Posted by John Goetz
Speculation abounds that the St Andrews golf course in Scotland will disappear by mid-century – a scant 42 years from now – due to global warming.
From theherald.co.uk.
Water hazard: how global warming could sink St Andrews Old Course
GRAEME SMITH
The world’s most famous golf course could crumble into the North Sea by the middle of this century, according to a climate change expert.
Professor Jan Bebbington, director of the St Andrews Sustainability Institute, visualises a town where locals remember with sorrow the last Open played on the Old Course, the home of golf.
She also foresees that Scotland will be a nation of car-sharing vegetarians and the declining population due to emigration will be offset by the allocation of 580,000 “climate change refugees”.
Does this mean we will never again see someone like David Duval whacking a golf ball against the side of a 17th hole pot bunker in futility?
UPDATE: Here is a Google Interactive map of St. Andrews Links, shown below. I assume the airport would fall victim to global warming also, though oddly there is no mention of it in the article.
Also, you can watch it “crumble into the sea” in real-time here with a choice of webcam views. Popcorn optional. – Anthony
oh goody! underwater golf, one more sport introduced from these shores.no doubt the americans will transform it to something in tight fitting lycra,skimpy swim-suits,bronzed females…ooh thanks for the tip,i’m already looking forward to it.
I can’t cite the expert, because I forgot his name, but he predicted (on Charlie Rose) that NY City would be inudated by AGW-induced rising sea levels to the extent that Wall Street would be 20 feet under water.
So that’s another benefit. Warmer is Better.
First haggis, now golf! Will the horror never end?
In the words of Dr Robert Zimmerman (MusD honoris causa, 23 June 2004) of the University of St Andrews (founded 1413).
Come gather ’round people
Wherever you roam
And admit that the waters
Around you have grown
And accept it that soon
You’ll be drenched to the bone.
If your time to you
Is worth savin’
Then you better start swimmin’
Or you’ll sink like a stone
For the times they are a-changin’.
Sorry, bit of an open goal.
Jan Bebbington was interviewed on national radio yesterday evening, sounded like a prediction to me.
Let me explain how this works …
The David Hulme Institute holds a seminar in which various participants imagine Scotland in 2050. As the introduction to the collected essays makes clear – these are not forecasts. Jan Bebbington makes her contribution in the form of an imagined speech, as she says ‘The world in which the speech is being delivered is one where dangerous climate change has been unleashed,’
I don’t see how that could be clearer. It is not a forecast, it is an imagined speech given in an imaginary Scotland in which dangerous climate change is assumed to have occurred. The speech includes the aside ‘we lost many historical sites on coasts (for example, many of you will remember the sorrow at the last British Open played in St Andrews).’
But ‘economist speculates… ‘well, that’s not such a good headline is it? Sso it has to become, in the Herald … Climate Change Expert predicts that St Andrews is doomed!. This is duly picked up by John Goetz, repeated here and we all have a lot of fun about those crazy AGW alarmists and their wacky doom and gloom predictions ….
Fairy stories indeed.
John Philip: “I don’t see how that could be clearer. It is not a forecast, it is an imagined speech given in an imaginary Scotland in which dangerous climate change is assumed to have occurred.”
John, in this day and age where the majority of people have the attention span of a gnat, what is the purpose of this type of imagined speech? Perhaps if it came from George Lucas it would be no big deal. I believe it is a proven formula for the indoctrination of the masses to a particular way of thinking. It is the start of the process: myths become legends, legends become facts, facts becomes history, history is taught to children. Of course if one is caught, they can always fall back on the position “it was only imaginary thinking”.
tty (12:01:07) : “Considering that the Black Widow occurs naturally north to southern Alberta and Saskatchewan where winter temperatures are something like 20 degrees centigrade colder than in Britain I don’t really see the AGW angle.”
Yes, they appear to have a wide range; and according to Wikipedia, the climate in Sweden is also suitable for them. However, the BBC do imply there is an angle: “Researchers believe arachnids arriving in imports of food and plants are now able to survive and spread thanks to the UK’s increasingly mild climate. The new inhabitants include a species of false widow spider and some believe the deadly black widow could be next to invade.”
On their news site, they also announce “…a spokesperson for the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) said that a new strategy was in place to “tackle the threat to the UK’s native biodiversity from unwanted pest species which have ‘hitchhiked’ into the UK on plants”.
So there’s a right kind of biodiversity and a wrong kind…
‘The world in which the speech is being delivered is one where dangerous climate change has been unleashed,’
Once upon a time in the not-too-distant future, a time where dangerous climate change has been unleashed, and in a land where many historical coastal sites including the beloved St. Andrews Golf Course have been lost…
Wacko Alarmist Fairy Tales. What fun, eh John?
GRAEME SMITH and Professor Jan Bebbington have now BOTH enjoyed their 15 minutes.
Seems like Graeme should enjoy an additional 5 minutes for deliberately publishing Ms. Bebbington’s words completely out of context, but to what end?
Nothing to see here…move along, move along.
Jim
One can also “imagine” the exact opposite to be true, or even worse not related to climate, so what’s the point?
Well, yes they do. “Increasingly mild climate” means warmer, or hadn’t you heard?
Jeff Alberts (08:31:29) : “Well, yes they do. “Increasingly mild climate” means warmer, or hadn’t you heard?”
To their credit, the BBC haven’t turned the story entirely into a “global warming triggers giant spider invasion” scare, but yes, I agree the implication is there. And milder conditions have also helped less scary species like chaffinches and butterflies to flourish, but we don’t hear so much about that.
Well golf courses are the second most wasteful use of valuable real estate; so sending St Andrews to Davey Jones Locker will be no great loss. Maybe those water hazards, once the get real North sea water in them, will become habitat for an Atlantic salmon resurgence.
It could start a whole new scuba diving cult; like Truk Lagoon, bringing divers from all over the world to plunge into the murky depths in the search for some Bobby Jones or Ben Hogan lost golfball. The Golfaeologists, will have new reasons to ask for government research grants.
Hey so long as Bagpipes survive the demise of St Andrews, I don’t care.
WRT: “To a Field Mouse”
Thanks, Patrick Henry, for bringing this rare, if somwhat invidious insight to the fond memory of Robert Burns! Little known TIL NOW was the poet’s unfortunate obsession with this barbarous sport. Once more you literary vandals have helped strip away the veils of pleasure which we Romanticists had savored, as we allowed ourselves to be transported by the word and cadence and illusion of a grand old master.
Is it really so necessary to picture him, up to his knickers in the rough of one of those hellish Scottish links, babbling to his ball (“little mousie”), to be disillusioned about the quaintly colloquial “murd’rin paddel” in reference to that barbarous 8 iron with which he went thrashing about the rye? Must we hear his handicap? Will you next be deconstructing his inspired line “The best laid plans…” from its predecessor: “the best lie…” ?
Ahh life… Ohh Art!
Claims for course erosion “due to Global Warming”, seem a bit shortsighted. Are such claims actually coming before insurers?
It appears there are any number of beautiful golf courses built on the edges of cliffs. Someone might remind the (celebrity) architects of these course that anything built on a bed of sand or on the edge of the ocean is like to be impermanent. Claiming a bailout when it erodes or falls shows a pitiful naivety.
“A survey last August of 50 links courses by Golf World revealed that in the past 20 years, three-fourths have suffered serious erosion and flooding, one-third have lost entire holes or parts of holes, two-thirds have taken steps to protect themselves from damage, and more than half are now working on long-term survival plans…”
Some other missing links:
Charleston SC:
http://www.earthgolf.com/2007/12/12/charlestons-wild-dunes-loses-18th-hole-to-atlantic-ocean/
Great Lakes, Michigan
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9E05EFDF1E39F934A2575BC0A96F958260
And a pseudo-science “lesson”:
http://members.aol.com/ruraleye/gowen4a.htm
The question for governments, as I see it, is:
Should private enterprise (which includes everyone from home-builders to golf course makers) be allowed to build and operate in locations where their long-term safety is endangered by natural forces (tides, tsunamis, floods, earthquake faults, volcanos, fires, etc)?
OR
Should government regulate where people build and live?
In the days before all this AGW nonsense I was told that England was tilting very slowly so that the East coast was sinking and the West coast was rising. Has this been proved to be false or has it been replaced by the theory that the sea is now rising on all sides?
Strange that we never seem to hear about places on the West coast being in danger of falling into the sea.
George
I have to disagree with you on that – so what is the first most wasteful? The piece of land on which you live? Do you imagine what would be at St Andrews if that golf course was not there? For starters, the town’s economy and tourism would take a huge dive and if you suggest it would be better used for agriculture, then you show a lack of understanding for why the linksland was used for recreation in the first place – it was not suited to agriculture, all except for a period when The Old Course co-existed with a rabbit farming venture. Golf has provided, and continues to provide an outdoor sporting experience in the fresh air for many millions of people, that can’t be bad can it?
Individual EU members are trying to back out of the 2020 CO2 reduction commitments which estimated costs are currently calculated at about 100 billion euro’s.
see: http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1851066,00.html
The article refers to a series of pictures that are presented as “proof” of what will happen to our world if no “action” is undertaken.
http://www.time.com/time/photogallery/0,29307,1828013_1743791,00.html
Is it possible that Anthony takes a look at those pictures and provides us with the real cause of the problems visualized in this presentation?
I am confident that most problems have nothing to do with CO2 emissions and will not be solved by an investment of 100 billion euro in…thin air.