From the “more proof Walmart is evil” department, comes this bit of serendipity. While looking for a marine deep cycle battery to serve as storage for a solar powered remote weather station and webcam I’m designing, this turned up in the Walmart product search:
Intrigued by the photo, since I had never seen it before, and because it showed a clear view of the sea at Battery Park from the early years of aviation, I set about trying to find the source of it. Usually, photos that are for sale tend to be well protected so that hi-res versions don’t make it onto the net. To my complete surprise, not only did I find the source, but also a high-res version. To my even bigger surprise, it turned out to be in NOAA’s public domain photo collection.
The source:
A flying boat cruising by Battery Park at the south end of Manhattan Island. In: “Flug Und Wolken”, Manfred Curry, Verlag F. Bruckmann, Munchen, 1932.
Image ID: line0987, NOAA’s America’s Coastlines Collection
Location: New York City
Photo Date: 1930 Circa
Credit: Fairchild Aerial Surveys Inc.
Category: Coastline/Mid-Atlantic New York/Historical/
And here is the hi-res version:
Click to enlarge (BTW, since this is public domain, save and print it yourself if you like it. COSTCO offers print services, as Dr. Mike Mann found out) – Anthony_
Available at: http://www.photolib.noaa.gov/htmls/line0987.htm
(Update: Michael Ozanne writes in comments:
That’s the Dornier Do-X , the biggest plane in the world of its day and one of the worst aeronautical engineering exploits in history. Famous for its mishap ridden marketing flight from Friedrichshafen to New York which ended up taking 9 months. Longer than it would probably take to swim it….. more here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dornier_Do_X )
Note in the background, you can see what looks to be the Empire State Building (or possibly the Chrysler building) nearing completion. Empire state officially opened on May 1st, 1931. The Chrysler building May 20, 1930. That puts the photo above around 1930 to early 1931. (any readers that can help identify for sure, leave a comment please).
Now compare that photo to this one taken 80 years later in 2010 from Wikipedia with a nearly identical vantage point:
While there have been a lot of changes, most notably the mature trees now in Battery Park, one thing is clear – the city has not been inundated by sea level rise even though the NOAA Battery Park tide gauge indicates a rise of about 0.22 meter ( 8 3/4 inches):
Granted, you wouldn’t be able to tell the difference in sea level from 1930 to 2010 just by looking at the two photos, but that’s the point, especially when we see idiotic stories like this one in National Geographic:
Or this one of La Guardia airport by Climate Central’s Andrew Freedman, which is the all-time dumbest in my opinion, since I’m pretty sure sea level rise can’t catch airplanes:
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.
As always, I remind our readers:
Freaking out about NYC sea level rise is easy to do when you don’t pay attention to history
Related articles
- From the Scientific Urban Legend Department: ‘AGW Sea Level Rise Made Sandy More Destructive’ (wattsupwiththat.com)
The building nearing completion is 70 Pine Street. It’s very much still there in the modern picture, just surrounded by lots of other tall buildings. 55 Wall Street is now in front of it, but you can still see its top. It was built as the headquarters for the Cities Service oil company, and more recently was the headquarters of the AIG insurance company. Empire State Building and Chrysler Building are both about 4+ miles away in the Midtown area and not visible here.
bart: “The buildings rest on the bedrock, and that doesn’t subside.”
It seems to me that if bedrock didn’t subside, there would be no such thing as isostatic adjustment and the belief in plate tectonics would need to be de-consensualized.
Robert Austin says:
September 21, 2013 at 9:49 am
I understand that the New York City area is still settling at about 1 mm / year from isostatic adjustment from the melting of the Laurentide ice sheet.
——————————————————————————————————-
Indeed. Could even be a little higher and could account for a portion of the “measured” sealevel rise.
Maybe SLR could be detected by examining the encrustations etc. on the piles the piers rest on (???).
the several layers of subway lines attest that the foundation of Manhattan is Moh’s definitely very solid. They are dug into granite, I believe.
Material has been dug and carted off to build the subways and other underground infrastructure. On the Circle-Line Tour, I heard that by weight more material has been removed from Manhattan than has been built up on its surface in buildings, etc.
Therefore, if anything, due to weight change on the balance, Manhattan Island ought to be rising.
I believe Nat Geo once did an article on underground Manhattan.
Concur. It’s neither.
Is there another way to date the photo?
*** Please Note ***
There is an entire new building on the extreme left side of the recent picture! Look carefully, this building sits atop land that didn’t even exist in the older picture.
I think the building under construction is 66 Pine Street, which went up in 1932, according to this interesting map: http://bdon.org/2013/09/12/building-age-nyc/
My tidal calculator only goes back to 1950 so I can’t provide an accurate tidal range for 8/27/1931. Typical tidal range at the Battery is about 5 feet with the exact value depending on the lunar phase.
Yes, that’s definitely the Dornier Doh-X. A great feat of German engineering? No, for two reasons: (1) it was a flop, and (2) it was built in Switzerland.
Believe it or not, a DO-X1 and X2 were built and sold to Mussolini. The X was hugely underpowered and overdesigned, based on non-state-of-the-art technology, and Dornier must have known its deficiencies. Among other nifty (but heavy) features, were passageways giving access to the engines while in flight. For a great summary of the DO-X, see: http://air-boyne.com/the-dornier-do-x-what-might-have-been/
Fernando in Brazil – apologies for misunderstanding you. My fault. Your English is 100% better than my Portuguese.
Greg Goodman says:
September 21, 2013 at 8:05 am
Ya gotta admit the water does kinda look higher 😉
===============================================
No, it looks deeper
Sea Level Rise has always intrigued me. Remember, sea ‘level’ is Mean Sea Level, an average. It is possible for that value to be influenced by different aspects of the tidal cycle. However if on the whole sea level is rising, there must be some humanly observable effect. Otherwise, what of it?
That said NO-ONE is going to notice a change of 8″ in MSL. As Mosher points out, the time of observation also plays a big role when looking for evidence of sea level rise in local tides. But if no-one can see that extra foot in action then it’s unlikely small rises have any effect.
There do seem however to be plenty of anecdotal claims that SLR has not been noticeable at many places around the world.
Personally, I’d like to see a crowd sourced project with a website where people can contribute photos and anecdotes to show how much SLR has affected their neck of the woods in the past 100 years.
I’d also like to see kind of evidence of the height of the HAT for each year for the past 100 years in various places. Because that’s where we’d see evidence of an actual physical rise in sea levels. Or maybe something like mean high tide values for each year.
There’s a challenge for anyone who know how to find it, do we have HAT records for say the past 100 years at The Battery?
Briney Eye says:
September 21, 2013 at 1:32 pm
Good call. I think the tower of similar height to its left would be 40 Wall St., built in 1930.
http://skyscraperpage.com/diagrams/?searchID=25002271
It is 1880.
Juice says:
September 21, 2013 at 9:11 am
Sorry. Missed your earlier comment.
That building is neither the ESB, nor the Chrysler Bldg. Both are way off frame to the left, that’s downtown, near Wall St.
Aside from the bogus Maldives rent-seekers’ scam, is there evidence or anecdotal reporting of SLR problems anywhere? No, storm surges don’t count as post facto evidence. Nor do instances of destruction and disruption of coral islands by overbuilding. Especially irrelevant are the rapidly-sinking-land gauges in Hong Kong.
On 22 August the Do X arrived in Miami. The crew finished their journey on 27 August 1931 via Charleston and Norfolk at New York Harbour
http://www.aer.ita.br/~bmattos/mundo/exp/dox.htm
==================================
Chrysler Building……Years as World’s Tallest Building…..1930-1931
http://tallest-buildings.findthedata.org/l/37/Chrysler-Building
Beginning of Construction 1928
End of Construction 1930
Date Opened 1931
====================================
Empire State Building
Governor Smith’s grandchildren cut the ribbon on May 1, 1931. Lewis Wickes Hine’s photography of the construction provides not only invaluable documentation of the construction, but also a glimpse into common day life of workers in that era.[27] [wiki]
ref, 27 = http://nypl.bibliocommons.com/
====================================
In my country it is common to usher in buildings unfinished.
We are trying to upgrade.
I tried doing a comparison using the photos from the post, but the difference in position and altitude made for a poor comparison. I found an alternative photo online from 2006 and although there is also an issue with elevation, it is a near-perfect match otherwise. I made a new comparison and here is the resulting animated GIF.
I cropped it to the foreground to get rid of the elevation distraction. Note the alignment from old to new of the buildings toward the left (the three in a row that still exist). Pretty spot in. The conclusion as to what is different 80 years later? Not a heck of a whole lot…but I guess you guys already realized that. As Mr. Watts says in the post and in his response to Mr. Mosher’s foot-in-mouth, can’t really tell from a photo anyway. I too responded to the National Geographic alarmism via post and letter. Shine the spotlight whenever possible. Watch them scatter. Cheers!
Like that twit Gavin Schmidt said “…it’s like it really IS there if you look hard enough.”
Or whatever he said as the functioning mouthpiece / representative of crime.in.government
What a crock.
Mahattan Waterfront, 1937
23 years later and everything looks, heh, waddaya know, pretty much the same.
(I can read lips, though, and I saw Dad tell his son, “Before your grandchildren are 20 years old, all that will be underwater.”
Son: “Even the Statue of Liberty, Dad?”
Dad: “Yes, son,” nodding, ” up to her armpits. Oh, it’s bound to happen; my cousin Jim Hansen told me.”
Aaaaaand, just to lighten things up a bit….. #(:)) VICTOR BORGE!
On, er, punctuation…. 😉
TheLastDemocrat: “…by weight more material has been removed from Manhattan than has been built up on its surface in buildings…”
The island has become top-heavy and is in danger of capsizing if the wind is strong enough.
Seriously, isn’t all the material that is removed used as landfill to expand the shoreline?
Richard Vada says:
September 21, 2013 at 6:04 pm
Like that twit Gavin Schmidt said “…
===============
We can go down that path, were does it lead us ?
http://31.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_ly7y0aHoA61qf71bqo1_1280.jpg