Guest “Son of a beach!” by David Middleton
Gregory Wrightstone linked to the Fox News version of this article on his LinkedIn page, the comments from fellow geologists were fracking hilarious…
World’s beaches disappearing due to climate crisis – study
UK on course to lose a quarter of its sandy coast because of human-driven erosionStefano Valentino
Mon 2 Mar 2020
Almost half of the world’s sandy beaches will have retreated significantly by the end of the century as a result of climate-driven coastal flooding and human interference, according to new research.
The sand erosion will endanger wildlife and could inflict a heavy toll on coastal settlements that will no longer have buffer zones to protect them from rising sea levels and storm surges. In addition, measures by governments to mitigate against the damage are predicted to become increasingly expensive and in some cases unsustainable.
[…]
These estimates are far from the most catastrophic; they rely on an optimistic forecast of international action to fight climate breakdown, a scenario known as RCP4.5. In this scenario of reduced ice-cap melting and lower thermal expansion of water, oceans will only have risen by 50cm by 2100.
However, if the world continues to emit carbon at its current rate, sea levels will rise by an estimated 80cm, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. If this happens, a total of 131,745km of beaches, or 13% of the planet’s ice-free coastline, will go under water.
Around the globe, the average shoreline retreat will be 86.4 metres in the RCP4.5 scenario or 128.1 metres in the high-carbon scenario, though amounts will vary significantly between locations. Flatter or wilder coastlines will be more affected than those where waterfronts are steeper, or those artificially maintained as part of coastal development.
[…]
“The length of threatened seashores incorporates locations that will be submerged by more than 100 metres, assuming there are no physical limits to potential retreat,” said Michalis Vousdoukas, an oceanographer at the JRC and lead author of the study, published in the journal Nature Climate Change. “Our 100-metre threshold is conservative since most beaches’ width is below 50 metres, especially near human settlements and in small islands, such as the Caribbean and the Mediterranean.”
[…]
The Grauniad
Where do I start? “Human settlements”?!?!?!?!? Those are generally called cities. The last time sea level wiped out “human settlements” was called the Holocene transgression.
Those former human settlements are now at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico and the reason why the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) employs archaeologists.
I have to quote this bit of idiocy a second time…
These estimates are far from the most catastrophic; they rely on an optimistic forecast of international action to fight climate breakdown, a scenario known as RCP4.5. In this scenario of reduced ice-cap melting and lower thermal expansion of water, oceans will only have risen by 50cm by 2100.
However, if the world continues to emit carbon at its current rate, sea levels will rise by an estimated 80cm, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
Unmitigated horst schist!
50 cm is half a meter… 1.6 feet. 80 cm is almost 1 meter… 2.6 feet.
For sea level to rise 80 cm by 2100, it would have to be rising twice as fast as the Holocene Transgression from 2081-2100.
And it just kept getting better for those of us who love to ridicule junk science…
Around the globe, the average shoreline retreat will be 86.4 metres in the RCP4.5 scenario or 128.1 metres in the high-carbon scenario…
Let’s look at Miami Beach, the poster child of catastrophic sea level rise. The nearest tide gauge station with a sufficient record length is Virginia Key.
Since 1931, sea level appears to have risen by about 20-25 cm. A review of USGS topographic maps reveals that the coastline has barely moved.
At 3 mm per year, sea level in the Miami Beach area will have risen by another 240 mm by 2100, 24 cm, about 9 inches. Beach slopes can be highly variable. Doran & Overbeck (2015) found that the slopes of North Carolina sandy beaches ranged from 0.05 to 0.10 radians (~3-6°). 9 inches of sea level rise works out to 7 feet of shoreline retreat at 6° and 14 feet at 3°.
Here’s a topographic profile across Miami Beach.
We can see that the sandy beach side (east) is much steeper than the shoreward side. The gray band represents 14 cm of sea level rise. Even if we double that, the shoreline would only retreat by about 100 feet on the shoreward side and hardly budge at all on the sandy beach side, a far cry from 86.4 to 128.1 meters (283 to 420 feet). However, we can see from the topographic maps that the previous 20-25 mm of sea level rise had no affect on the coastline… What’s up with that? Without anthropogenic intervention, beaches move… That’s what they do.
To illustrate the irrelevance of sea level rise, I devised a little topographic exercise using NOAA tides & sea level trends and a USGS topographic map of the Jacksonville FL quadrangle. There are two NOAA sea level stations in this quadrangle: Fernandina Beach and Mayport. I chose Fernandina Beach because the record goes back to 1897, Mayport only goes back to 1930.
2 mm/yr… Can I get a “yawn” for this?
Here is the current tide range for Fernandina Beach…
1.5 m/day… How can 2 mm/yr be a crisis and 1.5 m/day not be a crisis?
Here’s a topographic map of the Fernandina Beach area…
To evaluate the significance insignificance of 2 mm/yr of sea level rise since 1897, I constructed a topographic profile (A-A’) along Atlantic Avenue from Nassau General Hospital (A) to the shoreline (A’).
My next step was to plot the sea level data at the same vertical scale as the topographic profile.
According the the alarmists, sea level rise will make storm surges worse, somehow endangering beaches more than nature already endangers them. What effect has all of this sea level rise had on a 10′ storm surge? Just above the Dean Wormer line (zero-point-zero).
My next exercise was to compare the typical tidal range to sea level rise.
The construction of topographic profiles was literally the first thing I was taught as a freshman geology student back in 1976. How in the hell could ostensibly professional engineers and scientists write crap like this: “World’s beaches disappearing due to climate crisis”… Well, they didn’t. The idiot Grauniad journalist wrote it. The actual paper isn’t as bad as it’s made out to be…
Sandy coastlines under threat of erosion
Michalis I. Vousdoukas, Roshanka Ranasinghe, Lorenzo Mentaschi, Theocharis A. Plomaritis, Panagiotis Athanasiou, Arjen Luijendijk and Luc Feyen
Abstract
Sandy beaches occupy more than one-third of the global coastline1 and have high socioeconomic value related to recreation, tourism and ecosystem services2. Beaches are the interface between land and ocean, providing coastal protection from marine storms and cyclones3. However the presence of sandy beaches cannot be taken for granted, as they are under constant change, driven by meteorological4,5, geological6 and anthropogenic factors1,7. A substantial proportion of the world’s sandy coastline is already eroding1,7, a situation that could be exacerbated by climate change8,9.
[…]
Nature Climate Change
However, the paper has one YUGE problem with it…
Sandy coastlines under threat of erosion
No schist Sherlock! They always have been and always will be.
Beaches are the interface between land and ocean
No schist Sherlock! They always have been and always will be.
However the presence of sandy beaches cannot be taken for granted, as they are under constant change…
No schist Sherlock! They always have been and always will be.
A substantial proportion of the world’s sandy coastline is already eroding…
No schist Sherlock! That’s fracking obvious to anyone who has ever taken at least one semester of stratigraphy and sedimentation. Beaches are not only destroyed by erosion… They are formed by erosion. How the hell could the beach sand have gotten to the beach if it wasn’t eroded from some place else?
And… Here’s the mother of all “no schist Sherlocks”… Every beach that has ever formed has eventually disappeared or ceased to be a beach because of climate change.
Beaches that formed at the Holocene Highstand are now stranded well above sea level.
Many prolific oil and gas reservoir sandstone formations were once beaches.
Every beach currently on Earth will eventually “disappear” or otherwise cease to be a beach due to climate change. However, much of the sand will just be redeposited on new beaches. Because, that’s what beaches do.
This is another climate “crisis” that can be safely filed away as: “Same as it ever was”…
Letting the days go by, let the water hold me down
Letting the days go by, water flowing underground
Into the blue again after the money’s gone
Once in a lifetime, water flowing undergroundSame as it ever was
Same as it ever was
Same as it ever was
Same as it ever was
Same as it ever was
Same as it ever was
Same as it ever was
Same as it ever wasWater dissolving and water removing
Talking Heads, Once In A Lifetime
There is water at the bottom of the ocean
Under the water, carry the water
Remove the water at the bottom of the ocean!
Water dissolving and water removing
References
Doran, K.S., Long, J.W., and Overbeck, J.R., 2015. “A method for determining average beach slope and beach slope variability for U.S. sandy coastlines: U.S. Geological Survey Open-File Report 2015-1053”. 5 p., http://dx.doi.org/10.3133/ofr20151053.
Jameson, J., C. Strohmenger. “Late Pleistocene to Holocene Sea-Level History of Qatar: Implications for Eustasy and Tectonics”. AAPG Search and Discovery Article #90142 © 2012 AAPG Annual Convention and Exhibition, April 22-25, 2012, Long Beach, California.
Vousdoukas, M.I., Ranasinghe, R., Mentaschi, L. et al. Sandy coastlines under threat of erosion. Nat. Clim. Chang.10, 260–263 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-020-0697-0
Meanwhile in Ireland 2005
From https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/irish-beach-reappears-storm-vanish-12-years-ago-ireland-republic-ashleam-bay-achill-a8066771.html
and recently in the UK …
From https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5238421/Storm-Eleanor-changes-stony-beach-sandy.html
UNFAIR!
Things always only get WORSE with climate change, they NEVER get better.
You simply can’t say, hey, some beaches come back. Or, hey, more people die in of cold than of heat, so warmer is better. Or even, hey, plants LOVE CO2.
No, you HAVE to leave out the good stuff. Its in the rules.
Oh sorry, I now understand that these reports may be construed as offensive to some.
So please to everyone who feels offended by seeing these reports, understand that I’m profoundly sorry and that I hope and pray (to Jesus Christ redeemer of humanity) that one day your empty, idle lives will have some real meaning.
Have a good day! 🙂
tom0mason, I do hope you realise that Caligula wasn’t serious. People’s words are being misconstrued alot in recent comments, or their irony/sarcasm is being lost.
Yes, very sorry, my /sarcasm tag was missing.
Basically: places like WUWT bring science.
The MSM brings gloss, re-written press releases and is a waste of time and can’t die soon enough, although I’d probably wouldn’t realize when it goes.
Ooops, I failed again.
I was not implying Caligula Jones was one of those who were offended (I took his remark as sarcasm). No, I realized (from his comment) that some others may have been offended, thus my somewhat tongue-in-cheek-response.
However I do pray that some day those who may be offended by seeing that nature can take care of itself, will see the light.
Thanks for responding tom0mason. I too wish we could go back to that time of enjoying not just nature but also day to day mutual respect, kinder times. It’s likely just me being a little on the more sensitive side, writing letters to local, state and federal politicians without response over a long period of time now. It dents the soul.
There is humor here on this site from time to time, which makes me smile.
I’ve said that we’ve gone from:
That’s interesting, where did you read that?
to:
I find that hard to believe
to:
That’s BS, I don’t believe it.
If we could just move back to the middle part we’d all be better off.
But as they say, these days, we don’t listen to learn. We listen to react.
Oh, this is too funny for words. Talk about missing context. The Guardian is clueless (again). If only they knew where our current beaches came from, since we’ve enjoyed over 400 feet of sea level rise since the depths of the last Ice Age glacial period.
So 7-9 inches of sea level rise every 100 years cause beaches to disappear…???
JPP
The only time I’ve seen a beach ruined in the long term was by FALLING water levels.
The water level in Gull Lake in Central Alberta declined – don’t recall why -but the beach sand is now stranded in small dunes above the beach and the swimming area is now all mud – except at the provincial beach, where the Province trucked in acres of sand and deposited it in the shallow water.
As others have suggested , rising water levels will typically cause the beach sand to be moved up-slope by wave and storm action.
Who cares? The world’s gonna end in 12 years.
Except if we extinct rebellion.
Or, if you’re a Democrat or a Never Trumper (same thing these days)…in about 6 months.
Again.
A 2013 article on WUWT dealt with reclaiming beaches. If you are worried about loosing your beach, just follow the well established methods to retain and capture sand.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/08/09/breaking-news-seventh-first-climate-refugees-discovered/
David, thank you for another of your superb broadsides aimed directly at and hitting the incompetent and seriously misinformed reporting of this rubbish.
There is an interesting story to be told about the origins of the IPCC and the involvement of Maurice Strong in setting its Terms of Reference. There was to be no mention of anything other than human caused Climate Change. Forget the influence of the Sun. Forget anything not caused by humans. It’s all our fault and we must all pay, now and often. Anything goes when the future of the planet is at stake. That’s what you get when emotions take over and real science is ignored.
The IPCC Guide for Policy Makers had to issued prior to the publication of the scientific sections so they could be ‘adjusted’ to fit the narrative. Who are policy makers? Governments. That is why it is the Intergovernmental Panel on CC The IPCC is not really concerned with real science, its about forcing us all to accept the dictates of those who dont have our best interests at heart by appealing to our emotions. That is why when you take the time and trouble to do just a little real research the ridiculously one-sided narrative is exposed for what it really is: Political Propaganda.
Maurice Strong was an Alberta oil fields billionaire who overreached himself and died in China in 2015 so he would not have to stand trial in the USA for manipulating the oil-for-food scandal. Such an sad example, and his legacy continues to harm us all…
But, but, what if the warmings and coolings have nothing to do with CO2?
Henrik Svensmark, a Danish physicist, and his associates, proposed a couple of decades ago that it was sun activity which caused both warmings and coolings. CERN validated that cosmic rays could indeed influence cloud cover. More than average cloud cover leads to less sun being able to reach the earth surface which leads to cooling. Less than average cloud cover leads to more sun reaching the earth surface, so leads to warming. CO2 had no measurable role.
Dr. Don Easterbrook (geologist) recently published a book which covered an 800,000 year duration and claims that sun activity causes both small and large warmings and coolings, including even recent Ice Ages. The level of solar magneticism (sun spots) dictate the level of cosmic rays which enter the lower atmosphere. CO2 has no measurable role.
CO2 may continue to increase but has no appreciable role insofar as impacting global temperature. Therefore, climate is unrelated to human activity.
Not only that, surf report indicates current conditions (at buoy 41114) 3.9’ @ur momisugly 5 sec, and forecasts as much as 3-5 ft (is that crest to flat ocean? or peak to trough?) seas Saturday afternoon. So a high tide + a wave = 3 m (to the nearest significant digit), and 2 mm/yr, even for 80 years, is supposed to be a problem?
2 mm/year… gosh, do you think we can outrun it?
Sea level is heavily influenced by the velocity of wind circling the south pole with the velocity changing about 25% on 100 year plus cycles. If the wind stopped the adjacent level would rise over 4 feet. See Joseph O. Fletcher lecture in 2000 at CSUMB.
I’ve driven down both sides of Florida, and noticed that the east (Atlantic) side has a steeper slope to the ocean then the western side. surely this is simply because the Atlantic is more active, has bigger waves, than the Caribbean. The reason for this is that the trade winds blow from the south-east, and Florida, even if it is not exactly mountainous, shelters the Caribbean from the wind, whereas the Atlantic coast is exposed to the full strength of the wind.