Ah, once again in response to a fearmongering press release, we see the obligatory “NYC is flooded” photoshop trick.
But guess what? I’ve already debunked that photo as impossible for the time frame. More on that later after we do the math on the press release that prompted this.
First the press release, from the University of Copenhagen
Sea levels will continue to rise for 500 years
Rising sea levels in the coming centuries is perhaps one of the most catastrophic consequences of rising temperatures. Massive economic costs, social consequences and forced migrations could result from global warming. But how frightening of times are we facing? Researchers from the Niels Bohr Institute are part of a team that has calculated the long-term outlook for rising sea levels in relation to the emission of greenhouse gases and pollution of the atmosphere using climate models. The results have been published in the scientific journal Global and Planetary Change.
“Based on the current situation we have projected changes in sea level 500 years into the future. We are not looking at what is happening with the climate, but are focusing exclusively on sea levels”, explains Aslak Grinsted, a researcher at the Centre for Ice and Climate, the Niels Bohr Institute at the University of Copenhagen.
Model based on actual measurements
He has developed a model in collaboration with researchers from England and China that is based on what happens with the emission of greenhouse gases and aerosols and the pollution of the atmosphere. Their model has been adjusted backwards to the actual measurements and was then used to predict the outlook for rising sea levels.
The research group has made calculations for four scenarios:
A pessimistic one, where the emissions continue to increase. This will mean that sea levels will rise 1.1 meters by the year 2100 and will have risen 5.5 meters by the year 2500.
Even in the most optimistic scenario, which requires extremely dramatic climate change goals, major technological advances and strong international cooperation to stop emitting greenhouse gases and polluting the atmosphere, the sea would continue to rise. By the year 2100 it will have risen by 60 cm and by the year 2500 the rise in sea level will be 1.8 meters.
For the two more realistic scenarios, calculated based on the emissions and pollution stabilizing, the results show that there will be a sea level rise of about 75 cm and that by the year 2500 the sea will have risen by 2 meters.
Rising sea levels for centuries
“In the 20th century sea has risen by an average of 2mm per year, but it is accelerating and over the last decades the rise in sea level has gone approximately 70% faster. Even if we stabilize the concentrations in the atmosphere and stop emitting greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, we can see that the rise in sea level will continue to accelerate for several centuries because of the sea and ice caps long reaction time. So it would be 2-400 years before we returned to the 20th century level of a 2 mm rise per year”, says Aslak Grinsted.
He points out that even though long-term calculations are subject to uncertainties, the sea will continue to rise in the coming centuries and it will most likely rise by 75 cm by the year 2100 and by the year 2500 the sea will have risen by 2 meters.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.gloplacha.2011.09.006
Contact:
Aslak Grinsted, PhD glaciologist, Centre for Ice and Climate, Niels Bohr Institute, University of Copenhagen. +45 3532-5893, aslak@gfy.ku.dk
================================================================
First, there has been no evidence of accelerating sea level rise. Willis writes in a previous entry:
Does increased CO2 cause increased sea level rise?
Short answer, data to date says no. There has been no acceleration the rate of sea level rise. Sea level has been rising for centuries. But the rate of the rise has not changed a whole lot. Both tidal stations and satellites show no increase in the historic rate of sea level rise, in either the short or long term. Fig. 1 shows the most recent satellite data.
Figure 1. Change of sea level over time. Radar data from the TOPEX satellite. The light blue line is sea level with monthly anomalies removed. The interval between data points is usually ten days. The gray line is the 1993-2004 linear trend projected to the end of the timeline. Gaussian average using a 71-point filter. Photo taken at Taunovo Bay Resort, Fiji.
Up until about the end of 2004, there was little change in the rate of sea level rise. Since then the rise has slowed down. The average (dark blue line) does not stray far from the trend (black line) up until 1994. Since then, it is well below the projected trend (gray line). We were supposed to be seeing some kind of big acceleration in the sea level rise caused by increased CO2. Instead, we are seeing a decrease in the rate of sea level rise. So the first claim, that increasing CO2 will cause increased rates of sea level rise, is not supported by the evidence.
Note that I am not saying anything about the future. The rate of sea level rise might go up again. What we can say, however, is that there is no hint of acceleration in the record, only deceleration. The claim of CO2 induced sea level rise is false to date.
=================
Second, these guys can’t even show math that matches the claims. Since there appears to be no acceleration in the record, and the average rate is 3mm per year we get this for they year 2100, 89 years from now:
89 years x 3 mm/year = 267 mm or 26.7 cm by the year 2100
Compare that to:
Even in the most optimistic scenario, which requires extremely dramatic climate change goals, major technological advances and strong international cooperation to stop emitting greenhouse gases and polluting the atmosphere, the sea would continue to rise. By the year 2100 it will have risen by 60 cm…
Even if nature doubled the rate of sea level rise to 6 mm/year we still wouldn’t make it:
89 years x 6 mm/year = 534 mm or 53.4 cm by the year 2100
60cm by 2100? FAIL
=====================
Third let’s have a look at that photo of NYC again, since I’ve covered it before:
Below is a repost of an analysis I did on Nov 28th, 2010 on a photo from this “NYC is flooded” photoshop trick set. Guess how long it takes to get the results shown in that photo?
Freaking out about NYC sea level rise is easy to do when you don’t pay attention to history
One of the more common visual tactics used by AGW proponents to scare people into thinking that AGW induced sea level rise is a big threat is to show altered photographs and GIS models of a city near the ocean (take your pick, New York, London, San Francisco etc.). These futuristic images demonstrate what the city might look like once global warming kicks in and kicks our butt, apparently without anyone noticing the advance of the sea. Take for example, lower Manhattan, one of the more common targets. The top image is a future shock rendition from the History Channel “Armageddon Week” and the bottom image is a photo of present day reality from Wikimedia.
Scary huh? And it’s not just photos, now that most anyone with a PC can run Google Earth, there’s a veritable cottage industry of people who make sea level inundation KML files using the 3D buildings feature for major cities. It works very well to get people’s attention. But how much of a looming threat is it when compared to the reality of measured sea level rise? Let’s find out.
New York City under a 3-5 meter rise in sea-level due to global warming. Source: Inhabitat.comWill Manhattan really look like that in the future? You can even interactively freak yourself out here, at Climate Atlas, and see what it looks like in NYC when the entire Greenland Ice Sheet melts:
Gosh.
Well, I can see how people must be terrified. Just look at this plot of sea level rise at the Battery Park tide gauge from NOAA:
Yeah, it’s headed up, wayyyy up. 2.77 millimeters per year. So, to get the levels in the photo and 3D GE model shown above, we’d need to do some simple calcs.
The Google Earth 3D model is easy. It specifies a 3-5 meter sea level rise, so we’ll call it 4 meters.
For calculation purposes, we’ll assume sea level rise to be linear, and round up the Battery Park tide gauge rate to 3.0 mm per year, which puts it closer to the 3.1 mm per year measured by satellite and published at Colorado State University’s Global Sea Level Page.
4 meters = 4000 millimeters
4000 millimeters /3.0 millimeters per year = 1333 years
Now, how about the doctored image from the History Channel? There’s no reference given on the height of sea level rise on the web page, but fortunately, we have built-in yardsticks in the image. The story height of buildings in the photo can easily be estimated from the before and after photos shown at the top of this post.
I’ve selected the white building on the northeast side of Battery Park, along South St. I counted 18 stories of that building as being underwater using the hi-res image here , and I’ll estimate from other objects in the photo (like the water to pier to street height) that it is an additional 2 stories from street level there to the present day sea level (PDSL).
So what is the height of a story? The Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat gives a handy guide on story height for office buildings like that one. They say that an office building like that one has a story height of 3.9 meters , so we’ll use that.
History Channel photo submersion = 20 stories
Story height = 3.9 meters
Sea Level Rise in the photo 20 x 3.9 meters = 78 meters
78 meters = 78,000 millimeters
78,000 millimeters / 3 millimeters per year = 26,000 years
26,000 years to get that? Would those buildings still be standing then? And even more important, wouldn’t we be in a new ice age by then? If we did enter another ice age, sea level would be lower, as demonstrated in this graph below. Note the level 24,000 years ago.
Image: Global Warming Art – clickThis demonstrates the folly of assuming that climate change, and hence sea level rise, is linear. As we all know, it isn’t, yet that doesn’t stop many AGW proponents from using present day measurements to project linearly into the future and then generate scary scenarios and visuals from it.
Even on the short-term, such predictions fail miserably. Take for example Dr. James Hansen of NASA GISS. Read his prediction 20 years ago about sea level rise in New York City, which I previously covered on WUWT in A little known 20 year old climate change prediction by Dr. James Hansen – that failed badly.
He said that [in 20 years]:
“The West Side Highway [which runs along the Hudson River] will be under water.(which has been “updated” now, even with the update it still fails)
Problem is, here it is 20 years later, and people still drive that highway today without the use of Jet-Skis.
West Side Highway in 2007. Image: WikimediaWhat got me started on this post was a comment left on WUWT by “Rascal”
Submitted on 2010/11/26 at 7:46 pmCopy the following address in to your browser, and observe the expansion of lower Manhattan since 1660.
http://www.racontours.com/archive/coastline_anim.php
Note that the West Side Highway (West Street) over half of the World Trade Center site, and the South Street Seaport were “under water” in 1660!
He’s right. And one thing many AGW proponents don’t consider (in addition to the non-linearity of climate) is the adaptability of humans. For readers here, I’ve taken that Flash animation at Racontours.com and made it into an animated GIF below:
Flipbook of lower Manhattan harbor and city adaptation from 1660-2004. Images from Racontours.comThey write about this historical account of lower Manhattan:
Based on our study of historical maps of Manhattan, Racontours has been able to create this simulation of the expansion of the island’s coastline. This topic is covered in both our South St. Seaport and Lower Manhattan tours, and most people are amazed at the transformation that’s taken place. Pearl St, named for the seashells that washed up there, once ran along the river. (Click here for a view of Captain Kidd’s house at the corner of Pearl & Wall Streets)
The first land reclamation was undertaken by Peter Stuyvesant upon taking over as the colony’s governor in 1646. Hoping to facilitate waste disposal and transportation, he organized the excavation of the canal along what is now Broad St. Back then, this was still called New Amsterdam, and the Dutch were great believers in canals.
By the American Revolution, the city’s population had grown to 30,000, and land had become scarce and cramped in the city center. That’s when the city began to sell ‘water lots’, wherein entrepreneurs would seek to use landfill to create additional lots for use.
The most recent landfilled area led to the creation of Battery Park City, built in the 70′s on the earth excavated from the World Trade Center’s foundation.
Based on the 2.77 millimeters per year (call it 3 mm) of current sea level rise as shown by that Battery Tide gauge, in the 344 years (1660-2004) the sea level would have risen by:
344 years x 3 millimeters/year = 1032 millimeters or 1.032 meters.
Clearly, New Yorkers have been able to stay well ahead of that 1 meter rise since the city was founded.
The next time your friends get freaked out about sea level rise, or “high water”, show them this.
Bruce says:
October 18, 2011 at 9:59 am
“I must be missing something. The Hansen article that you quote and link in the above article says 40 years not 20 years! ”
Typical revisionism. When it came to light, a lot of gnashing of teeth came about, even going as far as to drag out the reporter whose recollections tended to change, despite what he originally reported.
It was covered on here a while back if you wish to got digging around for it.
Bookmarking this one 😉 It’s a keeper!
At least all these CAGW models are consistent in their broad details:
1) if we do nothing, we face apocalypse;
2) If we dismantle capitalism immediately, we will just dodge the climate bullet and be forever grateful to those wise AGW supporters who steered the bovine masses away from the brink of disaster.
Re the photoshopped 78 metre sea level rise – all the ice in the world could melt and there would only be – well, estimates vary, but are usually in the 60s. I did a rough calculation by simply smearing all the ice out over the existing ocean area, ignoring the shrinkage as it converted into water, and got 76 metres, so that is the absolute hairiest scariest maximum.
In 26,000 years the Earth should, by all measures, be halfway down the slope to the bottom of the Next Ice Age, with sea level down 100-200 feet.
Think of the boom it will create with all that continental shelf newly exposed.
Google that.
Hum, they are predicting a transgressive sequence not unlike the sequences of the Cretaceous responsible for much of the hydrocarbons in Western North America. Of course everyone knows that transgressive sequences have regressive sequences along with them in a kind of back and forth movement. All very natural and normal just ask Albertasouris. Oh, can speak dinosaur. No problem, the models do that don’t they.
The first land reclamation was undertaken by Peter Stuyvesant upon taking over as the colony’s governor in 1646. … Back then, this was still called New Amsterdam, and the Dutch were great believers in canals.
I have a great-something grandmother who was born in New Amsterdam in 1634, so welcome to America, all you newcomers. Judging by the animation, in 500 years the Hudson river will be no
more than another Dutch canal running through reclaimed landfill. Of course, in 500 or a 1000 years we may be sliding into the next ice age, assuming we aren’t already sliding from the peak in 1998.
And assuming those NYC buildings are so well built that they last 26,000 years, that won’t be water in the image, it will be ice.
The fig. 1 chart shows radar sea level data from Topex satellite running up to 2010, however Topex died in 2006, which is a good thing, because all that downwelling Topex microwave radiation was probably what was melting the Greenland glaciers.
To the attention of Anthony Watts
I’m glad adding a picture featuring France undersea to your collection. Boy tells :
I Thomas, 8, future climate refugee.
http://a21.idata.over-blog.com/399×599/0/45/99/86/r–fugi—clim.jpg
It was the poster of the 4th International Forum of Meteo in 2007,
official site http://www.smf.asso.fr/fim07.html
same poster in high and low definitions here (Affiche)
http://www.smf.asso.fr/fim07_presse.html
Note : sponsors of the poster includes
National meteorological office,
government agencies
EU commission
corporations, etc.
Sincerely yours
F. M.
I think we should send this to Australia, Rolling Stone already has them dead in the water and or withered from GW. What a crock!
zac says:
October 18, 2011 at 2:29 pm
“Of course humans dumping solid matter into the seas to create new land will also increase the sea level as will all that sediment carried into the sea by rivers.”
Just the point I was making to my Grandson yesterday as he tried to skim pebbles into the sea. We must educate the young and stamp out this danger to civilization! Multiply all the young ones doing it and a huge amount of sea rise is being missed by the models, never mind the quality of the data produced by the tidal gauges! 😉
RE: zac: (October 18, 2011 at 2:29 pm)
“Of course humans dumping solid matter into the seas to create new land will also increase the sea level as will all that sediment carried into the sea by rivers.”
One might think that all that sediment running into the sea would eventually depress land levels as well as increase sea level, but wait a minute, isn’t there something called ‘plate tectonics’ that is continuously sweeping sediment off the ocean floor and building mountains? Perhaps one component of sea level rise or fall is net plate tectonic activity.
By the way, some of the writers of these doomsday scenarios have cited the projections of Dr. Stefan Rahmstorf, who is a German Professor of Physics of the Oceans at Potsdam University who says he believes the hockey stick temperature rise, supposedly ‘unique’ to this century, may have already gone beyond the point of no return in setting the stage for a major arctic meltdown.
I was working in the Philippines last year and got talking to a Middle School Science Teacher who asked me, as a western Engineer (not many ’round eyes’ around the area I was working in) to come into his class and talk about the power station project I was working on. I thought this a great idea and readily agreed. I arranged to meet the Teacher again to go over details, after securing some time off from the project, and we got talking about what he was teaching his children.
The teacher mentioned AGW as a special topic, and as an educated westerner, would it be possible for me to instruct his class on the general points associated with this biggest danger to the world today. To his horror, I said that I would be happy to talk about AGW as the scam that it is. ‘But sea levels have risen 6m (six metres) in Pangansinan, Luzon, Philippines in my life-time!’ he exlaimed. I advised him that, however close to his pension he was, he was not over 20,000 years old. My looked-forward-to class meeting was abruptly cancelled.
Long story short; even the unfortunately limited education these wonderful Philippine children receive is being highjacked by the AGW scam, with apparently educated Teachers believing that sea levels have risen massively in a short period of time. I thought it was only in the west that our children are being brainwashed.
First of all, that famous graph showing the Meltwater Pulse clearly shows one thing, Seal level has been rising continuously since the Holocene began. All rising sea-level discussions are fraudulent already because sea-level is clearly supposed to be rising. If they’re only rising in the mm per year range, we may actually be in trouble because that graph shows that the last time sea-level did NOT rise was leading up to the last glacial maximum.
Secondly, any sea-level rise would *first* have to overcome the manmade expansion in NYC into the water. Both the East river and the Hudson are narrower at NYC these days. Such expansion is going on all around the world. There will not be enough sea-level rise to even wash over the synthetic Battery Park City, and it will never get near the original island.
Finally, I wish the alarmists would start making a parallel calculation when they project Greenland melting to account for all the water that would remain landbound in freshwater lakes. The melting of Greenland would create really really great lakes (pardon the pun). Greenland would become the world’s greatest exporter of bottled water for the hip crowd. Just picture little plastic bottles with a picture of a Viking on it, called ‘Glacier Water’! I would buy stock in this lickity split.
P.S. Anthony, excellent job on that Animated GIF! There is another one floating around the internet showing pretty much the whole island and it’s growth but I cannot find it. I’ll be linking to yours instead!
I have received the following from Dr Grinsted:
Hi Richard
I have not seen the wuwt page yet.
Frankly, I am reluctant to go or even visit there because I know that whatever I say there will be attacked by an angry mob of commenters which are unable to listen to reason. There may be a few individual posters/commenters that are the exception to the rule.
I have previously commented on climateaudit which atleast has a moderately polite tone (unlike wuwt), but still I did not find the experience constructive. I frankly do not think that anybodys positions were moved (I weren’t weren’t).
Finally, I think that WUWT completely lacks any editorial filter beyond only allowing ghg skeptics to write. It allows all kinds of basement cranks to write even when it must be obvious to Watts that it is an incoherent ludicrous mess.
To me, wuwt is just a noise horn with the only intent to delay any efforts to mitigate a serious problem.
Pros of posting there:
It feels good to set the record straight.
I may move 0-2 persons slightly.
Cons:
I have work to do that I feel is much more constructive.
I will be attacked by a lynch mob.
I lend credibility to the site by taking them seriously.
I will read the page at work, and perhaps I will make a single comment.
-Aslak Grinsted
I have sent this in response:
Dear Dr Grinsted,
Your reply has brought to mind the words “pot”, “kettle” and “black.” Consider for a moment the vocabulary you have used:
“angry mob”
“unable to listen to reason”
“basement cranks”
“incoherent ludicrous mess”
“noise horn”
“lynch mob”
I agree that politeness is important in debate. Using this kind of language does not help at all.
I will post your reply on the sea level thread. I urge you to add your comment. You will find that your remark “only allowing ghg skeptics to write” is without foundation.
Best regards,
Richard Barnes.
This tomfoolery about sea level rise is perplexing, looking at the long term post ice age chart the sea levels have risen at about the same rate for 8 thousand years.
The perplexing part is that it is a static 2 to 3 mm for eight thousand years. This tends to point to the fact that their is no extra water being added or only a minor quantity.
The answer has to lay else where, the odd dust storm and sand storm, the huge quantities of debris and silt from the worlds rivers and floods from the yearly monsoons. These are minor as is the millions of micro meteorites that rain down.
The billions of tons of little critters that live and die fed by the nutrients that find their way to the oceans by the erosion of the continents, they dieand fall to the bottom of the abyss, that is the briny deep, all add to the space occupied by the oceans.
This natural process I am sure adds in some way to the surface rise of the oceans and may account for most of it as it seems a constant.
My question to those with more knowledge would be how much is the average sea bottom sediment layer growing per year?
John Hayzen-Smith – Minor correction: The sea level has risen about 120 metres in 21,000 years (IPCC report AR4 FAQ 5.1), so your Philippino friend would not need to be 20,000 years old to have witnessed a 6 metre rise. More like 2,000 years old (I think the rise rate was higher in the earlier years).
Mike Jonas
More like 8-10 000 years, the rise has been very slow since the last remnants of the Laurentide ice melted about 8 000 years ago. And it actually is possible that the sea-level in Pangasinan has risen perceptibly (though not 6 meters) in a lifetime. The Philippines is a very unstable place tectonically.
Assuming Earth stays in the warm phase of the millennial climate cycle until at least 2100 (not a huge assumption), the maximum possible sea level rise by then will be a bit more than 0.25m above current MSL.
1/4 of a meter… A bit less than 1 foot… That’s it… That’s the worst case scenario that is actually possible in the real world.
The climate modelers make me think of an Aubrey McClendon (CEO of Chesapeake Energy) quote:
“That kind of analysis, I think, can only come at the dangerous intersection of Excel and PowerPoint. It can’t happen in reality.”
http://
debunkhouse.wordpress.com/2010/04/17/oh-say-can-you-see-20th-century-sea-level-changes-when-viewed-in-a-geological-persp
ective/
http://debunkhouse.wordpress.com/2010/05/20/the-national-academy-of-sciences-forecasts-sea-level-rise-of-22-mmyr/
REPLY: So might tides which can be as large or larger. Shall we then modify the orbit of the moon to prevent high tides? It is about as plausible as the claims on CO2 emissions equating to sea level – Anthony
—
I think adjusting the moons orbit is a bit extreme even for you Anthony. It only follows that if sea levels were to rise by 60cm then the tidal surge would also rise by at least that much. The Nargis Cyclone had a storm surge of 12 feet so an extra 60cm on that would increase it to 14 feet. Would that not have seen even more wide spread devestration that killed an estimated 138,000. Who knows? I’m sure it wouldn’t have improved matters though.
Would it not be possible to calculate (under, say, warmista assumptions) how long it would take to completely melt:
1) the Greenland ice-cap
2) the Antarctic ice-cap?
I realize that you are a busy man, Mr Watts, and that there are only 24 hours in a day, but one of your denizens is surely capable. I’d do it myself, if my math/physics was up to it.
A classic and thought through explanation of what is going on as regards sea level hysteria.
A dissection job of inspired genius, please accept my thanks and best regards.
@Skeptik says:
October 19, 2011 at 6:37 am
A recent publication by a team from TU Delft & JPL found that the Greenland ice sheet was melting at half the rate previously thought. They estimate that the Greenland ice sheet is losing ~230 gigatonnes (Gt) of ice per year. One Gt of water has a volume of 1 cubic km (km^3). 1 Gt of ice has a larger volume than 1 Gt of water… But, for the purpose of this exercise, we’ll assume 1 Gt of ice has a volume of 1 km^3.
If 1 Gt of ice has a volume of 1 km^3 and the current volume of the Greenland ice sheet is ~5 million km^3 and Greenland continues to melt at a rate of 230 km^3/yr over the next 90 years… The Greenland ice sheet will lose a bit more than 0.4% of its ice volume.~230 gigatonnes (Gt) of ice per year equates to about 0.005% of ice mass loss per year. At the current rate, it would take 1,000 years for the Greenland Ice Sheet to lose 5% of its volume.
The Earth’s climate was at least 1°C warmer during the Holocene Climatic Optimum and the Greenland Ice Sheet did not melt, disappear or destabilize.
The Earth’s climate was at least 2°C warmer and the Arctic was about 5°C warmer than it currently is during the Sangamonian (Eemian) interglacial. and the Greenland Ice Sheet did not melt, disappear or destabilize.
Greenland’s glaciation began during the Miocene, when the Earth’s climate was at least 5°C warmer than it currently is. It advanced rapidly after the Mid-Pliocene Warm Period.
Earth’s climate would have to warm back up to where it was in the mid-Miocene (~15 MYA) in order to destabilize the Greenland ice sheet.
There is no scientific evidence to back up the assertion of a “disappearing Grrenland Ice Sheet. For a detailed explanation as to why the Greenland ice sheet cannot collapse under any AGW scenario, see Ollier & Pain, 2009.
http://debunkhouse.wordpress.com/2011/01/22/more-glacial-junk-science-journalism/
Thought your readers may find this find interesting . . . .
Where’s the water? Signs of ancient lakes in China’s parched desert
http://news.medill.northwestern.edu/chicago/news.aspx?id=190203
LBtT;
The leap, of course, it that it was a period of “warming” that created the desert. Given that the recent warming has greened the eastern Sahara (the Sahel), said Great Leap is probably another one in exactly the wrong direction.
The first image, above, of Manhattan underwater appears on the cover of Heidi Cullen’s book, “The Weather of the Future.” At the time I presented much of the same evidence to the contrary that is presented here.
One of the amazing things to me is that “The Village” area, Chelsea, the Garment district and the rest between Lower Manhattan and Midtown Manhattan is shown completely underwater, without hundreds of buildings poking out. As you can see here…
http://climatesanity.wordpress.com/2010/08/21/manhattan-underwater/
that region is covered with buildings that are hundreds of feet tall.
You might also be interested in my short series “Cities Underwater” with examines claims of inundation for Manhattan, Boston, Vancouver, and Los Angeles…
http://climatesanity.wordpress.com/cities-underwater-2/
Tom