Guest essay by Eric Worrall
NASA’s Gavin Schmidt has provided some bizarre advice, for people building homes on the sea front, which might not be “sea level rise smart”.
According to the Vancouver Sun interview with Gavin;
Q: What is the future for waterfront cities like Vancouver?
A: You are going to have to put up with rising sea levels; they are not going to go down. But there’s a huge difference between a foot or two over 100 years and a metre or two metres. There’s a lot of waterfront development going on but is it sea-level-rise smart? I don’t know that it is. So don’t put stuff in the basement, have all your electrical equipment on the second floor or on the roof.
Just how rapidly is Gavin expecting that sea level rise to arrive? Even a metre or two per century, is not the same as the huge fictional tidal surge, in the blockbuster movie “The Day After Tomorrow“.
Lets forget for a moment, that predictions of accelerated sea level rise are not supported by observations, and consider the consequences of Gavin’s hypothetical 2m rise / century.
2 metres per century, is 20 centimetres per decade, or 2 centimetres per year.
You don’t go on permanent flood alert to defeat a 2cm per annum rise in sea level, you raise the floor a little.
Even assuming Gavin Schmidt’s rather wild 2m scenario, your property could be protected by lifting the floor 40cm (1ft 4 inches) every 2 decades. Obviously at some point, lifting the floor might become an engineering challenge – but even two lifts would preserve the viability of the property for 40 years.
Raising the floor of a house is a substantial renovation, but the technology used for raising the floor level of a house, is similar to the technology used for addressing ground subsidence – a relatively common problem.
If the sea level rise remains at a much more realistic 1ft / century, one of the owners of a near sea level property *might* have to lift the floor once.
The floor lift option does not even consider other possibilities, such as improved sea defences, or flood control pumping stations. The Dutch have been combating the sea for centuries. Much of Holland is reclaimed coastal peat bogs. Even with medieval technology, the Dutch defeated the sea.
In Venice, in Italy, people didn’t give up their houses, even when they sunk into the water. Instead they created one of the most beautiful cities in the world.
Vancouver Is in danger of tsunamis, not ‘sea rise’. The Northwest US is a tsunami zone from San Francisco to the entire coast of Alaska and a Tohoku earthquake like the one that hit Fukushima can happen at any time along this coast in North America and has frequently in the past and anyone living on or near the beach in any of these areas is in danger of being wiped out in an eye blink just like the many thousands who died in Japan.
Vancouver is in danger of earthquakes, not tsunamis. It’s quite well-protected from tsunamis.
There is no point on this rock that is totally immune from tsunamis or quakes, geologically speaking.
I believe that in Humboldt the land is rising faster than the sea. Couldn’t it be the same in Vancouver?
And here is a plot of the official Canadian daily average tides for Vancouver. ZERO TREND going back 100 years. Gavin must be using NASA/NOAA’s politically corrected version. Pretty soon NASA will be able to take advantage of their projected sea levels to sail a boat to the moon.
http://oi60.tinypic.com/33moj05.jpg
http://www.isdm-gdsi.gc.ca/isdm-gdsi/twl-mne/inventory-inventaire/data-donnees-eng.asp?user=isdm-gdsi®ion=PAC&tst=1&no=7735&ref=maps-cartes
There would be potential for a surge of sea water moving through the inlet and flooding the area. Although you are right that it would not take the direct impact from a tsunami.
It is not protected from the 300-500yrs cascadia fault. Last episode was calculated at 8.5 richter.
Surely, the subduction zone off Victoria Island implies a tsunami risk to the city of Vancouver?
@ Leo G…look at how Vancouver is well protected by barriers between the city and the ocean. They would certainly get flooded, but they would not bear the brunt of the wave breaking onto shore, unless the tsunami was a monster. As Stephen Richards noted, the quake would certainly affect them. It has been 300 years since their last Big One. The fault should be ready for the next triggering moment for release.
Vancouver is in greater danger of an outbreak of hemorrhoids.
vancouver is i danger of heroin addicts.
Is the severity of those measured in Suzukis?
Indeed – take a peek at NOAA’s record there – a whopping 1.44 in/100 year trend – and no acceleration (since the birth of AGW) in sight.
http://tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/sltrends/sltrends_global_station.htm?stnid=822-071
the raw data says the trend in Vancouver is 0.001 mm/year
NOAA has the trend as 0.37 millimeters/year with a 95% confidence. 370 times higher.
ferdb
There is a number missing:
0.37mm per year plus/minus [a number] to give a range with 95% confidence. The 0.001 may fall well within the range in which we can have 95% confidence. 0.37 is just the middle of the range.
NOAA has the trend as 0.37 +/- 0.23 mm/yr, which is well outside the observed 0.001 mm/yr
I think NOAA is trying to compensate for what they determine is isostatic rebound. This conveniently allows team journalists to effectively add back in the isostatic raise ( ie treating the NOAA figure as if it is a number relative to the land and not the sea.)
Don’t forget, tsunami’s will travel across oceans at over 400mph so a Japanese earthquake tsunami will cross the Pacific in 20hours.
Build your house in Sweden, sea level there is falling.
I think that is due to isostatic rebound from the last Ice-Age.
Same in the N. East Canada
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/L-u.gif
https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/file/index/docid/418304/filename/NATA.pdf
Unless you have studied geology, isostatic rebound or glacial rebound are terms that cause eyeballs to roll back in the head. And since few study geology nowadays, any understanding of the physical characteristics of the Earth are not on the public’s radar. Sad.
Doc Tom hi
No I have not studied geology, but since I am an engineer by profession, it looks and sounds to be logical and expected process. Further more I can see why the geomagnetic field intensity had NH’s peak value in the area, reaching its maximum around 1600, recently (1995) has been overtaken by the Siberian peak. This may be (but not necessarily) an indication of slowdown in the uplift.
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/AT-GMF.gif
(note: magnetic scale has values in inverted order)
http://www.panoramio.com/photo/40688562
No, not sea level falls, but land level rises. That part of Scandinavia is still rising after the last ice age. Plenty of ACTUAL evidence to support that.
See above
The displaced water has to go somewhere. I wonder how much of sea level rise elsewhere is due to isotactic rebound from the deglaciation.
Vuk’s overly parameterized data graph is based on stylized clockwork (modeled) cycles that we know, based on observations of these cycles, do not function like clockwork. His work has been debunked elsewhere by several. Warmist models make similar mistakes and is why they run hot. They stylize both CO2 increase and CO2 effects. The methods used do not stand up to gold standard handling of noisy observational data.
If our purpose is to show other plausible reasons for changes in temperature and sea level, those that propose such reasons need to pay attention to the highest quality research methods and statistical handling and have a skeptical eye towards their results. The rest of us should be highly skeptical of any and all alternatives brought forth and apply a fervent level of criticism.
Ms Gray
I see no cycles in up there, “overly parameterized data graph” no idea what that might be. However not unexpected, yet another amusing assessment.
Please do go on, even if you have to copy and paste your last contribution all over again.
Is shaped pattern polar vortex in the southern hemisphere. You can see that the vortex is shifted in the direction of South America. This means that in the region of Australia, occurs lock ozone (higher temperature). Winter will be similar to last year in Australia.
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/stratosphere/strat_a_f/gif_files/gfs_t05_sh_f00.gif
The southern jet stream has been wild for the last several weeks. Not only that but the overall wind streams around the globe have also entered into a different pattern in the last month. Look at the No Atlantic spiral in place right now at 1,000 hPa. That is unusual. It looks almost like a developing hurricane except if folds under itself. There is lots of change in the air…http://earth.nullschool.net/#current/wind/isobaric/1000hPa/orthographic=-24.57,42.04,497
In June 2014, after just six months collecting data, Swarm confirmed the general trend of the field’s weakening, with the most dramatic declines over the Western Hemisphere. But in other areas, such as the southern Indian Ocean, the magnetic field had strengthened since January. The measurements also confirmed the movement of magnetic North towards Siberia. These changes are based on the magnetic signals stemming from Earth’s core.
http://www.esa.int/var/esa/storage/images/esa_multimedia/images/2014/06/magnetic_field_changes/14582173-1-eng-GB/Magnetic_field_changes_node_full_image_2.jpg
ren
The solid part of the Earth core is unstable, there is continuous crystallisation in the west and melting in the east hemisphere. This process suppresses thermal convection in the liquid section of the core to the west – falling field, and boost circulation in the east – rising field.
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/ICA.jpg
As a consequence the geomagnetic axis is tilting from NW-SE towards NE-SE direction.
Surprisingly, regardless of its magnetic 22 year cycle, the sun itself also has a long term magnetic asymmetry, with a bulge at around 240 degrees heliolongitude .
The East-West melt-crystallisation is not an even process. Geomagnetic dipole’s strength as measured at the Earth’s outer core – mantle boundary has decadal variability which is synchronous and in phase with the sunspot cycles oscillations
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/Geo-Solar-MagneticOscillation.gif
(Effect was discovered in 2013 by m.vukcevic, the above graph is extracted from the Jackson – Bloxham geomagnetic data)
http://www.esa.int/var/esa/storage/images/esa_multimedia/images/2014/06/june_2014_magnetic_field/14582208-1-eng-GB/June_2014_magnetic_field_node_full_image_2.jpg
Vuk, if you would indicate your source of data, I would be able to critique more accurately. If I am in error I will most certainly state that result.
Ms Gray
You are wasting your time.
I published results first time as Geo-Solar cycle September 2012 then a two short versions first February 2013, replaced by the second October 2014,
EVIDENCE OF LENGTH OF DAY (LOD) BIDECADAL VARIABILITY CONCURRENT WITH THE SOLAR MAGNETIC CYCLES
available on line
https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-01071375v2/document
I discussed this with Dr. Svalgaard, who instead to approach in a constrictive manner did everything to suppress my findings.
Now I find my work and findings are plagiarised by Chinese scientist Lihua Ma from no less than Chinese Academy of Sciences,
Possible influence of the 11-year solar cycle on length-of-day change
http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs11200-014-1040-x
without credit or even giving a mention.
Good day to you Ms Gray
Ah, yes the data
It is here
http://sbc.oma.be/data1.html (as quoted in my article at the above)
use rough not smoothed version.
You need to eliminate low frequencies, by suitable high pas filter, alternatively you can do following in the Excel :
Value to plot as in my graph = Abs { Data (x) – Average [Data(x-10 : x+10) ] }
No parameterisation there.
Ms Gray
If you are inclined to do a fair work of it (it takes only few min), this is what you should get:
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/J-V-data.gif
Don’t forget to raise the NYC subways 2 cm every year. 🙂
Instead of raising floors, it might make more sense to raise the flood walls every so often.
BTW, what has NYC done in response to Sandy? I haven’t heard very much except for some recommendations, and I think some hospitals have moved emergency generators and other stuff that they really don’t want flooded out of the basement.
Climastrologists would rather destroy the world’s economy than move stuff out of the basement?
Brilliant!
That’s because they haven’t moved out of the house and that’s where their parents make them live.
@ Tom J…self preservation then. That is a reasonable response.
Southern States did this a few decades ago and now NY and NJ have re-written their building codes to reflect FEMA’s flood plain maps and flood plain (storm surge) building requirements. New construction and major retrofit projects have to comply. No doubt the rebuilding effort was put on hold until these revised standards were in place.
http://www.nyc.gov/html/dcp/pdf/retrofitting/retrofitting_complete.pdf
While meeting FEMA makes sense, not to sure about this wild hair.
http://www1.nyc.gov/office-of-the-mayor/news/451-14/mayor-de-blasio-commits-80-percent-reduction-greenhouse-gas-emissions-2050-starting-with/#/0
Most of the data in flood plain maps have little to nothing to do with shoreline sea level rise. It’s almost all related to rainfall and periodic flooding. Dips in the land fill up with water and flood. Periodically. Far, far from the ocean shoreline. There are millions of acres of floodplain in the SE that have nothing to do with sea level rise. Besides, ocean shoreline folks are much more concerned with wind that with sea level rise.
(Entirely NOT scientifically verified) – Almost every structure at risk from sea level rise is more at risk of being blow away by wind. Periodically. And, essentially, no one cares. People that live on the edge mostly make way more money than your or I and really don’t care thtat much whether or not their second, third or fourth beachfront domicile is in danger of sea level rise. And they can afford to pay for the exemptions from the rules and exist uninsured.
onto the roof?
They pump 13 million gallons of water a day out of the NYC subway system, and that’s on dry days. It goes up on rainy days. They already have a water problem. If something happened to the grid those tunnels would be filled with water because the pumps would be off, no storm surge needed.
Even large sections of the East Coast is in danger of mountain collapses in various volcanic islands in the Atlantic Ocean which have caused periodic tsunamis, too. For some odd reason, tsunami dangers are ignored by many city builders. Subsidence after an earthquake like the famous one that destroyed Lisbon in Europe, is also ignored as a grave danger.
Lisbon was rebuilt after that event and will be destroyed again in the future. One of the worst tsunami events in the Mediterranean Sea was when the island of Thera blew up destroying the entire Minoan civilization and empire thousands of years ago, the tsunamis from that event hit much of the Greek coast, Italy, Egypt, all of the Middle Eastern ports.
Anyone worried about small rises and falls of the ocean over centuries are silly. Adjusting to this can be done at a leisurely pace. There is near zero time to adjust to an earthquake/volcanic tsunami event. Anyone living near the ocean has to understand one can be easily wiped out in an instant. At least with hurricanes, one can flee in good time if there is a weather warning.
Humans love to live near the oceans. Accepting the severe dangers is part of living there. Recognizing that death lurks hidden from view for long periods is reality.
And it’s BOUND to happen sooner or later, just as Thera erupted around 1500 BC , Vesuvius eruptatd in 79 AD and will eventually erupt again, sooner or later, Cumbre Vieja in the Canaries will blow up.
http://www.rense.com/general56/tsu.htm
“… Indeed, parts of London would be uninhabitable for perhaps months and the cost of repairing and rebuilding the damage would be astronomical. Imagine, if you will, what effects such a massive inundation would have on some of our major public buildings near the Thames; The Houses of Parliament, Westminster Abbey, Canary Wharf, Buckingham Palace, The Tower of London, and the South Bank are only a few of the many London landmarks that would be severely damaged, as indeed would the entire City of London.
However, the destruction in the United Kingdom will be as nothing compared to the devastation reeked on the eastern seaboard of the United States. Dr. Day claims that the Mega Tsunami will generate a wave that will be inconceivably catastrophic. He says: “It will surge across the Atlantic at 500 miles per hour in less than seven hours, engulfing the whole US east coast with a wave almost two hundred feet high ” higher than Nelson,s Column ” sweeping away everything in its path up to 20 miles inland. Boston would be hit first, followed by New York, then all the way down the coast to Miami, the Caribbean and Brazil.” Millions would be killed, and as Dr. Day explains: “It’s not a question of “if” Cumbre Vieja collapses, it’s simply a question of “when”.:
Probably/maybe not:
http://blogs.agu.org/landslideblog/2013/12/13/canary-islands-tsunami/
Paper available here:
http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/363020/1/ggge20138_Hunt_2013.pdf
Looking for more details on this I see that Wikipedia says global warming could increase the severity of this! Never miss a chance to add global warming to the threat!
“Lateral collapse events at stratovolcanoes, similar to the current threat posed by the western flank of Cumbre Vieja, could increase due to the physical effects of global warming on the Earth from increases in deviatoric stress from post-glacial rebound, while the size and frequency of eruptions are also likely to increase.”
Put that in perspective of a single nuclear warhead carrying 20 devices of 2.5Mt yield each. Of the thousands scattered across the world one or more of them is bound to get launched sooner or later. The damage from a single one of those makes the largest tsunamis look like small potatoes. We live in a dangerous world. Sea level rising one foot in my lifetime just doesn’t rank very high in the list of scary things that could happen.
More likely 3-8 devices of several hundred Kilotons and numbering in the hundreds not thousands. Still ruin our day if more than a few were ever launched.
This of course assumes people building on the coast are building at sea level too. Generally building tend to be a few meters above sea level, even when right next to the ocean.
This is the point.
The exception is the very poor who live on beachside shantytowns servicing the tourist industry.
Poverty is the problem. All the rest are just exacerbating symptoms.
Schmidt’s assertion of a meter or more rise is physically impossible, and as a mathematician he should know that. The rate of rise wont just jump from the 0.17cm per year to 2cm per year over night. It would have to accelerate.
Besides the fact there is no observed acceleration, what would the rate of acceleration be to get to a 2 meter increase in 100 years? Simple enough to do on a spreadsheet. It’s 4.3% per year. At this rate the doubling time is around 9 years.
This means that every 9 years the rate of sea level rise would double from the previous 9 years. This is the only way to get from here to 2 meters in 100 years. This means by the last year, 2099, the rate of sea level rise would have to be a staggering 8.4cm/year! That’s more in one year than in all of the previous 110 years. Sorry that is just not credible. And Schmidt should know better.
Alas, the mainstream media wants to scare people.
Worse, the media ignores the real dangers. I used to live in Coney Island right on the beach. All the houses the entire island are right at sea level. Hurricane Sandy destroyed the home I used to live in and a previous Nor’easter destroyed my neighbor’s home in the winter ten years ago.
The reason the homes built during the Victorian era are destroyed is due to Coney Island being a sand bar.
MANY homes in the US are built on sand bars in the Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf of Mexico. Galveston, destroyed in a hurricane more than 100 years ago, was REBUILT! On the same sand bar. Ditto all other communities at sea level periodically destroyed by hurricanes. Every last one is rebuilt right on top of unstable, at sea level sand bars which is insane but that is property values: all these places become very expensive again because living on the beach if fun in the sun.
Galveston was rebuilt higher and with better defenses.
‘Better’ being slightly higher than before. Geologically speaking, raising a sand bar by even 10′ is minuscule.
Wormhole?
Excuse me? I thought that in the last 110 years the global sea level has risen around 20-25 cm. Or are you talking specifically of the sea level at Vancouver?
I agree overall with your point, nobody should expect a 2 meters rise of sea level ANYWHERE by 2100, it’s just that your numbers confuse me.
Vancouver’s sea level in 2013, per their tide gauge, fell an inch since 1913. San Francisco’s tide gauge shows sea level in 2013 fell slightly since 1941, after peaking in 1997. Overall from 1855 to 2013, San Francisco sea level increased 107mm, or 4.2 inches in 158 years. That’s a rate of 2.7 inches per century, although there has been no net increase in sea level since 1941, per the tide gauge record http://www.psmsl.org/data/obtaining/rlr.annual.data/10.rlrdata
From San Diego to Victoria, Canada, tide gauge records all show falling sea level since 1997. But the alarmist drums keep beating.
@JRW
Are you sure about your math? Using your baseline of 0.17 cm/yr gives a total rise of 17 cm in 100 years, with a balance of 183 cm to be made up. Using the formula for distance and acceleration, S = 1/2 A(T)^2
183 cm = 1/2 A (100)^2
366 cm = A (10000 yr^2)
366 cm/ 10000 yr^2 = A
0.0366 cm/yr^2 = A
The rate of sea level rise at the end of 100 years would be 0.17 + (100*0.0366) = 0.17 + 3.66 = 3.83 cm/yr.
I live in one the most densely populated areas in Holland, the Alexanderpolder, which is on average 4 meters below sea level. My neighborhood is almost 7 meters below sea level. I wouldn’t say the Dutch are better than any other people in the world; what we can, can be done by anyone else. BTW; sea level monitoring exists since centuries over here and no progressive rise can be noticed. Just business as usual. Sometimes we have a storm in a teacup, which we can handle very adequate.
Thanks for that observation Lex. In Australia I have an alarmist neighbour from Holland who I keep pointing that out to. As a sea-front dweller going back over 70 years all my old benchmarks tell me we have sustained somewhere between no sea level rise and up to a foot of sea level fall during that period.
Sounds to me like more alarmist, unscientific, cr@p to ram home the AGW myth and frighten the uneducated. I don’t believe a word of it. Also why is someone who is allegedly a space “expert” discussing rising sea levels?
As in the previous article there is a scarcity of students taking climatology. There is no recognition for studying climate science. You are better recognized and awarded as a climate scientist if you take up railway engineering , theology, law and politics than study climate science.
That will leave marks!
Climastrology aside, on a rational note, if the concern is possible flooding of basements, why have a basement at all?
That is the solution we came up with here in Florida. Doesn’t do much to stop the foundation from sinking, and up in Tampa sinkholes swallow whole houses.
Maybe without a deep foundation, frost heaves in the north will tilt houses.
One word: Pilings.
What is the economical life span of an infrastructure? Why worry of events 100 years from now when the economic life of your infrastructure is only 25 years after which you have to make extensive renovation. With roads you have to repave it every 10 years or so. M
There are millions of homes older than 100 years. I have renovated in several Victorian neighborhoods in the US and in Europe there are many houses older than 100 years, some are over 500 years old.
Modern houses, on the other hand, don’t last so long.
Winchester Cathedral is ~1000 years old, and that’s the new one. The site of the old one is dated at ~1500 years old.
I was living in San Francisco during the 1989 World Series Quake. One house further up the street from me was a survivor from the 1906 SF quake. It did sustain severe damage, but that was eventually repaired. So it has now survived two of the Big Ones.
There are millions of homes older than 100 years.
===============
not in Vancouver. We call them Tear Downs. In Vancouver, the price of 1 Tear Down is the same as 9 French Chateau’s combined. So much for old houses.
http://www.vancitybuzz.com/2013/11/9-jaw-dropping-french-chateaus-for-the-price-of-1-vancouver-tear-down/
Vote Trudeau the Younger into office, that’ll help against the house prices. The French are just more experienced in electing socialists.
It depends on the infrastructure. Some types (like water mains) can have an average lifespan over 100 years. An asphalt roadway needs rebuilding long before that. Here we are decades into a supposed revolution and nobody’s toted up all the infrastructure out there and its lifespans so people can get an understanding of what their money has been building to keep them and their descendents alive.
I’ve read that if rubber is mixed with asphalt (costly), roads last much longer.
In the 1970s in New York city, they decide to redo the pipes underground on Wall Street where my husband worked. When dug up, it turned out that some of the ‘pipes’ were TREE TRUNKS used 100+ years ago!
Worrying about events 100 years from now is stupid, we don’t know what those events will be, and we don’t know what technology will exist to deal with those events if and when they occur, nor do we know what the economic and social issues will be. There are many reasons why the people 100 years from now might decide to take a course of action that is radically different than the one we would take for them.
People on the east coast 100 yrs from now will likely be speaking Chinese or perhaps even arabic. A lot can happen in 100 yrs. Look at the last 100 yrs – two world wars, rise and fall of the soviet union, invention of nukes, computers, antibiotics. Now were messin with genes. Odds are that over the next 100 yrs there will be far more interesting things to worry about than climate or sea level. One things for sure – I won’t be here to worry about it!
The Vancouver Sun should take the short drive down I5 to Seattle. After the great fire of Seattle in 1889 the city was rebuilt about 12 feet higher. Not difficult. No model panic. Just a bit of plain common sense to adapt at a sensible pace when opportunities presented themselves.
I can testify that the tour of the old city, which lies under downtown Seattle, is a real eye-opener. One of the many things down there is the world’s first ATM.
Seattle was for many decades the Red Light district of the American West Coast. The census conducted when the total population was 10,000 included 2500 young women who listed their occupation as ‘seamstress’ and all of them gave the same contact address.
When the Big One hits maybe it will flush the blush from Chief Seattle’s face.
http://columbiariverreview.com/wp-content/uploads/chief-seattle-750×400.png
went to the interview:
and
ah, carbon taxes, that’s the trick for damaging CO2
I’m going back to read about super spiders
He obviously did not get the memo from Dr. Curry…
The carbon tax is the ‘indulgence’ the climate priests are selling. If there really was a carbon dioxide cap and emitters had to pay to emit (bidding on the right to do so) NASA would be out of business in a flash. NASA produces massive emissions of CO2.
Because all costs of CO2 emissions would have to be passed along to consumers, the price of everything would go up while incomes did not because no one would be producing ‘more’. Who exactly would end up with all that money? Carbon trading has all the reek of a fiat currency.
I much prefer carbon cap and trade to carbon taxes. Cap and trade allows a free market approach, and it worked quite well for SO2. I remember industry crying that SO2 regulations were going to have huge economic costs, and actually innovation allowed regulations to be met at a lower cost than projected.
Barry,
Why either when Carbon is not the issue?
To your: “I much prefer carbon cap and trade to carbon taxes.”
“Climate policy has almost nothing to do anymore with environmental protection, says the German economist and IPCC official Ottmar Edenhofer. The next world climate summit in Cancun is actually an economy summit during which the distribution of the world’s resources will be negotiated.”
http://thegwpf.org/ipcc-news/1877-ipcc-official-climate-policy-is-redistributing-the-worlds-wealth.html
“At a news conference last week in Brussels, Christiana Figueres, executive secretary of U.N.’s Framework Convention on Climate Change, admitted that the goal of environmental activists is not to save the world from ecological calamity but to destroy capitalism.”
http://news.investors.com/ibd-editorials/021015-738779-climate-change-scare-tool-to-destroy-capitalism.htm#ixzz3UqA7aWRx
But then I repeat myself….
Politicians don’t want to tax carbon dioxide to where it actually impacts GDP.
If it hurts the economy they could lose a great gig.
They just want you to worry enough to give them $T more in taxes.
When the tax doesn’t lower the temperature of their special thermometers…
We get a CO2 Exchange so they can make 100s of billionaires out of Wall St. millionaires.
That should hold the earth’s fever in check.
The rest of us won’t have a dime.
Q: So if we could make one smart decision what should it be?
A: 1.Think for yourself. 2.Do your own online research. 3.Be cautious of mainstream media and popular identities that have probably been bought and paid for.
There you go.There’s 3.
As I have said before, when the price of sea-front property starts to fall, then, & only then, will people start to believe the propaganda about sea-level rises! Meanwhile one cannot buy much in Sandbanks, Poole, in Dorset UK, for less than around £1.5M & rising!!!!
Exactly. In most communities, beach front property is going UP not down in value. Florida, which is barely above sea level, has a population going up, not down. Property values of land in the safe, cold northern interior is going down, not up in value. There is near zero migration in the US towards colder areas except for people looking for higher welfare benefits.
But is it not the “scarcity” of sea front property that is driving the rise?
/sarc
A couple of points:
First, witchdoctor Schmidt makes no prediction, he just throws out scary numbers which he can easily walk back when it becomes necessary.
Second, gradual retreat from apparent sea level rise would not be difficult. Our Federal Flood Insurance program could be modified such that property owners could be bought out if/when they suffered damage of say more than 75% of the value of their property. It could even be set up so that they would not be forced to sell if they did not want to. They could retain ownership and rebuild if they wished; they just couldn’t get federally subsidized insurance.
“Second, gradual retreat from apparent sea level rise would not be difficult.Flood Insurance program could be modified such that property owners could be bought out if/when they suffered damage of say more than 75% of the value of their property. It could even be set up so that they would not be forced to sell if they did not want to. They could retain ownership and rebuild if they wished; they just couldn’t get federally subsidized insurance.”
I have raised this and similar points many times.
The main danger to homes near the sea is from storm damage and coastal flooding due to hurricanes and other transient events.
Perhaps someone could do a study to determine the likelihood, using historical averages, of any particular stretch of coastline being impacted by coastal flooding (Whether by hurricanes, winter storms, or otherwise) during the next hundred years. The expected useful lifetime of a newly constructed home should also be considered. It seems to me that newer homes are not exactly built to withstand centuries of wear and tear.
Another thing to consider is why, if so many “experts” in and out of government and the insurance industry are so sure that storms will be more frequent and that sea levels rise will accelerate, are areas which suffer severe storm damage rebuilt in place?
Much of New Orleans, for example, is below sea level, and the land it is built on continues to subside due to oxidation and compaction of the alluvial subsoil. The natural protective barriers in that region continue to degrade, and the Mississippi river continues to become ever more elevated due to sedimentation of the river bed. Sooner of later it seems inevitable that the river will shift course and flow to the southwest, bypassing that city. And the region will always exist in one of the most hurricane prone locations in the entire world!
If ever a case could and should have been made for relocating rather than rebuilding in place, New Orleans was it, and yet little serious thought was given to a relocation effort.
One could make similar arguments regarding at least some of the areas affected by Sandy.
The fact is that building on the sea coasts of nearly any region in the world is hazardous, and will remain so.
That barrier islands consist largely of sand is a very big hint from nature that these areas are subjected to periodic overwash from the sea. There are coastal locations which have nearby forests consisting of trees of various ages, but how many hundred year old trees has anyone ever seen adjacent to or on a beach (along the gulf or Atlantic coast of the US)?
The maximum age of trees just inland from the coast may be a very good indication of the interval one might expect between large scale coastal flooding events.
In any case, as has been pointed out regarding the temperature and climatic regimes, variation of sea level over time is the rule. Anyone who thinks we can pick a certain level and somehow keep it there must not have spent much time looking at historical records.
On a slightly different point, it would be interesting to see a list compiled of all of the warmista scaremongers who own coastal or beachfront properties. We have already seen several high profile examples of folks who seem to say one thing but act as though they do not believe what they themselves are saying.
For the record, I recently was in the market for a new home. I looked homes at such locations as Cape Coral and other low elevation sites in the region. I settled on a place inland, at an elevation of about 17 feet.
Far less convenient for shopping, etc. But safe from the sea. (I hope)
Not because I think the ocean will rise faster in the future, but because I know for certain that there will be terrible hurricanes, as there have always been.
“The fact is that building on the sea coasts of nearly any region in the world is hazardous, and will remain so.”
Not much one can do if a Tsunami hits but for Hurricane’s today one has to build in accordance with FEMA and the respective States codes which are written around surviving a Cat 5 and the associated storm surge.
As reported by FEMA: “Between 1970 and 1999, more people lost their lives from freshwater inland flooding associated with tropical cyclones than from any other weather hazard related to such storms.”
The storm surge from Katrina was 27 feet high. What many have never realized or paid attention to was that the storm missed New Orleans. When a storm surge of 27 feet comes through, with hurricane winds and waves on top of that, good luck.
I would be interested to see pictures of structures that have survived a cat 5 hurricane and associated storm surge.
I recall one home built on stilts and made of poured concrete several feet thick, but it was built far above any code.
Better building codes may be a good idea to a point, but if the net effect is to raise the cost to build and hence the dollar amount of damage, what has been gained?
People who live in safe locations already subsidize those who choose to live in hazardous areas.
“Storm surge reached 9 to 12 miles inland”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effects_of_Hurricane_Katrina_in_Mississippi#/media/File:Mississippi_counties_map_Katrina_disaster_areas.jpg
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effects_of_Hurricane_Katrina_in_Mississippi
Open quote “Between 1970 and 1999, more people lost their lives from freshwater inland flooding associated with tropical cyclones than from any other weather hazard related to such storms.” End quote
I do not doubt that this is true, but it may be somewhat misleading.
When hurricanes or tropical storms approach, most people who live right on the water or close to it heed the warnings and leave.
And, as is often seen in the aftermath of tornadoes, even when a structure is completely leveled by wind, people somehow manage to survive in large majority of cases.
So flooding is usually the biggest killer.
Additionally, since coastlines are narrow areas, and inland areas far more extensive, it is logical to expect that there are more people, by orders of magnitude, in inland areas which are affected by freshwater flooding than along the coast from storm surge.
If we are talking about deaths, I think it is absolutely silly to worry that slowly rising seas will kill anybody.
Even if sea level rose 200 feet in a year, Granny could walk fast enough to stay ahead of it.
Given the size of the Mississippi River Delta it is not surprising that the surge travelled so far inland as the delta has little to impede its progress. Another factor would the Mississippi River itself given that the Mississippi River would have been backed up by the surge and flooding the upper reaches. Those 470,000 cu. ft. / sec had to go somewhere and the flooding of the low lying areas upstream would have occurred.
“The coastal area is the nation’s largest drainage basin and drains about 41% of the contiguous United States into the Gulf of Mexico at an average rate of 470,000 cubic feet per second.” (Wiki)
For pictures of building that have survived Hurricanes Google Hurricane Dennis which was a Cat 3 or Opal.
Not to be argumentative but:
Yes, some buildings can survive nearly anything, unless they are undermined. Which can happen.
And the debris carried by the rushing water causes a lot of the damage as well.
But the force of wind is proportional to the square of wind speed, so going from 3 to 5 is a whopping big difference.
Also, there are very often a great many tornadoes spun off by land falling hurricanes, especially to the right of the center.
The winds from these can easily topple reinforced masonry structures, and snap large trees like they were matchsticks.
I have examined the damage caused by large storms and tornadoes for decades.
Little is left intact after a direct hit from a cat 5.
I had understood that the levees and structures rebuilt in New Orleans were done so with a standard in mind of resisting a direct hit from a cat 3.
Perhaps this is incorrect.
I am not so sure how many locations specify building to a cat 5 (155 MPH sustained winds or greater).
http://www.floridabuilding.org/fbc/publications/FBC.pdf
http://www.chron.com/news/houston-texas/article/Texas-does-little-to-boost-buildings-hurricane-1762744.php
Menicholas
Adequate money was appropriated (planned and authorized) for levees and structures around new Orleans to withstand a direct hit from a Cat 3 hurricane.
The corrupt (democrat party/liberals/progressives who are now demanding the world destroy its economies out of fear of a potential sea level rise!) spent the repair, construction and (most important) the maintenance money for those levees and dams and gates and locks on their pocketbooks, their back accounts, their livestyles and their government offices and their democrat party voters in LA and New Orleans and Washington, on the bribes they took and the corruption in the contracts that they let out. The (more honest) government officials and contract offices just a few miles down the road (and across the border in Mississippi and Florida) were hit with more winds and as much rains … and recovered as best can be expected from that large a storm. The (honest and effective) governments in TX and Houston and east TX coast were hit with a worse storm just weeks later … and had no deaths, little flooding, and no looting and killing .
“Better building codes may be a good idea to a point, but if the net effect is to raise the cost to build and hence the dollar amount of damage, what has been gained? People who live in safe locations already subsidize those who choose to live in hazardous areas.”
Your frame of reference is somewhat constrained: think building a house constructed as a “lighthouse” on the beach or on a canal by those who can afford to carry their own insurance “risk”. Think piling, tones of concrete and rebar supporting two to three floor levels above a car port that will accommodate a surge. You are correct, it does cost a small fortune but think of the Gores et al that have these structures built on the ocean front because they can afford to do so thanks to CAGW scaremongering. If you doubt me take a trip to Longboat Key, Naples etc and checkout the “lighthouses” being built.
Part of the problem in NYC / NJ is that although some may own the land they can not afford the rebuild to the latest standards. What was once affordable stick-built housing from the ’50’s is now “beachfront” property located in a “V” location.
Menicholas,
Katrina and Camille both made landfall at Pass Christian, MS. Camille was Cat 5 but had a lower storm surge (22.6 ft vs 27.8 ft).
http://www.wunderground.com/hurricane/surge_details.asp
Comment from 2013-
New SLR paper in Nature Climate Change, August 21, 2013
List of cities most endangered- the authors based their prediction on an increase in sea levels of between 0.2 and 0.4 metres by 2050 caused by melting continental ice sheets. That is up to 400 mm in 37 years, or 11 mm per year. NOAA says current steric SLR is 0.2 mm per year.
Now for a look back at Boston-
In 1630, Boston area = 783 acres
Landfill additions- Back bay, west cove, mill pond, great cove, south cove
Total as of 1910 (assumed the same today)= 1904 acres
Land area gain per year = (1904 – 783)/(2013 – 1630) = 3 acres per year
Sea level rise 1630 – 2013 = 650 mm, or 1.7 mm/year
So, with SLR of 1.7 mm/yr, Boston was able to *add* 3 acres/year using shovels and horses.
Now we are worried about Boston drowning, with SLR at 2.6 mm/year.
Almost 60% of Boston sits on catastrophic anthropogenic landfill.
Who knew…
Not to mention that the average daily tidal range in Boston Harbor is 9.5 feet (2.9 meters), some days as high as 13 feet (3.9 meters). Nixes Mate is a tiny island in the Harbor where they used to hang pirates, and first mentioned in historical records in 1636. It’s stll there.
Gavin is feeding the political narrative and violating his charge as a scientist. Get over it. . He is reinforcing the political narrative. I am sure that Harry Reid’s chuckle over his legally protected lie about Romney is instructive whether one is a denier, sceptic or apoplectic.
Can we now call them apoplectics?
Synonyms:
angered, angry, ballistic, cheesed off [chiefly British], choleric, enraged, foaming, fuming, furious, hopping, horn-mad, hot, incensed, indignant, inflamed (also enflamed), infuriate, infuriated, irate, ireful, livid, mad, outraged, rabid, rankled, riled, riley, roiled, shirty [chiefly British], sore, steamed up, steaming, teed off, ticked, wrathful, wroth………
Any how we foolishly seem to think that when the argument becomes political that the scientific theory rules should prevail. Clearly with the smirk on Harries face this theory has failed, The longer we subscribe to it the larger the variance,
We must change the public perception of those who gain from misrepresentations. http://www.cnn.com/2015/03/31/politics/harry-reid-dana-bash-interview/
Just thinkin’
Forgot “in a snit”.
Any time you build along water it’s a crap-shoot, simply due to storm surge and the fact that residential foundations seldom go down to bedrock, and are subject to all kinds of erosion problems. If you’re trying to relocate corporately then any location in these so-called “threatened areas” would be an irresponsible use of your stockholders money. As for people who are already there, well, deal with it on your own, not my problem, public policy solutions are a fleecing of the taxpayers.
If you really want that nice water-side experience build a very nice energy-efficient house in the hills, and then use all the money you saved to spend two weeks out of the year at the 4-Seasons on Lake Geneva, (not Wisconsin). An added benefit, the food you cook tastes like nasty gruel compared to the menu at the 4 Seasons, so take a couple weeks and enjoy, and don’t worry about the AGW effects that aren’t going to happen.
“An added benefit, the food you cook tastes like nasty gruel compared to the menu at the 4 Seasons”
Please sir, speak for yourself.
My food tastes as good or better than any restaurant experience in the world, and the service here aint bad, neither.
BTW, I could suggest a good cook book or two.
🙂
I’m not speaking for myself, I’m speaking on behalf of anyone who is sufficiently dim-minded to build an abode within surge level of a major ocean. As for myself, I learned from my French Grandmother, and was supplied with primary ingredients by my Father, who raised beef for Michelin rated restaurants. FYI: If you need a cookbook then your food really isn’t going to be close to anything at the 4 Seasons, but, if you make your request in your best French, or Italian, they’ll allow you to spend a few hours in the kitchen. If you’re into cooking that experience alone is worth the price of a room there.
I agree that if you need a cook book, your skills are wanting.
I sometimes do look stuff up, like if I want to make something I have never made before.
completely reasonable, unlike people who need to build a 4200 square foot home on a sand dune.
Well let me see,. i went out to the dock his morning the check for bait fish in the water. I noticed the sea hasn’t risen yet like they tell me. Any day now i guess. This is the same bulkhead that was there since 1980 when I was born. I also have a local gauge in the inlet. I suppose it has risen a foot since 1980 or whatever Gavin claims just not in my neck of the woods or my sisters neck of the woods by San Francisco. I suppose the sandy barrier island I live near sank one foot even though there is no geological record of that. I suppose the sea level rise rate is going gangbusters in the last 12 years as according to the noaa summarized data. It’s strange because for that period of time the sea level has been remarkably stable in my neck of the woods even compared to the previous 12 years. I don’t trust summarized global mean sea level data. Yes i’m skeptic to say the least.
* correction..the barrier island sank a foot
Sea level seems like a simple enough concept, but is it really so?
Check this out:
i realize it’s not a simple concept. l also realize making things more complicate than they have to be is a tactic of propaganda here. Why can’t they show all the raw data and methodology of how they get global mean sea level from giss satellite and tide gauges?
Great link. Thanks.
Here’s an answer to your quandary – lumpy sea level rise. Look up “sea level rise will be lumpy” and sample some of the articles. For example:
http://green.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/01/22/sea-level-and-the-limits-of-the-bathtub-analogy/?_r=0
Excerpts:
“The paleoclimate record, as it is known, suggests that even a slight amount of global warming can produce a rise of 25 to 30 feet. And if scientists are anywhere close to right in their projections, the warming over the coming century due to human activity is going to be more than slight. That means a long-term rise in sea level of as much as 80 feet cannot be ruled out.
[…]
“Rising sea level, it turns out, is “lumpy” – the sea goes up more in some places than others.”
With this logic, it is easy to see that sea level can go up a bit here, and up a few feet more there, with the distance between here and there being maybe a few hundred feet.
\sarc for the last sentence, just in case
When you talk about lifting the floor of a house do you mean jacking the entire house up? I have seen that done to put a basement under the house. These are the things you should be prepared to do if you live by the sea.
There’s a proposal to build a ‘climate-proof’ house (‘mansion’!) on the south coast of England that does just that:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3044653/Citroen-house-pumps-escape-floods-Billionaire-plans-new-4million-mansion-hydraulic-stilts-safe-rising-sea-levels.html
As SandyinLimousin already pointed out!
He is so bright that he has never heard of a floating foundation, much simpler and much cheaper.
I wouldn’t bother if I were him (is that the correct grammar?) Buckler’s Hard, not far away in the New Forest, was where ships of Nelson’s era were built well over two hundred years ago, and the slipways are still there, exactly the same height above sea level. Hasn’t budged an inch!
The desperation of warming proponents to get things signed and carbon taxed, etc., is so when little happens in the future, they can take credit for it. The dreaded ‘pause’ upped the ante on this score. Gavin and all the rest used to believe that we were going to fry and melt all the ice but even he can’t in his mind still believe it, so throw everything you can into the fray and claim success when sea level doesn’t accelerate.
Very interesting things are happening as the world begins to realize it has been had by these climate doom sayers. The ability of the World Bank and the IMF to hold the third world hostage and refuse development of cheap energy projects has spawned a competitor bank in Asia to fund such projects and other development projects in Africa and other poor countries. China is virtually taking over Africa and Western influences are going to be neutralized. I applaud this. China, India and Russia are going to save this planet from the scourge of the New World Order. Not my first choice, but I’ll take it. I have in comments in the past alluded to the need for a news media and conferences to be created to tell the Third World what is being done to them, but the Chinese seem to be taking care of this. It will also be a big boost to China’s industrial sector, providing engineering and plants for these developments. The W. Bank and IMF will not have much to do but give dissenting countries like Canada, Japan, Russia, China and India scathing reports and dire economic predictions as their funds dry up and they sink beneath the waves.
OZ’s 4million grant to Lomborg at Western Oz U will probably create some copy cats and may turn the rat infested ship of higher ‘learning’ around and put the fools ashore. I think Prime Minister Harper may been given to thought on this development. Use funding of common sense to end the hegemony of the Gang Green zealots.
Fracking came along just when the Gang Green were busy celebrating the shut down of fossil fuel fired facilities – they were arguing that we were running out anyway and we should be enameling and tufting the earth with solar panels and windmills. The technology also put the US in the forefront of CO2 reduction is a classic irony. The left fortunately always become hysterical, then nasty and tips its hand and technology keeps finding a way. I think we are not far from a wonderful world with renewed vigor and good feelings about ourselves.
Here are all the models for SLR from the Royal Society for the next 300 years. Yes Greenland is positive but Antarctica is negative until 2300.
So where does Gavin think his SLR will come from, perhaps from his delusional imagination. Will these fools ever wake up?
http://rsta.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/roypta/364/1844/1709/F4.large.jpg
Neville,
Respectfully sir, why are these very numerous but apparently random guesses worth any attention at all?
If the grand solar minimum we seem to be going into causes a repeat of anything like the LIA, we could see sea levels dropping.
It would be hypocritical, IMO, for anyone skeptical of the value of GCMs to give much credence to these models of future sea level.
how much of the LIA was caused by the grand solar minimum?
Oh, look. Another question, from the guy who refuses to ever answer questions.
“how much of the LIA was caused by the grand solar minimum?”
Maybe if every dollar of money allocated for study of the Earth’s climate over the past 27 years was not dedicated to proving one thing or another about CO2, we would have some insight into that.
And I use the word “proving” loosely.
The new definition seems to include such concepts as “could”, “may”, “might”, “perhaps”, “is not inconsistent with”, “should”…etc, and will soon be expanded still further to include such as “perchance”, “mayhap”, “possibly”, “assumably”, “presumably”, “probably” and “supposably”.
Meni where you once s lead author on the IPCC? Your work looks familiar
“Meni where you once s lead author on the IPCC? Your work looks familiar”
Charlie,
Well sir, to answer your question…no.
I am not, and was not, and, I strongly suspect, never will be invited by the IPCC to participate in their dastardly shenanigans.
Mostly because I have views which are very near to being precisely and diametrically opposed to every single smidgen of tripe they have ever published.
I also ‘spect you may be funnin’ me some with that question. That’s cool, I was meaning to be funny myself.
“I was meaning to be funny myself.”
Funny, but serious.
And don’t call me Shirley.
Roger Roger
“Maybe if every dollar of money allocated for study of the Earth’s climate over the past 27 years was not dedicated to proving one thing or another about CO2, we would have some insight into that.”
so you think we do not have an insight into this? all the research that has been done into this is faulty? or what is your point?
Sea level rise is a serious problem. Many countries and cities will be devastated by it. Man made huge mistakes by building there. The good news however is that the buildings and infrastructure don’t last forever. Most will be replaced within 100 year time period. A smart thing to do is to have a moratorium on new construction, life cycle out what’s there and build new cities on higher ground. Man won’t do that though. They will build dykes and dewatering systems and be at mercy to the weather. And like New Orleans these systems will fail.
Interesting. Please see my comment above, posted also at 7:11:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/04/19/nasa-gavin-schmidts-whacky-sea-level-rise-advice/#comment-1911372
jamie on April 19, 2015 at 7:11 am
– – – – – – –
jamie,
Many of us who have long term dreams of owning ocean front property actually benefit by Gavin’s pre-science based alarms. He is creating fear based motive to sell by some intellectually susceptible current owners of ocean front property. Then, due to Gavin, when the supply of ‘for sale’ ocean front property spikes up (& prices spike down) my wife and I can pick an ocean front property on the cheap. The free marketplace of capitalism is a wonderful thing.
John
There is a least one person in the world who is taking this advice seriously.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3044653/Citroen-house-pumps-escape-floods-Billionaire-plans-new-4million-mansion-hydraulic-stilts-safe-rising-sea-levels.html
A sea level rise of 2 centimeters a year could be thwarted by a five year old girl with a plastic pail and toy shovel.
Apparently the scaremongers do not get to the beach much, or have never equipped a child with a pail and shovel:
http://www.rense.com/1.imagesH/image032.jpg
http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2012/08/18/article-2189914-1496B94C000005DC-374_964x584.jpg
you will notice the article said the people’s houses in Venice “sunk” into the water and that is exactly what happened. The sea hasn’t taken over that city. The land has sunk.
As a practical matter, what is the difference?
there is nothing practical about climate change hysteria and propaganda. Maybe if you think scamming people is practical. This is not an article about building houses on stilts or having a rational and reasonable discussion on coastal development. The sea level projections are unethical. They are political not scientific. A reasonable assessment of sea level prediction is nothing to be alarmed about.
I agree with you that the hype is completely unwarranted and unethical.
The article does discuss efforts at mitigation though, and my comment was intended to reflect that, as a matter of practical efforts to mitigate encroaching waters if and when such do occur, whether the ground is sinking or the sea rising, the same steps would solve the problem, or else be unable to do so.
Personally I think that living in a city with rivers for streets would be quite unpleasant. I would have voted to move the city.
IPCC AR5’s worst, worst, worst case computer model (table 13.8) has sea levels rising 1.5 to 6.6 m (nice tight predicted range) – by the year 2500.
Think 485 years is enough time to adapt?
Doesn’t anybody actually read this stuff?
Oh, and think about it?
I can’t help but thinking that the vast amount of effort, time and money which went into preparing this latest WAG from the IPCC proves one thing, and one thing only: Some people just love to hear themselves talk.
400 years from now, will there be shows on TV similar to those we have now which examine the quatrains of Nostradamus?
In a related story, I hear that NASA has now declared tea leaf reading to be a credible and rigorous scientific discipline.
I used to have a knack for tea leaf reading. I will send in my resume immediately.
I think 485 years is enough time for unimaginable advances in technology that completely changes civilization.
Technology is developing at an incredible rate. Flight, consumer inter continental flight, combustion engine, automobiles, plastics, electric lights, seemingly limitless energy, phones, space flight, satellites, nuclear energy and bombs, personal GPS, personal computers, cell phones, genetics, organ transplants, vaccines, and of course internet have all happened within 200 years, much happening in the last 50. Even with all that, technology advancement is accelerating.
How narcissistic and stupid of a Dark Age scientist do you have to be to warn of some water in the basement in 100 years ignoring the potential technology advancements possible in the same time period.
“How narcissistic and stupid of a Dark Age scientist do you have to be”
And the answer is…..extremely so.
Next question: How dishonest and shameless must one be to call such concerns as that crew warns of to be “The biggest threat to civilization that we face”?
I live at the beach, about 3-4 meters above sea level and about 50 kilometers from the mid-point of the mighty Cascadia Subduction Zone, capable of generating tsunami’s over 30 meters if Indonesia and Japan are any indication. Travel time is about 15 minutes (assuming where I am doesn’t subside 10 meters).
My solution is to wear shorts year round.
Good plan.
One might also consider drilling oneself and the fambly to head for higher ground very quickly upon experiencing an earthquake.
If there is no tsunami, no big deal. If there is one, it may be the only course of action that will save you.
Like the ancient folk knowledge that denizens of certain locales on the ring of fire have passed down for generations: If you see the ocean pulling away from the land, turn and run as fast as you can to higher ground and do not stop.
Menicholas
There is anecdotal evidence from the 1927 disasterous Mississippi river floods that the mid-American Indian burial mounds (far, far larger than just the area needed for single “temple” or priest’s house – of which there are no real archeological evidences available, but lots of drawings and assumptions!) were available for just that kind of flooding. The 1927 Mississippi flood covered so many million acres so deep for so long that many poor mid-south residences (black, white, poor and land-owners alike) clustered on the old Indian mounds with only the belongings they could carry for as long as two weeks. That hand-carried luggage was the only thing that was left after the waters went down.
These displaced people formed many millions of those who then moved north to the new factories (Detroit, Cleveland, Chicago, Dayton, Pittsburgh somewhat, etc) that broke them from their original farms and leased land.
It is easy to see Stone Age Indians “learning” the same lessons: Build high ground, if there are no slopes and no hills around you.
“Build high ground, if there are no slopes and no hills around you.”
Very interesting Mr. Cook.
I had heard of these mounds, but was not aware that they had been used as refuge from those epic flooding episodes.
It is striking to consider how even in the US, and even in that relatively recent time, people caught in disasters were pretty much on their own.
Max,
Here is a link for the Pacific Northwest Geodetic Array (PANGA) and associated studies.
http://www.geodesy.cwu.edu/
Another link you might like:
The Orphan Tsunami of 1700
http://pubs.usgs.gov/pp/pp1707/
January 26, 1700 and greater than mag9.
I believe there is clear evidence of periodic and large tsunami hitting the Pacific Northwest.
It may be that the more southerly parts of the Pacific coast are similarly affected, but geographic conditions make any evidence less apparent.
Gavin from the interview:
“a business-as-usual scenario which would result in a planet that was unrecognizable. ”
My comment isn’t meant to be an insult to Gavin, it’s actually an impassioned observation: Gavin has in fact lost his mind. His statement does not come from a scientist weighing out evidence but from an irrational mind that can not differentiate between what is known and what is fantasy. GISS needs a scientist at its helm.
Basically Gavin shows some raw, aggressive alarmism.
It is true, that two meters would cause some damage, but if you have say 60 years to adapt, the losses would be marginal. There is enough time to move, build dams, set up windmills to pump water over the dam. Raising floors is not sensible normally, but giving up properties that are not worth protecting is just normal.
And the two meters is really a worst imaginable case. Mr Schmidt definitely has not lost his marbles. The question is more like did he ever have any. Because he wants mitigation in a situation where and by means it is proven not to work.
“Gavin has in fact lost his mind. His statement does not come from a scientist weighing out evidence but from an irrational mind that can not differentiate between what is known and what is fantasy.”
No, he is perfectly rational. His livelihood depends on a taxpayer funded organisation, NASA; that currently gets 1.2 billion USD a year for climate research. His rational interest is to increase taxation – like with all statists.
here’s Vancouver’s tide gauge…nothing to see here…move along
http://www.psmsl.org/data/obtaining/rlr.monthly.plots/175_high.png
“There’s a lot of waterfront development going on but is it sea-level-rise smart? I don’t know that it is. So don’t put stuff in the basement, have all your electrical equipment on the second floor or on the roof.”
I do not know what particular community he is thinking of, but I know of not one single place in which a building near or at sea level has a basement. So unless he is referring to the ground level as “basement”, he is imagining things anyway.
Electrical equipment on the roof?
Um, yeah…lots of thought went into this statement.
The floating houses in Holland have basements
I have never been there, but that sounds interesting. Are they below ground level?
Actually, when I made this comment I was thinking of seaside communities which line the coast in the eastern US.
After pondering it further it did occur to me that in places like lower Manhattan which are fairly close to sea level there are basements. One notable example was the World Trade Center lower level parking lots. As I recall extraordinary measures were taken to prevent water infiltration, including construction of a huge slurry wall structure, which they called ” the bathtub”.
Because of cost ,and as a practical matter, basements at or below the water table, while possible, would be extremely expensive.
Additionally the weight of the structure built above it would have to be sufficient to overcome the buoyancy of having a waterproof structure below the water table.
If it is sufficiently waterproof to keep water from gushing in, then it’s going to act more or less like a boat, and try to float up to the top of the water table. Here in Florida we have to be very careful about draining swimming pools because they’re liable to pop out of the ground.
In other places along the coast there are high rise condominiums and hotels, and many of these have underground parking garages and basements. But if you look carefully you’ll see that they’re usually built on artificial hills, basically mounds of earth building the land up so the basement is actually above the surrounding ground.
Gavin better start telling Obama not to buy ocean front property in Hawaii:
http://www.politico.com/story/2015/03/obama-purchase-magnum-pi-home-116233.html
“Q: What is the future for waterfront cities like Vancouver?”
An actual scientist might begin this question by looking at sea level data from Vancouver!!
http://www.psmsl.org/data/obtaining/rlr.monthly.plots/175_high.png
Measurements of sea level in Vancouver shows nothing to worry about. Gavin is either an idiot or a liar or just too lazy to look at actual data. That this story could go to press without anyone fact checking says a lot about the pathetic state of journalism.
gavin an idiot? No. what was the other choice again?
As we know from the Climategate emails, they are not interested in looking at actual data. The models have been designed to tell THEM everything that WE need to know!
One can classify the people who “believe” CAGW is a high probability outcome into one or a combination of 3 groups
1. Ignorant (the largest the group)
2. Stupid (I believe the smallest)
3. Users and Abusers of the Ignorant and Stupid (Small but very influential)
I’m am sure Gavin falls into category 3. I remember the debate when he got his butt cleaned by Crichton, Lindzen and the Prof from England whose name escapes me right now. He didn’t not come across as stupid and I highly doubt he is ignorant of the available date which puts him in category 3. He is a user and/or abuser. He has the advantage of that stupid lack the skill set to check his statements and the ignorant lack the inclination or time to do so.
What his motivations are only he knows. Possibilities include keeping the funding gravey train going, he actually believes population growth is problem, he has investments in green technnology which can’t economically exist without the largess of gov’t grants/regulations, and others.
Group 3 is the most dangerous. They are the ones trading long term benefits for short term gains. They are the opportunity thieves. They are taking resources out of Joe 6 Pack’s pocket and hindering his and his family’s pursuit of happiness.
I am heading out to Vancouver today. If I run into Gavin, I hope I don’t accidentally bump him into his rising tidal wave. 🙂
Cheers
Where do you have the useful idiots? A sub-category of 3.? The so-called journalists who do receive financial gain, but then also that large group of scientist wannabes (many who we see on here) who deal in the currency of planet-saving perceived (to them) higher moral authority?
Having examined tide gauge data from many locations, one of the most striking things to me is that, despite the longer term trends which do exist in many locations, the monthly and yearly variation is so large that one can see that, even in the places that show long term trends of rising water, there are particular months from many decades ago in which the sea level was higher than particular months in the past few years.
In ST. Pete, for example, there is a month just prior to 1950 in which the monthly average was about where it is in the most recent month on the chart:
http://tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/sltrends/sltrends_station.shtml?stnid=8726520
As satellites allow more accurate readings we are finding out more about this grand ride we are on. I think given the tidal influence on the earth’s surface by the moon it would not surprise me that the ideal shape of the planet has a perturbation which we have been attributing improperly. Sea level rise is tiny compared to some well known tectonic influences. Given that sea levels are influenced by cold and hot water eddies, random storm events, seiches, wave periods and heights and tectonics, I think getting a handle on sea level is a fascinating exercise. When the newspapers touted a 5 inch increase in sea levels in one year I ran right down to the local boat ramp. Best place to field check a claim since it has a 13% slope. i was checking to see a 38 inch change in the skum line…..Nope! Oh I forgot we are not supposed to field check. Just feed it to the narrative and get more apoplectic.
Building houses and towns changes with generations. Those who had to fight the elements without benefit of easy food, water, and shelter, built their permanent residence in sheltered locations away from the beach, windy hills, flood plains, raging rivers, and the scorching sun. Now, these are the exact places houses and towns are built. Wisdom won, and practiced hardiness has been bred out. The lessons of our pioneers forgotten.
But hardship will return as it always does and wipe out fancy houses and ready food, water, and shelter. The fittest will survive and build shelter and houses that are in protected areas. These early generations that survive think only of future generations and so begin again the process of building security for those that are yet to come. As life becomes easy, attempts are made to pass down what was learned.
Given the above, it is very likely that humans do not retain or pass down this wisdom or hardiness very well. Why? Because at least for humans wisdom and hardiness is something earned, not given. And finally, I can conclusively state that anyone who has to raise their house above the waters isn’t because of CO2.
NOAA tide gauge data through 2013 for the more than 70 year long time period record at Vancouver shows a completely linear rate of sea level rise with the rate of sea level rise increase measuring at an astounding 1.5 inches per century. Just more climate alarmist garbage.
“record at Vancouver shows”
so? you think SLR happens everywhere at the same rate?
of course not – we only measure/model official local SLR at Gavin’s summer home and upscale that to Vancouver
One has to take both eustatic and isostatic changes in sea level to answer that question. Bilal Haq is likely the most knowledgeable person in that regard.
Noaa tide gauge data through 2013 shows rates of sea level rise at hundreds of coastal locations around the world with records going back more than 100 years in duration. Virtually none of the measured data shows any acceleration in the rate of sea level at these locations with these measured linear sea level rise rates varying between about 1 to 12 inches per century. Empirical sea level rise data from coastal locations around the world does not support climate alarmist claims of accelerating rates of sea level rise.
The idea of a permanent flood seems too much for me and living houses is close to the absurd. Still, I totally agree that it is true that climate is influencing ocean levels as oceans are influencing climate. To see a bit from the past century’s sea levels and ocean evolution, you can go to http://www.arctic-warming.com and read a bit about the way the oceans have influenced climate in the past and how they can influence the climate in the future.
Gavin should tell his breaking new finding instantly to Al Gore, so that Gore can immediately sell his home at the Pacific waterfront (Los Angeles?).
De Caprio and Obama too!
So Gavin cries wolf in alarm with his exaggerated sea level belief.
Why is Gavin Schmidt, having been publically exposed about his marginal scientific skill, the head of NASA’s GISS?
I am a US citizen / taxpayer. I sincerely want NASA to tell me why.
John
I don’t know why Nasa and Noaa are huge environmental journalism think tanks now..Its really just climate change though. . As far as I’m concerned they take should climatic measurements with satellites, tide gauges, floats. weather balloons etc. That should be about it. Show us that data and methodology. They are not National Geographic. They are government funded.
Charlie on April 19, 2015 at 9:22 am
– – – – – – –
Charlie,
Yeah, I think it would be interesting if a critical journalist from a significant news outlet did a deconstruction of the history of the evolution of NASA (and its affiliates like GISS) from the end of the Apollo moon missions to now.
Also, why are duplicate climate related activities being done by NOAA and NASA?
John
“Why is Gavin Schmidt, having been publically exposed about his marginal scientific skill, the head of NASA’s GISS?”
Excellent point.
We pay this guy to make inaccurate predictions that never come true, and spin scare stories that scare children and the weak minded?
Why?
Menicholas on April 19, 2015 at 11:40 am
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Menicholas,
The process to replace James Hansen should have been very transparent to the general public. But it wasn’t. Why? Why hide the process that led to the llimited skills of Gavin Schmidt?
John
“The process to replace James Hansen should have been very transparent to the general public. But it wasn’t. Why? Why hide the process that led to the limited skills of Gavin Schmidt?
John, a very good question sir.
I certainly have my suspicions regarding why, but no insight into the actual process.
I actually would have supposed that such posts could be filled as a political appointment. Is this not the case?
Menicholas on April 19, 2015 at 11:40 am
– – – – – – –
Menicholas,
The selection process appears to have been buried within the bowels of NASA administration not unexpected but disappointing.
NASA should have taken the opportunity to have a public view of the selection process for Hansen’s replacement. It would have increased openness and would have been evidence of increasing willingness to explain stuff.
John
Maybe Inhofe will be able to do something about this paid liar.
Don’t forget that Gavin’s predecessor sat twitching in front of a camera, trying to keep a straight face, while informing us that the oceans would boil. Tough act to follow.
“informing us that the oceans would boil”
As bad as this idiotic and flat out impossible exaggeration is, the silence from the entire rest of the warmista community in response to this and other ridiculous and demonstrably false, misleading, exaggerated, or just plain wrong statements from Hansen and others is just as bad if not worse.
It would seem that within that groupthink community, no lie is too big to go unchallenged.
How many folks who can afford oceanfront property also can’t afford to replace the dwelling as needed? Talk about chasing lightning bugs, it’s almost guaranteed have storm damage within 100 years time and be rebuilt or razed to be replaced with something more opulent.
“How many folks who can afford oceanfront property also can’t afford to replace the dwelling as needed? ”
They do not even need to be able to afford to replace their property. They only need to be able to afford the highly subsidized national flood insurance policy that anyone can buy.
Where exactly would this undeveloped “ocean-front” real estate in Vancouver be located? And why is a climate scientist giving advice on real estate? Isn’t that like a real estate agent providing scientific advice on climate change?
Steve: Isn’t that like a real estate agent providing scientific advice on climate change? No, the estate agent would be more accurate!
Gavin must be looking as NASA’s adjusted data, politically correct data. Here is the official Canadian source for Vancouver’s tidal data. As one can see, Vancouver’s tide has ZERO trend going back 100 years.
http://www.isdm-gdsi.gc.ca/isdm-gdsi/twl-mne/inventory-inventaire/data-donnees-eng.asp?user=isdm-gdsi®ion=PAC&tst=1&no=7735&ref=maps-cartes
And here is a plot of the daily average tide
http://oi60.tinypic.com/33moj05.jpg
so?
the raw data says the trend in Vancouver is 0.001 mm/year
NOAA has the trend as 0.37 millimeters/year with a 95% confidence. 370 times higher.
And Daniel Kuhn’s response,………..
are you implying that the adjustments, if there are, are not justified?
why? what is wrong about it?
Interesting that people like Schmidt dont want homes built along the ocean front, but he says nothing about building civilization along active tectonic zones. How many have died from plate tectonics? 300,000 in Haiti. 200,000 in Indonesia.
Little thought is ever given in such discussions to proportional risk.
In addition to the risks you mention of tectonic disruptions, anyone who lives along any river faces the near certainty of having their home flooded over a sufficiently long period of time. And yet many rivers are lined with homes.
And for these homes to flood, nothing has to change. The averages just need sufficient time to play out.
Imagine the millions of folks who live along the San Andreas fault worrying about rising oceans!
This is akin to people who drive hundreds of miles a week worrying about the risk of flying.
Then again, many of these same millions of people, who have chosen to live in a near desert, seem genuinely surprised and upset whenever they have a drought, and yet defend the decision to let 800,000 acre feet of water be wasted to save 305 little fish.
Has the man ever made a prediction that came true?……..
Anybody worried about living near an ocean that rises should consider moving inland. I realize that this is only a concept, but as Captain Obvious, I am calling on someone to look at the odds of Pittsburgh being swamped by rising tides. My consultation fee is small, should you need any assistance in drafting your grant request.
How much does post-glacial uplift contribute to rise in sea level?
http://www.earth.northwestern.edu/people/seth/research/gia.jpg
Very happy to see the Florida uplift. But the coastal down-shift in the NE is worrying wrt the Ca. to Co. effect as far as the southern States are concerned. 🙂
Only a moron builds next to water thinking they will NEVER have a water issue. We on the prairies are having this discussion now. Morons in city hall have ignored the Gov’t policies and kept issuing building permits and now they are playing the blame game and looking for $.
Schmidt dont want homes built along the ocean
=====================
Suzuki has a waterfront house in Vancouver worth over 8 million dollars, as well as another waterfront house on nearby Quadra Island worth over 1 million. Maybe he knows something about sea level rise that he isn’t telling us?
http://www.ottawasun.com/2013/10/10/david-suzuki-a-man-of-property
No, I think Suzuki knows nothing.
Literally nothing:
Or how about the waterfront house recently built in Vancouver?
http://bc.ctvnews.ca/polopoly_fs/1.2170666.1420242634!/httpImage/image.jpg_gen/derivatives/landscape_620/image.jpg
Lululemon founder’s $57.6M mansion is B.C.’s most expensive home
A waterfront property on Vancouver’s Point Grey Road is worth an eye-popping $57-million, according to B.C. Assessment. Jan. 2, 2015.
is that a moose on the roof? keeping his hooves high and dry
No, but I can see a camel toe from here.
Max, sometimes you need to see a hoof so close it hits you in the jaw.
Come on Pamela, your violent side is starting to show through. (And after I stood up for you?)
The Lululemon see-through-yoga-pants story was seen nationally as very amusing. The small town in which I live hosts an annual yoga festival that is very popular, and Lululemon jokes were cracked (as it were) by everyone, including — now hang on to your high elephant — women.
As my website’s byline says, “Lighten Up!”
In Canada, we refer to it as a “Moose knuckle”. 8^D
The moose is a nice touch. Is it made out of glass, or has the winter air afforded such a sculpture in ice. I think the neighbors across the street love thir new view as well.
Based on Gavin’s pre-science based ocean level beliefs and sophomoric alarm mongering, the following two premises are in need of testing and analysis.
Which of these two premises more likely to be valid?
Premise #1 – Gavin Schmidt’s public credibility is related to the public trust in NASA’s GISS (which is affiliated with Columbia University) as Dr. Mehmet Oz’s (Surgery Department Vice Chairman at Columbia University Medical School) public credibility is related to the public trust in Columbia University’s College of Physicians and Surgeons.
Premise #2 – Gavin Schmidt’s public credibility is related to the public trust in NASA’s GISS as Rajendra Pachauri’s pubic credibility was related to the public trust in the IPCC.
John
If San Francisco could deal with a city sinking two inches a year back in 1898, I don’t think there will be much of a problem.
http://www.sfgenealogy.com/sf/history/hgoe26.htm
Sea walls people, we need sea walls! and JOBS we need jobs! so lets hire everybody to fill biodegradable sand bags out of that environmentally friendly concrete reported on here a couple of days ago and place them to protect all our lowest civilization. We could have the villagers catch, cook and serve our new spiffy workforce those darn rabbits!!!
I want oceans of OPM to study sea water sequestration (SWS).
Note that when the Dutch wanted to drain the Schiphol Polder, within which the international airport is built, they used the Cruquius steam engine (mostly built in England). So despite the Dutch command of wind power, previous generations knew that only steam power had sufficient energy for the job. Why are our scientists and politicians going backwards, instead of forwards?
I’m soliciting research funds for a project to develop a unique new three dimensional computer model that will use a novel method that I predict will robustly challenge the predicted rates of sea level rise.
On April 14, at this website (WUWT), there was a posting concerning diners that will have to eliminate that old English staple of fish and chips due to declining fish stocks. I’ll quote from the report which was copied here:
‘From Fish and Chips to Just Chips: Some of the most traditional and cherished staples of the English diet may become scarce as a result of climate change, a new study finds. As North Sea waters continue to warm, haddock, the eponymous fish in “fish and chips,” is expected to decline, as well as plaice and lemon sole. Already, the North Sea has warmed four times faster than the global average over the past 40 years.’
What I seek to do is gather samples of haddock, plaice, and lemon sole; and measure representative fish body volumes down to 0.0000000000000000000001 milliliter accuracies – something that has never been attempted before. I will utilize special models to compensate for volume changes due to thermal expansion resulting from temperature differentials as little as 0.00000000000000000000001 degree Centigrade. I will also utilize special models (again) to compensate for pressure differentials the fish’s bodies are subjected to at different depths. Along with my associates (who I hope will be young tan college coeds that the sensible person in me should really recognize are not going to have one iota of interest in a wannabe youthful, but nevertheless aging old man that I am) I hope to count up every single haddock, plaice, and lemon sole in the sea.
Armed with this information I will, using super super super duper whooper computers, determine the amount of sea water displaced by all these fish, and how the absence of these fish (due to global warming) will actually lower sea levels.
I will then invite Gavin Schmidt out for a plate of fish and chips. (His treat of course because I won’t have any money because I don’t have a prayer of getting any research grants for the foregoing project even though it’s really not all that dissimilar from a lot of the AGW studies past and present.)
OK, just do not forget to mind your significant figures in your reported results, like all the other climate studies do…oh, wait…nevermind.
Vancouver’s maximum tidal range is about 15 feet in a single day. And Gavin would have us worry about a fraction of a millimeter change per year?
Is Gavin looking to drive down waterfront prices in Vancouver, to take advantage of the falling loonie to snap up some deals?
And so castles made of sand, fall in the sea, eventually.
Here is an awesome Hendrix remake …
The first time I saw him was at the Old Fillmore on Fillmore and Geary St. He was 3rd billing that night. It was his first performance at the Fillmore. I was going to say in 1966, but looking it up it was June 20 1967. I was 17 and worked at the Fillmore at the time. So I saw him 3 nights in a row.
I used to have a complete set of the posters back then, until my dad threw them away. They are worth some nice money now.
Gavin:
All those things are very positive and the B.C. carbon tax is one of the most progressive and far-reaching ideas — even though in practice it hasn’t made a huge difference yet.
===========
How wrong you are. Gasoline sales are off 15% in Vancouver.
Vancouver is less than 30 miles from the US border. Every week tens of thousands of Canadians cross the border to fill up with cheap Yankee gas. So, the carbon tax has has a huge effect on gasoline sales in Vancouver. Tax revenues are well down from expected. To the point where the government is looking for ways to raise provincial sales taxes for Vancouver.
http://oi57.tinypic.com/24v1uuo.jpg
The Law of Unintentional Consequences rules supreme.
So let’s say 20,000 Canadians are driving about 60 miles to the US and back every week, at about 30 mpg makes 40,000 gallons a week burned for nothing. The Americans sell this gas so one less reason for them to raise taxes. Even the Canadian civil “servants” who pushed this can’t be happy about it when driving to US gas stations themselves. Why are they called “servants” anyway? How many Canadian gas station owners are getting out of business due to this brilliant move? Undisclosed information, i suppose. People will never find out the damages incurred.
Not just Canadian gas stations, but probably many Canadian retailers as well. I’m betting that those Canadians making those trips to the States to buy gas aren’t just turning around and heading back. They are also staying to shop and buy things to take back with them. So it’s an even bigger drain on the local economy.
A pivotal moment in the whole climate donnybrook to me, was when Schmidt got up and left the set instead of taking on Dr. Spencer (whom I do not completely agree with on many things, which is as it should be).
It told me that Schmidt didn’t have the “toolbox” to discuss this issue with a peer, and more importantly, Schmidt revealed that Schmidt knew this as well.
yeah John Stossel. a highly uneducated ignorant [snip]. From what i remember from debates or sports is that when you forfeit, you lose.
So when Gavin Schmidt walked off stage rather than debate, he lost?
Yeah, I agree.
And Stoessel wasn’t the debater. But nice try at misdirection.
I was being sarcastical. John Stossel is a skeptic and I agree with him.
Sorry, in that case. That’s why a “/sarc” tag helps.
I wonder if Gav is confusing a foot or two and a metre or two in his models. Wasn’t the Mars orbiter lost because one NASA team was using imperial units and the other metric?
Could explain everything about this farce
As a resident of Bellingham, Washington, the destination of many of those Canadian gas purchasers, I can tell you how pleasant it is to suffer the effects of an eighty-cent loony, at least in the short term. Yesterday, I drove right up to the pump at Costco to buy some much-cheaper-then-last-year gas. Of course, the flip side of the coin is that with sales tax revenues from those hordes of Canadian shoppers down, local governments will have less to spend.
Of more concern than sea level rise to the residents of Vancouver might be the potential collapse of one of the greatest real estate bubbles in the world.
Enjoy the ride, guys.
Dave:
I’m still saving $30 – $40 in gas plus the difference in cheese, milk etc. One of these days, the dorks at customs will start letting bring eggs and chicken back again. In addition, I have the complete joy of knowing I’m not paying the stupid carbon tax. Now they are trying to put another 0.5 cent sales tax on to support mass transit. Idjiots.
BTW, I love your town. If I could live there and keep my job here, I’d do it in a flash. (No, I haven’t run that by my wife:)
Gavin must live in a cave, does he honestly think for a second there are not strict planning controls around floor levels in coastal areas and that engineers are not thinking about sea level rise???
Seriously? In the UK for example, houses MUST be built above the 1 in 200 yr tide level plus climate change (say 0.5m) plus a further amount of freeboard (typically 300-600mm depending on uncertainty). That applies to all new houses, so Gavin, you can sleep at night, the mitigation has been going on for years as no one ever seriously thought a carbon tax was going to stop the sea rising!
I studied engineering at the University of British Columbia around 50 years ago. At that time we dis a little field trip to look at geology of the area.
One of the things we learned was that the whole of the “North Shore” (West Vancouver and North Vancouver) are situated on a slip plane. With a bunch of rainfall combined with a good shaker, we were told that there is a good chance that much of the North Shore could end up in English Bay and Burrard Inlet. Same for that lump of clay that Simon Fraser University sits on. It is also slowly slipping into Burrard Inlet – and having designed a few things along the Barnett Highway between Burrard Inlet and Simon Fraser and a few other areas, I can attest to the “stability” of this area. A good shaker is going to sink a lot of places from Bellingham to Vancouver.
A small sea level in a place where sea level moves 5 metres between high and low is of minor concern Actually subsidence of the protective dykes along the Fraser and surrounding Richmond is much more of an issue that requires regular maintenance.
I’ll be long dead before sea level is a rise … but if a good shaker comes along there will be a lot of residential damage. (Industrial and municipal infrastructure has had significant earthquake resistance.)
Oh darn proof reading. “did a field trip”; “A small sea level rise in a place…”;
“I’ll be long dead before sea level rise is a problem… but if”
Gavin Schmidt, idiot savant, forgot to check with Al Gore on their waterfront property policy before he opened his mouth. Al might not like it if his new mansion drops in value…
I work in local government in the Vancouver area. I can tell you that our gullible provincial government buys into the climate change/sea level rise meme.
At the cost of billions of dollars they’re requiring local governments to design for 1m sea level rise in the next 100 years.
According to Bastiat’s Broken Window theorem that could make you the wealthiest people in the world.
I do not know if this is a factor in his scary announcements , but he has just published an article (with 35 co-authors!) entitled :
Future climate change under RCP emission scenarios with GISS ModelE2
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/wol1/doi/10.1002/2014MS000403/full
It estimates max thermosteric ( no sea ice melt contribution ) sea level rises for 2300 of:
1.2-1.3m under RCP8.5 scenario
0.22-0.33m under RCP2.6 (controlled CO2 emission).
( compared to 1995-2006 mean)
Prediction are also made about the stopping of the NAO under RCP8.5 .
I cannot judge the validity of the modelling , but it seems some of the predictions in this possibly important paper are open to experimental checking already.
Anyway see what you think.
Okay I don’t have enough information to assess how real is the threat but if there is a good reason to expect that sea will be rising substantially in Vancouver (which might have nothing to do with global climate or temperature) in upcoming 100-200 years, then I would say Gavin’s recommendation is not completely wrong.
Quite opposite, I believe that moving your floors 20 centimeters up every 10 years is a stupid idea as it threatens stability of the house. Do what generations were doing before, just ‘demote’ your ground floor to (eventually flooded/filled) basement and continue living one floor higher, given your house will last that long. Venice is beautiful town but there was no electricity or other infrastructure that might suffer by getting under water when the town was founded. It’s much easier to give up a floor and move your stuff one floor up than if you have to rebuild parts of the house to continue functioning.
In the city where I live there are 500 years old houses with three levels of basements which used to be normal living floors but as material deposited during river floods piled up in streets they gradually ‘sunk’ under the ground.
Being ready for future changes and challenges regardless whether they are natural or human caused is a good plan. That’s what we should be doing rather than building expensive and inefficient replacements for our energy sources.
There is much more likely that Vancouver will be hit with “the big one” in 200 years than to see a 2 meter rise in sea level.
http://tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/sltrends/sltrends_global_station.htm?stnid=822-071
if there is a good reason to expect that sea will be rising substantially in Vancouver
=======================
Less than 2 inches in the past 100 years, with no acceleration.
Kasuha,
Sir, it sounds like the houses you’re talking about were built out of stone.
I do not know about construction methods in Vancouver, but very few seaside houses in the US are built out of materials or with the construction methods that would allow you to just keep piling on additional floors.
Particularly with new construction, in the US houses are generally wood frame construction, sometimes with cement block elements, sometimes was stucco on the cement block, or stucco on plywood.
Nowadays, if stone is used, it is typically just a thin facade.
I grew up in a place with very old houses, and that the house I grew up in was over a hundred years old, and still in the condition that it was built. and their areas of the city with churches and houses hundreds of years old.
But when I watch how they build houses now a days, it doesn’t seem to me they’re going to last for hundreds of years or even a hundred years… I think they’re built to last 50 years tops.
All this is interesting, but the fact remains that Vancouver’s tide gauge shows a 2 millimeter rise in 102 years (1911-2013). http://www.psmsl.org/data/obtaining/rlr.annual.data/175.rlrdata
In fact, tide gauge records for the entire west coast of North America show sea level decline since 1997, and sea level should be a decent proxy for temperature. Sea level has risen since the end of the Little Ice Age roughly 300 years ago, but overall has fallen since the end of the Holocene Climatic Optimum 6,000 years ago, with fluctuations around the Minoan, Roman, and Medieval warm periods, but nothing approaching its peak 6,000 years ago. Sea level was even higher during the Eemian interglacial 125,000 years ago, and so were global temperatures higher than any during the Holocene interglacial. Again, this demonstrates the efficacy of sea level as a proxy for temperature. It takes a lot of warming to melt a significant amount of ice, particularly since most of it is at an altitude where it is never above freezing.
MajorMike, I agree that large scale melting during a short framework of time is unlikely, that there is no evidence of it occurring, and that most remaining ice is in locations that are far below freezing, all the time.
But since this obvious fact seems destined to be forever denied by warmistas, pointing out other flaws in the logic of their stated goals seems worth doing.
By denying plainly obvious facts, the public perception of their arguments is shifting. Atmospheric physics is incomprehensible to many people, but the longevity of a modern home seems likely to be less so, as is the evidence for relatively stable sea levels.
No one can look at a photograph of a beach from 50 or 100 years ago and argue that it is not proof of where the sea was back then.
Well you can get hysterical if you forgot to bring tissues on a camping trip. I’m pretty sure you and many future generations will be ok though. This is not about natural climate change. This is about propaganda tactics for a political ruse. There is a saying in Central America when the clouds get dark and ominous in the afternoon. Es azúcar
Didnt have the time to read all the comments, I agree with the article to an extent. The only thing that NEEDS correcting is the following Statement: “In Venice, in Italy, people didn’t give up their houses, even when they sunk into the water. Instead they created one of the most beautiful cities in the world.” Venice has been built on stumps sunk in the mud, Venice was never on firm ground.
Anyone who elevates model outputs over measured data is not a scientist, full stop.
I’ve always sort of felt that people live up (or down) to their names. Perhaps it’s some sort of weird parental intuition kind of thing where they can look at their newborn and somehow know what that newborn will grow up to be all about.
For instance, I was born a Catholic (thankfully there’s no death penalty for apostasy in the Catholic Church), and my parents thought I was going to be a great thinker so they named me Tom after the great Catholic intellect, Saint Thomas Aquinas. And, I am pleased to say (and as any reader of my comments simply cannot deny), my parents were spot on in their assessment.
Um, there’s always a flaw in every theory, however. Thomas Aquinas claimed to have witnessed people levitating. I can safely say that I don’t think I’ve ever seen anybody levitating.
Where am I going with this? Well, I looked up the name Gavin in Wikipedia. And here’s what they have to say: ‘Meaning White Hawk Gavin is a male given name. It is the late medieval form of the name Gawain, which in turn is believed to have originated from the Welsh name Gwalchgwn, meaning “White Hawk.” Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is an epic poem connected with King Arthur’s Round Table.’
Now, that’s a pretty hard act to follow (even harder than to find people who are levitating). More importantly, however, King Arthur is connected to … ready? … The Crusades! So an agency, NASA, that has a mandate for Muslim outreach as one of its important space missions has an employee who has a connection with King Arthur, Lancelot, Merlin, and …the Crusades.
But I’ll make a promise. If Gavin can levitate in front of me (something we may actually have to learn if sea levels rise), I promise to tell him that King Arthur is just a legend so he couldn’t have been involved in the Crusades.
And, maybe we can talk about other things that are just legends.
🙂 Great Gaelic name….as my son will attest.
Great story!
I have one regarding my naming.
When I was born, I was given the name Blaise (After the famous mathematician and philosopher). It was on the certificate and everything. But my paternal grandma (Irish Catholic) had an absolute fit when she heard what I was named, and so my parents relented and they renamed me…Nicholas.
True story.
[And how did your Polish ancestors feel about their new names sake: Nicholas Copernicus? .mod]
“And how did your Polish ancestors feel about their new names sake: Nicholas Copernicus?”
Not sure, I never heard that part of the story.
But I suppose maybe the “One take back per child” rule was in effect at that point, although they may have been thrilled.
As for Blaise, my mom is partly French, and my dad had been a Trappist monk before he met her and left the monastery. Dad always was a betting man.
Gavin Schmidt never fails to disappoint.
Knowing that hydraulic fractures less than 2500 feet in depth tend to be horizontal, the sea level rise / subsidence problem can be cured by lifting the ground with hydraulic fracturing using concrete, gravel, or anything that can be pumped and used as a permanent propant.
This idea should make the day for a select few. It actually is not a new idea and has been used in the past such as the tower of Pisa.
So, we can grind up Californ-i-a and use it as grout to shore up Florida!
(Sorry Max)
Well I suspect Schmidt left high school and went to university and then he left university and got a government job. He’s never done anything remotely related to the real world in his life, so he wouldn’t be the first guy I would go to for home building advice, to be honest.
SCHMIDT is a traitor of humanity. Period
But no doubt a well paid traitor to humanity….and it continues.
Vancouver’s tide gauge was installed in 1911 and sea level then was measured at 7056mm. In 2013 it had surged to 7058mm, a leap of 2mm, or 0.08inches in 112 years. At that rate it will take over 500 centuries (50,000 years) for Vancouver sea level to rise one meter. The high point for Vancouver’s sea level was in 1983 at 7195mm, so it’s fallen 137mm (over five inches) in the past 30 years. Gavin should go to this link before he distributes his next round of sea level rise advice. http://www.psmsl.org/data/obtaining/rlr.annual.data/175.rlrdata
De Cruquius is one of the three steam powered Dutch pumping stations that drained the Haarlemmermeer in the Netherlands in the 19th century.
Right and before these magnificent steam engines people relied on wind mills to do the job.
For the same reasons why wind power today is not a good option the clever Dutch of those day’s understood the principle for 24/7 continuous pumping capacity. Wonder where all those clever people have gone.
All we see today are the most stupid elements in society wrecking our civilization with their [trimmed] propaganda. They’re freaking Apparatchiks AKA, Green Nazi’s.
Watch your back.
[Please do not insult BS on this site by comparing it to climastrologists’ propaganda. BS has done its purpose; been processed, separated and served up its nutrition; and been productively expelled to be recycled later. Climastrologist propaganda will only promulgate itself to infinity and beyond. .mod]
I´ve been waiting for that sea level rise for some time now, it´s getting quite expensive nowadays keeping the water approximately where I want it! Having a summerhouse in the western archipelago in Finland(Where I truly enjoy life), I have had to buy a small excavator 2 years ago and a dredger this winter. This only for keeping some kind of a path for my boat with a 20 hp engine and some kind of flow of water around the small isle the summerhouse sits on. If i`d been one of the clueless and gullible ones that Gavin targets, i would have just sat back, drowning a couple of beers and enjoyed life. Now, thanks to WUWT, I have to think about the future for my family… All is not bad though, sitting in a excavator, working, drowning a few beers, in the summer sun…. Not bad!
Why is it that down through history so many of these predictions of catastrophes to come such as future catastrophic sea level rises, future searing temperatures from burning coal, future extinctions of everything except global warmers and greens are almost exclusively the prerogative of intelligent idiots?
Good question, that.
I seem to recall reading that language was invented when a guy needed a way to call into the kitchen “Honey, can you get me a beer while you are up?”
The next spoken words after that were “It’s the end of the world!”
Been going back and forth like that ever since.
A timely reflection on a ‘Heretic’
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/john-harrisons-longitude-clock-sets-new-record–300-years-on-10187304.html
These fantastic sea level rise stories got started with Al Gore whose movie predicted that a twenty foot sea level rise would simply inundate the state of Florida. Since he is not a scientist the source of it must be James Hansen, his scientific adviser. It worked and he got a Nobel Prize for this pseudo-scientific fantasy. I went to the scientific literature and found that the sea level rise for the last 80 years before 2008 had been at the rate of 2.46 millimeters per year, or a little under ten inches and not 20 feet per century. Clearly anything that has been stable this long is not about to change anytime soon. I sent papers off to both Nature and to Science and was turned down by both, without even bothering with peer review. Nature now publicly admits that they do this with 40 percent of the papers submitted to them. No wonder you can’t get a paper in that is scientifically correct but questions the received wisdom they get from the global warming corporation.
It is just me, or have our resident trolls given up without a fight on this discussion?
Today is the first sliver of the New Moon. It is a time for rest and contemplation in the troll community.
So?
/sarc
Here is a graph of Vancouver, B.C. sea level rise:
It shows a best fit line from 1973 to 2013 annual data of 0.7 mm/year. The sea level in 2013 was actually lower than in 1973. Data from here
As I commented earlier, Vancouver’s sea level record began in 1911 at 7056mm, and in 2013 reached 7058mm, an increase of 2mm in 102 years, which gives a rate of just under 2mm per century. At that rate, it would take 500 centuries to increase Vancouver’s sea level one meter. The sea level in 2013 was an inch lower than in 1913, causing me to wonder what all the sea level excitement in Vancouver is about? (or aboot, as Canadians might say). Can’t they read their own tide gauge record?
We Californians are as bad or worse. San Francisco’s tide gauge was installed in 1855, and is the longest sea level record in the Western Hemisphere, yet goes unnoticed by California natural climate change deniers. It shows that San Francisco’s sea level rose over 4 inches from 1855 to 1941, and fell one-third of and inch from 1941 to 2013. i’ll type slowly so the alarmists can understand – sea level at San Francisco rose steadily as the Earth warmed following the end of the Little Ice Age, but has been level since 1941 while atmospheric CO2 increased steadily as warming oceans outgassed CO2. While San Francisco’s sea level has fallen dramatically since 1997 to its 1941 level, California government is working against an expected rise of five feet by 2050.
They must smoke a lot of our water-guzzling number one crop before they make their pronouncements, and Californians must do the same to believe such unsupported alarmism. Last year the San Francisco Chronicle did a news story about their historical tide gauge, yet somehow the reporter never got around to asking what its record showed.
2m a century is 20mm per year, the peak rate 15-20K years ago. Back then there was a million cubic km of ice sheet melting. Does Gavin expect all of Antarctica to melt?
Apparently, yes. And that’s the assumption in IPCCs worst, worst, worst case model RP 8.5 that has 1.5 to 6.6 m rise by year 2500.
He must, and in only 100 years. He needs to take a first year course on thermal physics.
I have a very simple mitigation plan to keep sea level from rising: Nuclear reactors on the coast of Antarctica powering huge pumps that pump water to the interior where, at 70 degrees below 0 centigrade average temperature, it will freeze and stay there for a very long time.
* If needed, which I doubt.
The Permanent Service for Mean Sea Level website has some great tools for checking out your local sea level and that of others such as Gavin’s. It takes its data from tide gauges. I don’t know if there is any tectonic correction applied. You will have to look for yourself.
I’ve checked the rate of rise for NZ. For the period 1900 – 2010, it was about 1.7mm per year on average.
(17mm or about 0.67 inches per decade. Wow. Be scared, be very scared. ) For the period 1955 – 2010 it was between 0.5 and 1.0 mm per year. So are sea level rises actually going backwards? Seems so for the Sappersiffick. (say it quickly with an NZ accent … )
Data is taken from the Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch tidal gauges.
Nice link, thanks for sharing.
I read a few of Pacific Institute’s publications recently, and was amazed by the projected sea level rise until I noticed that it was calculated using IPCC’s atmospheric temperature increase as a basis for thermal expansion. This is a very useful political tool, although I don’t know if it’s commonly used, but I’m keeping my eyes peeled for additional instances.
So are NASA worried about being flooded out and looking to relocate further inland and move out of Cape Canaveral.
Prime Florida Beech Front property .Lex Luther and the other greedy property sharks looking on with interest and soon swarm in putting up plenty of plush hotels ,tourist timeshares and retirement Condos nice somewhere for Gavin.
Pharrell Williams has an uber sick Gribb in Miami
So question does Gavin Schmit live on the coast?.How much is his pad worth?
average joe –
A lot can happen in 100 yrs.
Look at the last 100 yrs. Odds are that over the next 100 yrs there will be far more interesting things to worry about than climate or sea level.
One things for sure – I
won’t be here to worry about it!
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AJ – You won’t be here, Angela Merkel, Putin, Thatcher, Lagarde –
Pathet Lao won’t be here.
khmer rouge, bombed into live in the 70’s, won’t be here – lasted less than 10 years.
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but their very descendants, the /red/greens thrive 50 yrs on leading us into a new stone age.
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Hans