Energy
Michael Bastasch
President Donald Trump will rescind an Obama administration policy requiring government agencies to take into account global warming-induced flooding and sea level rise for federally-funded projects.
Trump will repeal the climate order that President Barack Obama signed in 2015 as part of a broader effort to streamline infrastructure permitting. Administration officials said the current process is long and cumbersome.
“For far too long, critical projects have been delayed by duplicative permitting and environmental requirements which added time and unnecessary expenses to much needed projects,” Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao said in a statement obtained by Bloomberg.
Trump wants to push a $200 billion infrastructure spending bill through Congress this fall, which he hopes will mobilize $800 billion in state and private funding. A cumbersome permitting process could hold up infrastructure projects.
Furthermore, Obama’s executive order to “improve the resilience of communities and federal assets against the impacts of flooding” could increase the upfront costs or even eliminate projects in the pipeline.
Obama wrote sea level rise and flooding are “anticipated to increase over time due to the effects of climate change and other threats.”
Obama’s order required federally-funded projects to be two feet above the 100-year floodplain. Hospitals and other critical buildings must be three feet above the historic floodplain.
The Obama administration also issued a rule requiring federally-financed single family homes must be built two feet above the 100-year floodplain. The National Association of Home Builders worried this rule could increase construction costs and make it harder to build low-income affordable housing.
Environmentalists were critical of Trump’s plan to rollback the 2015 order, as was the right-leaning R Street Institute.
“Taxpayers have been made to shell out hundreds of billions of dollars in disaster-related spending over the past decade, including more than $136 billion for just the two years from 2011 to 2013,” senior fellow R.J. Lehmann said in a statement.
“By contrast, evidence shows that every $1 spent on disaster mitigation can save $4 in post-disaster recovery and rebuilding costs,” Lehmann said.
More , please !
When we get tired of winning, we’ll let you know. Until then …
Will Trump ever appoint administrators of NOAA and NASA, rather than keeping on letting these administrations being run by acting administrators that were promoted from within? I am a longtime multiple-times-per-day reader of WUWT, and I expect that names will be named if Trump nominates appointments to these posts. And names of opponents will be named if opponents block or slow down such named appointments, and posts will cheer Trump’s success in that area once he successfully hires people into these posts. Aren’t there swamps to drained in NOAA and NASA?
With you there.
Agree, who knows it may be in the “political” mill in the Senate.
The ones who are causing the most problems are career bureaucrats who can’t be fired.
Not only has Trump not appointed anyone to NOAA or NASA, but he still has John Koskinen, IRS commissioner, running the IRS. This is the same guy that Congress wanted to impeach, the same one that stonewalled Congress, yet there he sits still running the IRS.
I don’t know why he is still there, but Trump needs to expedite getting rid of Obama holdovers. No doubt they are pushing back or dragging their feet on everything Trump is trying to do, and Trump needs to clean house.
Of course, he’s pretty busy as it is. And Congress deserves some blame for the IRS commissioner since they never did impeach the guy, although they were threatening to do so for a long time. Empty threats. Add in their empty promises, and they are not looking so good. Time to shape up.
“By contrast, evidence shows that every $1 spent on disaster mitigation can save $4 in post-disaster recovery and rebuilding costs,” Lehmann said.
Well if money had been spent on basic infrastructure maintenance on the levies BILLIONS of damage and countless lives could have been saved.
Oroville dam came horrifying close to a major disaster because of lack of basic maintenance.
Meanwhile the left are having nightmares about exaggerated claims of unproven warming in a hundred years time.
With storm swell of several metres you do not need to worry about a few centimetres of rise in mean sea level. You need to worry about storm swell.
Good move by Trump
This is non sequitur, or even equal to lying. But we know Lehman[n] brothers..
Hugs,
What is not clear from that statement is whether it applies after the fact specifically to a damaged home or to all mitigation compared to all post recovery costs.
The former of course is the definition of insurance; in the event the disaster does NOT occur you’ve lost that dollar. 1:4 would be a pretty high insurance rate if that were the case.
The Oroville dam was never in any danger of collapse. The spillway that was eroding was on the opposite side of a solid rock ridge from the main dam.
The floodplain rule might be reasonable on its face, but if someone is using more radical sea level rise projections, it is a matter of the devil (or James Hansen) being in the details.
Yes, exactly.
A few of their sea level predictions:
“Entire nations could be wiped off the face of the Earth by rising sea levels if the global warming trend is not reversed by the year 2000.” -Noel Brown, ex UNEP Director, 1989
“European cities will be plunged beneath rising seas as Britain is plunged into a Siberian climate by 2020.” -Paul Harris, 2004, UK Ecojournalist
“[in twenty years (2008)] the West Side Highway [and thus much of Manhattan] will be under water.” -James Hansen, 1988, NASA
After that failed projection we see that Crying Wolf Hanson is at it again:
“If Canada proceeds [with its tar sands oil development], and we do nothing…ice sheets would accelerate out of control. Sea levels would rise and destroy coastal cities. Global temperatures would become intolerable. Twenty to 50 percent of the planet’s species would be driven to extinction.” -James Hansen, 2012
No. Sea levels aren’t going anymore. For more than a century we’ve seen the most minimal level of sea level rise, and that rate hasn’t changed, at all, despite massive increases in CO2. The sea level fear-mongering of the leftist Chicken Littles is absolutely baloney. Here, with a recent high tide picture of La Jolla California vs the same in 1871. The sea level is JUST THE SAME:
So much wrong; so little time.
At La Jolla, the difference high and low tide averages about 4 feet and between the highest high tide and lowest low tide is about 8 feet. The direction and strength of the wind and waves also have an impact. It is impossible to detect 1 foot of SLR since 1871 in these pictures against this background of large change. I could take two pictures on the same day at this sight and “prove” the sear level had risen 5 feet or 0 feet.
Tides in Chesapeake Bay are smaller, about 1-2 feet, but so is SLR since 1970.
This is as absurd has Hansen’s predictions about the West Side Highway.
Give that sea level rose about 120 m while temperature rose about 5 K after the last Ice age (or 24 m/K), equilibrium sea level changes a huge amount with temperature. (The amount of land shrinks as ice retreats poleward, so 24 m/K exaggerates the problem). A rise in sea level following almost 1 K of warming in the last century is inevitable, but we don’t know whether than rise will be spread over several centuries or several millennia. Sea level rose about 1 m/century for roughly 10 millennia at the end of the last ice age before it slowed to a much lower rate than we have seen this century.
Actually, if that is high tide, the water level in the “recent image” appears to be about a foot lower than the 1871 image
Frank, I said the recent shot is HIGH tide: https://realclimatescience.com/2017/03/sea-level-change-at-la-jolla-california-since-1871/
At the above link there’s a recent picture of that same La Jolla beach at low tide … to distinguish it from the different high tide picture that merges with the 1871 pic. As Bryan said: if that’s high tide than the recent sea level is LOWER than 1871!
Frank, actually to make it easy so you don’t have to click on the link of my last comment, I’ll just display the contrasting low tide shot:
Eric, thanks for providing more info than last time this was shown. Saying both are high tide is helpful but not enough. There is a lot of variation in high tides. You need exact times and dates for both images. This will enable checking against longer cycles than the simple diurnal high/low tides.
There are predictable and recorded cycles up to 18 years in period.
There is also the question of storm swell or at a smaller scale with out an actual storm, the barometric pressure in the surrounding ocean.
Do you at least have a date for the earlier photo?
Since we do not know whether these were spring or neap tides etc, I don’t consider that one can claim that sea level is lower today.
The picture provides qualative evidence that there has been no significant sea level rise in the vicinity these past 150 or so years.
Greg, you’re getting too deep into the weeds. Obviously the sea level is practically the same now as it was over 100 years ago. Yeah, give or take a small amount. Check the link I gave and its supporting links, but you’re really just throwing up flak to try to obscure what would be obvious to even a 4 year old. The point: we’ve seen nothing like the warmist predicted tumultuous sea level rise that would engulf whole cities and states by 2000. In fact, with sea level we’ve seen … NOTHING. Nada. Zilch. Zippo. A goose egg. A big fat sleepy zero.
Here’s some more relevant general info on sea level, from a previous WUWT comment:
Sea level rise is not uniform around the world. In some places, like around the Maldives, the sea level is declining. This makes the claims about the Maldives being imperiled by sea level rise both a lie and a stunt. A large region of the Indian Ocean (where Maldives are situated) has shown a measurable decline over the period 1950-2000, and the rate of decline measured by satellite altimetry exceeds 10mm per year in places.
Sea level all along the west coast of USA is stable or declining. At La Jolla it is very slightly declining. Check out the facts in paper by John A. Church et al (Journal of Climate, July 2004): Estimates of the Regional Distribution of Sea Level Rise over the 1950–2000 Period.
Church shows that most regions of the oceans are stable or in slight decline, but there are some regions with steep increases, especially around Indonesia. So we have the same situation as ‘global temperature’ – we can have most of the globe with stable or declining temperatures, but the ‘global average’ can be record high due to a local hotspot. So it is with sea level – a relatively small region around Indonesia dominates to give a ‘global average’ sea level rise. But for most of the world – no change! For more see: http://buythetruth.wordpress.com/2008/11/15/sea-level-scam/
So, other than a couple of isolated spots that skew the data, in the vast majority of places in in the world the sea level has not changed for decades. The fear mongering on sea level is a joke.
Frank,
Reference please for 24m per deg K. It is hard to get good info on the ocean acting like a thermometer. Thanks. Geoff
I’m certainly no expert so you can all take what I say with however much salt you require. It seems to me that sea level rise is just about as curious a thing as climate is turning out to be. As an example, the idea of there being a straight line correlation between temperature rise and sea level doesn’t quite make the cut as far as I can see. The initial period of rise in atmospheric temperatures would mostly effect sea surface temps and should cause more evaporation from the surface. So long as we have freezing temps at Northern and Southern latitudes this will result in higher snowfall in those places. This means greater accumulation rates on Antarctica and permanent glaciers (such as Greenland). Thus, sea level falls! We don’t really understand exactly how sea surface temp increases are translated to the deeper ocean water so we don’t know how isostatic level changes with atmospheric temperature. This is the kind of stuff that the Warmists make convenient assumptions about. I have to point out then, that they almost always get it wrong!
Too many straight line assumptions about very complicated processes.
I should add this. Earlier this month:
Al Gore was just called out in his CNN “climate change town hall” on the non-existent sea level rise. See: Al Gore Schooled on Climate Change By the Mayor of an Eroding Virginia Island.
An excerpt from the above link:
A link to the video of that exchange between Gore and the mayor: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VUfARQaVWsI
I’m 75 years old. As a boy I lived in a low lying suburb and the “spring” tides used to come up into the gutter outside my house and Dad filled the back yard a little to keep it dry.
Nothing has changed in that street in the 60+ years since. In fact the suburb has gentrified and real estate is quite valuable.
Sweet.
Hanrahan “In fact the suburb has gentrified and real estate is quite valuable.”
Exactly. Thanks for another anecdote saying that the sea level hasn’t changed … in sixty years!
And, as you say, the land around that beach is becoming gentrified. No one’s worried about sea level rise. All the liberals are just buying beachfront properties with the water lapping virtually right up to their door. Including the libs in Malibu. If they’re so worried about sea level why are buying those properties without expressing even the smallest iota of concern for their millions of dollars spent? Or Preacher Gore, who just bought a $9.5 million beach front mansion near Santa Barbara. These libs are not actually worried about sea level rise.
That’s why floodplain rules should be the the responsibility of LOCAL authorities.
As the saying goes “Let’s not make a Federal case out of this!”
I agree with Tom Halla here that some standard to protect against basic flooding is warranted. I don’t think 2 feet is too much. That has nothing to do with sea level rise. It is just good planning for long term building sites. I wouldn’t build my own house any closer to 100 year floodplain than that. The much larger issue is with insurability and disaster relief for people who re-build after floods on floodplains.
Better to go on the past records of what nature has thrown at us over say the last 1000 years as a guide as to what laws to pass, rather than to follow the results of gazing at the modern chrystal ball PC’s that the so called Climate scientists use. ,
“Trump To Repeal Obama Executive Order On Sea Level Rise”
Sounds like King Canute in reverse sort of. Obama commanding the sea to rise and Trump proving that Obama has never had that sort of power.
Its great news though, but the communist local governments, like in my country, will still have the last say and will rip off normal people just the same.
See the “Inundation Zone”, (link below), in Christchurch city. There was an uproar about this and the council backed off and the Mayor shed tears. However it appears to have happened anyway once the people had forgotten about it.
https://thedemiseofchristchurch.com/2016/05/06/six-reasons-why-you-should-worry-about-climate-change/
Cheers
Roger
Roger almost all local government Worldwide is now controlled by leftists who:
A. Are fanatical about imposing their dictatorial will on other people.
B. Passionately believe they have a right to live off other people’s money regardless of the consequences.
C. Are petrified of being responsible for anything and in particular making their own way financially.
Most people don’t realise how sophisticated the criminal green network is. This will shock you (perhaps not):
http://www.worldmayorscouncil.org/
“criminal green network” Warren You’re on the money with that one! Scare the bejesus out of everyone, depress property prices and then buy cheep. I’m sure there are a few useful green idiots who genuinely believe the bogus science but for every one there are probably 100 who just see an easy way of separating people from their money.
Fortunately the ‘we’re all gonna drown’ hoax is much easier to debunk than the ‘we’re all gonna fry’ hoax. For example to melt Greenland would take thousands of years even if there was man made global warming. The energy to do this would have to come from the Sun so it would be a physical impossibility for this to occur over short timescales.
.
Warren,
No surprise – what you describe sounds exactly like our local council, which by the way has a leftist career politician as mayor.
I have noticed over the years that building consents have progressively become harder to obtain with the council requiring details planned to the smallest minutiae.
The not so obvious effect of this is the expense required to pay ones architect and engineer to specify at this level as well as the cost of answering queries as the consent is being considered.
It is fairly obvious that this adds a significant cost to building ones house and may contribute to many not bothering and therefore putting pressure on the secondhand house market. This impediment on building new housing stock, for a growing population, in turn helps to pressurize the housing market making the price of housing go sky high.
Nowadays in Auckland city around NZ$3,000,000 for a modest residence, in a equally modest suburb, appears to becoming the norm. Of course the council induced shortage of building land has something to do with it as well, but the councils consent labyrinth must definitely have a contributory effect.
Cheers
Roger
http://www.thedemiseofchristchurch.com
FEMA has established the 100 year flood elevation for many locations, and it should be reasonable to expect that projects should be some level above that without regard to climate change. However, 2 feet is completely arbitrary. For a basin that is well modeled 2 feet might be excessive while for a basin that is not well modeled 2 feet may not be a sufficient margin of error.
I am talking about river basins, not coasts.
Yes, and if there happens to be global cooling accompanied with deeper snows, river basins may flood more with spring run-off.
One of the problems that happens with all the reporting on flooding is this concept of a 1 in 100 year event, which most people, especially politicians, take literally.
http://water.usgs.gov/edu/100yearflood.html
“The term “100-year flood” is used in an attempt to simplify the definition of a flood that statistically has a 1-percent chance of occurring in any given year. Likewise, the term “100-year storm” is used to define a rainfall event that statistically has this same 1-percent chance of occurring. In other words, over the course of 1 million years, these events would be expected to occur 10,000 times. But, just because it rained 10 inches in one day last year doesn’t mean it can’t rain 10 inches in one day again this year.”
More discussion here:
http://gallery.usgs.gov/audios/50#.VmqbzcRKV_A
“A lot of people think “OK, if I’ve had a 500 year flood now, this year, we’ve got 499 years. We don’t have to worry about it again.” And that’s simply not the case. Essentially, a 500 year flood is just that quantity of water that has the 1 in 500 chance in happening in any one year”
Maybe, but alarmists typically say a 1 in 500 year event just occurred, and on looks at the historical record and such an event occurred 3 times in the last 100 years.
There’s no evidence that anthropogenic GHG emissions are significantly accelerating sea-level rise. It has been very linear for nine decades. If the last +100 ppmv of CO2 didn’t accelerate sea-level rise, then there’s no reason to expect the next +100 ppmv of CO2 to accelerate sea-level rise (especially since we know that CO2 has a logarithmically diminishing impact on temperature).
Pacific:
http://sealevel.info/MSL_graph.php?stnid=honolulu&thick&boxcar=1
http://www.sealevel.info/1612340_Honolulu_vs_CO2_annot1.png
Atlantic:
http://sealevel.info/MSL_graph.php?stnid=newlyn&thick&boxcar=1
http://www.sealevel.info/170-161_Newlyn_vs_CO2_2016.png
S. Hemisphere:
http://www.sealevel.info/MSL_graph.php?id=Sydney&boxcar=1&boxwidth=3&c_date=1930/1-2019/12
http://www.sealevel.info/680-140_Sydney_1930-2016_vs_CO2.png
Nor is there any evidence that anthropogenic GHG emissions are increasing the risk of hurricanes-driven high storm surges:
http://policlimate.com/tropical/frequency_12months.png
http://policlimate.com/tropical/global_running_ace.png
The best prediction for sea level in the future is simply a linear projection of the history of sea level at the same location in the past.
Great graphs. And actually I think the graphs, even though they are showing very minimal sea level rise as it is, for some reason I think the data overstates the sea level rise, because strong anecdotal evidence from all over the world suggests the actual sea level rise is ~ ZERO in most places over at least 50 years. Who knows why the data is likely wrong, but there are countless cases of people that are old enough, and have known beaches for decades, that see with their own eyes on those very beaches that … the sea level is the same.
Btw, I love that picture of Trump for this post where I imagine he is motioning with his hands and saying “we’ve had THIS MUCH [ie a quarter inch] sea level rise over 50 years.”
Unless I am misreading the graphs, the total sea level rise since 1880 is about six inches, on average (fifteen hundredths of a meter). Since the high-low difference [=range] in one day is usually far more than that–indeed, the range from peak to trough of every single wave–it’s no wonder that the effect is basically zero.
John Ware, a graph does not represent “actual” sea level rise. Actually there seems to be zero sea level rise almost everywhere (at least since 1950), except for in some isolated spots like Indonesia that have a lot of sea level rise, and these isolated spots unduly influence the overall data. See my comment above or: http://buythetruth.wordpress.com/2008/11/15/sea-level-scam/
But, yes, I agree, however you slice it on sea level rise, it’s effect is basically zero.
is a wasted dollar.
Janice,
Put together a feature post. You are a good writer, and the mods will approve it easily.
Aw, Tony. That is SO kind of you. I’ll keep it in mind. I would really like to, but, I think it is not the mods who approve it and I’m so unsure about whether I would do all that writing and research for nothing that I just don’t have the heart to do it. (plus, the job I managed to get last week has me setting my alarm for 0245 many mornings, working a split shift, and, well, I CAN BARELY TYPE THIS, much less think very well these days — things should get better…. and maybe then I’ll re-think writing at the risk of hearing “No, sorry, but, no.” (lots of rejection in my job search of over 3 years has taken a toll…. a person can only take so much “No, sorry, but, no.”))
You were a blessing from God to me just by your vote of confidence! Thank you, so much.
On the one hand, a stitch in time saves nine. To properly apply that rule often takes superhuman foresight and wisdom though.
On the other hand, I often hear arts groups assuring us that every dollar spent on them comes back into the economy as ten dollars.
When you frame it in terms of CO2 it becomes obviouser.
For every dollar you give me I’ll borrow 2 and spend them all! How’s that for a deal?
A metaphor.
GO, TRUMP, GO!
Makin’ the American economy take off! #(:))
Who am I voting for in 2020?
Donald J. Trump. — no matter what he said or says. What matters is what he does.
I’m a little unclear on why a 777 flying out of Dumpocrap-dominated O’Hare represents Trump.
The metaphor is:
American Economy = AL plane “taking off” thanks to Trump’s actions in office.
American Airlines is scarcely better than United in customer service. No one in his right mind would want to be associated with them.
Unfortunately, my experience with AAL is largely restricted to South America, where they send their old airliners to die.
Last week I flew home again, from KLAX to YSSY for the 7th time in 7 years. This time I flew American Airlines, flight AAL73. I must commend AAL on their in-flight services, and their wonderful meals.
The Boeing 777 is a wonderful, quiet aircraft, and maybe it was AAL’s seating configuration, as there was plenty of leg room, even in economy class.
Never again would I get on a Qantas Airbus A380 .
You need some degree of comfort on a 14 hour flight.
Check out the Dow Jones Industrial Average – it is very apparent when President Trump was elected. Very similar to a plane taking off.
Love it!!!! Any time I have someone trashing President Trump (and please do remember, I live in the friendly country to the north of the US of A), I simply pull out my iPhone and show a one year DJIA trend and ask them to point out when the election took place.
Chris in Hervey Bay, if I may share an interesting story with you.
I was flying back on business from Great Britain back in 1997, and had the pleasure while waiting for my flight to sit and chat with three people from Boeing at Heathrow, who were on their way back to Everett, WA, after outfitting some 737’s for Athena Airways. Interestingly enough, when an airline buys a plane, they are purchasing a hollow tube that they then discuss with the appropriate airplane manufacturer personnel as to how THEY want to outfit their new planes. Basically what I am saying is that it is the airline and NOT the airplane manufacturer who decides what seats to use, how many lavatories to outfit the plane with, etc. I have flown in everything except the new Boeing 787 Dreamliner, and can say without condition that there are great seating arrangements, and poor seating arrangements – ditto amenities, but it is all based on the airline and NOT the aircraft manufacturer.
I worked on the flight software for the 777.
Janice. Also notice that there more prayers and times the word God is used in the Trump Administration. Some may not like it, but I find it refreshing and uplifting.
So the belief in the power of the demonic CO2 is being replaced … by belief in the power of an invisible friend who you can talk to, with some self apointed ‘special people’ who can interpret / intercede for me….sounds very Hanson, Mann, Gore ish
1save: In Protestant Christianity, you do not need any “special people” to intercede. Jesus does all the interceding with God. Just talk to Him. You think you don’t believe in Him, but, I think that the fact that you felt it necessary to sort of ward Him off by writing as you did shows that He has been knocking on the door of your heart for quite awhile, not and you can sense that (and do not like it one bit, apparently). “Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice an opens the door, I will come in … .” Revelation 3:20. That door only has a handle on the inside. Stop resisting, open the door.
A song for you by another person who ran and ran and ran from Jesus and angrily told him to beat it:
(youtube — Keith Green)
*******************
Note: I only talked about Jesus because you, 1save, inaccurately characterized the facts about Him making it important to respond to you (and because I care about where you will spend eternity).
Janice, I’ve noticed how most people who call themselves atheists are so quick to insult anyone who is religious.
Sounds like insecurity to me.
Let us remember. The purpose of these regulations are to prevent projects from being approved. They are not used to introduce reasonable discretion into the planning process. The purpose of government bureaucracy is to say NO.
The bad move is when the Government got into the flood insurance business. If people build next to the river they need to suffer the consequences or get private insurance which does not exist because the Government got into the business.
If SLR is a problem then it is a problem all on its own. It is not an AGW thing because there is no evidence that cutting emissions will change the rate of SLR.
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3011279
Does this mean Obama lied?
sarc/off
No, that would actually mean he cared. Read
Harry, G. “Frankfurt, On Bullshit.” Princeton: Princeton UP (2005).
Houses, hospitals, buildings, ….all of it should be far above floor plain levels or built elevated — but by LOCAL building codes.
Building more important infrastructure in known-harm’s-way is simply idiotic.
But Federal rule making is almost always senseless and a waste of time and effort — counter-productive all around.
The stated Obama rule forbids building federal-funding assisted hospitals is huge swaths of North and South Carolina by geography alone.
To require such to be built intelligently is correct — to have o0ne-size-fits-all regulations is bad.
Many years ago I explained some of this to a University of Iowa official connected to the construction of new buildings in the flood plain of the Iowa river. I know a bit about rivers but I am neither a politician nor an engineer. The man dismissed my comments with the fact that they knew what there were doing.
It did not work out well:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iowa_flood_of_2008#Iowa_City-Coralville
John ==> The vast majority of flooding losses are due to “building in harm’s way”. The uber-rich do it on beaches and critical-slope California hillsides, the poor in river flood plains, and in Miami, they build infrastructure and roads below Mean High High Tide!
According to the U.S. Geological Survey, if you live on any floodplain, the chances are about 1-in-2 that you will experience a flood in your lifetime.
Hallelujah! And I am an Atheist!
In Alaska the “Native Corporations” are demanding 1 to 100 Million dollars for permitting one square meter! I guess they need more money to pay for their “Obama Care” and Ganja.
Thank you, President Trump. The permitting process in the United States has become a tool to simply block any major development.
In Carlsbad, California, it took 10 years to get a one billion dollar desalinization plant approved through all the government agencies. This is simply too long for an ever changing and ever growing nation like the United States.
Port Arthur (Tasmania, Australia) benchmark mean tide mark chiselled in geologically stable rock in 1841 shows just about 3cm of mean rise in 176 years.
Sea level in DOWN TREND for MSM’s doomed islands of NAURU, KIRIBATI and VANUATU.
Very inconvenient data from automatic tide gauges verified by high-resolution satellite altimeter measurements (courtesy AU Bureau Baseline stations).
Antarctic sea levels in DOWN TREND.
Wait . . . isn’t that where billions of tonnes of ice are turning to water?
Extremely inconvenient data so yep the UN stopped AU Gov publication variously after 2008 – 2010.
AAD data did not support IPCC’s warnings of impending catastrophic sea level rise.
You guessed it . . . to this day AAD sea-level data for Antarctica remains un-published.
Pension Funds control UN politicians who control AU politicians who control AU Bureau of Meteorology.
It’s a small World at that level with very direct lines of communication!
Plenty of info on this important sea level benchmark.
http://www.john-daly.com/deadisle/
Also, the geology of Tasmania is fairly stable, but there were some quakes in the 1880s. So the same benchmark was evaluated again in 1888 with better documentation. Today, the 2017 sea level is 2.5 centimeters above the 1888 measurement. That’s 129 years.
Thanks for that bw!
Can you please explain why pension funds would give the tiniest damn about sea level rise? Or how UN ( bureaucrats) come to be owned by these people? This is nonsense.
Actually building restrictions in proven areas prone to damage from storms would not be a bad idea.
Cyclone Althea ripped through my town in 1971, causing severe damage to buildings and houses considered “solid”. The local uni, less than 20 yrs old went to the wind tunnel to find out what went wrong and devised building codes that remain substantially unchanged to this day. Darwin would have upgraded codes from the same study.
$1 spent on prevention certainly saves money and lives, but you need to have something real you are protecting yourself from.
You put the cost on climate change directly on the people who choose to live in areas with suspected higher risk.
That would be ruinous for the human reptiles that live in our biggest swamps. I like it!
Trump is talking about stream lining the process, going from 10 years plus to two years. He is not talking about no regulations.
Given that the US taxpayer currently subsidizes flood insurance in risky locations and then pays for disaster relief when a disaster occurs, perhaps the government should restrict where one can building in flood plains and along the coast. The libertarian alternative is to get rid of subsidies for flood insurance and disaster relief that pays for rebuilding in dangerous areas. I prefer the libertarian approach, but – whatever we do – we shouldn’t subsidize risky behavior and pay for it when disaster comes. That is what this form “regulatory” relief” will leave us with.
There is nothing wrong with allowing a 1 m safety buffer to cover SLR for projects that are expected to last about 1 century. Nor should that delay permitting unnecessarily. Lawsuits about future SLR delay matters, a simple fixed safety margin should not. (It will be quite costly for owners of land that is not “safe, however.)
Common for marine infrastructure to have a 100 year engineering design lifespan. Nothing unusual to expect to replace docks, piers, in that time span. Annual tide ranges and storms are designed into the life span, and I doubt any engineer really cares about a few inches of sea level rise from the “global warming” jokers.
Frank wrote, “Given that the US taxpayer currently subsidizes flood insurance in risky locations and then pays for disaster relief when a disaster occurs…”
That’s the narrative, but the truth is more complicated.
The Left’s political spin is that the Biggert-Waters Act required flood insurance premiums to reflect the real cost of flooding. It’s untrue.
The Left wants a small percentage of Americans — those who live near coasts and inland waterways — to pay off the NFIP’s $23 billion in debt, which is mostly due to the cost of the federal government’s failed New Orleans levees, by paying ruinous rates for insurance, while enabling the feds to pretend to have not raised taxes. That policy is also supported by radical “green” activists who want to make coastal development economically unfeasible, by making mandatory flood insurance unaffordable.
That’s just wrong. It is unethical, and it is bad economic policy. Federal flood insurance on coastal property in many States, like North Carolina, is already profitable, without these rate increases.
Insurance rates are supposed to be based on the risks associated with the properties being insured. Raising their flood insurance rates would only make sense if the high losses in New Orleans and the profits in other States were products of mere random luck, implying that future risk to property in those States is higher than their loss history suggests.
But we know that isn’t true. Most States do not have cities which are built below sea-level, behind federally-constructed levees of questionable integrity. It’s not fair to make coastal homeowners in those States bear the burden by themselves of paying for the federal government’s expensive New Orleans levee blunder, while other citizens pay nothing.
The Homeowner Flood Insurance Affordability Act of 2014 modified Biggert-Waters, to address the widespread insurance sticker-shock that it had caused, but the Homeowner Flood Insurance Affordability Act was just a band-aid. Biggert-Waters contains many other very bad provisions, including provisions which appear to be designed to increase the cost of insurance and discourage coastal development.
For instance, it has a provision encouraging, for the first time, the squandering of federal flood insurance premium money on private “reinsurance,” of the sort which has wiped out most of the reserves of the NC Beach Plan (now called the NC Coastal Property Insurance Pool).
http://www.sealevel.info/biggertwaters2012k.html#100232
If there’s any entity on planet Earth which should self-insure, it’s the U.S. federal government! Private reinsurance makes no sense at all for the federal government. It is a scam, pure and simple, by an unholy alliance of reinsurance companies and leftist Climate Movement activists.
The reinsurance scam is just a way to siphon money from American homeowners and other taxpayers, and put it into the pockets of (mostly foreign) reinsurance companies, through manipulation of government-run and government-guaranteed insurance programs. It is supported by incestuous relationships with politicians and Climate Movement think tanks, like the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, which peddle the most outrageous hoaxes in the climate change biz, like preposterous predictions of wildly accelerated sea-level rise and the imaginary extreme weather linkage.
Biggert-Waters also has a provision directing FEMA to draw all new Flood Insurance Rate Maps (FIRMs). The new flood maps will, for the first time, incorporate “climate science” to make sea-level rise projections. Those are code words meaning that new flood maps are to be based on future, hypothetical, politically-driven predictions of wildly accelerated sea-level rise, which are thoroughly inconsistent with sound scientific analysis.
http://www.sealevel.info/biggertwaters2012k.html#100216
I don’t know whether the Trump executive order will impact that.
Biggert-Waters set up a body to oversee the rate mapping process, called the TMAC (Technical Mapping Advisory Council). This process will create fanciful “flood maps” which make billions of dollars worth of coastal property undevelopable, and which have nothing to do with real flood risk. It could end up being even a bigger economic catastrophe for coastal communities than the disastrous Biggert-Waters insurance provisions.
http://www.sealevel.info/biggertwaters2012k.html#100215
Early last year the TMAC issued a deeply flawed 233-page report, masquerading as a scientific assessment, based on the usual unscientific projections of climate change and accelerated sea-level rise. It mentions “climate change” 129 times, and “sea level” 261 times. It was followed by a 72-page update late last year. Coastal communities and property owners should be very worried.
That certainly has the ring of truth to it. Another symptom of a governance structure wherein special interest groups control the agenda for their own benefit with congressmen as gatekeepers and feetakers.
Exactly.
I gather most people reaidng this post just overlooked the fact that
R Street is a Libertarian organization.
The Science says there is a RISK that Sea level will increase.
IF you want to ignore that Risk and Build by the ocean, FINE.
but dont expect me to subsidize your decision by paying for a federal bailout when that risk comes home
to roost
I dunno about you but this conservative is TIRED of subsidizing rich coastal democrats who want to build
in risky areas and then demand a federal bailout.
Can you (or anyone) give an example of a rich coastal democrat (or republican, or independent, or socialist) that built in a defined risk area and then demanded a federal bailout when they were harmed by sea level rise or flooding (not wind; not slides)?
Maybe it happens often in California (maybe Florida? Maybe North Carolina?).
You know Mosher, I very much doubt that anyone gives a flying ferret’s foreskin what YOU are TIRED of.
“By contrast, evidence shows that every $1 spent on disaster mitigation can save $4 in post-disaster recovery and rebuilding costs,” Lehmann said.
If the “disaster mitigation” is based on unsubstantiated mythical claims then “every $1 spent” is a waste of $1 !
One man’s “disaster” is another man’s opportunity … if they feel so strongly about the virtually immeasurable ‘threat’ of sea level rises then let them pay for their own excesses.
I’ll run this logic past you experts:
The great river deltas, such as the Ganges will never be inundated if the sea level rises slowly enough. As the sea rises the spring river flows when the snows melt and bring the silt, will meet tidal water sooner, slow sooner and drop the silt sooner. Provided they don’t build massive levees such as they have on the Mississippi and metaphorically “keep stamping their feet” the arable land will remain above sea level and fresh, fertile silt will renew the soil.
I first thought of this when I heard of another scare that did the rounds: That there would be millions of climate refugees as the deltas were flooded by 2000. I doubt it will ever happen with the current rate of rise.
The reality of those deltas is whether the rate of sea level rise exceeds the rate of alluvial deposition.
Plenty of valleys are ‘drowned’ o.e. have no delta like deposits where sea level has risen far and fast enough.
In Britain the west coast is all ‘drowned’ and small versions of deltas abound on the east coast. Something to do with what happened when the weight of ice left the country IIRC.
The Nile delta is a case in point. The silt that used to be dumped on it is now trapped in lake Nasser, a thousand miles upstream. Does not bode well for its millions of inhabitants.
you are missing the effects of storm surge (one reason the Thames has a tidal barrier) and worse, storm surge plus heavy rain/spring flooding:
http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/v5/n12/full/nclimate2736.html?foxtrotcallback=true
UK coast is already suffering increased damage from storm surge
Apart from the whole eastern side of England sinking, forget that did you Griff?
“forget that did you Griff?”
Of course he didn’t, he never knew it in the first place.
Worth pointing out that Trump is actually repealing a lot of federal laws that were duplicated at state level. He is cutting down on the number of hoops someone needs to jump through. Ultimately, this will lead to decisions being made quicker and faster development, as opposed to going through repeated steps at different levels.
Massachusetts energy policy to destroy Maine wilderness. Mainers are not too happy about this hostile takeover of Maine.
http://www.centralmaine.com/2017/08/16/more-than-100-people-ask-if-massachusetts-energy-policy-will-destroy-moosehead-lake-region/
I’m not arguing your point Richard but both sides of the payback issue should realize that absolute payback is not the correct metric. The real issue is the time value of the money as it is applied in the now and the payback is a maybe and whenever. The best and most realistic appraisal of this is key- just one more thing that government is terrible at. Also, if payback calculations are based on today’s interest rates and inflation rates, they will almost certainly be wrong as today’s rates have not been seen in probably at least 500 years. They are a sign of the hand of government misapplied to economic sickness, not health.
why does this remind me of this:
https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=canute+holding+back+sea&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwj-34r4it7VAhVMKMAKHctFBcwQ_AUICigB&biw=1285&bih=765#imgrc=HzuZ1wfoiZoJnM:
Notice how Griff responds when politicians use actual science to guide policy making.
What science? Trump is going against the science.
And he certainly can’t hold back the sea…
Speaking of holding back the sea, was it not the O who said, ” This is the moment when SL rise will slow” speaking of his own election of course. The only science ” denier” is folk like you GRIFF.
Don’t you just love the batty Obama logic – we will ensure that global warming will be contained in the next 100 years (and therefore restrain sea level rise) but, you know, that’s a crock, so let’s make sure every building is higher than what the sea level would be if we failed in restraining global warming. If Obama had any knowledge of advanced nuclear technology or the imminent
revoution in transportation (electric cars) he wouldn’t have been running around make noises about coal-fired plants- he would have done something constructive to facilitate adoption of those future energy technoogies – giving millionaire buyers of $70,000 Tesla electric cars a $7500 govt subsidy
to help sell cars that are in high demand – 500,000plus customers lined up and paid up ($1,0000 deposit) for Tesla’s Model 3 does not represent a situation that requires govt subsidies to sell EVs.
Obama was just plain dimwitted and his actions were pure PR.
Too bad he’s gone. I had this great idea for government subsidized aqua-cars!
“The Obama administration also issued a rule requiring federally-financed single family homes must be built two feet above the 100-year floodplain.” Why. So, if a 100-year is a 3 foot floodplain the house is still damaged. If they kept the two feet above the 100-year floodplain rule would the home owner still have to pay for government flood insurance?
By “Build 2′ above” they (generally) mean the finish floor height above natural ground where a flood elevation (BFE) is not established. If a BFE is established then the federal regs require crawlspace to be above it (local regs sometimes require more). It’s a bit complicated.
To avoid the insurance requirement you generally need to have your crawl space above the defined BFE. If you don’t have a crawl space then the lowest adjacent grade needs to be above the BFE. AND then you need to get a LOMA if you are in a FEMA mapped flood plain. (existing construction is slightly different than new construction wrt ability to remove insurance requirement).
In any event you should understand your local conditions. If the FEMA mapping poor and/or the BFE elevations (modeled and established by FEMA) are crap then you act accordingly.
If you can get a LOMA for your existing house based on elevations, but you know the maps are crap, then you can can/should get insurance (but you can get it at the low rate, and be like the rich coastal democrats).
““Taxpayers have been made to shell out hundreds of billions of dollars in disaster-related spending over the past decade, including more than $136 billion for just the two years from 2011 to 2013,” senior fellow R.J. Lehmann said in a statement.
“By contrast, evidence shows that every $1 spent on disaster mitigation can save $4 in post-disaster recovery and rebuilding costs,” Lehmann said.”
Most of you dont know R street.
Libertarian
Data Driven.
Listen up. We SUBSIDIZE people to live in places that are risk prone.
Whether you believe in climate change or not
This needs to change.
Mr. Mosher: I agree with you. Dammit!
Let’s require those aholes to leave San Francisco before the next earthquake so we don’t have to bail them out.
All those OTHER people in risk prone areas are costing us lots of money.
So, stick a label of mitigation on your project and spend away. Even if all the catastrophic models were correct, federal housing projects don’t last long enough to need stilts.
President Trump is the best this country has had during my life time. No wonder the globalist criminals attack him every day.