Assuming that it can actually get there?
Today on the WUWT Hot Sheet, we reported that there was more fear-mongering imagery from National Geographic, as seen at right.
Steve Wilent said in a tip:
Have you seen the cover of the September 2013 National Geographic Magazine? Cover story: Rising Seas. Image: The statue of Liberty with water up to about Liberty’s waist — more than 200 feet above sea level.
http://press.nationalgeographic.com/2013/08/15/national-geographic-magazine-september-2013/
I wondered if they told readers how long that will take to get to that level, like I did in a previous photo portraying New York underwater here:
According to the Nat Geo article “Rising Seas”, it turns out that they didn’t tell their readers about how long it would take to reach the level depicted on the cover, so I’m going to do the calculation for you. First, specs on the Statue of Liberty. I found this image with measurements:
![funfactsstatue[1]](http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2013/08/funfactsstatue1.jpg?quality=83)
But neither it or the article http://statueofliberty.org/Fun_Facts.html using it had the details I was seeking to be able to determine the heights above current mean sea level.
The National Park Service stats page says:
| Top of base to torch | 151’1″ | 46.05m |
| Ground to tip of torch | 305’1″ | 92.99m |
| Heel to top of head | 111’1″ | 33.86m |
| Ground to pedestal | 154’0″ | 46.94m |
Source: http://www.nps.gov/stli/historyculture/statue-statistics.htm
Since the measurements are to ground level, I also has to determine the height of the island above MSL. A variety of measurements I discovered give different answers. Google Earth says 7 feet, while this National Park Service document says 15-20 feet were the highest elevations during its natural state before becoming a national monument. Looking at photos, etc, and considering those citations, for the sake of simplicity I’m going to call the height of Liberty Island at 10 feet above MSL. That puts the torch at 315 feet above the sea level.
I also had to estimate where the NatGeo waterline was, and based on folds in the robe, I estmated it to be 1/3 of the entire height of the statue from feet to torch, or about 50 feet above the top of the pedestal. That puts the NatGeo waterline at approximately 214 feet, or 65.2 meters above mean sea level.
So I have added these measurements, along with the estimated water line from the NatGeo cover to this image from WikiPedia:
So now that we have an estimated value for the NatGeo waterline depicted on the cover of the magazine, we can do the calculations to determine how long it will take for sea level rise to reach that height.
We will use the rate value from the tide Gauge at “The Battery”, just 1.7 miles away according to Google Earth.
Source: http://tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/sltrends/sltrends_station.shtml?stnid=8518750
How long will it take to reach the NatGeo waterline in the cover photo?
The mean sea level trend is 2.77 millimeters per year. At that rate we have:
65.2 meters = 65200 millimeters / 2.77 mm/yr = 23537.9 years
That’s right, 23 thousand 500 years!
A new ice age will likely be well underway then, dropping sea levels. The water would never get there. That’s assuming the statue still exists there at all. Ironically, Liberty Island is a remnant of the last ice age:
Liberty Island is a small 12.7-acre island in New York Harbor. As a remnant of last glacial age, it is composed of sand and small stones deposited as the glaciers retreated.
Even if we believe that sea level will accelerate to 2 or 3 times that rate (as some proponents would have us believe), we are still looking at thousands of years into the future. At a 3x rate, we are looking at 7846 years into the future.
Without explaining this basic fact to their readers, National Geographic is doing nothing but scare-mongering with that cover image. Shame on them.
It is this sort of junk science sensationalism that causes me and many others not to subscribe to National Geographic anymore. Their climate advocacy while abandoning factual geographics such as this is not worthy of a subscription.
It appears that by only focusing on the rate and timing of rising seas, Mr. Watts is merely creating a diversion from the reality that global warming does exist, and that it is indeed caused primarily by human activity. Due to his climate change denying status and his connections to polluting industries, his credibility is no better than that of the National Geographic. The following link might be of interest to the readers of this blog: http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Anthony_Watts
From Nat Geo article:
“Unless we change course dramatically in the coming years, our carbon emissions will create a world utterly different in its very geography from the one in which our species evolved. “With business as usual, the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere will reach around a thousand parts per million by the end of the century,” says Gavin Foster, a geochemist at the University of Southampton in England. Such concentrations, he says, haven’t been seen on Earth since the early Eocene epoch, 50 million years ago, when the planet was completely ice free. According to the U.S. Geological Survey, sea level on an iceless Earth would be as much as 216 feet higher than it is today. It might take thousands of years and more than a thousand parts per million to create such a world—but if we burn all the fossil fuels, we will get there.”
So 216 feet is pretty close to what the cover photo depicts.
[Snip. Sockpuppetry violates site Policy. Use one screen name. See the Policy page. — mod.]
Russell Raney,
You’re obviously new here, so I’ll be gentle:
First, global warming certainly does exist. It has been happening at the same rate for hundreds of years, without any acceleration. So we agree there.
Next, there is no verifiable, testable, empirical evidence that human activity is the cause. That is simply a conjecture. So you may believe that to be the case, but belief is not scientific evidence.
Since you are new here, you should read the Policy page, which requires that you do not label those you disagree with as “deniers” or any other word rooted in ‘denier’.
Finally, you also link to scurrilous innuendo accusing Anthony Watts of “connections” to “polluting industries”. Explain yourself. What industries? And what is your definition of the vague term “connections”? Any blog like your link with a header proclaiming “Lower wages, Less Healthcare, More Gun Violence” has zero credibility. It is a propaganda blog. Is that the best you can do? Are you led by the nose by people like that? It appears so.
The enormous amount of misinformation in your link avoids the fact that Anthony Watts is a published, peer reviewed author in the field of climatology. What are your qualifications, if I may ask? Be specific. You like links, so let’s have a link to your CV — if you even have one.
The Surface Stations paper singlehandedly forced the USHCN to alter its temperature reporting protocol. You can find critics anywhere, but the flak only proves that Anthony is over the target, and the target is squealing in pain from his direct hits.
WUWT has rocketed from zero to well over one hundred million unique hits in only 6 years, including more than one million reader comments. Many reputable climatologists such as Prof Richard Lindzen, Dr John Christy, Dr Roy Spencer, and others have written articles and commented here. Contrast that with the abysmal site traffic of all the alarmist blogs combined. WUWT has won the internet’s “Best Science” Weblog Awards for three years running. No alarmist blogs have ever won “Best Science” even once.
So I ask you: what is your problem? Millions of people click on WUWT because the science is here, instead of the usual climate alarmist bilge. If you stick around for a while, you may even learn something — that the entire “carbon” scare is a grant-fed scam on the taxpaying public, and it is not supported by replicable science.
If all the ice in Antarctica melted, mean sea level would rise by about 50m. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-21692423
Melting it: if methane from tundra accelerates global warming, this becomes imaginable. It is not simply ridiculous.
[snip]
Furthermore, I don’t understand why my qualifications or credentials should be relevant in this discussion – I’m not a meteorologist, yet I’m inteligent enough to understand the research on and logic of man-made climate change issued by the most respected climatologists.
[snip – Let’s just leave your explanation at that. You are right, to folks like you, qualifications don’t matter, you’ll simply pass on smears on anyone who disagrees with you world view. None of this has anything to do with the fact that Mr. Watts is right about this National Geographic article, and so your comment is off-topic in addition to being nothing but trying to tear down Mr. Watts for daring to have an opinion.
If you want to take it further about qualifications, we’ll be happy to discuss your viticulture training. – mod]
Reblogged this on This Got My Attention and commented:
I’m saddened by the National Geographic’s deliberate distortion.
Russell Raney says:
“I don’t understand why my qualifications or credentials should be relevant in this discussion”
You disparage Anthony Watts, but then you think you’re immune from a question about your own [non-existent] qualifications or credentials?
The difference between this award winning site and your typical alarmist blog that you get your misinformation from is that your comments get pubished here [except when they violate written site Policy, like labeling people “deniers”].
Best you run along now, back to whatever alarmist propaganda blog you get your talking points from. This is the internet’s “Best Science” site, [emphasis on ‘science’], so I don’t think you belong here. Religion is more your forte.
Greg,
You asked what happens if all the ice melts. That will not happen [or if it did, it would take thousands of years], but this link may be of interest to you.
Hi DB, thanks for the link, it contains some useful estimates of the volumes involved
however perhaps I didn’t state my question well.
I was interested in whether any estimates of the effects of crustal deformation had been
arrived at in the purely hypothetical case of grounded ice melting on a large scale.
An over simple analogy: imagine three ships floating next to each other in a closed basin, one (ship A) containing liquid cargo and representing land with ice on it, ship B represents the ocean
basin and contains some fluid and ship C represents land that has no ice to be shed.
Now if some of the fluid cargo is transferred from ship A to ship B the former will rise
relative to the water they are floating in and ship B will sink, ship C will remain
unchanged as will the level of the water they are floating in. Further, imagine that the
water they are floating in represents the magma that the tectonic plates “float” on.
The result of transferring liquid into ship B representing the ocean basin in terms of
the liquid level with reference to ship C will depend mostly on the relative density of
the cargo fluid with respect to the water (magma).
I don’t believe that magma behaves in exactly the same way as water such that crustal
masses displace their own weight in magma but I think some similar effects could be
observed?
Finally, I agree that melting of most or all of the ice on the planet would be
extraordinarily unlikely and would require an astronomical catastrophe (in the literal
sense).
Cheers
Greg Everard
(PS not the Greg I’ve seen posting here before)
Jeff Alberts says:
August 21, 2013 at 8:01 am
Galileonardo, excellent letter! I’d recommend that as a separate post, if possible…
Chad Wozniak says:
August 21, 2013 at 11:50 am
Excellent letter, as well said as anything.
Alberta Slim says:
August 21, 2013 at 9:25 am
That is an excellent letter. But I doubt that NG will care, or print it.
Many of us are glad you sent it to them.
A bit too late getting back, but Jeff, Chad, Slim, thank you. Jeff, I took your suggestion for a separate post (and for fixing the typos you pointed out), but I didn’t think Mr. Watts would post it so I just published it here along with a follow-up post you might enjoy. Chad, I agree, the results of their agenda are not unexpected and are unforgivable. Thank you all for the feedback and suggestions.