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.
…
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)
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
15 years eh?
Now at last we have some optimism from these climate folks
I was sure that Windows 10 would have it completely wrecked before Christmas
The 3.2mm/year is only a measure of the water in the oceans, not the hight relative to land.
The relative MSL rises between 1.5 to 2mm/year and that is the important measure.
WTF are these so called Professors on these days!
Another on BBC claims this:
The concentration of CO2 in our atmosphere has changed forever
In 2013, the level of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere was measured at 400 parts per million (ppm) for the first time, at Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii. By May 2016, it had hit 400ppm at the South Pole too.
Prof Tony Ryan, Director of the Grantham Centre for Sustainable Futures, says: “This is having a profound effect on us and on future generations, and we’re never going to go back. So, in 1962 when I was born, it was 320ppm, 0.03%, now it’s 0.04%… those numbers will pan out to climate change, and climate change will mean that we have to change the way we live.”
[ref: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/2CVVqFNMPpYNGKbHzlZPjTC/7-extraordinary-things-science-has-discovered-in-the-last-decade%5D
Well, this explains Al Gore’s activism.
He’s not out to save the Planet. He’s out to save the Internet he invented.
Folks, if you want to know when the seas are really rising, check the real estate pages in SOCAL and Florida. When Barbra Steisand’s Malibu estate is on the market for $100,000, you need to move to Colorado.
15 years equals about 1-2 inches (2.54-5.08 cm) at most…Where is this guy’s head??
As I see it, If Al Gore invented the internet, he should also be able to invent a floating internet. You know, like the floating wind generators! After all, he’s got all the answers (NOT).
No way can sea level rise destroy the internet in 15 years. Sea level rise of 2 millimeters per year is more likely but not entirely accurate. The best estimate is by Chao, Yu, znc Li (Science, April 11th 2008). They corrected the measured sea level rise for water held by artificial reservoirs built since 1900. When corrections were applied the sea level rise curve it became linear for the previous eight years. Anything that has been linear this long is not about to change anytime soon. The corresponding slope was 2.48 millimeters per year. This gives a sea level rise of justt under 10 inches per century, not a hazard to the internet
Then there’s 5G internet (or even 6G).
The multiplexers are on towers on the top of hills.
So the internet will still be operating long after the users are submerged…
Unfortunately when talking about whether the internet is going to get inundated or not, average sea level rise is pretty close to meaningless.
This one instance in which local tide gauges are the only thing that matter.
If the land is rising or falling is absolutely critical in knowing how long until the sea reaches something in that area.
This another reason why this “study” is completely useless. For each piece of internet infrastructure, you need to measure how the tides are changing in that area, and then calculate a time from for that spot and that spot only. Then move on to the next spot.
This study is just another attempt to gin up scary headlines without bothering to do the actual work needed to figure out what is really happening.
“The chances of anything coming from Mars are a milion to one, but still they come.”
… makes also good Science Fiction horror.
Google and Facebook have done more to kill the internet than anything I have seen through censorship. Twitter is on track for the same.
What will kill the internet is advertising. When I have to wait more than 5-10 seconds watching advertising before I can watch a video, I don’t bother waiting for the video. At my age, I buy what I buy, no amount of advertising will get me to switch from toothpaste X for toothpaste Y.
Davis,
I find it interesting that billions of dollars are spent on advertising/marketing, and yet Hollywood de-Nyes that their violent movies or video games have any impact on homicide rates or choice of weapons. It seems to me that either marketing people or Hollywood actors are out of touch with reality. That can’t both be right!
This is what happens when someone takes a nonsensical computer model and then assumes nothing in the world will change except what someone programmed the computer to spit out.
It always amazes me how these people fail to understand how difficult it is to have dynamics change so suddenly to cause such rapid acceleration in rate . The only “tipping point” around is the one at 273.15 — and that’s smeared over latitude and salinity .
A reason there is the difference between tide gages and satellites ( if the satellite estimations are correct ) may be that they measure mid-ocean deep water where thermal expansion may cause the rate to be higher than shallow water in shore where the same thermal expansion has little effect . I believe this has been worked out .
So 1.5 decades is the new “century”? Got it. Wait, what? “… in as soon as 15 years”.
Computer Science Professor Paul Barford
is a stupid-head. He should get a T-shirt
that says that.
There is no acceleration
of sea level rise based on tide gages —
the current rise rate is 6 to 8 inches a century,
not one foot in 15 years.
I read the article, but not the paper,
which I’m sure was a deeper pile of BS.
When you are a leftist, you can make up
any scary story about climate change,
get it published, and have no questions
or negative feedback from fellow leftists,
since you are supporting the “cause”.
There must be a competition among leftists
for the scariest climate change fairy tale.
Killing the internet in 15 years is a good fairy tale.
But the author will still be alive in 15 years —
he should have said 30 years.
It will need new government departments local and national to deal with this problem. ” Parkinson’s Law” C Northcote Parkinson.
will create many supporting roles for sub departments. If it never happens these people will still have jobs and have to be redeployed..
According to this report, NOAA is merely reflecting other “peer reviewed” literature to explore future scenarios:
In other words, they took the already scary model outputs and revised them upwards. 2.7 meters by 2100 will get you at least 1 foot every 15 years between now and 2100.
This appears to be built in to the NOAA Sea Level Rise Viewer.
If you look at page 12 of the linked document (page 22 in the PDF file), it shows a graph of the four SLR scenarios (“lowest”, “intermediate low”, “intermediate high”, and “highest”) [Parris et al. (2012)]. The “lowest” one is essentially a continuation of the historical SLR, which means that 2100 global mean sea level will be about 20 cm higher than 1992. the “intermediate low” scenario projects 50 cm rise; the “intermediate high” projects about 110 cm, and the “highest” scenario projects 200 cm. These are the estimates NOAA started with, and then found reasons to adjust upward.
So it appears that what Professor Barford is calling an “official NOAA scenario” is the most extreme worst possible case scenario anyone can justify to what is laughingly called the “peer review community”.