Edward Mendel – Chicago Historical Society
Guest essay by Eric Worrall
Sea Level Rise may displace up to 16 million Americans by 2100, according to researchers from the University of Georgia. But the study ignores history, technological progress, and the unreliability of climate models.
Sea level rise projected to displace 13 million in U.S. by 2100
A new study by University of Georgia researchers could help protect more than 13 million American homes that will be threatened by rising sea levels by the end of the century.
It is the first major study to assess the risk from rising seas using year 2100 population forecasts for all 319 coastal counties in the continental U.S. Previous impact assessments use current population figures to assess long-term effects of coastal flooding.
The study is based on analyses by Mathew Hauer for his doctoral work with the UGA Franklin College of Arts and Sciences; Deepak Mishra of the UGA department of geography; and Jason Evans, a former UGA faculty member now with Stetson University. It was published March 14 in the journal Nature Climate Change.
Based on year 2100 population forecasts, the authors report that a 6-foot sea level rise will expose more than 13 million people to flooding and other hazards from rising seas. Florida faces the most risk, where up to 6 million residents could be affected. One million people each in California and Louisiana also could be impacted.
…
Adaptation strategies are costly, and these are areas of especially rapid population growth, so the longer we wait to implement adaptation measures the more expensive they become,” Hauer said.
Read more: http://phys.org/news/2016-03-policymakers-sea.html
The abstract of the study;
Millions projected to be at risk from sea-level rise in the continental United States
Sea-level rise (SLR) is one of the most apparent climate change stressors facing human society1. Although it is known that many people at present inhabit areas vulnerable to SLR2, 3, few studies have accounted for ongoing population growth when assessing the potential magnitude of future impacts4. Here we address this issue by coupling a small-area population projection with a SLR vulnerability assessment across all United States coastal counties. We find that a 2100 SLR of 0.9 m places a land area projected to house 4.2 million people at risk of inundation, whereas 1.8 m affects 13.1 million people—approximately three times larger than indicated by current populations. These results suggest that the absence of protective measures could lead to US population movements of a magnitude similar to the twentieth century Great Migration of southern African-Americans. Furthermore, our population projection approach can be readily adapted to assess other hazards or to model future per capita economic impacts.
Read more: http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nclimate2961.html
Obviously anyone in immediate danger of flooding needs to address the problems they face. But is it really wise to spend large sums now, to protect property against a future rise in sea level, which might never happen?
Sea level rise has not accelerated, as climate models predicted. Until climate models demonstrate reliable predictive skill, it would be unwise to use them as the justification for large expenditures of public money.
For example:
Source: https://tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/sltrends/sltrends_us.htm
Even if the predicted sea level rise occurs, every year that preparations are delayed, substantially reduces the real economic cost per capita of action. Our economic, our engineering capabilities are growing geometrically. For example, new construction systems, such as gigantic “concrete printers“, robotic machines which create large continuous structures using scaled up 3d printing technology, are already being prototyped. Such robotic machines will dramatically cut the cost of building sea defences, when they become mainstream.
New York City has been able to keep up with sea level rise since it’s beginnings with simple technology, there is no reason to think future inhabitants won’t be able to.
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/2015JC010716/full
Global sea levels have been rising through the past century and are projected to rise at an accelerated rate throughout the 21st century. This has motivated a number of authors to search for already existing accelerations in observations, which would be, if present, vital for coastal protection planning purposes. No scientific consensus has been reached yet as to how a possible acceleration could be separated from intrinsic climate variability in sea level records. This has led to an intensive debate on its existence and, if absent, also on the general validity of current future projections.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0964569116300205
Tide gauges provide the most reliable measurements, and best data to assess the rate of change. We show as the naïve averaging of all the tide gauges included in the PSMSL surveys show “relative” rates of rise about +1.04 mm/year (570 tide gauges of any length). If we consider only 100 tide gauges with more than 80 years of recording the rise is only +0.25 mm/year. This naïve averaging has been stable and shows that the sea levels are slowly rising but not accelerating. …The satellite altimetry returns a noisy signal so that a +3.2 mm/year trend is only achieved by arbitrary “corrections”. We conclude that if the sea levels are only oscillating about constant trends everywhere as suggested by the tide gauges, then the effects of climate change are negligible, and the local patterns may be used for local coastal planning without any need of purely speculative global trends based on emission scenarios.
“If we consider only 100 tide gauges with more than 80 years of recording the rise is only +0.25 mm/year. This naïve averaging has been stable and shows that the sea levels are slowly rising but not accelerating. We also show as the additional information provided by GPS and satellite altimetry is of very little help. Computations of “absolute” sea levels suffer from inaccuracies with errors larger than the estimated trends. The GPS is more reliable than satellite altimetry, but the accuracy of the estimation of the vertical velocity at GPS domes is still well above ±1 mm/year and the relative motion of tide gauges vs. GPS domes is mostly unassessed.”
Thanks for that link, Kenneth. Good information and much more realistic than the stuff we are usually fed.
http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/JCLI-D-14-00359.1
Projected sea level trends of the representative concentration pathway 4.5 (RCP4.5) scenario for 20-, 50-, and 100-yr intervals grow from being largely dominated by internal variability on shorter time scales to being the dominant sea level signal on long time scales. The internal variability is estimated by calculating overlapping trends for the various time scales on the regional sea level control run output from each model. When compared to the ensemble spread of the RCP4.5 scenario trends, the internal variability remains a substantial portion of the spread even after 50 years.
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2012GL052032/full
Numerous studies have linked recent high sea level trend patterns in the WTP [Western Tropical Pacific] (global mean removed) to trade wind forcing [e.g., Carton et al., 2005; Kohl et al., 2007; Timmermann et al., 2010; Becker et al., 2012]. Merrifield [2011] used tide gauge data to show that the regional sea-level rise rate increased abruptly in the early 1990s shortly before the start of the TOPEX/Poseidon altimeter record, and that the trend shift matched an enhancement in reanalysis trade wind speeds averaged across the tropical Pacific. Numerical model simulations [Merrifield and Maltrud, 2011; McGregor et al., 2012] confirm that the steady intensification of the trade winds largely accounts for the amplitude and spatial pattern of WTP sea-level rise since the early 1990s.
Tide gauge observations in the western tropical Pacific provide a 60 year long record that strongly reflect trade wind forcing on multidecadal time scales. Similar variations are also exhibited by the dominant climate indices in the tropical Pacific. The recent high sea level rise rates in the WTP beyond the global mean rate are a result of increasing trades, which occur when the PDO (SOI) index exhibits a negative (positive) trend.
Sixteen million displaced by the end of the century? Did any of these fear mongers ever hear the story of the boy who cried wolf? You can only repeat this stuff so many times. Give it up already. No one is really listening.
Yawn, how did you guys miss this from the OP?
Quote
Based on year 2100 population forecasts, the authors report that a 6-foot sea level rise will expose more than 13 million people to flooding
Unquote
So they just made it up. Coloured in blue the six foot contour line, then looked at some forecast population data for coloured in area. Not science just schoolboy stuff
Next; New York at risk of tsunami when Guam capsizes .
Throw in lots of colds,mights, and possible , Press will lap it up.
I am sure US engineers can match those from a little country like Singapore, which manage to handle sea level rises and still increase their land size by 23%.
“Ongoing land reclamation projects have increased Singapore’s land area from 581.5 km2 (224.5 sq mi) in the 1960s to 719.1 km2 (277.6 sq mi) in 2015, an increase of some 23% (130 km2). The country is projected to grow by another 100 km2 (40 sq mi) by 2030.[95] Some projects involve merging smaller islands through land reclamation to form larger, more functional islands, as has been done with Jurong Island.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singapore
So matching that would be protecting NY city alone.
Average over different parts has no meaning in real terms to take any appropriate action. While discussing such issues, it is better to say so and so segment is going up by so and so mm/yr and so and so segment is going down by so and so mm/yr and so and so region has no change. Also, such data will help in analysing the causes for such changes and thus to evolve remedial path. Average sea level and average global temperature are only useful to fill the pages and have heated discussion.
Dr. S. Jeevananda Reddy
Just like CO2 is the magic molecule, “could” is the magic word in the climastrologist’s tool kit to get their papers published with just a pal review….as long as they adhere to CC church dogma.
In Biblical times the city of Ephesus was a sea port. Now, after centuries of silt have washed into the harbor from a nearby river, it resides some 2 miles inland.
This makes me wonder, how much effect does land erosion have on sea levels? I wonder how land erosion would compare to melting ice caps.
I know that if I take a pan of water and pour some dirt into it, the water level will rise.
Scare off the locals and the property sharks buy up all the cheap premium beach front property.
They’re probably thinking about displacement through immigration rise and various refugee crises in second and third-world nations. In short, the global humanitarian disasters resulting from catastrophic anthropogenic government warring and whoring, including environmental sequestration, irrational regulations, irregular relationships, and renewable debt.
“Sea level rise projected to displace 13 million in U.S. by 2100”
This is so far-fetched it needs it own word.
I mean when will the sea rise enough to even matter.
Next year? In 2040?
When does the displacement start? Soon I hope.
Because the 13 million will take 155,000 people per year, every year starting now.
If it doesn’t start till 2040 it will take 217,000 every year there after.
When I go to the beach it looks identical to the way it did 50 years ago.
“Sea level rise projected to displace 13 million in U.S. by 2100”
This is so far-fetched it needs it own word.
I’m sure we are all aware of the correct word for this…
It’s better known as BS.
More immigrants have come to Britain than that in less of a time-scale.
We were told it was a DamGudThyng and Culturally Di-Verse*.
*Di-Verse – a schizophrenic alternative to a Uni-Verse.
Their assumptions are garbage, Not based on reality. Therefore their study is worthless. We need to demand a full refund of any public funds they spent on this…pg
Well, duh!
With FEMA offering less than market rate taxpayer subsidized disaster insurance for people to live in high risk areas it’s only logical that more people will be affected by “disasters”.
Spangled Drongo asked:
“When are we going to get a GPS chip on every long-term tide gauge in the world so that an audit will show the true state of SLR [or SLF].”
http://sideshow.jpl.nasa.gov/post/series.html
They’re never ON the gauges, but many are very close to the gauge sites. Data has been in use for years to estimate true (rather than relative to the land, which may be rising or falling) sea level change.
We are now up to 384 Tide Gauges that are co-located with a GPS station (operating for long enough to provide useful information).
This table shows the Vertical land movement (V_GPS) for the stations.
http://www.sonel.org/IMG/txt/ulr5_vertical_velocities-2.txt
Unfortunately the GPS station ID name is not the best to know where it is so one has to use this table as well to match up the ID to the location.
http://www.sonel.org/index.php?page=cgps&GLOSS=1
Battery Park/Sandy Hook (SHK2, SHK5) is actually sinking by about 1.6 mm/year to 3.6 mms/year so the tide guage at Battery Park measuring sea level increase of 2.84 mms/year is essentially measuring no change in real sea level at all.
This is quite the blow, in 20 years my ankles could get wet and when we walk our flip-flops will spray water up the back of your legs … not good.
The poster child for SLR would have to be the island of Tuvallu (hope I spelt that right) ,the photos and videos of the encroaching water make a good argument until you find out that during ww2 our American friends built an airstrip using coral for fill .
End result no reef to buffer the waves so erosion sets in .
Last I heard, Tuvalu (single ‘l’) had actually increased in area… naturally
The computer model overlooked one critical factor–there’s no source for that much water! As Niklas Morner has pointed out, even when warming was 20 times as intense as recently and there were huge ice sheets covering large masses of land, the rate of sea level rise was only about one meter per century. Today with a puny rate of warming for 20 years, no warming for 18 years 9 months, the Antarctic ice sheet growing (not melting), temperatures in Greenland lower now than in the 1930s and 1940s, and no glaciers at the North Pole, the most sea level rise we can expect is about 7 inches per century.
Did this already get posted? You can just jump to the conclusion….
http://www.geo.hunter.cuny.edu/~fbuon/PGEOG_334/BnC/Lecture_pdfs/jcr_dean_gauge.pdf
Emeritus wrote this article. Are they not informed of the risk of stopped carriers?
“Our analyses do not indicate acceleration in sea level in U.S.
tide gauge records during the 20th century”
You can easily see the waves in the gauges patterns:
http://tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/sltrends/50yr.htm?stnid=8518750
It is harder to explain!
Yes, Miami has sea water in places that were built in my lifetime. A friend in Miami Brach no longer can use his parking spot in his condo building he has used for thirty years. It has salt water intruding at each high tide. He hopes to sell the place To someone who reads WUWT.
‘may ‘, good BS idea means you can always claim you did not say ‘will ‘
‘by 2100 ‘, by which time those making the claims will be in no position to be asked why they got it so wrong
In other words classic climate ‘science ‘ statements with a ton of wiggle room based in turn on models which they got to tell them what they ‘needed’
I really wish my job was this easy .
Well, those that happen to be floating in the sea will for sure be displaced.
Sea level graph Fort Denison Sydney Harbour.
http://tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/sltrends/sltrends_global_station.shtml?stnid=680-140
0.65 mm per year from 1886 to 2010.
Where are my water wings… help me I’m drowning !!!
I never worry about sea level rise. Some Cnut will be along to put pay to it, you mark my words!
Then there is no point in dredging out the harbors of Savannah and Charleston.