Andrew Freedman writes in this Tabloid Climatology™ piece at Climate Central:
When Hurricane Sandy struck New York City on October 29, 2012, the dark waters of Flushing Bay poured over the edges of LaGuardia Airport, flooding parts of the facility’s 7,000-foot long east-west runway, and damaging lighting and navigation systems. The floodwaters created an eerie image of jetways ending in water, as if they had been converted into boat ramps.
This was not the first time that LaGuardia suffered major flooding during a storm, nor will it be the last. Due to climate change-related sea level rise, LaGuardia and other coastal hubs throughout the U.S. face a growing risk of flooding during even modest storms.
Now, wait for it….here’s the fake picture they rendered to show what this might look like:
What La Guardia Airport could look like with 5 feet of sea level rise, an amount that could occur by 2100, according to some estimates.
Click on the image to enlarge. Credit: Nickolay Lamm/StorageFront , for Climate Central, using Climate Central data.
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This is a ‘jumped the shark’ moment for Climate Central. Read the whole story here: http://www.climatecentral.org/news/coastal-us-airports-face-increasing-threat-from-sea-level-rise-16126
Gosh, I never knew that sea level rise was so abrupt that it would catch those speedy airliners off guard so fast they couldn’t move out of the way. The climate change onset was so fast…that maybe future archeologists will find fossilized passengers with half chewed peanuts still in their mouths.
UPDATE: reader “cotwome” provides this image of before and after LaGuardia was built.
Click for a larger image. Note the LaGuardia is all landfill, done in the face of sea level rise. But apparently future builders just won’t be able to keep up.
As they say, ‘the stupid, it burns’.
Read this story for some reality on NYC and sea level rise:
Freaking out about NYC sea level rise is easy to do when you don’t pay attention to history
UPDATE 2: Checking what the FAA says, LaGuardia is 21 feet above sea level by survey.
Source: http://www.airnav.com/airport/KLGA
So one wonders if there will be a retraction for the statement “What La Guardia Airport could look like with 5 feet of sea level rise” and of course the photo.
On the plus side, jets in 2100 will be required to have water tanks to fight the Xtreme Brush Hell Fires & Deadly Dangerous Despicable Droughts as they criss-cross the country on their routes. The new amphibious runways make filling the tanks that much easier.
Our grand-kids will never know what a tarmac looks like.
At least the air traffic pattern will be predictable, changing 180 degrees every 12 hours so pilots can take off into the tide.
: > )
97% of all journalism is tabloid journalism. I know because surveyed the consensus. The consensus wasn’t happy about it, either.
*Sigh* I miss the days when a picture was worth a thousand words.
This weeks Economist has a sea level alarmist article titled “You’re going to get wet” in which it asserts that sea level was static for 2000 years before starting to rise around 1880 and with an accelerated rise in the last 2 decades.
This is imagined nonsense, as shown by these two figures:
The sea level rise since 1850 is uniform (and probably before that also):
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2010/11/battery_sl_trend_plot.png
and SL has never been static during the Holocene or probably any other time:
http://www.globalwarmingart.com/wiki/File:Post-Glacial_Sea_Level_png
The Edenic myth of the static and perfect “pre-industrial” climate “is not a sign of intelligence” as Richard Lindzen so aptly puts it.
WRT insanity of the picture. While the insane picture is obviously insane, there could be a rationale for the “5ft of sea level rise causing flooding of the airport”
They were discussing this in the context of Sandy.
So, Sandy in some places managed almost 14′ of surge. A good chunk of that was high tide, but let’s assume that their airport picture was again imagining this worst case scenario.
14′ + 5′ is just 2′ shy of 21′ – so, if they were imagining a “superstorm + high tide” scenario then the picture is almost plausible.
Something a little odd about the plane in the foreground. It appears to be missing the number 1 engine.
The altitude stated is the highest altitude of any runway, which for LGA is the beginning of runway 4. The lowest elevation of any of the runways is 7 feet at the beginning of runway 31.
We can scavange oysters at KLGA.
There won’t be fuel for flying anyway
Flying and grocery stores just won’t due.
To have them is evil and makes CO2
I read from the Climate Central story:
I have done some checking to find out how many feet the lowest part of the airport is above sea level and get 8 and 6.7 above sea level.Also the photo has water almost touching the underside of the body of the nearest plane. That’s another 6 foot at least. Am I missing something or is their rendered photo claim a pile of utter crap.
I heard on NPR a few weeks back that the reason for so much damage from Hurricane Sandy was because sea level rise greatly increased the storm surge. My jaw dropped to the floor when nobody countered this absurd statement.
Ooops! Missed the word feet.
“…sea level and get 8 and 6.7 above sea level…”
“…sea level and get 8 and 6.7 feet above sea level…”
Andrew Freedman is going to have to do much better than this….
…I don’t think there’s one person that gives a rats rear if an airport floods
Just a FYI: The entire airport is not one elevation. For example, the airport diagram from http://155.178.201.160/d-tpp/1306/00289AD.PDF (which is a link on the RHS of the website: http://www.airnav.com/airport/KLGA which is given as the source in the post) shows the following elevations:
Start of Runway 4: Elevation = 21 feet (this is labelled “Field Elev”)
Start of Runway 13: Elevation = 13 feet
Start of runway 22: Elevation = 12 feet
Start of runway 31: Elevation = 7 feet
The elevation in the terminate area is not given.
Unless the terminal area is below sea level, the “rendered” photo is still completely wrong and misleading.
Cheers.
At this point, how could any warmist continue to believe that Photoshopping pictures isn’t going to do more harm than good to their cause?
@DaveL right, I’m in a twitter exchange with Freedman on varying LGA elevations, but have not gotten to update main post yet…. No matter how you look at it, their claim doesn’t work.
Looks about as comfortable as existing airports.
Rates right up there with “record cold and snow is caused by AGW”….
Freedman is a warmist writting to bolster other warmists in a paper no one else would look at (except WUWT for the laughs!)
If you think that is bad then you need to see this, our good taxes paid for this, there is so much BS involved it is probably causing its own warming ! – Ha self fulfilling !!!!
http://australianclimatemadness.com/2013/06/17/climate-commissions-emotive-alarmist-blackmail/comment-page-1/#comment-31088
Reg,
Somewhat OT – but I watched the one certified widebody DC-10 tanker drop water on the Royal Gorge and Black Forest fires here in Colorado. Magnificent seeing that old bird so close to the ground lining up for a water drop. It holds 11 thousand gallons (according to newspaper reports) and can make several drops with just one fill.
So your comment about the planes having tanks isn’t that far fetched. (sarc on) All the passengers would have to bring their own scuba tanks (charged as extra baggage) or purchase it on the plane as an option and move to the forward cabin during drops, but that sounds like flying these days anyway (sarc off)
Mike Bentley
La Guadia’s got to go some to beat Schipol airport (Amsterdam). The naval battle Of Haarlemmermeer* was fought above its location.
* http://www.frommers.com/destinations/amsterdam/0043020009.html
Is this Freedman character aware that Amsterdam’s Schipol Airport datum is -11′ AMSL – i.e. 11 feet below mean sea level? Amsterdam seems to have a tidal range of around 7 feet at mean springs, comparable to New York’s at around 6 feet (New Amsterdam as was!).
Sorry Solent for the coincident post – was just checking the tide tables, which took time!
Amsterdam’s main Schiphol airport is 11 feet below sea level.
Presumably they use submarines with wings. Maybe Mr Freeman should take a world saving CO2 emitting flight to Amsterdam to check out this amazing thing. Make sure you pay your offsets, we wouldn’t want you to be a hypocrite.
If the Warmistas can get the majority of that sea level rise to pile up around La Guardia, they just might have a point. However, the word “level” is used in the description for a reason.
So another epic fail in logic. Are you thinking, Warmistas? Or is that too difficult to do?