Guest Post by Bob Tisdale
I always enjoy the headlines of climate alarmist news stories.
This one caught my eye this week. Of course the headline included the infamous weasel words: COULD BE.
At BusinessInsider.com: 4.2 million Americans could be displaced by rising sea levels this century — see if your county is at risk. The linked webpage includes a fancy-schmancy video to show in which counties those displacements might take place, with a bar graph to show which oceanfront states might be impacted most or least.
What did I see?
Less than 1% of Forecast U.S. Population by 2100 Might Be, Or Might Not Be, Displaced by Projected Sea Level Rise of 3 Feet That Might, Or Might Not, Happen. The Other 99% of U.S. Residents Couldn’t Give a Rat’s… Some Optimistically Looking Forward to Their Inland Properties Becoming Oceanfront.
That figure of 4.2 million, of course, was for the low-end could-be scenario. If we look at the might-maybe-could-happen high end of 1.8 meters (6 feet) from the study, the could-be displacement more than triples. Curiously, the headline Up to 13M Americans at risk from sea level rise – study ran for a story at the Governors’ Wind & Solar Energy Coalition website…as if solar panels and wind turbines are going to stop sea level rise. Maybe the Governors are thinking of dismantling them and using them as landfill for dykes.
The study referenced was Hauer et al. (2016) Millions projected to be at risk from sea-level rise in the continental United States.
PS: Maybe the Governors would be interested in a realistic look at anthropogenic global warming and climate change presented in my free ebook On Global Warming and the Illusion of Control – Part 1 (700+ page, 25MB .pdf). If not, maybe the voters of those up for reelection might.
Yeah sure- like you’d need to read a Businessinsider article to work out if you live near sea-level. “Panic sweeps 4.2 million Americans” “Your risk of drowning when sea level rises”. Clickbait for the intellectually very seriously challenged.
Its rather interesting, isn’t it, that illiteracy is seen as a terrible social and economic disadvantage, and we work toward eliminating it. People volunteer to help people learn to read and celebrities make commercials endorsing reading.
Innumeracy, however, is pretty much ignored, and is even a joke. People will laugh about how bad their math skills are.
Explains lotteries, though.
Two thirds of all US college degrees, never earn a brass razoo for the person who wasted their money on getting a degree that nobody needed in their job. Some of those folks will likely drown. A century is plenty of time to learn to swim.
G
Actually, buying a lottery ticket is a much better deal than paying many times the amount to go to a movie or a sporting event. You do not have a lot of extra expense (parking, popcorn, beer) and you do not waste several hours, during which you can do some good for family and friends, and many volunteer organizations. And sometimes you do get your money or more back.
Politicians have too much to gain from keeping the public illiterate.
“John F. Hultquist April 11, 2016 at 2:31 pm”
Sorry, but I have a relative who has a gambling addiction. She’s beat most of her other addictions, but the fact is, gambling is a hard one to break because it is strictly mental. If you and I do the same amount of heroin, or prescription drugs, or alcohol (with some differences in body weight and tolerance, etc.), we’d get equally stoned.
I can walk through a casino with a billion nickels and not spend ONE. My relative not only goes through all her pension, but her husband’s pension, whatever she can “borrow”, whatever she can steal, etc. She’s banned from the local casino (at her own request), but goes online. Etc.
As for your movie analogy: if you go to a movie a week, you can probably afford to go to one movie a week (with the prices they charge, etc.). Two movies a week, and you’re probably more of a movie-goer than most. Three or four a week, or one or two movies a day? Putting it all on credit cards (because you obviously aren’t working, and few retired people who have the time don’t have the money, even with a senior’s discount.
I’m at 3500 feet. I’m worried. Am I at risk?
Yes. But not from SL rise.
Seems to me there was this cowboy song about a mangy mongrel, sitting on its A***, and howlin’ up a storm.
The mutt was sitting on a thorn, and was howling because it was too darn lazy to move over !
Who was that Country or Western singer that made that famous ??
G
Here you go, George:
“Hound dog howlin’ so forlorn
Laziest dog that was ever born
He’s a-howlin’ ’cause he’s a-settin’ on a thorn
An’ just to tired to move over.”
One verse from the song “Life gets tedious (tee-jus) don’t it?” sung by Walter Brennan.
You are most definitely at risk…Haven’t you seen that Costner Flick…”Waterworld”??
/wink
I think Hank Williams Jnr. also recorded the song “Life Gets Tee-jus” but the one I remember was by Walter Brennan with his wonderful, quavering, voice.
I wouldnt stress for a million years or so. Maybe start planning after a couple of hundred thousand. Always good to be prepared. We live at 1000ft , we will let you know when the water arrives.
You heartless bastage. We are only at 463ft above sea level. We will be long past dead by the time we get your warning!
Read someplace that If ALL the Land/Sea Ice Reserves melted, sea level would rise 462′ so you should have beach front property on your own island
According to NatGeo though it is only 216 feet
http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2013/09/rising-seas/if-ice-melted-map
CodeTech:
“I’m at 3500 feet. I’m worried. Am I at risk?”
It depends. How much fuel is remaining in your aircraft? Do you have a parachute?
As far as rising sea levels go, it’s possible that you could be impacted depending on the asteroid that hits the earth.
Probably. Eventually. Give it a billion years or so, and our sun will be going supernova. Can’t discount it might happen earlier, though. Those “give or take a couple of hundred million years” would sound impressive on a headline…
I’m at 3500 feet. I’m worried. Am I at risk?
===
probably……about 43% of American homes are considered high risk for some sort of natural disaster
Which makes 4.2 million a very small number
Over 300,000,000 Americans will move somewhere this century just cause they feel like it.
You’re a lot closer to that incoming asteroid, than I am !
G
Yes. The radiation exposure increases with altitude:
Exposure to Fukushima fallout from the overhead Jet Stream is also a problem…
There’s more radiation eating a banana. But I can’t tell if your post was serious or sarcastic.
Yes. Don’t forget that sea level rise will be “lumpy”. That’s a quote that I found from somewhere out there on the Internet. Also, if your 3,500 ft is in California, CA sea level rise includes “latent sea level rise”, where the difference between real sea level rise and computer-modeled sea level rise is stored up somewhere (maybe with all that hidden heat), ready to rear its ugly head when you least expect it.
(\sarc except for “lumpy” and “latent”)
The SLR thing is just so ridiculous.
I lived on a tidal riverfront for several years, my back porch literally overhung the river. Once every couple of years the sea rose above the back door jam. There was always plenty of warning, a bit of repair tape and plumber’s mate non-setting putty (normally used to waterproof toilet outlets) kept the door waterproof.
The new owner had some money to splash – he raised the floor level a few feet.
Jakarta has sunk 3 meters in 3 decades. Tokyo sank 2 meters in the XX century with rates of up to 10cm a year. Hell, a 400-km chunk of Japan’s East Coast dropped 60cm in a single day, as a result of the 2011 earthquake.
That’s why these places have all been abandoned – ooops.
In Landers, CA a couple of decades ago they had an elevation rise of nearly 2 meters in about 23 seconds. I guess they’ll be able to keep up with SLR.
We lived for some years on a saltwater marsh on Seabrook Island, SC, in a house right on the marsh, designed for the occasional high tide that washed under the house. It was unscathed by H. Hugo. We noticed no changes over the house’s forty years of experience. An empirical anecdote?
Hugo landed north of you, so you were on the backside of the circulation. Little scathing would have been expected.
I don’t think he said he was scathed by Hugo; nor by sea level rise.
g
‘designed for the occasional high tide that washed under the house. It was unscathed by H. Hugo.’
The mention of Hugo was for validation of the design. Hence my comment.
There’s a lot of talk about sea level rise when what really matters is shore-line movement, If the sea stays put and the land drops, the shore-line moves. For what it’s worth, I was born in Napier. My father was there in 1931 for the big earthquake. He used to go sailing where the airport now is. Since then, there has been
no movement of the shoreline that I can detect on maps. In order to decide whether we’re threatened by sea level rise, what we *really* need to track is where the high water line is.
How about the headline
“Down to 97% of Americans won’t be at any possible risk of being displaced by climate change induced sea level rise”
Tee-hee! It’s all in the “framing,” isn’t it?
Slight change:
“Down to 97% of Americans won’t be at any possible risk of being displaced by climate change induced sea level rise that won’t occur based on empirical current trends.”
And here, UK and Scandinavian readers can see how there property “could” be affected by a return to the conditions that existed just 16,000 years ago.
Whilst on the upside – a large quantity of usable land “would” be freed up for development, on the downside – Norway and Sweden “may” be completely buried under a vast ice sheet.
On the other hand, such a return to glaciation “may” not happen. Not for a while anyway:
http://cdn.zmescience.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/31836.jpg
I always love seeing this map, especially the 7000 year ago coast line.
I think a three to six foot or even higher sea rise could easily be handed with adaption at a lot lower cost mitigation of CO2 emission. I live in Singapore which is at a very low elevation with lots of reclaimed land. I have absolutely no doubt we could handle a 2 meter rise with a minor effort. We had planed for a 1 meter rise years ago and are now ready for it at was a very low cost.
So far as I can see rising CO2 levels have had nothing but beneficial effects on the environment.
Singapore has an unfair advantage. You’re the smartest people on earth after the European Israelis. The US, Europe and Australian held it’s own for awhile but then went Honey Bo Bo.
It would really annoy the SNP. They’d blame it on the English.
After reading this why not blame them : On the BBC today http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20160408-this-is-how-far-seas-could-rise-thanks-to-climate-change
But what about the Scots? Glaciers there! 🙂
N..ice map.
G
Thank heavens for rising sea levels, or we’d be connected to France! Just doesn’t bear thinking about.
It was neat to learn that the Doggers used to be really big in the North Sea. I picked up their story only when they moved from Brooklyn to Los Angeles.
So The Shire would be about where the white blob is in Ireland.
The Lonely Mountain would be somewhere around Wismar Bay.
Mordor would be …. this map is wrong. The UN HQ is not anywhere near Italy!
I’ve got dibs on Dogger Bank. Let me know when it’s habitable.
I’m sorry to have to inform you that it has already been purchased by an off-shore wind consortium.
Soon to become – an on-shore wind consortium.
They obviously realized that global warming was a ho@x – when they grabbed dogger bank!!
It’s what I call language creep.
https://thepointman.wordpress.com/2016/04/08/science-and-sensibility/
Pointman
There seems to be a belief that the world as it is now has achieved (for some reason) a stability and permanence unmatched in even recent geologic history.
Homo sapiens first appeared around 200,000 years ago. The more recent evolution into stable farming communities rather than hunter gatherers occurred 10 – 20000 year ago. In this very brief flash of geologic time sea levels, rainfall, temperature etc have changed markedly.
The solution to these changes is of course to do what our ancestors did – adapt. Even King Canute realised he could not control the tides!
Terry – King Canute KNEW he couldn’t control the tides – it was his courtiers who thought he was able to, so he had to sit on the seashore to prove to them that he couldn’t…
Just sayin’…..
The sea level rises, the land is inundated. People buy houseboats?
No they build sea defences, if you don’t know how to do that ask the Dutch. They drained much of East Anglia turning it from a malarial swamp into some of the finest agricultural land in Europe. Holme Fen is around 9 feet BELOW sea level and is thriving. Nor is East Anglia the only part of England where this is true. I lived in a house on Romney Marsh set back just 29ft from the seawall that was below sea level while the Somerselt Levels were drained In the Middle Ages by the monks of the monasteries of Glastonbury, Athelney, and Muchelney. In modern times of course the greens are arguing we should allow it all to revert to swampland. I don’t think the question of where their muesli and lentils will come from after half the prime agricultural land in England has gone ever occurs to them, presumably they believe Gaia will provide.
4.2 million people being displaced over 96 years is hardly enough people to even worry about and thus we can stop researching global warming and sea levels. We have more important issues to worry about. AMA Doctors “kill” about 100,000 people each year according to JAMA. I am of course being sarcastic on the displacement of people to a degree.
I remember reading an article many years ago about the enemies of government, most of them being made up or over sensationalized. Global warming, infectious diseases, terrorism, Y2K, unfettered capitalism, the domino theory, gun shootings, illegal immigration, etc., etc., etc. I just really brought up the Doctor issue, because it is not one of the prominent memes the lame stream media generally brings up to keep fear in the hearts of the average American. Government must legitimize itself and the ruling oligarchy requires government to redistribute the wealth so that their special interests can skim off some of the money that goes through the treasury due to the various schemes. EDS for example, owned by Ross Perot, provided the hardware and software for Medicare and Medicaid. I found one corporation (a consulting company out of Connecticut) that had won 4,500 existing government contracts. Some call it crony capitalism but it is really fascism, because of the high levels of militarism and police state spending, an obvious part of the estimated $1 trillion spent on police and defense each year. The annual military defense budget alone for 2016 is $600,400,000,000 – Now wonder so many people are willing to lie to the American people. We should all be really afraid, if government does not continue all the redistribution of wealth schemes the main stream media and politicians like Trump, Sanders Cruz and Clinton say we should. Those libertarians like Rand Paul just don’t understand how bad the rest of the world is and why we really need so much government to protect us.
Like most Green articles on BI Australia, it quickly dropped out. I can’t get back in to read it. I suspect few people did.
Like Al Gore, Barak Obama, Tim Flannery, and the like, I bought a little shack by the water front to retire in. Just like them, I don’t believe in the sea level story. Sea level there hasn’t changed significantly in 100 years.
Alarmist anthem:
Why has nobody mentioned Holland?
Holland is a special case. Most countries are above sea level, and are threatened by sea level rise. Holland has areas which are below sea level. This is the exact opposite case, so logically, it stands to reason that Holland would be threatened by the opposite situation. Holland is therefor concerned about sea level fall.
We definitely are , it would connect us to England and that whole thingy that was going on a few hundred years ago would start all over again.
OK I’ll ask the question more directly.
Why is Holland not the poster boy for why we don’t have to worry about rising sea levels?
Its ‘An Inconvenient Truth’ perhaps.
What ever would the Climate Liars do without that one word, “could”? It allows them to lie so cleverly, couching their lies within further, far bigger lies.
Rich countries with advanced technology suffers less from SLR, earthquakes, hurricanes, flooding etc than poorer countries. (citation needed?)
The green solution is to build windmills, thus making all of us poorer. No effect on occurence of catastrophes noted.
Correct. See my post above about Singapore.
This kind of headline distortion has a long history with IPCC science, and really depends on no one going into the weeds to test the assertions.
https://rclutz.wordpress.com/2015/04/14/headlines-claim-details-deny/
Reminds me of this :
There used to be a group of people that would buy shares in small companies for pennies a share … then they would get some ‘crooked’ finance-editor of a newspaper to publish good things about the company. Then when the readers bought loads of shares, they would dump the shares they bought earlier at a massive profit. Check what Piers Morgan was up to before he became a TV star ..
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/media/the-piers-morgan-version-i-shouldnt-have-been-buying-shares-at-all-as-editor-of-the-paper-519884.html
So, in my most humble opinion; if they were to say, “dont move to the east coast because of the SLR is going to drown everyone” then the property prices would drop. So some savvy people could go and buy those houses cheap.
How much did A.G. pay for his seaside mansion ?
Many people don’t know it, but just south of Orlando, used to be the southern shoreline of Florida. You can dig down in many places in So. Florida and hit what is called shell rock, old coral beds and find various seashells. Like much of the Everglades is today, it was all underwater. I don’t know the time line and I can’t tell if the land is getting higher or the water is dropping, so don’t ask me.
So that is why so many millions of people are moving to Southern Florida or along the beaches of Long Island, etc! They want to drown due to it being warmish.
Based on a rough interpretation of census data 4.2 million people are roughly the number that move their residence within any 6 week period.
Could be wrong but I think the government is still subsidizing home insurance for water front properties.
You mean flood insurance not home insurance. There is a difference.
There could be a mass migration – or not … http://www.bc.edu/bc_org/avp/cas/fnart/fa267/boston/sequ_ani.gif
Panic immediately! Then send money and vote for us to save you from this dreadful thing. A short summary of Green communications.
4.2 million Americans also could have monkeys fly out their butts. Here’s a dramatic-looking map, with dramatic music, showing how and where this could happen. It’s science, done by actual scientists. Why would they lie?
I wonder if the Dutch are all that concerned. Oh wait, they have dikes! Problem solved.
Not concerned at all since we claimed land from the sea. I live near the sea and can’t see what all the fuzz is about. But hey, if the experts say so I guess I must be blind 😉
The lowest point in New Orleans (founded in 1718) is 8 feet below sea level (average rate 8 mm/yr). They have learned to cope to a limited degree with land subsidence/rising sea level. The lowest point in the Netherlands is 23 feet below sea level (average rate 7 mm/yr), but they have been developing and refining flood control techniques for over 1000 years. The simplest and best adaptation is to move your assets to higher ground.
The alarmists insult everyone by assuming nobody is smart enough to adapt.
More than 100 years ago the city of Galveston raised the entire city something like 17 feet using horse and cart technology. Seattle did something similar. It is amazing that a century later we have lost the ability to solve even the simplest of problems.
I had a low spot on my property. I put out a sign. Free fill wanted. For a couple of weeks trucks from surrounding construction sites dumped dirt in my yard. I rented a bobcat for a day and levelled it all out. Now when it rains and my neighbors property is under a couple of inches of water, I’m high and dry.
You don’t need to swim faster than the sharks, you only need to swim faster than your buddy.
Chicago did too. Basically raised the whole city by one floor to get it out of the lake.