, storm surge and prodigous rainfall wipes out their home.
Measuring sea level rise is quite difficult, I’d view that 1.7mm per year with considerable skepticism. It might really be half that. Or twice that. And over the course of a century, it might accelerate or decelerate a bit. On top of that, folks generally underestimate the worst case scenario for any given location. And the world likely won’t end in 2100. Many towns in Europe have been in the same place for a thousand years. Even in the new world, 200 year old or more buildings are still in use. All in all, prudence would probably dictate that stuff that doesn’t have to be waterfront either be bunkerlike, mobile, throw away, or built WELL back from the ocean.
Roger, you say: “Of course there would need to be a marked acceleration of sea level rise to achieve 100 cm in 100 years.”
They are actually talking about 180 cm (1800 mm) in under 90 years, so more than 20 mm per year, 10 times the rate that we’ve seen over the last 100 years of dumping massive amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere.
Alarmists are getting on Exxon Mobil’s case because in the 1980s some engineers decided to factor in a 20 mm/year sea level rise into the design of an offshore oil platform, allowing for 500 mm rise over the 25-year life of the platform. This “proves” that Exxon knew about the danger of climate change way back then.
Of course, sea levels only rose about 50 mm over the life of the platform, so those engineers wasted a lot of money by believing the alarmist predictions.
Big G
Perhaps you could first take a good look at Munch’s masterpiece , he may have done from the (old wooden) bridge while on his way to Hell /sarc off
They assume to begin with, that even though sea levels are rising, between now and 2100 nobody will notice and adjust their behaviors based on that fact.
PS, before anyone jumps, I’m just stating what their assumptions are, not mine.
It’s the math that gets me. 2100 is 84 years from now. 0.9 meters is 900mm. So 900/84 gives you 10.7mm/year. Have we’ve seen a 4mm year yet? No! So, how are we going to get to 10.7mm? The physics is just not there.
2100 will arrive in around THREE GENERATIONS of our descendants. In only ONE generation of mine our family members have dispersed across the globe, relocating on three or four separate occasion within those countries each.
This was by CHOICE, not enforcement.
The alarmist stance always seems to imply the catastrophe will be happening ‘tomorrow’ and will be insurmountable. I tend to err on the side of the people – who have, and always will, do what they need to do.
I think your next president will cause more displacement than any sea rise 😉
We can only hope. Water obeys the law of gravity; I wish a lot of people would honor our immigration laws and a whole bunch more would obey them.
If all the liberals leave, will that cause enough geostatic rebound to counteract the anticipated sea level rise?
Let’s ho that it’s not Hillary.
One loon leader on this continent is enough…
Unfortunately the loon leader leads the country I happen to live in.
…Trudeau the 2nd, how could this world be so cruel !! Maybe there is a God…With a really bad sense of humor !
“Trudeau the 2nd, how could this world be so cruel”
But without step change, the frog might not jump out of the pot.
Never, ever, mention “ho” and Hillary in the same sentence. It will take me years to get that image out of my mind.
They’re just trying to keep a scare going. Any scare will do. Anything ‘threatening’ millions of people will do. It’s all for the funding.
What part of “this isn’t working anymore” don’t they understand?
All those California surfers will DROWN!
Oh no!!!
@ur momisugly emsnews: “All those California surfers will DROWN!”
Even worse, every ship with less than 1.8 meters of freeboard will be swamped!
Would be so nice if we were at the same point in time as 15,000 years ago.
Sea levels then were rising Fast..
I would like to see a study on if sea levels fall, how would it effect world shipping and costal cities.
If you think sea levels are going to drop, buy stock in dredging companies and in operations savvy enough to somehow acquire title to property currently under water.
The current trend in sea level since the satellite era as not been acceleration:
http://oi65.tinypic.com/29549l0.jpg
By the way, Colorado University’s Sea Level Research Group just published their latest revision a few days ago
http://sealevel.colorado.edu/files/2016_rel1/sl_ns_global.png
The astute reader will notice that the “GIA Corrected” notice has been disappeared.
The astute reader will note zero acceleration in the tide gauges, where people actually live, showing SL rising 4.5 inches by 2100!!!!
Yes, but they want you to be SCARED of 4.5 inches. They want you to be scared of all sorts of things.
Well they are scaring me into recognizing that they are bats_it deluded. It’s also motivated me to hunker down and look for underloved and undervalued assets in the energy field.
Fear has its purpose.
Interesting! We think alike. I’m also looking for underloved, undervalued assets in the energy field. 🙂
An investment style I wish I was open to learning when I was a young man. Nevertheless, I did eventually learn it. 1. Underloved (preferably for a few years) 2. undervalued (good books) and 3. evidenced by large, early and sustained movement of money (I use monthly rydex money flow reports). Equities started the sucking sound in 2015. Precious metals have recently (past 6 months) met all three criteria for me and coal 1, 2 and just the beginning … not sustained yet over past month. So far these trends continue.
As Ive aged, the tracking of free trade, human behavoir and REAL assets fascinate me almost as much as fishing.
you know that those dreaded 4.5 inches are enough to drown all the continents all at once and to exterminate the whole planet?
(do i need to insert sarc tags? )
The basis of their scaremongering is that the population in the threatened regions is increasing, so there will be even more people displaced, This means that they assume that people will be moving into a region that is at serious risk of flooding. They don’t seem to have much faith in the intelligence of the average American citizen, do they.
Bloke down the pub – I’m absolutely certain they think of humans as mindless cretins who don’t know what to do unless told, just animals stubborn enough to need incentives in the form of punishments to get them (us) moving. I can’t fathom how they manage to see extra intelligence in the self-imposed elite classes, but I guess they’re on the ladder and only need impress their superiors to climb an extra rung or two or be turfed off, making them… Oh wait!
At the mention of an extra 4.5 inches, my wife got very exited…that rapidly turned to disappointment when I told her she’d have to wait another 84 yrs.
Eventually, we will have a better grasp of glacial isostatic adjustments and absolute vs. relative sea level changes. To use this post’s reference to The Battery in New York as a starting point, consider that most of the US coastline is moving up or down over time due to glacial rebound, tectonic forces and/or subsidence from sediment compaction and pumping of underground fluids.
In 2006 NOAA estimated that the Mean Sea Level Trend at The Battery was 2.77 mm per year of which the “Vertical Land Movement” was -1.22 mm per year. Data taken from Table 1 at
https://tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/publications/Technical_Report_NOS_CO-OPS_065.pdf
In my part of West Virginia (the Ohio River Valley near Wheeling, WV), one can climb to the top of the bluffs overlooking the valley and see that one is actually looking across a dissected plain. Every hilltop is the same height as far as the eye can see, with the Ohio River about 450 feet below. The land has risen with the retreat of the glaciers, and the Ohio and its tributaries have cut deep into the rebounding earth.
The photo in this link gives one a good idea of the terrane. It’s looking west from Moundsville, WV, just a few miles south of Wheeling on the Ohio.
http://media-cdn.tripadvisor.com/media/photo-s/02/e9/3c/9c/grand-vue-park.jpg
Its certain that virtually every one of the 300 million+ residents in the USA today will not be living in the same abode 84 years from now. If the ocean rises a few inches lets all move into our next home with that in mind. Is this a horror or a ho hum?
Hasn’t anyone here visited Venice?
Venice Italy I mean.
I knew a girl from there once. She was a great swimmer. The rumour was that she was once a street walker. 🙂
Cheers
Roger
http://www.thedemiseofchristchurch.com
BTW, the write-up in phys.org is deceptive to say the the least. For instance:
“A new study by University of Georgia researchers could help protect more than 13 million American homes
Based on year 2100 population forecasts, the authors report that a 6-foot sea level rise will expose more than 13 million people”
Although I did not shell out the $32 for the study, the actual abstract seems to indicate 13 million people would be living in housing “at risk” after a 6 foot rise in sea level, assuming no-one sees K-Kenny c-coming to k-kill them and current population trends are projected forward. Phys.org apparently has no problem inflating that by a factor of 2+ by equating “people” with “homes”. Just another another publication with low ethical standards.
The MSN headline is more deceptive. (In my estimation.) (I didn’t read the article, perhaps it doesn’t match the headline.) http://www.msn.com/en-us/weather/topstories/up-to-13-million-americans-are-at-risk-of-being-washed-away/
Up to 13 Million Americans Are at Risk of Being Washed Away
…Adaptation strategies are costly, and these are areas of especially rapid population growth, so the longer we wait to implement adaptation measures the more expensive they become,” Hauer said…
How about we limit development in coastal areas?
Won’t adaptation just encourage the development and rapid population growth in these areas?
What happens when continued warming creates the need for future adaption, considering these measures get more expensive in the future?
“How about we limit development in coastal areas?”
How about we do not?
Wind down and eliminate the federally mandated and subsidized National Flood Insurance Program to get the taxpayer off the hook, and therefor no interest in what happens.
Then people can buy property as they see fit and build on it as they see fit.
We used to call this way of doing things “a free country”.
Even changing the program based on predicted flooding to eliminate all new development would reduce taxpayer liability and make “homeowners” insurance unavailable leading to lenders refusing mortgages. If Hillary wants to build a house on the coast and accepts the risk I don’t care.
Of course big rises in sea level are not predicted by historical data and coastal rise or fall acerbates some problem examples.
Maybe I’ve got the math skills of a cat, but am I wrong? Variations around 2.5 mm/y to 3.5 mm/y are … 0.25 to 0.35 meter per century or from 10 to 14 inches of average global seal-level rise by 2116? or only 8 to 11.5 inches by the year 2100?
I thought the authors were propounding 0.8 to 1.8 meters! Did they use different sea-level statistics than all the ones so far cited and listed here? Has anyone yet found a nonlinear sea-level rise correlation?
PS: the reason for the Crescent City sea-level subtle drop is very likely to the Pacific (or Juan de Fuca) plate submerging under the North American plate, causing buckling along the great Cascadia fault. The rising coastal plate hides the sea-level rise because the plate is rising faster. At least I can do that math.
GoatGuy
When are we going to get a GPS chip on every long-term tide gauge in the world so that an audit will show the true state of SLR [or SLF].
In my [geodetically stable] NOTW there has been at least 6 inches of SLF over the past 70 years.
Accurate measurement of tectonic changes in tide gauge elevation does need to be done. But it’s MUCH harder to do than most folks think. You’re talking changes of the thickness of a few sheets of paper per year. Relative to satellite positions that are a bit uncertain. Using radio signals that are subject to variable ionospheric delays. And there are some technical geometric problem with the vertical component of GPS measurements that make it a bit harder to measure than the horizontal components.
Thanks, Don K. Please see my reply below to Kennethrichards. That paper agrees with what you say. That vertical movement of tide gauges is very hard to pin down from GPS data.
I’ve always wondered why the GPS units almost never display altitude. There are times when I would really like to know.
Mark W: The reason why GPS units don’t display elevation and wander around a lot if they do is a geometry thing. Unlike your eyes which see angles well and distance poorly, GPS sees distance really well and angles not at all. So the GPS needs to get the distance to several satellites and try to solve for a unique position that accounts for the distances to all of the satellites. When the GPS satellites are near the horizon, there are a lot of elevations that can be a pretty good fit to the set of distances being observed. To resolve elevation well, at least one of the satellites needs to be high in the sky. Unfortunately, most satellite passes don’t get very high in the sky. Passes directly overhead that have a lot of elevation information are quite rare. Throw in all the miscellaneous errors that can louse up a calculation, it turns out that there is a lot more x-y (lat-lon) information to use to average out errors than z (elevation) information.
An obvious point….
Since the sea level was rising as rapidly prior to the US Civil War as it is now (see The Battery, NY graph above), mankind could not have caused the sea level rise then, and we have not altered it with our emissions.
I tend to agree. Your argument, at the very least, undermines any argument based on observed sea level rise.
First theres the UGA article then this. Perhaps a full court press. I thought for sure that geologists were generally the more grounded in reality bunch. Very nice graphics. They do such a fine job drawing the eye to the meshing of rising everything to do with temp.
http://blogs.agu.org/wildwildscience/2016/03/14/nasa-february-temperatures-hottest-ever/
Perhaps I missed it, at least in the Abstract (pun intended), but did the paper posit a figure for the projected level to which the sea is expected to rise? I can understand that, IF the sea rose 6 ft (1.8 m), then there would be a greater effect than 3 ft, but there also would be a greater effect if it rose 9 ft. Of course, this all would be moot if a 20 km diameter asteroid or comet hit the earth. Since it would have (assuming such an object hit the earth) a better than 2 to 1 chance of hitting oceans than land, that would raise the land-measured level of the sea much more than 6 ft, at least temporarily. Shouldn’t we be building ships to evacuate Earth? /sarc off…
Twenty years ago, we were being told that the sea was going to rise six feet by now.
Is the sea eternally “going to rise” six feet, but never actually rise six feet?
…Dang Black Holes keep swallowin’ the extra missing heat !
I knew it went somewhere!
Or perhaps they are swallowing the missing water instead.
Aha! Another question.
I use a sea level rise of 8 inches/century because that is what has been going on for the last 4,000 years, at least. (not GIA corrected, of course)
So your 6 foot rise will take exactly 900 years. Note that is eustatic sea level rise.
YMMV due to glacial rebound, tectonic uplift, subsidence, mining activities, landfill operations, asteroid strikes, etc.
And you left out volcanoes. These really change the landscape a lot, too, not to mention climate.
@ur momisugly emsnews:
True enough, for sure. Add volcanoes to the list.
You left out the fact that 100 years from now we will have according to some scientists gotten to the point that we have pumped dry our aquifers and have to start desalinating the oceans, which then will lower sea level the same 1.8 meters, because as our population according to same said “scientists” has doubled to 14 billion people (so I guess we are safe after all.)
Well, a recent paper found plate tectonics cause ocean depth variation:
https://chiefio.wordpress.com/2016/03/13/ice-does-not-control-ocean-rise-the-mantle-does/
so include changes of mantle flow…
> Is the sea eternally “going to rise” six feet, but never actually rise six feet?
Apparently the answer would be “Yes”.
OTOH, something to file away mentally. There is considerable evidence that the high stand of the last interglacial 120,000 years ago was at least 5 meters (16 feet) above current sea level. No one has the much idea why the current interglacial might not eventually achieve the same level with or without human intervention.
Jam every other day, never jam today.
The sun will come out tomorrow, bet your bottom dollar that tomorrow, come what may ….
Several commenters beat me to my reaction–sea level rise is predicted to be on the order of a foot. Where did they get a seal level rise six times that?
Don’t you get it…In the settled science of climatology all possible results are equally possible, all possible results are catastrophic and all is made up a confirmed robustly verified result of peers. It’s all very democratic that way! The feminists are going to be the fly in the ointment.
It’s actually man’s fault. Peer review is dominated by men. If more women were involved in the process, the findings would be less biased and more open to debate.
Look, Chicken Little has a great prediction record!
It’s actually women’s fault. Peer review is dominated by sons of women. If more women were involved in the process, instead of having sons, the findings would be more biased and less open to debate! Which is what is wanted. (by Alarmists)
It was not blind male prejudice that gave the same root to ‘hymen’ and ‘hysteria’.
The case is often made that women were deliberately excluded from the sciences that involved rational process instead of blind prejudice. When one looks at today’s feminists, it doesn’t look like such an unreasonable decision.
That there are rational creatures of the female persuasion cannot be denied, but they are still largely in a minority.
@ur momisugly Leo Smith……So…..you don’t plan on ever getting laid again?
Maybe he’s preparing his mind for not needing to get laid if Shrillary becomes the idol of womanliness for the next 10 years.
For a moment, imagine a worldwide moment of hillary wanna bes. Perhaps he’s smart that way.
> Where did they get a seal level rise six times that?
They used climate models that clearly don’t work. That’s called “science” apparently. And if you point out that they are behaving quite foolishly, they call YOU names.
Seal levels are terribly dependent on warming. Just half a degree increases the seal food index exponentially, and the seal level will therefore rise accordingly, till we are awash with seals, and the ‘Canadian Club on the Rocks’ remedy will have to be implemented, along with sealskin mittens being featured on the catwalks.
I blame it all on Thatcher, for making strident sealfemales claim their rights to have unlimited pups, instead of dying heroically pupless, from starvation.
You know it makes sense ;-).
In 1990 I began designing features for a $28.2 million flood control project for a city at the mouth of the Chehalis River in Grays Harbor WA. The design flood still water level was caused by a spring tide, coincident with a low barometric pressure and high river flow.
Global warming and sea level rise was in the news back then, so we assessed the threat, determined it was political science and designed the level to accommodate one foot of sea level rise over the next century. This was the observed historic rate of sea level rise based on tide gauges in the area.
The project has provided reliable flood protection since it was completed in 1996 and there are no plans to increase the levee height.
NOAA ‘s sea level trends consistently show a constant and generally trivial rate of sea level rise based on tide gauge data going back to 1854.
Sea level rise is not accelerating presently, and has been constant since the 1850’s. This is obvious proof that the planet is not warming catastrophically and the AGW science is a FRAUD!
There are no massive construction projects building new levees or raising existing levees near our coastlines and estuaries. The politicians obviously know that AGW and sea level rise is not reality.
Wonderful comment. I saved it for future reference. I do however dis agree with
“The politicians obviously know that AGW and sea level rise is not reality.”
Many don’t know. Making a judgement concerning the validity of a scientific claim is not within their sphere (not all) of thought. Politicians are intelligent in a way that helps them identify the thing people want to here and see in order for them to be rewarded with power.
IF voters were more conscious of this dependent and often unhealthy level of interaction, they’d be more skeptical of the salesman. Alas, the human spirit appears inclined to want their false hero’s and so they trust them more than they should.
My opinion based on observation.
@ur momisugly jueltidegates, March 14 , 5:36 pm, Maybe not in the US but in Holland there, as far as I know , are projects being worked on to raise certain dike systems over the next few decades. I’ll see if I can find out more from family members, ( who are mostly “luke warmists” at best) and I’ll let you know. Seeing that you are in the industry maybe through your knowledge of such work you can find out more than I can.
You surely know more about your local conditions at Grays Harbor than I do. But did you take the Cascadia fault system into account? A lot more is known about subduction zones now than was known in 1990. I think the current best guess is that it may well let go during the current century and that it will probably drop much of the NW coast three feet or more when it does. Of course if a magnitude 9 earthquake does occur there, a bit of river mouth flooding may not even reach the top 20 on your list of problems.
Back in the 1960s the Warmists projected that by the year 2000 the sea level could rise by 10 feet, enough to put NYC and DC underwater. They also projected that catastrophic melting of Greenland and Antarctica would cause sea levels to rise another 200 feet over the next 200 years. At 1 foot per year since 2000, I figure that we should already be at 26 feet of sea level rise of the Warmists were correct.
And as they say, it’s just physics, and those physics have been well understood for 100+ years, so they certainly shouldn’t have been off by a factor of 100.
::: Channeling Prof Wigley :::
That’s an interesting point and certainly demonstrates that although global warming is real, we should dedicate more funding to increase precision concerning our regional predictions for the future.
Start with Malibu. A very entertaining movie could be made about that effort. High surf has been destroying beach homes there since Pacific Coast Highway was built. But romance(politics) and science belong to alien realities. Indeed, one is often confused with the other.
Why is it the uneducated people from whom we are descended were able, thousands of years ago, to survive very rapid sea level rise in excess of hundreds of feet but modern society can’t tolerate a matter of inches of rise? Is it that people think this could happen over night if it even happens at all? Recall too there is no evidence that accelerated rise is even happening. The notion comes from questionable models, not observation. How many more decades of failed sea level rise fear mongering must we endure before the Department of Justice investigates these claims and prosecutes the perpetrators for unsubstantiated mayhem and tax-wasting alarmist propaganda?
Ask these death wishers why it is not possible for couples to take long walks on the sandy beaches of Doggerland while listening to Kenny G on the radio. It is because there was once a real change of climate that flooded the land bridge between England and Europe, and there has not been a similar event in the time since and won’t be one again any time soon. The same event that flooded Doggerland made it possible for my house to be built on a glacial bench left behind by the Cordilleran ice sheet here in Washinton State – home of the famous Scablands. http://www.iafi.org/. We know in this state what real climate change looks like – we’re surrounded by the very dramatic results of climate change.
Desperately Seeking Publication At Any Cost.
That might make a nifty good web-site to chronicle the Religious Addictions of the AWG’ers cult.
Ha ha
Weeeell they liked you idea so much they beat ya to it although not like in the manner you’d present it. I was only going to offer one article but Yale does such a chummy job, I’d thought I’d send you their list.
Billions of believers waiting to smite the dirty users of fossil fuels.
http://fore.yale.edu/climate-change/articles-on-religion-and-climate-change/
I already commented on this silly alarmist nonsense on the NYT and Wired Facebook posts. Great post as usual.
Quick! Somebody tell the insurance companies! Somebody tell the CONSTRUCTION companies!!
“Sea Level Rise may displace up to 16 million Americans by 2100, according to researchers from the University of Georgia. But the study ignores history, technological progress, and the unreliability of climate models.”
For the Eastern Seaboard of the US many projections of sea level change ignore geological processes that are not related to the rise in sea level.
Along much of the US east coast, the land is sinking and has been sinking since the continental glaciers melted at the end of the last ice age, about 18,000 years ago. The mantle rock displaced by the weight of the ice in Canada had created a ‘fore-bulge’ in an arc that extends from offshore to mid-continent, intersecting the east coast. Ever since the glaciers melted and the weight of ice was removed, the fore-bulge has declined, resulting in the sinking of the land along the coast.
Just as climate fluctuates naturally over decades, centuries and millennia, so does sea level fluctuate. During the Holocene Climate Optimum (Hypsithermal) about 5,000 years ago, sea level was about 7 feet (2 meters) higher than now. During the last interglacial about 130,000 to 105,000 years ago, sea level reached about 30 feet (9 meters) higher than now. These ancient high sea level stands occurred without any help from mankind.
During our present warm interval between glacier advances, sea level will continue to rise a little faster during warm periods and a little slower during cold periods, whether or not we act to control climate.
The ancient Mayas sacrificed their children to appease the rain gods, but the climate of the Yucatan changed in spite of their efforts. (http://dujs.dartmouth.edu/2013/03/climate-change-and-the-decline-of-mayan-civilization/#.VuduffkdC-s) Some modern nations seem keen to sacrifice the economic well-being of present and future generations to keep climate and sea level stable. Those nations will decline as did the Mayans, and other nations will rise in power and wealth. This must happen because the wealth of modern nations relies on cheap energy, traditionally coal and more recently methane (natural gas).
History repeats itself, but never in the same way. The old way to national rise and fall of nations was by warfare and conquest, discovery and technology. Modern America, Canada, and Europe have invented a new way to alter the relative wealth of nations: economic decline by government policies and law based on semi-religious beliefs about mankind’s relationship with Nature. If there was any doubt about the religious basis for catastrophic climate alarmism, the present Pope has revealed its true ideological foundations.
We are witnessing the end of the beginning of the decline in American-European civilization and the ascendancy of China-Southeast Asia.
Many thanks for the geological insight…the true reason for “sea level rise”. Do you know of any papers/illustrations showing similar fore-bulge effects for Europe or elsewhere where sea level panic is so prevalant? Is there a similar situation occurring in the Southern Hemisphere?
maybe so but it can’t be blamed on fossil fuel emissions.
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2725743
Boston sea level rise impacts since 1630:
With SLR of 1.7 mm/yr, starting in 1630 Boston was able to ADD 3 acres/year to its area using hand labor and horses.
Now, with modern earth-moving machinery and advances in design, Boston is doomed to drown with SLR at 2.8 mm/year, about half of which is local subsidence.
In 1630, Boston area = 783 acres
Landfill additions- Back bay, west cove, mill pond, great cove, south cove
Total as of 2013= 1904 acres
Land area gain per year = (1904 – 783)/(2013 – 1630) = 3 acres per year
Sea level rise 1630 – 2013 = 650 mm, or 1.7 mm/year
(Note- USGS estimates SLR of 1 mm/year over last 2000 years
http://pubs.usgs.gov/gip/capecod/sea.html)
(Note- Boston subsidence is estimated at 1.5 mm/yr
http://www.cityofboston.gov/images_documents/Coastal%20Flooding%20Metro%20Boston_tcm3-31975.pdf)
http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/10/8/084024
Sea level rates up to three times the global mean rate are being observed in the western tropical Pacific since 1993 by satellite altimetry. From recently published studies, it is not yet clear whether the sea level spatial trend patterns of the Pacific Ocean observed by satellite altimetry are mostly due to internal climate variability or if some anthropogenic fingerprint is already detectable. We show that subtraction of the IPO contribution to sea level trends through the method of linear regression does not totally remove the internal variability, leaving significant signal related to the non-linear response of sea level to El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO). In addition, by making use of 21 CMIP5 coupled climate models, we study the contribution of external forcing to the Pacific Ocean regional sea level variability over 1993–2013, and show that according to climate models, externally forced and thereby the anthropogenic sea level fingerprint on regional sea level trends in the tropical Pacific is still too small to be observable by satellite altimetry.
Furthermore, regressed CMIP5 MME-based sea level spatial trend pattern in the tropical Pacific over the altimetry period do not display any positive sea level trend values that are comparable to the altimetry based sea level signal after having removed the contribution of the decadal natural climate mode. This suggests that the residual positive trend pattern observed in the western tropical Pacific is not externally forced and thereby not anthropogenic in origin. In addition the amplitude of the sea level spatial trend pattern from regressed CMIP5 MME is low over the altimetry period in the tropical Pacific. This amplitude is significantly lower than the expected error in trend patterns from satellite altimetry (in the order of 2 mm yr-1 to 3 mm yr−1, Ablain et al 2015, Couhert et al 2015) and suggest that satellite altimetry measurement is still not accurate enough to detect the anthropogenic signal in the 20 year tropical Pacific sea level trends.