We continue to find laughable errors in the state-by-state climate impact report released yesterday. Today we have this claim in the White House climate impact report for Georgia about coastline for the State of Georgia being threatened by sea level rise: (h/t Ryan Maue)
For comparison, California has 840 miles of coastline.
Map from NOAA US Tides and Currents website
According to the U.S. International Borders: Brief Facts”, by the Congressional Research Service, Table 3 lists the value for Georgia:
It took me about 20 seconds to locate this data. Georgia has 100 miles of coastline, not 707.
If you use the NOAA method, where they measure the outline of every estuary, inlet, peninsula, etc that touches water, we get a value for Georgia of 2344 miles:
Source: http://coastalmanagement.noaa.gov/mystate/ga.html
No matter which method you use, you can’t get 707 miles.
Add this to the list of laughable data claims already discovered, such as the claim that the president’s home state of Hawaii has 31 counties (it actually has 5), it seems to me that that the White House doesn’t know how to do basic research using a search engine.
Besides, Savannah, GA seems to not have disappeared in the face of its measured sea level rise:
Source: http://tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/sltrends/sltrends_station.shtml?stnid=8670870
Surely it must be embarrassing for the White House that a “flat earther” blogger like me has to point these factual errors out to them.
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If you measure coastline using fractal math, it can be a lot bigger
We know the White House is arithmetically challenged.
When you believe that adding $9 trillion in deficit spending is “cutting the deficit in half”, you know that numeracy is not a strong suit of the current administration.
Ok, now I’m confused. Are we at war this week with EastAsia or Oceania?
hmiwindows says:
June 27, 2013 at 9:21 am
“The White House has a lot of things confused. Help them Lord… ”
don’t you mean ‘help us Lord”.
More lacking Google work, as pointed out by Pete Brown:
Okay, the mighty EPA’s own Website has the following:
A typical passenger vehicle emits about 5.1 metric tons of carbon
dioxide per year.
Source: http://www.epa.gov/otaq/climate/documents/420f11041.pdf
Doing the math, 18 million vehicles in a year emit 91.8 MILLION
metric tons per year.
And they’re worried about a measly 85 metric tons.
The innumeracy, it burns.
Erik Jacobs says, “Tarran and Steven bring up some interesting questions. How are the other states measured? If Georgia is 707 miles, then California must be a lot more than 840 miles. ”
Just look at a detailed map. California has mostly straight coastline — beaches. Georgia has few beaches. It is a maze of barrier islands and marshes.If you measure what makes sense in a political discussion (i.e., miles of shoreline that property owners care about), then I’m kind of suprised that Georiga doesn’t have a larger total than California.
How long is any coastline?
It depends on how long your ruler is.
If your ruler is very short, say 3 feet, the measure of a coastline would be much longer than if you measured it with a 1000 foot ruler. Especially if the coastline is crooked and full of rocks an features.
🙂
It’s close enough for government work!
“No matter which method you use, you can’t get 707 miles.”
That is a bold statement. There are a lot of correct answers to the question “how long is X coast?” until you know where 707 came from, I probably would have made such a claim.
george e. smith says:
June 27, 2013 at 10:34 am
“…An old Polynesian cure for drowning, was to hang the patient by his/er heels over a fire pit, with wet aBanama leaves, to quell the flame from the fire. The hanging itself, would drain the patient a bit, and the CO2 in the smoke, would trigger spontaneous breathing, to get the victim going again. Well the presumption was that the patient was on our side of course. If s/he was on the other side, we would save the leaves for next time, and have dinner instead…”
*
I really REALLY should stop drinking coffee when I read this site. Thanks, George, for starting my day with a laugh (it’s 4:35 a.m. in Australia). Shame about the monitor, shame about the wall… ah well.
As for coastlines and measurements… actually, it’s scary. Do they just pluck figures from the air? Sloppiness in an early grade school project I can understand, but in the professional world, no. The White House is supposed to be higher again… I guess not, huh?
If it has become acceptable to be this sloppy with facts and figures, it’s time to chase the kiddies out of office on all levels, and bring some responsibility back in. Who let those dang kids in, in the first place?
Just did some looking due to the Maryland post below and found this.
Coastline
1. Figures are lengths of general outline of seacoast. This does not include freshwater coastlines. Measurements are made with unit measure of 30 minutes of latitude on charts as near scale of 1:1,200,000 as possible. Coastline of bays and sounds is included to point where they narrow to width of unit measure, and distance across at such point is included.
Shoreline.
2. Figures were obtained in 1939–1940 with recording instrument on the largest-scale maps and charts then available. Shoreline of outer coast, offshore islands, sounds, bays, rivers, and creeks is included to head of tidewater, or to point where tidal waters narrow to width of 100 feet.
Source: Department of Commerce, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, National Ocean Service
Read more: Coastline of the United States | Infoplease.com http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0001801.html#ixzz2XRcZrxpe
Read more: Coastline of the United States | Infoplease.com http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0001801.html#ixzz2XRWdo3KN
Data? We don’t need no steenkin’ data. We make our own.
Montana just received a Tsunami warning, stay safe all you Montanans
Maybe Obama has gotten away with so many lies that he doesn’t bother to have anything checked.
Paul Westhaver says:
June 27, 2013 at 11:36 am
“How long is any coastline?
It depends on how long your ruler is.”
And on the fractal dimension of the coastline.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fractal_dimension
Did you know that the CEO of Ryanair is an ardent anti AGW person.
http://iceagenow.info/2013/06/ryanair-ceo-blames-notion-global-warming-%e2%80%9cenvironmental-loonies%e2%80%9d/
This is the kind of person who could actually do something about stopping these loonies from spending our money on a non-event. Instead of constant rants and handwaving here (including myself ad priori of course), inst it time legal action was taken against these people eg FORCE Mann to release tax paid documents. Force NOAA, Met office, msn news etc to admit there is no warming publicly etc. Advertisements on MSM with Roy Spencer Epic Fail etc. Get the lawyers on to these people quick smart! LOL
If you use the NOAA method, where they measure the outline of every estuary, inlet, peninsula, etc that touches water, we get a value for Georgia of 2344 miles:
====
can Calif get 3427
Michael Bacigalupo says:
June 27, 2013 at 11:21 am
“Other posters said the same thing, but you can measure coastline basically however you want to get any length you want. It’s not inaccurate, just a weird way of looking at it.”
A straight coastline has the same length no matter how long your ruler is.
This is obviously an attempt by some of his advisers to help boost his legacy. Being recognized as a complete and utter fool is possibly the most charitable explanation for many of his actions.
In all fairness there could be 707 miles of coastline depending on the resolution and boundary definitions you use. It’s part of the coastline conundrum, They aren’t per-se wrong they just aren’t using official methodology and it is likely inconsistent on a state to state basis.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Hummm, just curious if anyone has done the math on this little $100,000,000 trip to Africa and the carbon footprint that is carried with the jets, carrier, 60 or so cars etc that our POTUS is taking with him. That has gotta be a pretty big number. Probably offset by the kids not being able to do a White house tour due to the cuts though — >SARC>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
And that’s not even scratching the surface. The amount of assets the USAF commits to supporting one of the Presidential trips is staggering. Airlift galore, many tanker aircraft; and spare/backup aircraft, of course, as the King just can’t be inconvenienced, you know. It’s grossly wasteful.
The ‘facts ‘ mean nothing its all about the ‘message ‘ , so no matter how poor the data as long as the ‘message’ pushes the right button with right people everything is fine .
Coastline miles getting smaller is one of the effects consistent with global warming.
You way over-estimate the embarrassment potential of this particular White House.
If they can’t get the number of counties in Hawaii, or the coastline of Georgia right, how in the world can we expect them to have correct facts about carbon cycles, sea level rise, temperature anomalies, and other technical matters correct?
Well, I guess the answer is self evident…