It seems this claim comes up about once a year, now we have yet another one making the rounds in the media. Of course when you look at the data, it doesn’t look quite so terrible and or plausible. Here is the story being distributed today:
Global warming may imperil Statue of Liberty, Tower of London
The source of this? Schnellenhuber and the PIK:
===========================================================
Cultural world heritage threatened by climate change
03/05/2014 – From the Statue of Liberty in New York to the Tower of London or the Sydney Opera House – sea-level rise not only affects settlement areas for large parts of the world population but also numerous sites of the UNESCO World Heritage. This is shown in a new study by Ben Marzeion from the University of Innsbruck and Anders Levermann from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research.
“The physical processes behind the global rise of the oceans are gradual, but they will continue for a very long time,” says climate scientist Ben Marzeion. “This will also impact the cultural world heritage.” The scientists computed the likely sea-level rise for each degree of global warming and identified regions where UNESCO World Heritage will be put at risk throughout the coming centuries. While public interest so far was focused mainly on ecological and agricultural impacts of climate change, Marzeion and Levermann in the journal Environmental Research Letters now put the focus on the cultural heritage of mankind.
136 out of 700 listed cultural monuments will be affected in the long-term
The UNESCO World Heritage List comprises a total of more than 700 cultural monuments. If global average temperature increases by just one degree Celsius, already more than 40 of these sites will directly be threatened by the water during the next 2000 years. With a temperature increase of three degrees, about one fifth of the cultural world heritage will be affected in the long term. “136 sites will be below sea-level in the long-run in that case if no protection measures are taken,” Ben Marzeion specifies. “The fact that tides and storm surges could already affect these cultural sites much earlier has not even been taken into account.” Among the world heritage sites affected are, for instance, the historical city centres of Bruges, Naples, Istanbul and St. Petersburg and a number of sites in India and China.
In order to make reliable statements, the climatologists also consider the regionally different rates of sea-level rise. “If large ice masses are melting and the water is dispersed throughout the oceans, this will also influence the Earth’s gravitational field,“ says Anders Levermann. “Sea-level rise will therefore vary between regions.” The scientists calculated future sea-level rise for all world regions and compared these projections with today’s coastal settlement areas and the sites of the cultural world heritage. “Our analysis shows how serious the long-term impacts for our cultural heritage will be if climate change is not mitigated,” says Anders Levermann. “The global average temperature has already increased by 0.8 degrees compared to pre-industrial levels. If our greenhouse-gas emissions increase as they have done in the past, physical models project a global warming of up to five degrees by the end of this century.”
Currently populated regions become oceans
Apart from historical cultural monuments, regions that are currently populated by millions of people would thus be affected. With a global warming of three degrees, twelve countries around the world could lose more than half of their present land area and about 30 countries could lose one tenth of their area. “Island states in the Pacific and the Caribbean as well as the Maldives and the Seychelles are particularly threatened, but not only these,” says Anders Levermann. “A majority of their population will eventually need to leave their home islands in the long-term, so most of their culture could be entirely lost sooner or later if the warming trend is not stopped,” Ben Marzeion adds. Seven percent of the world’s population today live in regions that, without massive protection, will eventually be below sea-level if temperatures rise to three degrees. “If that sea-level rise occurred today, more than 600 million people would be affected and would have to find a new home,” Marzeion emphasizes.
In Southeast Asia, where many people are living at the coasts, sea-level rise will impact especially strong. But parts of the United States will be affected as well, as for instance the state of Florida. “These major long-term changes along our coast lines will most probably change cultural structures fundamentally,” says Marzeion. “If we do not limit climate change, the archaeologists of the future will need to search for major parts of our cultural heritage in the oceans.“
Article: Marzeion, B., Levermann, A. (2014): Loss of cultural world heritage and currently inhabited places to sea-level rise. Environmental Research Letters [doi: 10.1088/1748-9326/9/3/034001]
Link to the paper: http://iopscience.iop.org/1748-9326/9/3/034001/article
============================================================
Eh, Statute of Liberty underwater. Been there, done that.
Assuming that it can actually get there?
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)
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.
===============================================================
In the PIK paper, they say 2000 years.
So assuming (and it is a big assumption) that sea level rise will continue along its historical average rate of 2.77mm/year we have:
2.77mm/yr * 2000yr = 5540 mm or 5.54meters or 18.1759 feet.
Based on the photos above, that might put the waterline at the base of the pedestal.
Of course, one has to assume that:
1. Sea level rise will be constant for 2000 years.
2. The Statue of Liberty itself will survive that long.
3. The United States will survive that long to have people who still care about the Statue of Liberty.
4. We haven’t already started into another ice age, lowering sea level, and giving us far bigger problems to worry about globally.
I just can’t get excited/worried/concerned about this anymore.
Sad that formerly reputable publications like Nat G have fallen to this abysmally low level. I won’t cancel my lifetime subscription, but have ceased voluntary “donations” to what used to be a first-rate publication.
Crackpotsdam
So 3°C will be a problem if it is achieved?
Firstly you need to get to 3°C.
Then it needs to be a problem.
The first is unlikely.
The second is unproven.
But if the best argument the alarmists now have is that [Venice] will be flooded then…
Yes!
I think they may have found their new canary.
…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….
More importantly, if you save up all the extra heat that is modeled to occur from Global Warming over the entire globe for the next 7846 years, and imagine it all dumped into the copper skin of that statue, it would probably be enough to melt bits of it. Perhaps.
Arrgh!!! We’re all going to FRY!!!!
Straight edge forecasting is another form of assault on science and education.
As soon as I read “The scientists computed the likely sea-level rise for each degree of global warming [and identified regions where UNESCO World Heritage will be put at risk throughout the coming centuries]” I thought “Here we go again.”
Ian M
What would the average depth of ocean water be if the Earth’s land mass were leveled by erosion, and why hasn’t it by now?
I would be more worried about the right to liberty than the statue of it.
So, Kevin Costner had it right, all along- here comes Waterworld.
Meh. Nat Geo outlived its usefulness when pre-pubescents found much more reliable sources for visuals of the female breast. Ah, THOSE were the days of Nat Geo glory.
Such stupidity.
”136 out of 700 listed cultural monuments will be affected in the long-term”
So even if their super scary scenario actually happened only about 20% of listed cultural monuments would be affected. Is there no way civilization could survive with 20% less cultural monuments? How did we manage to survive the loss of 85% of the ancient wonders of the world?
For this to happen, we would also have to have forgotten the skills we had in the 1960s, when we moved the whole Temple at Abu Simbel a couple of hundred feet higher to avoid the flooding of Lake Nasser.
But then, in the 1960s we DID things, rather than agonised about the environmental issues…
The most famous Nazi associated with Tower of London was actually Rudolph Hess, in 1941.
🙂
Venice is located on a mud island (several, in fact). Pilings were sunk into the mud and they are still there today. It is sinking and has been since before the first brick was laid.
From Wikipedia – that stalwart of hard honest facts:
Link to Acqua Alta: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acqua_alta
Not much has changed over the years except the folks in charge are now saying the sinking has stopped all on its own. That can only mean the flooding is caused by greedy Americans.
satellites are tuned to the 35% of tide gauges that are showing sea levels rising…
…65% of tide gauges show no sea level rise…or show sea levels falling
The solution is clear: open your chequebooks.
2000 years?! Does someone actually think the Sydney Opera House will stand for another 200 years, let alone 2000?
Stephen Hawking opines that our species has less than another 1000 years to survive.
Eristic casuistry, nothing more
This AGW promoter/[believer] compulsion of circling back to repeat untrue statements about the current situation, the future, the evidence, those who [disagree], etc. seems to be borderline pathological.
But, but, what about subsidence as was discussed with hurricane sandy and sea levels in that area?
I can’t even joke about this type of garbage hype anylonger. It is painful to see it regurgitated so regularly. Sigh 🙁
NatGeo is [basing] that image on ALL of the ice in the world melting, including Antarctica and Greenland.
I like the Jay and Silent Bob version of the post-apocalyptic Statue of Liberty the best…
“If our greenhouse-gas emissions increase as they have done in the past, physical models project a global warming of up to five degrees by the end of this century.”
Physical models? They have a tiny planet in some university basement built to scale and running at 10x speed to test these theories?
Of course all the icecaps are going to melt eventually. They are only temporary, after all, and have not been there for most of the Earth’s history. Sea level is normally about 250 feet higher than it is at present. Just look at the evidence which surrounds us.
The Statue of Liberty: that’s a funny one. Liberty?…..lol. Something tells me that there’s a link between those who started the CO2 hoax and the founders of the so-called statue of liberty. Ah, the wh__e of babylon.
Prof. Stefan Rahmstorf is famous for his equation of sea level rise. Never mind that it assumes an unlimited supply of water – actually, Prof. Rahmstorf has not bothered with that level of detail. So Anthony’s nitpicking does not count; global warming will submerge everything.
What a lot of these people really comprehend about heritage you could fit in a thimble.
They don’t really like the idea of different nations, seeing it as somehow racist, and don’t much like the idea of different families either. For all their talk of “diversity” they are frightened by individuality, and instead envision utopia involves a sort of McPerson, where people all over the world are exactly the same. The reason they have to preserve “heritage sites” from the past is that the future would hold such a bland sameness that there would be total agreement and conformity and (yawn) an inability to differ, and to create anything fresh and new.
Sorry if I sound a bit bitter. It is a dull, gray day in New Hampshire with light snow and a forecast temperatures will drop to five below tonight (-20 Celsius.) Get back to me on Friday, when temperatures might get up to freezing, and perhaps I’ll be more up-beat.
Another National Geographic nail, is this suicide by air-nailler?
How about right for the wrong reasons?
Historic monuments are endangered, endangered by poorly educated, mechanically inept “progressive” bureaucrats and politicians, having control of the specific maintenance budgets and of State & National budgets.
Public wealth has been wasted, looted and lost on pipedreams of the irrational, so there is no money left for maintenance of operational or historic infrastructure.
Then try finding artisans with the necessary skills to maintain and repair, not from our public “education” bureaucracies.
Our civic infrastructure, what we know as govt, are full of the useless and clueless.
Fools and bandits in my eyes, bottom line, persons on the public teat are a parasitic load upon all who pay taxes.
Some are necessary and behave in a symbiotic manner when they conscientiously do their jobs.
Persons of such a nature are rare among our entitled civil servants.
Civilization grinds to a stop when the parasites command the host.
Welcome to North America, those national debts, the if it is Not Permitted, it Must be Forbidden, mentality of our officials,private property belongs to the state, these are all clear signs.
How do you negotiate with a parasite?
Funny how we repeat historic mistakes, all the coins of the realm, here in Canada, can now all be retrieved using a magnet. Process trumps common sense at every level of bureaucracy.
Hysteria and nationalism is rising. Government contracts are worthless.Trust falls.
Excellent breakdown! Excellent takedown!
23,500 years!
ROFLMAO at fears of environmental disaster.
If these idiots don’t back off, the Statue of Liberty, will throw her torch at the alarmists, and then give them, the finger!!! LOL!!! The damned sky is always falling, just ask the Lefties!
Just out of curiosity would it even happen that fast. Once the sea rose above its current land containments and began to flow over the continents wouldn’t the rate slow considerably due to the increase in volume?
And although the paper makes no references to these cities The Guardian does explicitly name them. St Petersburg (built on a reclaimed marsh), Venice (already known to be sinking), London (also sinking after the glaciers retreated).
When was the last time sea level was that high? Wasn’t that long before human emissions of CO2 from fossil fuels began? And so why, if it is going to happen again, do we assume that the cause is human emissions of CO2 rather than simply a repeat of what previously caused sea level to be that high?
In the “Day After Tomorrow” climate simulation the Statute of Liberty survived being hit by a ~200 ft wave (storm surge) so I have no concerns about its robustness.
Statute of Liberty is much more threatened by demagogic fraudsters who seek to kill freedom and kill Western CIvilization with their sick fascist lies.
Just wait, eventually the science mags will be publishing photos of Everest with water lapping its slopes. The hysteria is a sign of desperation.
Maybe if we’re lucky it will cover the U.N building. That would at least be a worthy goal.
Could we start a massive sea-sponge breeding program to soak up all the excess water? Wait, I meant to say, “At a 95% confidence we can safely forecast the mitigation of 40% of the projected sea-level rise by 40my if we model Porifera as absorbing more dihydrogenmonoxide than their displaced volume. Further funding is needed to research this important area of climate-change related disaster preparation & to better understand how to offset the eventual submersion of various important landmarks around the globe.”
By these kinds of researches and the associated PR, their intentionally unscientific exaggerations just makes the public laugh more and more at them.
{And when we scoff and laugh at the characteristically unscientific exaggerations of these scientists, the lawyers smile because they know Scott Mandia will financially support more Mann-like lawsuits.}
John
The real take away here is that a legitimate study of seal level rise would focus on coast line encroachment in general. Why call out UNESCO heritage sites? I checked the funding source in the paper, and it seems to be grants from Austrian institutions focused on climate change.
If this report is followed by calls from UNESCO for more funding to protect UNESCO heritage sites referencing this report, then I would suggest some follow the money sleuthing. Did UNESCO or some other UN agency grant money to the Austrian institutions to get a report that justifies them getting more money?
“Schnellenhuber”?
As in Macht Schnell?
(Drop that first “n”)
I got it! Lets have the entire working world pay taxes to build huge space tankers and deliver half of the earth’s oceans to Mars and there we can re-establish oceans on Mars and all the global warming worste case senarios will not mean a thing as there will be plenty of room for our remaining oceans! That has got to be worth a CAGW grant!
Watch out …! Now that these things have been declared in danger from the sea level or whatever , next they will have to move or place into museums to protect them. Maybe even virtual museums(per linked article) Who knows ? maybe it will be a big public works project. and then afterwards they can declare “see we told you things were changing.”.
Thanks for the interesting articles, posts, references and highlighting of current events.
and the comments.
These heritage centres will suffer a lot more under a mile thick ice sheet. 10,000 years out and counting…
M Courtney says: @ March 5, 2014 at 7:40 am
So 3°C will be a problem if it is achieved?
Firstly you need to get to 3°C.
Then it needs to be a problem.
Actually the earth (at least the Arctic) has already been ~3°C warmer.
Sort of kills all the hysteria doesn’t it?
Here is the another paper stating glaciers are re-establishing.
The authors of BOTH papers are stating that most glaciers likely didn’t exist 6,000 years ago, but the highest period of the glaciation has been in the past 600 years.
It’s just another example of narrow minded and static environmentalist thinking. “What we have now is the way it should always be and anything that changes that is wrong”. We are all a mere nanosecond in the history of the Earth. Our edifices are temporary and will disappear one way or another regardless of the percentage of CO2 in the air. Pompeii was there and suddenly it wasn’t. the same can happen to anything at any time. Seems to me we are a bit full of ourselves.
Proud Skeptic says: “What we have now is the way it should always be and anything that changes that is wrong”
Then why are some trying to change it?
Please excuse my ‘alarmism’ in my earlier comment.
Thanks
Berényi Péter said above: “I would be more worried about the right to liberty than the statue of it.”
Very well put, Berenyi!
The oceans will likely rise as the current interglacial continues, so what do the purveyors of climate doom really think we can do about it? What we should be doing is preparing for climate change no matter which direction it is heading and stop building gazillion dollar homes on the beach that everyone poor sucker has to chip in to rebuild when they wash away.
According to R. Alan Mounier, in his 2003 book, “Looking Beneath the Surface: The Story of Archaeology in New Jersey” – “About 11,000 years ago the sea stood as much as 262 feet below its present level, and the shoreline lay as much as 100 miles to the east of its current position (Edwards and Emery 1977).” That was before mankind began burning fossil fuels. Again, what would the purveyors of doom suggest that the Paleo and Archaic Indians could have done to prevent the oceans from rising to their present level?
http://www.wakingtimes.com/2014/02/26/brain-washing-social-control-programming-kill-your-television/
Regardless of how hot it gets, she isn’t going to sweat. Glisten maybe.
From mbur…
Proud Skeptic says: “What we have now is the way it should always be and anything that changes that is wrong”
Then why are some trying to change it?
Please excuse my ‘alarmism’ in my earlier comment.
Thanks
Proud Skeptic – I don’t understand what this means. I started with “It’s just another example of narrow minded and static environmentalist thinking. “
Thanks for your response. What i meant by that was: Why are some trying to change it ? Like you said—
“It’s just another example of narrow minded and static environmentalist thinking”
IOW,Declare that the statue is going to by affected by sea level rise .Then remove the statue.
Then declare that proof of the sea level rise is the fact that we had to move the statue.
i was kinda using your quote to emphasize my earlier point, i apologize for any mis-understanding.
Thanks
This is complete nonsense.
First, are these people so arrogant to think that many of these structures will be around in 2000 years, or that anyone at that time will really care? That’s like being in Ancient Egypt 2000 years ago worrying that the Sphinx will be covered in sands, the pyramids stripped of their casing stones, and the lighthouse in Alexandria sunk in the Mediterranean. Those things did happen and we in the 21st century don’t really care.
Second, if they can’t move the Statue of Liberty over the next 2000 years to higher ground, they deserve it to be lost. When the Hatteras lighthouse was in jeopardy of being eroded into the ocean, they propped it up on rails and dragged it inland to the relative distance to the shore it was originally situated.
….be affected (?)…be effected (?). and others… whatever maybe it’s emotion ?
maybe just syntax errors . dang it
my response comment was to Proud Skeptic .
Now i have to pay a penance and not comment for a time unless directly commented to.
Thanks for you tolerance.
At first, I was aghast that National Geographic had depicted a CAGW sea level rise of 214 feet via their Statue of Liberty graphic. But then after acquiring data from the USGS.gov website (apportioning global water among various sources) and doing some simple arithmetic, I was surprised, but also alarmed, to learn that if all ice caps, glaciers, and permanent snow were to melt, and if the earth’s ocean areal fraction remained at ~72%, indeed such a sea level rise could occur. Wow, this was distressing!
But then, looking more closely at the USGS data, I learned that “biological water” . . . that is water captured by dehydrating all mankind and all other animal and plant species . . . represents only ~ 0.0001 percent of total global water. This translates to a sea-rise contribution of less than 2mm, a minuscule amount. I’m feeling better (in my present hydrated state) but still not happy at all. Then again, at least I’ve found some solace that future catastrophic sea-level rise can not rationally be attributed to anthropogenic sea level rise. I’m really feeling good now. . . I certainly want to be a responsible steward of our planet . . . actually also the cosmos!!
(Do I really need to say, SARC OFF)
Dan Backman
While the climate models project a global warming of up to five degrees by the end of this century, these projections are not falsifiable. Thus, they are scientifically and logically nonsensical.
To its discredit, the National Geographic didn’t bother to reveal this state of affairs to its audience. Had it done so, readers would have asked why the magazine was raising an alarm.
How many CO2 doublings would it take before the Earth is warmer than the Sun? How far under water would the Statue of Liberty be then?!
Meanwhile certain billionaires know this is just another policy and media scam going on so they are buying beachfront and whole island properties in the case of Richard Branson and Larry Ellison.
The agenda is settled. I thought that extreme drought and water shortages were the future. National Geographic is only good for the Photography. The stories usually border on emotions and feelings, not good science .
The year 4014 had not entered my time horizon until they brought it up. Given the slow rise in sea level we can dismiss this as an issue. Fire (earthquakes, volcanoes) and ice (snow that doesn’t melt), and asteroids (fire followed by ice) can be with us rapidly.
Reminds me of this:
Fire and Ice by Robert Frost
Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I’ve tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.
So we’ve misunderstood the movie for 40 years. It wasn’t destroyed. Global warming has flooded the world, and the apes adapted by building the land up. That’s how you can go Beneath the Planet of the Apes.
Ah yes, the Appeal to Emotion. Works on some, I guess. No facts or science necessary.
Chris B says:
March 5, 2014 at 7:49 am
“What would the average depth of ocean water be if the Earth’s land mass were leveled by erosion, and why hasn’t it by now?”
It’s a moving target. Erosion does a good job reducing the continental elevations, and dumping their refuse into the ocean basins, but the darn floating plates keep running into one another continually growing mountain ranges and volcanoes. Everything’s old, it just looks new.
I didn’t renew National Geographic this year, after subscribing for decades. The Statue of Liberty issue was the straw that broke the camel’s back as far as I am concerned. If they would issue a retraction and apology I might reconsider. They usually have a few good articles, but then ruin it with politically driven nonsense.
If anything destroys the Statue of Liberty (it or what it stands for), it will be over-reaching and kleptocratic government.
65 meters sea level rise requires that all ice on Earth, including East Antarctica melts. The last time that possibly happened was about 55 million years ago. At that time there were alligators living in Northern Greenland, so I suggest the Statue of Liberty is probably safe at least until the alligators start colonizing Canada.
Berényi Péter says:
March 5, 2014 at 7:50 am
I would be more worried about the right to liberty than the statue of it
—–
Bravo!
Global sea level has not increased by 300mm since 1886. The Statue was dedicated in 1886. There are photos (taken from ships) showing the base and waterline at the sea wall. In the 125 years since 1886, the mean sea level should have risen by 300 mm, if you believe the tide gage. NY Harbor tides are around 5 feet low to high, so any 1886 photo will have to have a date and time to calculate where the mean sea level would have been relative to the local tide.
There is no way that the mean sea level of NY harbor has risen by one foot since 1886. Geological survey maps for Liberty island also show no substantial changes to the waterline.
The same can be said for the Brooklyn Bridge, plenty of photos of the towers, no obvious change in the water line.
As they talk of 4014 at PIK, 2000 years in the future, I think this video showing the sea level rise in 1000 year steps puts things into perspective:
Sea level has been continuously rising since 21000 years, but each 1000 year saw less increase.
PIK talks about 2.6 to 4.8°C increase by the end of the century, so 0.26 to 0.48 per decade!
How well this is validated so far in this century….
If these projections were made before the last melt water pulse we would all be fishes in the sea! What a load of garbage. The Holocene rate of sea level rise is flattening. The rest is speculation about the future. What if…..????????????????? I say what if global warming alarmists never existed, we might actually see nothing talk about.
WE MUST ACT NOW!
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/pubs/ipcc2007/fig68.jpg
http://dx.doi.org/10.1175/JCLI-D-12-00319.1
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Holocene_Sea_Level.png
National Geographic can explain themselves with many statues http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Replicas_of_the_Statue_of_Liberty. For example, the one on the Île aux Cygnes of the river Seine in Paris. It’s only 37 feet 9 inches. http://www.panoramio.com/photo/10184914
In the meanwhile CAGW proponents can start warming up the audience to george e. conant’s idea (convincing tax payers to fund a seawater transport mission to Mars) with this photo, undeniably of the same statue http://www.flickr.com/photos/gadl/445650912/. And if that fails, the statue in Nevada is about 2200 ft above sea level.
I still cannot understand why they keep narrowing the definition of climate to the effect of our miniscule contribution to the total amount of CO2. It’s only our emissions and nothing else. Anyone who does that has to be insane, blind, stupid, dumb, willingly ignorant or all of the above.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/101666925@N02/12760313784/in/photostream
Good grief. Have these Warmists ever cracked a history book about Venice? The fact that it has always been sinking?
Where is the photoshop that shows the Statue being bowled over by the advancing ice face?
Well the original article starts off stating in ‘4014’ which by my calculation is 2000 years in the future.
Well looking forward is a good habit, but like most people, looking forward is usually about such things as what and where we are eating tonight, or when is payday, I think looking forward 2000 years is a little unrealistic.
Now we can look back 2000 yrs and wonder if people thought about the year 2014. Well maybe Jesus Christ had something up his sleeve, but the roman emperors were more worried about their present, bread and circuses for the mob and staying alive. The average person was worried about the next meal but at least they didn’t have to worry about whats on TV.
Cheers
Roger
http://www.thedemiseofchristchurch.com
Planet of the Apes fantasy!
Chris B says:
March 5, 2014 at 7:49 am
What would the average depth of ocean water be if the Earth’s land mass were leveled by erosion, and why hasn’t it by now?
Assuming the earth’s surface was flat….continents levelled, oceanic basins filled..there’s be a layer of water about 2700m deep over the lot.
Why hasn’t it now ? Because of pesky plate tectonics. Bits of crust sliding around and colliding with each other. Crust rises at spreading ridges and is subducted at trenches and some of it pops out again as volcanic lava and ejecta.
The Himalyas-TIbet are rising in places at up to 16mm a year as India continues to push north.
That’s uplift of 16km over a million years. But the highest point, Mt Everest, is “only” 8850m high [or thereabouts]. So around 8000m has been eroded in the same time. There are lots of complications but that’s the general idea.
Erosion will win in the end.
If everyone drinks just one extra glass of water a day we can stop sea level rise in its tracks ;o)
And that was only for sentimental reasons. There’s not much navigational need for lighthouses now.
Latitude says:
satellites are tuned to the 35% of tide gauges that are showing sea levels rising…
…65% of tide gauges show no sea level rise…or show sea levels falling
Very interesting – can you point me to more details, please?
H.R. says at March 6, 2014 at 2:29 am
Now you’re just taking the piss.
Anthony,
I did the same seat-of-the-pants estimate when I first saw the cover, and with the same results.
At anything close to current rates, the time required to reach that level is so far in the future that the next ice age would have started, reversing the sea level trend. Thanks for putting it into print.
My real frustration was that they blamed this threatened rise on human effects, thus it was “bad”. But only a year or so before, they had published a lengthy article about an area called “Doggerland”, a civilization that lived 8000 years ago in the marshy flats east of present day England. An area now at the bottom of the North Sea. But the sea level rise that flooded out this area was natural;, thus “good” (or at least OK by NatGeo standards.)
Despite their lovely photography, I let that subscription expire.
…turns out i was just being oversensitive,
(with delusions of unprecedented institutional oversight and my own oversight too)
and my average equilibrium was out of line with my variables.
Thanks for the interesting articles and comments.
I’m not going anywhere near the Statue of Liberty. That’s where all the apocalypse’s happen.
http://imgur.com/YniC0
It is oddly sad that the people who make claims about sea level simply don’t understand that the surface area of the seas will increase around 20x faster than their level. The original numbers had to do with how far INLAND the ocean would encroach, so people just keep re-hashing the old pseudo-math to produce new terrifying amounts of water.
One would think they simply don’t know how a Mercator projection works.
Look at a Mercator projection and where the ice is. If all the white on that map is a kilometer thick, then yes, if it stayed only in the boundries of the map’s ocean it would produce a sea level rise of about 50 meters.
I harken back to the 80s when people were terrified of sea level rise due to the melting of the Arctic ice cap. “OMG the end of the Wurld” But it is already displacing its own volume in the ocean…. no change.
We’re fighting a religion of ignorance and constantly losing the battle no matter how often we decapitate the leadership of the enemy.
We must educate against Anthropogenic Global Jonestown while we still can.
Reblogged this on Daily Browse and commented:
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 mm in 500 years!
“M Courtney says:
March 6, 2014 at 7:49 am”
Yes, but think of the recycling and water saving going on.