First posted on ClimateREALISM
On September 8th, 2023, The New York Times (NYT) ran an article titled “DeSantis, Leading a State Menaced by Climate Change, Shrugs Off the Threat.” If DeSantis is, in fact, shrugging off the threat of climate change, he is right to do so. Data shows that the extreme weather events that DeSantis is dealing with not historically unique or even rare, but rather they are part of normal weather during the hurricane season in Florida. In other words, recent hurricane activity in the state under DeSantis’ administration are not indicative of climate change. Also, concerning Florida sea level rise in some areas, that is due to local conditions like land subsidence and rapid water withdrawals from local aquifers, not climate change.
The NYT article opined:
Now running for president five years later, the Florida governor no longer repeats his previous view that humans affect the climate, even as scientists say that the hurricanes battering his state are being intensified by man-made global warming. Those storms include Hurricane Idalia, which killed three people this month, and last year’s catastrophic Hurricane Ian, which killed 150 Floridians.
On the 2024 campaign trail, Mr. DeSantis has promised to ramp up domestic oil and gas production and fight against mandates on the introduction of electric vehicles — the kinds of steps that could worsen the sea-level rise that is flooding coastal cities in Florida and around the world. Mr. DeSantis says he is simply being realistic about the country’s economic and national security needs.
The NYT is wrong to blame climate change for Hurricanes Idalia and Ian. Climate Realism provided data-based rebuttals to the Hurricane Ian claims here. Climate at a Glance provides a solid refutation to the false claims that climate change is increasing hurricanes overall – the data says otherwise.
Most importantly, Florida, America’s most hurricane-prone state, recently underwent its longest period in recorded history without any hurricanes. Even the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says in their AR6 report, Chapter 11, Weather and Climate Extreme Events in a Changing Climate there is no detection or attribution of a climate change signal in hurricane data.
Data shows no link between climate change and hurricanes, but more importantly, individual hurricanes are weather events, and not climate events, which further refute NYT’s claims. Weather is not climate, and the two operate on completely different timescales.
On the issue of Hurricane Idalia, the NYT noted, “Mr. Biden seemed to weigh in last weekend during a visit to Florida after Idalia. “Nobody intelligent can deny the impact of the climate crisis anymore,” he said.”
But DeSantis fired back with: “The idea that we’ve not had powerful storms until recently, that’s just not factually true,” he said, adding that Democrats were trying to “politicize the weather.”
In the conflict between data, which clearly demonstrate that hurricanes aren’t getting worse and alarming but patently false claims made by the likes of the NYT and President Biden that hurricanes are worsening, science says follow the data not assertions made in furtherance of a political agenda.
On the issue of sea-level rise, one of the most commonly cited issues about Florida is flooding in Miami. The NYT itself has posted several stories on this topic, and they all missed the main cause for the problem, which isn’t rising seas due to climate change, but land subsidence.
Much of Miami was built on reclaimed swamp land, and then built up with modern infrastructure. That extra weight causes a sinking of the land, known as subsidence, allowing seawater to seep in when the surfaces sink to near sea-level. It also means that during strong rainfall events, and hurricane storm surge, areas of Miami that have subsided don’t drain as they did years before, resulting in flooding.
This is clearly addressed in the scientific paper Land subsidence contribution to coastal flooding hazard in southeast Florida, published in Proceedings of IAHS in 2020.
Governor DeSantis seems to be better informed on the issue of climate change and Florida than either the NYT or Biden, sticking to reality, supported by what the data says, rather than responding to the clearly false claims of worsening weather and sea-level rise for the state.
In short, DeSantis is right to “shrug off” the climate hype and focus instead on the real problems facing Florida. Doing so might reduce the chances of sea water incursion and subsidence, and minimize damage done by hurricanes undoubtedly instore for the state in the future. Ending fossil fuel use in the vain quest to control the climate will do neither.
Anthony Watts is a senior fellow for environment and climate at The Heartland Institute. Watts has been in the weather business both in front of, and behind the camera as an on-air television meteorologist since 1978, and currently does daily radio forecasts. He has created weather graphics presentation systems for television, specialized weather instrumentation, as well as co-authored peer-reviewed papers on climate issues. He operates the most viewed website in the world on climate, the award-winning website wattsupwiththat.com.
Why does anyone read the New York Times anymore?
Yes, and they believe the propaganda, of course most are Democrats and don’t know they are being lied to.
If you repeat a lie often enough you begin to believe it to be true
I’ve heard that a lot.
Don’t know? More like don’t care.
For the Crossword and Sudoku puzzles???
It’s the fishwrap of record.
9 out of 10 homeless people prefer it?
I am not sure what Anthony Watts means when he writes “This is clearly addressed in the scientific paper Land subsidence contribution to coastal flooding hazard in southeast Florida, published in Proceedings of IAHS in 2020.”
The conclusions of the above papers states:
“Increasing flooding frequency in several coastal communities along the southeast Florida coastline resulted in damage to property, commerce, and overall quality of life. The increased flooding frequency reflects increasing rate of relative sea level rise, mostly due to ocean dynamic contributions, but possibly also due to coastal subsidence.”
Note that the authors say that the flooding is “mostly due to ocean dynamic contributions” while subsidence is only listed as a possible contribution.
Regarding the cGPS monitoring, the authors say: “As soon as permits will be issued for the four sites, the cGPS stations will be conducted and start operating.”
Apparently they have come to their conclusions based on data they haven’t collected yet.
The relative sea level rise at Virginia Key is 3.1mm/year..
Most of the sea level rise in the Gulf are between 1.5 and 3mm per year.
DON’T PANIC !!!
Or you could do the chicken-little thing… like most stupid alarmists do !
In 1906 an earthquake lifted the west coast of California by 1 foot as evidenced by mussels on pier pilings in less than 30 seconds. In 1989 an earthquake lifted the west coast of California by 1 foot in less than 17 seconds as evidenced by mussels on pier pilings.
The net result is that there is no difference in sea level in over 100 years as evidenced by photographs of the area. I’ll be dead and gone before the next uplift, but any sea level rise is not an issue locally in the lifetimes of most residents.
There are so many things to worry about in life- that anyone who panics over this needs to see a shrink. 🙂
And you really should at least read the article you link to
Now, considering the sea level rise is only 3-4 mm/year along the Florida coast…
Looks like Izzy has linked to an article that says what the main post says….
He scanned it for quotes that would support what he already believes and ignored the rest.
As for the statement from the linked article “. . . results suggest that contribution of local land subsidence affect only small areas along the southeast Florida coast . . .”, let’s consider these facts that refute that argument:
“In this study we evaluate the contribution of land subsidence to the increasing flooding hazard in Miami Beach using Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (InSAR) observations. “Preliminary InSAR results detected localized subsidence, up to -3 mm/yr, mainly in reclaimed land located along the western side of Miami Beach.
“Although the detected subsidence velocities are quite low, their effect on the flooding hazard is significant, because houses originally built on higher ground have subsided since the city was built, about 80 years ago, by 16-24 cm down to flooding hazard zones.”
— Simone Fiaschi, Department of Geosciences, University of Padua, Padua, Italy, and Shimon Wdowinski, RSMAS, University of Miami, Miami, USA
and
“Geological changes along the East Coast are causing land to sink along the seaboard. “New research using GPS and prehistoric data has shown that nearly the entire coast is affected, from Massachusetts to Florida and parts of Maine.
“The study, published this month in Geophysical Research Letters, outlines a hot spot from Delaware and Maryland into northern North Carolina where the effects of groundwater pumping are compounding the sinking effects of natural processes”
—John Upton, “Sinking Atlantic Coastline Meets Rapidly Rising Seas”, Scientific American, 14 April 2016
You’ve gotten a lot of down votes for daring to disagree with the author, but in fact there is very little subsidence at all in coastal Florida. Subsidence is only a factor when there are clay soils subject to compressing (consolidating) due to ground pressures. There is almost no clay at all in Florida – the Florida peninsula is basically a gigantic beach, where above the bedrock, virtually all of the soils are sands. The bedrock is actually quite shallow in most of coastal Florida, within a few feet of natural ground surface. Which is why virtually all tall building constructed in Florida within the last 50 years are embedded in the bedrock using concrete or steel piles.
The problem that Florida faces is that prior to about 50 years ago there were no flood protection standards in the building codes … a deficiency that began to be corrected a half century ago. Today it is illegal to place any building’s first floor below either the 100 year flood plain elevation or the 100 year storm surge elevation. In most of coastal south Florida, that means the first floor can be no less than anywhere from 12 to 60 feet above mean sea level. However, those standards did not apply to the older buildings and infrastructure, and of course the coastlines tended to get developed first and only in the last few decades has moved gradually inland.
If you had toured the city of Fort Myers Beach a year ago right after Hurricane Ian passed through, which featured a maximum 15 ft storm surge, all of the older housing stock (the majority of the town) was completely wiped out … while all of the newer buildings, required to be elevated above the design storm surge elevation, survived quite nicely with only superficial damage.
For the last 30 years coastal Florida has been undergoing a steady process of redevelopment, with newer buildings replacing older buildings. That process of course is now jump started in Fort Myers Beach – all of the old stuff was wiped out, so by the time reconstruction is completed in the next two years or so, the city will not resemble the old Fort Myers Beach at all.
Correction to second para., since the commenting function at WUWT no longer allows editing. It was a typo – first floor elevations must be anywhere from 12 to 16 feet above MSL in the coastal construction zones of south Florida.
By the way, I am a career civil and construction engineer, lived here in south Florida for the last 33 years, and I am an active real estate developer who deals every day with Florida building code matters. So I do know what I’m talking about.
but… but… climate “scientists” and their lackeys don’t care what engineers say! /sarc
Adding to your comments is the new building codes for roof tie downs and other wind mitigating construction showed that the new buildings stood up quite well to the wind. Personally, I had my roof done with the waterproof self adhering underlayment put on along with 125 mph rated shingles. Winds in my area estimated to have been around 100 mph with higher gusts, only lost one shingle along the roof edge. I had metal shutters up and the house suffered no other damage. Mitigation, especially protecting your windows from breach, is highly effective.
It would seem to me that much of the flooding in urban areas of Florida would be due to the very development you mention here, namely paving over the naturally permeable ground with impenetrable surfaces: asphalt, concrete, stone, etc. It might be logical to expect ground subsidence to be a natural corollary of these surfacing projects which flush rain water down through city streets and out to sea when for millennia “sunny day rains” percolated down through natural ground cover and soil and replenished the underground aquifers. Minus the underground lakes, ground would tend to subside. Such subsidence as shown in the articles Anthony Watts cites. From the article:
https://scientificinquirer.com/2021/07/22/the-dangers-of-urban-flooding-are-increased-by-concrete-asphalt-and-brick/#:~:text=Besides%20climate%20change%2C%20one%20of,%2C%20pavements%2C%20and%20parking%20lots.
“Minus the underground lakes, ground would tend to subside.” – or not…
Prior to the 1970s, little to no thought was given to the effects of development on stormwater runoff, in Florida and probably so in most jurisdictions. But that changed in the last half century so both water quantity and water quality concerns are taken into account in designing and permitting new development.
Subsidence, as I mentioned above, is not really an issue in coastal Florida because of our geology here. We do pump a lot of groundwater, but it is not “mined” like it is in some parts of the US and the world, like the Ogalalla aquifer, and water tables maintain a pretty static level when seasonally adjusted (higher in the summer rainy season, lower in the winter dry season).
Also, unlike some locations, such as in the Los Angeles basin where many tens of feet of subsidence has been observed, largely due to long term production of their oil reservoirs, we don’t do oil production along the Florida coastline.
Not true. Subsidence can happen in all types of soils, especially in sandy soils*. And subsidence can be caused by a variety of factors, such by large-scale geological effects in bedrock (e.g., isostatic rebound from last period of glacial overburden in adjacent sections of land), from tectonic plate movements or normal/reverse earthquake fault motion, and from depletion of groundwater or aquifer water due to human extraction*.
*”Land subsidence occurs when large amounts of groundwater have been withdrawn from certain types of rocks, such as fine-grained sediments. The rock compacts because the water is partly responsible for holding the ground up. When the water is withdrawn, the rocks falls in on itself.”
— https://www.usgs.gov/special-topics/water-science-school/science/land-subsidence
Yeah. What he said.
Another contibuting factor to flooding in Miami, suppossedly, is the fact that mining companies have been mining sand off the coast of that city- which increases storm damage and flooding. I saw 2-3 YouTube videos on this subject- one interviewed a former mayor of that city and she agreed the mining of sand was a contribiting factor. I don’t know how true this is- just saying it may be true and seems reasonable. I’m too lazy to look for those videos- but maybe late.
Florida gets hurricanes.. check…always have…check…intensities of hurricanes are not increasing nor is frequency,
check..until recently,, Florida was in a hurricane drought…check…sea levels have not changed much since they built close to the ocean…check.. temperatures virtually unchanged, perhaps slight uptick over recent decades but hardly noticeable to homo sapiens, check…WHAT THE HELL you talking about NY TIMES?
Of course DeSantis is right. That why democrats hate him. It really is all about dogma. No one actually looks out the window anymore and sees that its not really any different than it ever was.
I started really liking DeSantis when he flew a plane load of illegals to Martha’s Vineyard, home of wealthy, snobby, wokesters. Of course those wokesters- all who believe in “sanctuary cities” were not pleased with their new guests, so they forwarded the plane to a national guard base on Cape Cod.
DeSantis has now overseen the repairs and recovery from 3 hurricanes, Irma, Ian and Idalia (yes, the “I”s have it). He is vastly experienced in coordinating numerous agencies in dealing with whatever comes along. His hands on approach, his being on the ground there when needed and his demonstrations of outstanding leadership make him the most qualified to be our next President. There are those who will complain that he lacks charisma. He is a doer rather than talker, and that is what we need now.
Charisma is vastly over rated. I’m voting for him, and not just because I’m also Italian American! I wanna see big spaghetti dinners out in the patio of the White House. 🙂
mama mia!
I don’t know whose idea that was. But I was loving it. All the southern governors were suddenly in total harmony. On the other hand I don’t get out much. They’re landing in sanctuary cities like Denver. 16,836 since December. One reviewer of the “Sanctuary City” pleges around the country as a “hypocritical bridge” was right on, and boy it sure shows right now.
On the 2024 campaign trail, Mr. DeSantis has promised to ramp up domestic oil and gas production and fight against mandates on the introduction of electric vehicles — the kinds of steps that could worsen the sea-level rise that is flooding coastal cities in Florida and around the world.
Yet another example of claiming that we should do things ‘because climate’ which can have no effect on the supposed problem. Suppose there is sea level rise caused by global warming.
How much effect on Florida flooding will the EV mandates have? None!
EV mandates propitiate Gaia, don’t you know.
Well EVs are quite a lot heavier than other cars. Has any work been carried out on the effects of high EV penetration on local subsidence rates ? 🙂
Of 7,853,979 vehicles in Florida, about 96,000 are EV’s. Now, does that seem to be ‘high EV penetration’ to you?
It was sarc.
Did anyone else notice that they refer to him as Mr. DeSantis.
His title is governor.
Does anyone expect the NYT to make the same over sight for a Democrat governor?
Gov. DeSantis IS a conservationist, with a record of strong environmental protections for water quality, Everglades restoration, and actual environmental issues. He does not dance to the tune of the warmunists with their barely disguised attempt to destroy capitalism and freedom using “climate change” as their all purpose threat of the day.
As for Miami, it is not that there is a lot of “subsidence”, since all of the heavy infrastructure such as high rise buildings, common on the coast, are all supported by pile foundations resting in bedrock. There’s really not much subsidence. There is not much ground pressure exerted by low rise homes and commercial buildings, and there is no subsidence on landfill that is comprised of sandy soil, which is predominant throughout Florida. Subsidence is common in clay soils, where continuous soil pressures over time cause the moisture to move out of the soil and the soil consolidates. But we have very little clay soil in Florida, and none along the seacoast.
The issue in Miami, and just a very small part of it (immediately along the water front) is that much of it was built, with or without fill, up to a century or more ago, certainly nearly all of the coastline being developed at least 5 decades ago, when there were no standards in place for flood protection. For the last half century Florida has adopted strong flood protection codes that, for instance, forbid new construction within the 100 year flood plain or storm surge elevation. Which is why all of the newer buildings along the coastline are either built upon much higher fill, or are elevated on pilings. But of course all of the older buildings were not built to such standards.
If one had seen the destruction a year ago from Hurricane Ian at Fort Myers Beach, one of the striking features post storm was that all of the older buildings and facilities were completely wiped out by the storm surge, but all of the newer buildings including individual homes, built up high on pilings, survived quite nicely. But unfortunately for that city, the majority of the construction in that old beach town was of older vintage and was wiped out.
It is not sea level rise that causes catastrophic flooding – it is natural storm events with high storm surge and high rainfall depths that cause damage to developed areas. And poor design.
One comment, I live in Venice along the Gulf coast about 1 mile as the crow flies from the Gulf. Having grown up with a well and septic, when I bought my house I checked the well surveys looking for a layer of clay above the well. The survey for the property I bought showed 30 feet of sand, then 10 feet of mixed shells and gravel then a 9 ft layer of gray clay, then more shells and gravel until the limestone aquifer about 60 feet down. I happen to have a very good pocket in that limestone, very slight tannin, no sulfur. There are 3 aquifers in this area at depths of 50-70 feet, around 150 feet and then at 400 feet farther inland. New wells are put into the 150 foot level. By contrast, the Tampa area has only one aquifer. My well is feed by the shallow aquifer that comes over from near the middle of the state where there is no clay layer.
If Florida was run by Dems, it would have the ethical lapses of Andrew Cuomo, Chuck Schumer, and NJ in general in hyping every storm for extra federal funds to rebuild from Superstorm “fill in the blank”.
The Democrats need to get back to carrying about the workers instead of mainly carrying about the weather.
When did they ever care about the well being of workers ?
Claiming to care about workers is not the same thing as actually caring about workers.
The policies pushed by Democrats have been bad for workers for at least the last 100 years.
Labor Union “contributions” are good.
DeSantis and Anthony are intelligent people. They form their opinions and make decisions based on objective facts and the scientific process. When Biden states:
“Nobody intelligent can deny the impact of the climate crisis anymore,”
he is using a different definition of intelligent. He seems to think it refers to the inability to think critically or understand logic. Perhaps he has confused “intelligent” with “compliant”.
Leftists consider themselves to be smart, which means that anyone who doesn’t agree with them isn’t smart.
Ahhhh . . . the woke New York Times, being so ignorant as to write a headline featuring:
as if climate is something that is restricted by geographically-surveyed borders.
Do we therefore conclude that Georgia, to the immediate north of Florida is not “menaced” by climate change? How about Cuba, just 90 miles to the south of Florida . . . no worries there about climate change and possible effects of such on hurricanes? Yeah, right!
Since they made the distinction, the NYT simply must publish their list of all states and countries they have determined are NOT subject to/threatened by “climate change”. Inquiring minds want to know.
If climate change is such a threat to Florida, there should be evidence that the population is declining as people seek safer environments. Yet the state still has the 3rd or 4th highest population in the Union, so either the people are oblivious to the threat or they don’t consider it to be one in the first place. Nor are they naive enough to fall for all the alarmism thrown at them whenever even a mildly extreme weather event occurs because they consider them to be the cost of doing business in their state.
DeSantis is the best governor in the country, and by some margin. His record of accomplishment gives me hope of actually reining in the federal leviathan and steering the country toward better times. If we are wise enough, he will be president in 2025.