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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VERY interesting work! For those who have not, I highly recommend reading. Read both parts (quite long, but worth it).
Thanks very much for the link! (http://www.john-daly.com/deadisle/index.htm)
I remember when I heard about the Glacier Bay glaciers having retreated since they were discovered. I was prompted to think like a warmest. I was dismayed.
Forgot all about it when I was privileged to work on a ship in the Bay several years later. circa 1970
btw, than tks for reminding me, 45 years ago I got to snorkel at that cove too.
What is it that makes people so crazy about seeing things not change? Ah, were these people that naive. Afraid they have motivations more wicket than Shakespeare could express.
Here in New Zealand on the news (t.v) a school is using the kids to raise money to move another school in Somoa because of the rising sea levels . A good way of getting a new school when the Samoan government cant afford it.
My problem with almost all of the maps of sea surface height data is that they tend to display everything in terms of anomalies from some , usually not well defined mean surface height, rather than absolute elevations, For most purposes anomalies are probably more useful than absolute elevations, but they tend to implicitly disguise the true range of variability in sea level around the planet. After quite a number of false trails I finally managed to locate the type of map I was looking for.
http://bulletin.aviso.oceanobs.com/images/duacs_global_nrt_madt_merged_h_latest_glo_madt_n0_t0.png
It shows the SSH as anomalies from the geoid rather than from local averages. You’ll note that the range of sea levels is variable over a range of nearly 3.5 meters and this is merely the latest image and in no way reflects the extremes of historical variation. When it comes to masses of water as large as the ocean’s of the world, water is definitely capable of forming rather substantial hills.
Lay your hand and forearm flat on the desk. The back of your wrist is now about 50 mm off the surface. At the current rate of rise – 3.2 mm/year, says the U. of Colorado – it will take 16 years to cover your hand.
The late John L Daly has a photo of the mean sea level mark left by Captn. Sir James Clark Ross at the Isle of the Dead in Tasmania Australia in 1841
image
Photo taken at low tide 20 Jan 2004.
Mark is 50 cm across; tidal range is less than a metre. © John L. Daly.
link here
Even the university of Colorado only says the sea level rise is 3.2 MM per year or 1 cigarette length in 30 years.
Dr. Nils-Axel Mörner claims that even this amount has been “adjusted” to match faulty tide gauges. He thinks 1.1 MM per year is more accurate.
He also mentioned an interesting fact, that we should be able to measure a slowing down of the planet’s rotation proportional to the sea level rise.
It is like a figure skater letting her arms go out and she slows down.
With atomic clocks this effect should be measurable and any other source adjusted for.
Has this been done?
You can see .
The graphics under “Sea level trends: southern ocean versus global ocean” show recent (1993-2000) mean sea level variations as observed by TOPEX/POSEIDON.
Anton,
Very well said. I offer the same evidence for Daytona Beach, going back to the fifties. I would like to suggest that eyeball evidence is the most reliable. Daytona Beach slopes gently down from the dunes to the Atlantic. The sand on the beach moves all the time and ordinary storms move it considerably. Yet the overall beach, the beach stretching for miles, has a shape, a topology, that is unmistakable to the experienced and loving eye. As high tide climbs up the beach, its peak is very easy to measure because the foam spreads itself over surfaces that have become mostly flat. On these flat or nearly flat surfaces, a rise in sea level of one inch would cause the foam to extend another ten or twenty feet. It has not happened. Nothing like that has happened. If it had happened, I would be beside myself with grief.
Leon Brozyna says:
May 1, 2010 at 4:57 pm
Who needs science when you can make fantasy photoshopped images of London drowning?
The same people who need dodgy models to tell that we are all gonna broil?
magicjava writes:
“All valid arguments, none of which require us to claim that sea levels are not rising when it’s demonstrable that they are.”
Can you demonstrate it without using statistics? Without using contrived bundles of measurements rather than actual empirical measurements? I didn’t think so.
Oh dear, Anthony, you have inflamed my premiere pet peeve. “… if sea level was rising …” is a subjunctive phrase. “If sea level were rising” is the correct English.
Wet Blanket Larry’s stoopid question of the day:
In the not-too-distant past, there were oil wells in the Long Beach area. What about the San Diego area? If yes, then compaction could have canceled out sea-level rise.
Steve:
I used to take my vacations during either high of preferably low tide events to walk the beaches along the California coast. I was able tho see the tides come in (sea level rise) and the tides go out (sea level retreat). Studying tide tables to find extreme events provided an understanding of natural variability.
I’ve just been idling away some time on the site where I found the map I referenced in my comment above. They have an app called Sea Views
http://bulletin.aviso.oceanobs.com/html/produits/aviso/welcome_uk.php3
It’s an archive of daily SSH maps from 1992 to the present. Each map has daily max., min., and average noted. Clicking back and forth between various dates throughout the year from 1992 and 2009 and 2010, the difference of the avg. numbers was mostly about 3-4mm and in a not insignificant number of cases ’92 was actually higher than ’09 or ’10. Admittedly the averaging for these maps is probably less rigorous than the methodology used to calculate MSL, but 3mm vs 50+mm for the 3mm/yr supposed trend seems like an unusual large jump to me.
Steven,
I normally don’t bother commenting on such ridiculous entries, but since you asked so nicely for someone to give you an example, here ya go:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/03/24/new-moore-island-disappea_n_511162.html
We’re using distorted, undocumented photographs to do science now? This is a new low (pun intended).
I was pondering the suggestive image of London submerged by the relentlessly encroaching sea when it dawned on me that for that to happen the Brits would have to be stump stupid. There is a nation that has not only faced this problem, but created it from whole cloth.
I give you Amsterdam – a city built on a seafloor by design and intent. And successfully.
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Aerial_photographs_of_Amsterdam
At 1.8mm/year sea level rise, this is not a problem that is going to come slamming home next week. The photo should be seen as a significant insult to British pluck if not a complete in-your-face declaration of national incompetence. The Brits are every bit as capable of managing this as anyone. Here’s what the forward thinking Dutch are looking at:
http://www.wired.com/science/planetearth/magazine/17-01/ff_dutch_delta?currentPage=all
This is not a problem – yes, we have to, at some point, deal with it, but we always would have. It’s the recent and foreseeable trend: http://www.globalwarmingart.com/wiki/File:Recent_Sea_Level_Rise_png
This would be a problem: http://www.globalwarmingart.com/wiki/File:Post-Glacial_Sea_Level_png
This is what flooded the Cosquer cave, for example. Nobody’s predicting this as a possibility. In fact I would bet my entire year 2090 wages that the Cosquer cave entrance is exposed by nature long before the sea level rises another 40 meters.
http://www.culture.gouv.fr/fr/archeosm/en/fr-cosqu1.htm
Summary: Nothing to see here – move along.
Bought our property on the Pacific Ocean (Ganges Harbour, Salt Spring Island BC CAN ) in 1988. Have not noticed any long term sea level change. Rip Rapped the waterfront to stop bank errosion from boat wash and got beach errosion (as expected). Have noticed some variation in extreme high tide height due to changes in ocean temperature. ( I’m a geologist and thus I notice changes in my physical environment)
Squidly,
Thanks for that link.
The late John Daly’s view on Aust SLs tie in with what I have been observing all my life.
Phil M says:
I normally don’t bother commenting on such ridiculous entries, but since you asked so nicely for someone to give you an example, here ya go:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/03/24/new-moore-island-disappea_n_511162.html
We’re using distorted, undocumented photographs to do science now? This is a new low (pun intended).
I don’t know how ironic you were trying to be with this comment,but New Moore Island was a river delta sandbar whose disappearance had nothing to do with rising sea levels.
Phil M
LMAO – You linked to the Huffington Post Bengal sinking sandbar article. Next time, please read the article above before posting. For your mea culpa, you have to read the link below.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/03/25/bengal-island-succumbs-to-global-warming-nonsense-ap-gets-nutty-over-loss-of-a-sandbar/
Larry Fields
La Jolla is nowhere near Long Beach, and if there was subsidence – it would increase sea level rise, not decrease it.
Good Lord, I’ve been saying this for years! As soon as I hear (and I’ve been hearing it for a long time), that the sea levels are going to drown our cities, I ask for one – just one city to be named where the rising seas have already created problems. The answer I get (lately), is “Well, Palin is dumb!”
Stupid worthless environmentalist wackos.
Those doubting the scaling in the animation, watch the person in front of the left horse.
As the images morph, you will see a person appear next to him who is almost exactly the same height.
I live right next to the sea on the South Africa coast of South Africa and have done so on and off for fifty years, since I was a child. I know every rock on the beach like like the back of my hand. If there’s been any rise in sea level in these parts, it certainly hasn’t been obvious to me.