Guest essay by Eric Worrall
A study published by Computer Science Professor Paul Barford claims that critical parts of the Internet will be submerged under rising seas in the next 15 years.
Study suggests buried internet infrastructure at risk as sea levels rise
July 16, 2018 By Terry Devitt
For news mediaThousands of miles of buried fiber optic cable in densely populated coastal regions of the United States may soon be inundated by rising seas, according to a new study by researchers at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and the University of Oregon.
The study, presented here today (July 16, 2018) at a meeting of internet network researchers, portrays critical communications infrastructure that could be submerged by rising seas in as soon as 15 years, according to the study’s senior author, Paul Barford, a UW–Madison professor of computer science.
“Most of the damage that’s going to be done in the next 100 years will be done sooner than later,” says Barford, an authority on the “physical internet” — the buried fiber optic cables, data centers, traffic exchanges and termination points that are the nerve centers, arteries and hubs of the vast global information network. “That surprised us. The expectation was that we’d have 50 years to plan for it. We don’t have 50 years.”
…
The peer-reviewed study combined data from the Internet Atlas, a comprehensive global map of the internet’s physical structure, and projections of sea level incursion from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). The study, which only evaluated risk to infrastructure in the United States, was shared today with academic and industry researchers at the Applied Networking Research Workshop, a meeting of the Association for Computing Machinery, the Internet Society and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers.
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Read more: https://news.wisc.edu/study-suggests-buried-internet-infrastructure-at-risk-as-sea-levels-rise/
The abstract of the study;
Lights Out: Climate Change Risk to Internet Infrastructure
Ramakrishnan Durairajan, Carol Barford, Paul Barford University of Oregon, University of Wisconsin – Madison
In this paper we consider the risks to Internet infrastructure in the US due to sea level rise. Our study is based on sea level incursion projections from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) [12] and Internet in- frastructure deployment data from Internet Atlas [24]. We align the data formats and assess risks in terms of the amount and type of infrastructure that will be under water in dif- ferent time intervals over the next 100 years. We find that 4,067 miles of fiber conduit will be under water and 1,101 nodes (e.g., points of presence and colocation centers) will be surrounded by water in the next 15 years. We further quantify the risks of sea level rise by defining a metric that considers the combination of geographic scope and Internet infrastructure density. We use this metric to examine differ- ent regions and find that the New York, Miami, and Seattle metropolitan areas are at highest risk. We also quantify the risks to individual service provider infrastructures and find that CenturyLink, Inteliquent, and AT&T are at highest risk. While it is difficult to project the impact of countermeasures such as sea walls, our results suggest the urgency of devel- oping mitigation strategies and alternative infrastructure deployments.
Read more: http://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~pb/anrw18_final.pdf
The following table of absurd sea level rise estimates from the full paper (same link as above) shows where it all went wrong for Professor Barford and his team.
Table 1: Timeline of projected Global Mean Sea Level Rise. Data is based off of “Highest” (i.e., most extreme) projections.
| Year | 2030 | 2045 | 2060 | 2075 | 2090 | 2100 |
| Projected rise (ft) | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 |
A one foot per 15 year sea level rise starting in the next few years should be an implausibly rapid acceleration to the current long term observed rate of around 3.2mm / year, or around one foot four six inches per century.
But Professor Barford claims this absurd estimate of 1ft every 15 years is an official NOAA scenario.
What next? The potential for harm from this nonsensical sea level estimate is not yet exhausted. The next step could easily be some politician or government bureaucrat seizing on Professor Barford’s warning, and authorizing the waste of vast sums of public money on unnecessary remedial works.
Update (EW): 1’6″ per century, not 1’4″ per century. (h/t David S)
Update (EW): 3.2mm = 0.01049869ft. 0.01049869ft x 100 = 1.049ft. 0.049 x 12 = just 0.58 inches – so 1’0.6”, just over 1ft. (h/t Randle Dewees, Climatebeagle and Retired_Engineer_Jim)
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This study is flawed in many ways.
1) There is no thermodynamic path to 6 feet of sea level rise in 100 years even with the absurdly high estimates of increased average atmospheric temperature over that time. If we could exchange all of the thermal energy in the atmosphere for polar ice melt, the result would be 3” of sea level rise and a global average atmospheric temperature of 0C! Melting ice cools the atmosphere (or sea). The atmosphere above 2.5km is already below 0C! The consensus global average surface temperature is 16C – but only 8C if averaged between the surface and 2.5km. At the depth of a glacial period the consensus average surface temperature is 6C, so melting enough ice to raise sea level by 3” is enough to cool the atmosphere to 6C lower than the coldest point in a glacial period.
2) The researchers didn’t look at topographic maps. Refer to this link and examine the data for several of the listed cities.
http://www.floodmap.net/Elevation/CountryElevationMap/?ct=US
How does 6 feet of rise (as extreme as that is) affect the areas shown? The maps show elevations in meters.
3) The internet we have today, originally developed by DARPA – and evolved to develop TCP/IP, is an open, fault tolerant, packet switched network. It can route around outages. It was designed to stay up in the event of a nuclear strike.
4) IF these locations were submerged under water along with the internet infrastructure equipment, then we would have other (much larger) problems besides the loss of the internet infrastructure. We would have the loss of homes, roads, power grid, water/sewer, public transportation, etc., etc. Essentially, the locations would be uninhabitable. Relocating the internet infrastructure would be a small fraction of what would need to be relocated.
Our world seems to be awash in money to fund academics who produce senseless output.
WW
Yes, it’s a bit like warning that if I submerge my face in water, my hair will get wet.
If the homes and businesses get flooded, they won’t be needing the internet anyway.
Their map shows Newark under water. I am OK with that.
The concept of zero has long been a bane of humans.
The authors should look through the work and add a few, as appropriate.
Or maybe the climate scientists.
I noticed they tend to be coastal people.
Yes, they are rich enough to own homes protected by Flood Insurance backed by Tax Payers.
The United Nations will lose their building on the East river too.
https://thedemiseofchristchurch.wordpress.com/2016/05/06/un-headquarters-and-usd1-2-billion-upgrade-and-rising/
Cheers
Roger
Cool.
The UN will lose their build on the East River? So this is a good news story after all 🙂
Communications cable runs under the sea anyway … what, did the idiot Barford think that they hung from invisible skyhooks ?
We are old and infirm but distinctly remember when working for an international telecommunications company in the 1980s that optical fibre carries (the clue is in the name) photons and not electrons. There cannot be electrical faults in an optical fibre. It does not matter if it is under water. Most of it is. It cannot make any difference if the water is deeper.
You forgot that 0.5 mm of the annual sea-level rise is a fictitious “Global Istostatic Adjustment”, so the actual physical rise is well under one foot per century.
I think a short note on the origin of the Internet is in order. It has its roots in DARPAnet, a concept for a network with an extremely decentralized structure and no central nodes, that was developed by DARPA. The idea was for a net that would work irrespective of damage as long as there was a single topologically feasible path between a sender and a receiver. The original intention was to create a command and control net that would survive a nuclear attack.
So, no, the internet won’t die even if the whole US eastern seaboard is flooded. Not even if it happens overnight (which could happen if there is an island flank collapse in the Canaries or the Azores). There would probably be capacity problems and a lot of sites would be down, but nothing worse.
Incidentally, why should water damage optical cable? There is no electricity involved and such cable is frequently laid in soil that is regularly wet with no ill effects.
By the way, if anyone is silly enough to put a server within one foot (or five foot at that) of mean sea level I would expect them to provide for suitable protection, particularly on a coast that is subject to hurricanes.
Electricity powers optical repeaters every few km.
Indeed. And those are placed well above groundwater level, at least in Sweden.
Are you implying that the Swedes are smarter than the rest of us? Malmo
No, contrariwise our political swamp here is almost certainly the most insane and incompetent in the world, North Korea and Zimbabwe included. But it is the only optical cable system I have experience of.
From memory … forty years ago submarine repeaters were about 80km apart. I suppose that the distance between submarine repeaters is now much greater. Even forty years ago it meant that all the harbours in the world of whatever size could have optical fibre across them with no underwater electronics.
Why don’t they just run a few more fibre optic lines and make the repeaters light powered. I’ve heard that light power is the wave of the future. 🙂
“It has its roots in DARPAnet…”
I thought Al Gore invented the Internet.
Al claims he “took the initiative in creating the Internet” which basically boils down to the same thing – him taking credit for it’s existence. But use the word “invented” and lefties will pounce on you claiming Al never made that claim.
True, but the common retort to that statement from an Al Gore supporter is that invented is an accepted synonym for created. The real problem is it takes Mr. Gore five words to say what can more clearly be said with one word. Of course, with a politician, clarity of speech is rarely what they are trying to achieve.
Yes, that reminder might also come from the Chicago companies that had IT equipment flooded when a hole was poked in the bottom of the river.
I’m more afraid that “climate change solutions” (which don’t actually solve climate change nor are they solutions) will kill the internet by restricting access to electricity and communications.
Can I suggest a betting fund whereby we bet the maker of such claims large amounts of our money against theirs that the prediction won’t come about? They’d run a mile…
Irrelevant.
Over the next 15 years, the major Internet components will be constantly in maintenance anyway.
And many of these components will be obsolete, exchanged for newer developments.
But they will still be in danger of sea level rise. They will NOT be relocated AWAY from DANGER. They will NOT be designed to operate UNDER water if they are currently located ABOVE water.
I do NOT accept that the sea level rise will happen, merely pointing out that even if they BELIEVE that it WILL happen, they won’t do anything to SOLVE the problem, merely do stuff that will make people FEEL good about “addressing” the POTENTIAL threats.
Why are you so sure that they won’t be relocated? The companies that maintain the equipment are not stupid. *IF* the sea level starts rising at the proposed levels, the companies will take steps to mitigate the potential damage (with, yes, relocation being a possible mitigation step) long before the water reaches catastrophic levels. When the distance between the equipment and the sea starts noticeably shrinking, only an idiot would not think to take measures to protect the equipment. The seas would have to literally rise over night for them not to.
I am talking about those that BELIEVE it WILL happen. I’m sure you agree with me that those people are not the brightest. And those people tend to think that they can CONTROL and CHANGE nature with impunity because they are SO brilliant and all knowing. (Get the sarcasm?)
Companies are not stupid, but they are often short-sighted. And they are certainly more focused on this year’s bottom-line than actually fixing problems and preparing for disasters. Have you checked our electrical grid and bridges lately?
you’re not talking companies with bridges and electrical grid, you’re talking government entities. When your bottom line depends on your equipment working (as would be the case with non-government owned businesses) you make sure your equipment is well maintained and capable of running, because if you don’t you quickly find yourself out of business. In government, you don’t have a bottom line to worry about so it can all go to crap and the bureaucrats won’t care as they’ll still have jobs regardless of what happens.
Hyperemotional Trevor? Is that YOU???!!???!??!?!?!
Its interesting that there is no consideration of the inevitable end of the current interglacial, and the associated FALL in sea levels.
Lights will go out because of idiotic climate-change energy policies. Not because of climate change.
We used to see lots of “Given global warming, . . .” studies.
Now we are seeing “Given sea level rise, . . .” studies.
“Given ocean acidification, . . .” studies will surely follow.
Gamecock, I’m looking forward to, “Given the lack of grant money…. (This study intentionally left blank, but we’re all gonna die!)”
‘Could be’ like cows could be flyers, but if won’t be, they will not apologize for the false alarm.
And as we know, the ‘coulds’ in the Greenhouse Effect Anthropogenic Global Warming Climate Change have an awesome trackrecord. Just check “climatechangepredictions”.
“could be” is all they need for INCREASED funding via Other People’s Money. And of course, as the value of the assets they are “managing” increases, so too do their salaries.
“…infrastructure that could be submerged by rising seas…”
Whenever I see this kind of “could be” I always wonder how it compares to “could be struck by lightning” and generally conclude the lightning “could be” is the more likely of the two.
Data centers can be moved. In fifteen years the equipment in a data center will already have been replaced a few times. If sea level rise is a problem it isn’t like it’s going to flood something permanent, irreplaceable, and immovable like the Statue of Liberty.
1. Even the Statue of Liberty can be moved. How do you think it got there from France in the first place?
2. Yet, instead of doing the SMART thing and building a new data center AWAY FROM DANGER, they just try to STOP NATURE from damaging the data center where it is now. See my comment titled: The Stupidity of Modern Man
A new data center costs millions of dollars.
A little bit of extra protection costs thousands of dollars.
Yabut … In fifteen years they will have replaced every part of the data center more than once. Depending on the circumstances, they might even save money by relocating.
If they move the center now, they are going to end up building the new one the same as existing one. The only changes will be technology that was about to be replaced anyway.
The biggest costs are still the building and infrastructure.
Probably not.
The building is usually leased so you bail when the lease is up. Every part of the infrastructure is fair game for upgrading.
“A little bit of extra protection costs thousands of dollars.”? How “little bit” is the “extra protection” to keep a few feet of sea water out of your equipment room?
And as Mark W points out below, the cost of a new data center is mainly the building since the equipment is going to be replaced over the next few years anyway. You build the building and then migrate as you replace equipment. I know that isn’t EXACTLY how you do it, but the concept is that instead of putting band-aids on the existing facilities, you SOLVE the problem that THEY believe in by moving the facility.
I do NOT believe any of these scenarios are likely, but I keep asking the people of New Orleans: What part of BELOW sea level do you NOT understand?
Since it will take hundreds of years for the sea to rise enough for anyone to have to worry about “feet of sea water” in your equipment room, why spend the money now?
Is the Atlantic cable still around? Or did that giant white shark eat it?
Doesn’t this fall into the category of ‘Dumb and Dumber”? This dope hasn’t heard of wireless stuff yet? If NYC loses its internet service, I’d like to know how that’ll happen, because Sandy was such a massive threat — gonna have 3 feet of water in the streets!!!!! Panic attack!!!! – and Mayor Doofus 1a(DW) threatened anyone on the street with arrest, like the brilliant moron he was, when the actual water depth was about 2 inches (count ’em) and Sandy mostly just flooded and damaged New England.
It gets more and more hysterical every time one of these ridiculous creatures publishes something. Might as well be on Jerry Springer’s show, except he lost out to the hysterics of the cackle festivities on ‘The View” (another bunch of people who sit on their brains).
Someone is keeping track of these attacks of The Sillies, for which I’m grateful. I would like to live long enough to see these money-grubbing, attention-seeking little twits brought to a screeching halt by reality. I hope that someone, some day, cuts the funding down to a sensible level, for weather-related stuff like an improved Doppler radar system and better WEATHER forecasting.
End of rant. Weekend’s coming up. I will enjoy it. It’s raining in my kingdom (finally), and that’s good enough for me.
Oh, yeah: WOLF!!! WOLF!!! WOLF!!! Oh, look! Sandwiches!
Please, don’t confuse them with the FACTS. These are ideologues, not rationalists.
The world is literally girded by undersea cables. link, link
The technology keeps advancing and I have no idea what comes next. So far we’ve had wire, radio, microwave networks, satellite, optical fiber.
“Table 1: Timeline of projected Global Mean Sea Level Rise. Data is based off of “Highest” (i.e., most extreme) projections.”
What part of extreme scenario analysis do you NOT get?
Do you truly believe that the sea will rise by 6 ft. by 2100 ?? Thats not “extreme”, it’s %#&*!^$ impossible !
Steven Mosher. Are you quoting from NOAA or the article?
I haven’t read the article and don’t intend to. The key to me would be whether the author(s) fairly identified the slr projections used as the “extreme” scenario defined by NOAA. If it’s buried in a table somewhere, in a footnote or appendix, then that doesn’t qualified as fair.
The press, who distributes drivel like this article, doesn’t deal with nuances such as the language you quoted. They just repeat a press release without comment or analysis. The target audience is the general public who will not delve into the nuances. The article’s conclusions will be repeated by the popular press and alarmist commentators as another revelation of the deep do-do we’ve inflicted on ourselves.
So you’re point is fair only if it’s clear from the material released to the public. Otherwise the authors are intentionally playing into hands of a gullible popular press, following a well-worn PR pattern..
Mosher…If you lived your life guided by the ‘most extreme projections’, you would not be able to leave your house. Nor would you be able to stay in it!
Ironically, if you attempted to live your life guided by the ‘most extreme projections’ of things, it would make your life completely miserable and very likely destroy you. Why in the world would you defend such nonsense for society, unless your goal was to destroy it?
“What part of extreme scenario analysis do you NOT get?”
The one where they say their analysis is conservative…..
“Our analysis is conservative”…….
I didn’t realize “extreme scenario analysis” meant “physically impossible in that time scale scenario analysis”
We ‘get’ it all. Extreme scenario. The warmist starting point.
SM,
By definition, an extreme scenario is the least probable. Unless it is cost effective, engineers don’t design to the least probable . That is, dams are built to withstand maybe a 100 or 500 year flood, but not a maximum possible flood nor even a 1,000-year flood because the dam isn’t expected to last 1,000 years. One has to exercise a little thought and cost-benefit analysis, which seems a foreign concept to climate alarmists. Further, as Chauncey Starr has demonstrated, people are quite willing to accept risk (financial costs) in direct proportion (actually it is a log-log relationship) to the perceived benefits.
Hey Mosh
Back again and you believe all the drivel that these clowns dredge up never respond with any reasons to back up this rubbish .
Can you not see that the sea level cannot and will not rise at the rates that this 12 year old brain with a BS is writing and publishing .
AS I stated there is absolutely no proof that the global climate temperature will rise by 4C by the end of the century and you have not posted one single fact to prove your belief that it will .
Tide gauges through out the world show no acceleration in sea level rise at this time .
Scientists have calculated that during the melting of the land based ice at the end of the ice age 10K years ago that sea levels did not rise anywhere as fast as this clowns predicts .
Come back with some proof Mosh .
Don’t hold your breath waiting for him !! LOL
“Hey Mosh
Back again and you believe all the drivel that these clowns dredge up never respond with any reasons to back up this rubbish .
Can you not see that the sea level cannot and will not rise at the rates that this 12 year old brain with a BS is writing and publishing .”
1. I see no evidence that such a rise is IMPOSSIBLE.
2. Physically, such a rise is POSSIBLE.
3. Whether it is PROBABLE or not, is immaterial to SCENARIO analysis
AS I stated there is absolutely no proof that the global climate temperature will rise by 4C by the end of the century and you have not posted one single fact to prove your belief that it will .
1. Science does not deal in PROOF
2. Scenario analysis does not deal in PROOF
3. if you want PROOFS please see math, logic, and geometry
Tide gauges through out the world show no acceleration in sea level rise at this time .
Scientists have calculated that during the melting of the land based ice at the end of the ice age 10K years ago that sea levels did not rise anywhere as fast as this clowns predicts .
Come back with some proof Mosh .
1. Tide guages are wholly innaccurate and poorly located for global averages.
Here is the point you guys do not get.
I will use an example from a similar feild ( operations research)
Lets take war planning. Circa 1985
As analysts we were given the following scenario.
1. Half of our forces are tied up in a war on the Korean peninsula
2. The soveits attack in the fulda gap.
3. We have ZERO help from defense suppression: meaning we had to fight through
ground based SAM bridgades.
Those were the assumptions: Crazy. never guna happen in a million years. we all knew
it was an extreme case. two front war.
The job was GIVEN the scenario, explain what the outcome would be in the fulda gap given
A) having airplane X in the force structure
B) having airplane Y in the force structure
c) having airplane Z.
This and the paper in question requires SCENARIO analysis. SCENARIO analysis typically
accepts some assumptions ( like best case and worst case) and calculates what those
futures would look like, as best as you can.
So we decided that a Stealthy plane was required to meet that Soveit threat.
Turns out the real threat was 747s running into buildings.
What do they do, these authors
1. They take the EXTREME CASE of 6 feet by century end
2. They dont ask if this is probable. they just follow through on the analysis.
3. They look at geography
4. They conclude a 1 foot rise, will innundate a good amount of infrastructure
conclusion:
IF, we see 1 foot by 2030, the internet is in trouble. Moreover, if we 1 foot in 30 years, its in trouble, 50 years or 100 years.. the geographical analysis is more important that
their assumption that we will see 1 foot by 2030.
Nothing wrong with this scneario analysis. Its like saying, IF yellowstone
blows then you have 2 feet of ash in San fran. Thats good to know. Thats why you DO
scenario analysis
The proper response is pretty effin simple:
IF, you think the scenario (1 ft by 2030) is low probablity ( we wont see a foot by 2030), Then you dont take any action. Simple.
However, the really interesting thing about the study is that 1 foot ( regardless of how long that takes ) does a lot a damage. THAT is the key finding.
What’s that mean?
If you are building internet infrastructure, and you have a choice, make sure you plan for a SAFETY FACTOR. If you can dont put your infrastrure where it will be under water if the SLR is a few feet. Wanna be really safe, do go putting any NEW critical infrastructure
in areas that a few feet above ASL
Well then doesn’t this admission:
Those were the assumptions: Crazy. never guna happen in a million years. we all knew it was an extreme case.
Contradict these premises:
Such that 1) no one should care one whit about what the author is claiming and 2) you contradict your own assumptions?
If “never guna happen in a million years” scenarios are allowed, then:
What about the scenario where we’re all wrong, and space aliens and sky fairies actually do exist, are hostile, planning to invade our rear ends, place us all in pods and use us for electrical power in the Matrix?
In such a case, why develop any new internet infrastructure at all? Shouldn’t we rather pull up the covers and hide awaiting our inevitable fate?
To get that kind of sea level rise, temperatures would have to rise on the order of 5 to 10 degrees, and that is not possible.
So the those levels of SLR simply aren’t possible.
Mosh,
You said, “3. Whether it is PROBABLE or not, is immaterial to SCENARIO analysis.”
What you don’t get is that if the scenario is improbable, you are on a fools errand and wasting time and resources. Now, if you are on the clock, and getting paid to do a fools work, do it, but look for another job or boss. In order to be useful, scenarios should have a reasonable probability of occurring, such as being within one or two standard deviations of the most probable event.
As an example, if one were to propose a scenario of the sun becoming a supernova tomorrow, calculate the availability of drinking water. It is immaterial because there won’t be any humans to consume the water. It should be obvious that it is a waste of time to engage in things that are extremely low probability or pure speculation, and even more so when the low probability event completely changes the game. There are more important things to worry about.
However, what is egregious about the work by Barford is that he presents a low-probability event (scenario) as reasonable and draws unwarranted conclusions from it. The uncritical reader is left with the impression that our internet infrastructure is at risk from AGW/climate change. The proper conclusion is that when pigs fly, and the extreme scenario actually occurs, there may be problems unless internet providers observe accelerated SL rise a couple of years before the pigs start flying around.
You are out of touch with reality!
Hey Mosh ,You did answer well done .
Why don’t you see that this is so over blown that every one with a brain can see that this guy is stupid .Look at the FACTS Mosh .
The sea level is not accelerating and at the claimed rate of sea level rise 3.2 mm per year ( which is open to debate ) in 82 years the sea might have risen 262 mm just over 10 inches not really enough to get your knickers in a twist .
This is an absolute waste of time and most internet connections will be by wifi sooner than later.
If we took this to the limit New Zealand would be almost deserted because the last global supernova eruption was Taupo and it covered the central North Island with ash and pumice.
It could rumble back to life any time but why worry,there are monitors in place and odds are it never will but the odds are 100 times greater than the scenario that this clown is presenting
The inundation could come within 15 years. “That was a little bit unexpected,” said study co-author Paul Barford, professor of computer sciences at the University of Wisconsin. “We sort of expected that it might be parceled out over a longer period of time, but that’s not the case.”
So they took the most extreme projection and they were surprised by SLR being sooner than later!!
and of course this is now picked up by MSM:
https://www.nbcnews.com/mach/science/rising-seas-could-knock-out-internet-sooner-scientists-thought-ncna896256
“sooner than scientists thought” – yeah – because they picked the most extreme SLR projection.
After adjustments.
It is well known for example that after adjustments Manhattan’s West Side Highway has been submerged under the Hudson River for the last decade.
Adjustments are amazing things.
“Adjustments are amazing things.”
This reminds me of a comment made by someone else on a previous thread to the effect that they were afraid that if they keep making adjustments to cool past temperatures, their grandparents will freeze to death and their parents will never be born.
Wow, this guy is almost as stupid as a social psychologist who goes all in for climate catastrophism.
That’s getting rather extreme to compare to them….but okay.
The Stupidity of Modern Man
So, as we find more and more ancient cities buried under the world’s oceans, we argue that instead of being proactive and MOVING our cities AWAY from the rising floodwaters, we should continue building in areas prone to flooding and instead spend TRILLIONS on technology, that will likely fail, to TRY and hold the floodwaters back.
And, instead of upgrading our crumbling infrastructure with current technology that we know will be viable for 50 years, we waste our resources on TRYING to invent technology that MIGHT work in 20 years. Our decades-old electrical, water, sewage, gas and transportation infrastructure is crumbling, but instead of eliminating the KNOWN risk of it failing NOW, we continue to try to prevent the “wind” from blowing and damaging it decades in the future.
Yes, there are a growing number of finds in this area: Ancient cities submerged by rising seas from glacial melt at the end of the last glacial period. Here is another interesting example:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/1768109.stm
For every site found, I speculate there are many that will never be found.
The current Quaternary Ice Age is 2.5M years old – and there have been over 50 glacial/interglacial periods during that time. So, this oscillation of sea level by up to 430 feet is not a new thing.
Modern science has known it for ~100 years. It has been injected into popular culture for at least 40 years by alarmists. Our “leaders” (politicians, Hollywood, etc.) run around Chicken-Little-Fashion telling us the deluge is coming. Do they believe it?! Search for coastal cities in the US that have placed a moratorium on building along the coast. The result: ZERO municipal governments have slowed or restricted development due to SLR fears. Banks are still financing construction. Insurance companies are still insuring coastal properties. People are not panic-selling their coastal homes to the first “idiot” who will take them off their hands. In fact, coastal property sales are still robust. It is reported that Al Gore purchased a $9M ocean-view mansion in Montecito, CA in 2010. So, do they believe it? Listen to what they say and then look at what they do.
The appropriate response to the SLR panic is an eye-roll and a yawn.
There are no ancient cities submerged by glacial melt. There were few cities at that time.
What we are talking about is closer to hunting and fishing camps.
We can agree there were “hunting and fishing camps”. But it is clear the humans of that time would have had to move their “camps” as the sea level rose – so I’m not sure my points are affected.
Regarding archaeology, we don’t know everything about history conclusively, so I won’t take a strong position on this, but will add that there seems to be reasonable evidence that our understanding of human history is incomplete (if not flawed). (Climate studies are not the only branch of science tainted with the demand to adhere to orthodoxy.) Clearly, it would not be easy to find cities under the ocean should they be there. The BBC link I provide above offers some support of a possible city. There are others. 2 other examples of older cities (not submerged) are Jericho and Göbekli Tepe.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jericho
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6bekli_Tepe
Any civilization (or band of humans), around before 6,000 BCE and living near the sea, were dealing with ~1.5m SLR per 100 years.
Historically, humans (and all life on Earth) have dealt with the large change in living conditions that go with the glacial/interglacial cycles. Our civilization has ignored or forgotten the lessons. Will we have a “miracle” and never have to deal with these changes again? If not, then our coastal cities might experience flooding at the current SLR rate given enough time. Or, if not, then our northern infrastructures will be bulldozed by a 10,000-foot-tall wall of ice in a few thousand years after the next glacial period starts.
Gore’s home in Montecito is not near sea level. It does have an ocean view from its high elevation, however. At one time he did own a condo in SF close to sea level. I don’t know if he still does.
Agreed – that’s why I said “ocean view” instead of beach-front. He will have the perfect vantage point from which to watch the show: his neighbors down below drowning in the deluge.
Or worse, wasting money and resources trying to prevent climate change.
‘An ant can’t move a rubber tree plant… but he’s got HIGH hopes.’
As an engineer, if I published something this outrageously wrong related to my field I would be asked to appear before the local licensing body. I would be asked to explain myself and probably have my license suspended and be forced to pay a fine. Scientists, journalists and teachers should face similar repercussions as so called professionals. It might force more rigor.
In this Brave New World the advocacy powers have already worked ahead of you to corrupt the licensing body. You will find that out the hard way if you push on the issue.
This author is the poster child for
“Alarmist”
Noun
A person who tends to raise alarms, especially without sufficient reason, as by exaggerating dangers or prophesying calamities.”
“Someone who exaggerates a danger and so causes needless worry or panic.”
both from good dictionaries.
Why are funding liars and charlatans?
Peer reviewed???
I wonder if it could be a Sokal style hoax?
The peer-reviewed study ………..
Have these people ever heard of groundwater?
Ground Water: BINGO!
My preferred resource about current sea level rise (SLR) is Nils-Axel Morner. Morner’s research shows the actual EUSTATIC sea level rise is closer to 1mm/yr. Forget the bogus dataset discontinuity and alarmist calculations claiming 3mm/yr.
Furthermore, we know the Antarctic Ice Sheet is growing and that the Greenland Ice Sheet is essentially unchanged over the past 120 years (99.7% of what it was 120 years ago). So, the water to fuel sea level rise is not coming from the polar ice. Where is it coming from then? Since the early 1800’s there have been reports of mid-latitude glacier melt and retreat. So sure, some comes from this, but the amount of water stored in all of the mid latitude glaciers is less than 1% of the fresh water on Earth. Ground water is 30% of the freshwater. Polar ice is about 68%. The amount of ground water is sufficient to explain the eustatic SLR. Ground water sourced from melting glaciers at the end of the last glacial period takes thousands of years to filter through the ground and return to the sea. Man-kind, through use of ground water, has accelerated this at local points (cities/regions). The ground subsides in these locations thus adding to the apparent SLR (but not eustatic).
This study supports the theory about ground water as a major source of SLR. The study works with the “consensus” 3mm background SLR rate, but if we use Morner’s 1mm eustatic rate, then the study’s claimed 0.8mm SLR from ground water lines up nicely.
https://www.waterworld.com/articles/wwi/print/volume-25/issue-5/groundwater-development-flow-modeling/groundwater-depletion-linked-to-rising.html
Measuring sea level is not like measuring water in a drinking glass. The target is moving, and the target is different at each location all over the world. Some factors: Isostatic rebound, local ground-water-subsidence, silt build up, shore line changes, sea floor changes, sea current changes, wind current changes, temperature changes, tidal changes, etc. That’s why some tide gauges show the sea rising and some show it falling. In some cases, gauges that are in close proximity to each other show contradictory slopes or rates.
SLR panic is Chicken-Little selling fear to the weak minded.