Guest Essay by Kip Hansen — 19 December 2023 – 1100 words/8 minutes
Here’s a story recently being pushed like mad by the climate crisis propagandists: El Bosque!
The last residents of a coastal Mexican town destroyed by climate change
‘It’s time for us to go’: the Mexican fishing village swallowed by the sea
Coastal Mexican town sees rising seas, storms and disappearing locals
We may be the first people displaced by climate change in Mexico, but we won’t be the last
And back in 2022, published in time for COP27:
Mexican village blames climate change as sea swallows its homes
Who, or what, is El Bosque? In Spanish, the name means “the forest”, but El Bosque is a forest no more. This century, it has always been a sandy little peninsula barely above sea level, poking out north from the Mexican coast between Veracruz and the Yucatan peninsula:
Just to the west is the port serving the Puerto Ceiba oil and natural gas operations.
The first step in looking at this problem is to view the geography – as sea level is basically a geography problem – the relationship between the dry land and the sea. The satellite imagery above shows clearly some important points: El Bosque sits on a tiny hooked peninsula that extends out onto a very shallow shelf of sand, at the mouth of the Grijalva River. The northeast side of the peninsula faces the Gulf of Mexico, while the southwestern shore is inside its own hook and protected from the waves:
The incoming swells are clearly visible even from space. Now imagine those northeast swells when Hurricane Isidore hit El Bosque (circled) in Sept 2022:
How many hurricanes affect El Bosque?
A lot of tropical cyclones, all spinning in the same direction, nearly all north of El Bosque, with winds pushing water and waves down on El Bosque from the northeast. To save you the trouble of counting, that is 37 tropical cyclones in 23 years. That’s a few more than the 23 in the twenty years before that – and, since the advent of the satellite era, there have been 106 tropical storms affecting the area of interest. And that’s a lot of wind and waves, peaking up over that shallow sandy bottom and smacking that little peninsula.
Oh – wait! What about Sea Level Rise?
Ah, the Big Lie. Nearly every news story blames sea level rise, at least in part, for El Bosque’s demise. So, let’s have a look. Disappointingly, there is no good long-term tide gauge in all of Mexico registered with the PSMSL – Permanent Service for Mean Sea Level. In fact, there does not seem to be any good long-term tide gauge data anywhere in Mexico…many stations have decades of missing data. One nearby station (on the Yucatan Peninsula), Progresso, has data from 1952 to 1984, then a separate record up to 1998-2012. It is plainly marked: “Use only with extreme caution.” If its data is approximately correct, and there is no guarantee that it is even that, then from about 1960 to 2012 there was 100 mm or 4 inches of Sea Level Rise over those 50 years. At that rate, for another ten years, we could guess (and it is only a guess, it is not measured data) that Progresso has seen 120 mm or 4.7 inches of SLR (including whatever VLM is seen at Progresso) since about 1960, which would be close to the expected century-long value for global SLR of 8-10 inches.
This, I admit, is lousy data. But, it is what we have. What we don’t have is any data showing that SLR at El Bosque, or anywhere in the southern Gulf of Mexico, has been in any way exceptional. And, while five inches of SLR is not nothing, it is not enough to flood and drown little El Bosque. Sea level rise is not the villain in this little story…nor is climate change.
What is to blame is this:
The sand shelf off of El Bosque is only 9-14 meters (30-45 feet) deep. Most of that is shallow enough for me to free-dive. Storm-driven waves will build and peak and break as they are driven from the northeast by cyclonic storms onto the shore at El Bosque. Here is the result of decades of storms:
Again, we see the wave pattern clearly in the February 2023 image in the lower right. Those waves rake the down beach from the point – you can actually see the massive breakers from space.
The truth is that El Bosque will eventually be entirely washed away – it is simply a long-standing, but in no way permanent, little spit of sand, exposed to the wrath of every passing tropical storm that comes hurtling in over the Yucatan. Like many of the barrier islands along the East Coast of the United States, the El Bosque peninsula is in constant danger of being cut in two at the narrow neck by the next big storm.
This is not the result of any change in the climate. It is the result of the climate of the Yucatan Peninsula, which is and (probably) has always been shaped by the tropical storms rolling in from the Caribbean and even some originating in the Atlantic.
The solution to all of these local problems, whether blamed on climate change or some other imagined ill, is adaptation. If your land is being eroded away by wind and waves then you must do something other than hope your national government or some international entity will come to your rescue. For those poor fishermen at El Bosque, they will have to move. And I hope that their government will give them some financial help in doing so.
But they can’t blame climate change for their sorrows. They have built upon the sand and the winds and waves have come.
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Author’s Comment:
Late Note: 1600 hr 19 December — Although a search of WUWT failed to note it by name — Anthony Watts covered this issue previously HERE. – kh
Narrative journalism gives a lot of legs to propaganda stories like this. This one has been repeated for the last two COPs. It even includes photos of posters produced by poor kids that have lost their elementary school, probably requested by the news photographer. It is a good human-interest story, nonetheless, but the Big Lie is that their troubles have been caused by climate change and sea level rise.
Beach erosion is a natural process and sand spits and sand-based barrier islands are extremely susceptible to erosion. The time for them to act was a decade ago – build sea walls or move.
Thanks for reading.
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I have a book that lists 217 named villages that were destroyed by the sea around the coast of the UK over the last two millennia. It must be assumed that many others whose names are not known also vanished. Build right next to the sea and you are liable to be flooded at some time.
Doggerland must have contained numerous settlements prior to the great flood from the end of the last glaciation. Dover and Calais were once a leisurely 20 mile walk that could be made in a day.
Man has a habit of thinking the land is permanent and unchanging and building his settlement close to the abundance of the oceans (We don’t like to walk far). It is nothing more than the inevitable war between land and sea that we can’t control only adapt to.
That village should have been placed farther inland and just roads going to the point for fishing access. I wonder how far inland those villagers will eventually relocate? Likely about 1/2 mile east and on the coast.
Erosion happens, it’s inevitable
I’m sure I read the rate of sea-level rise would have been noticeable to the people who at the time lived near the shore
At 2mm/yr, in your lifetime sea level will have risen eight inches. What is the range of daily high/low tides for your area, measured in feet perhaps?
Redge and Little Mike ==> Tides in the mid-latitudes are smallish — often just inches. At Miami, Florida, they have 2 feet of tide, lowest to highest.
Even way up the Hudson River north of New York City, they see four and five feet of tide….
But the Doggerland went under rapidly- not during the current 2mm/yr, and those ancient people had good long term memories- so over several generations should have noticed.
Ya see that tree in the water waaay out there in the ocean? That’s where your Ma and I used to live just before you younguns were born.
I inherited a sea coast cottage in Maine. There is a long flat rock that has two dimples on its top. When I was young, the water in there was brackish. Now, the dimples are full of seaweed. The Maine coast is rebounding and the water is higher a bit, maybe 4″, in 60 years.
The cottage is another 16′ above MHT.
Those deglaciation melt water pulses certainly would have left little time to adapt just bug out and keep moving. Doggerland shoreline was about 450 miles north of current day Calais and Dunkirk
Mankind also has a long standing habit of blaming other people for natural disasters and undesirable weather (and also diseases and plagues). One would think that in this so-called enlightened age, that sort of superstition and ignorance should have gone by the wayside long ago. The notion that some marginalized and shunned person living on the edge of a village could cause crop failures or epic storms makes about as much sense as me (and millions of other people) driving around, heating their homes and eating meat can cause an island in Mexico to vanish into the sea.
Science and reason was supposed to end such notions and prevent the subsequent persecutions of those believed to cause such calamities. Sadly this isn’t the case, as it seems our primitive desires make it so much easier to just blame other people and attack them whenever something beyond human control goes bad.
It is human nature to not take all that to mind if you can blame someone or thing instead. Part of the epidemic of lack of personal responsibility
I suspect that the large majority played no part in the Enlightenment . Benefits slowly filtered through the populations, probably mostly accepted without curiosity or understanding. They most likely didn’t even feel any need to put “We believe in the Science” signs in front of their huts. The culture may have changed in some ways but not the people.
The UK has some ancient seaside village ruins, which are currently miles inland. Either sea level lowering, or the land has risen since the time people lived there.
The UK is both sinking and rising – the southern part is sinking into the English Channel while the northern part is rising. The alternative explanation is that silt/sand deposition has increased the distance from the seaside ruins to the sea. Other parts of the UK are experiencing erosion so there’s give and take there as well.
The outer part of Cape Cod here in Wokeachusetts- nothing but sand- has been losing ground for centuries.
A few years ago, we visited what was left of a castle on a cliff in Northern Ireland. It was far above sea level, but the relentless pounding of the cliff base resulted in the cliff collapsing and taking half the castle with it. What the sea wants, the sea will take.
The Norfolk coast, the Dorset coast, the Isle of Wight have all had cliff collapses in the last few months due to erosion and just the other day there was a land slip on Lake Garda in Italy. (https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/world-europe-67744248)
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cjrp4k8d2l1o
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-hampshire-67701115
All coastal topography is constantly changing due to wave action and erosion/deposition. Even tall cliffs cannot stand against the forces of nature, not just low sand spits and sand bars. The reason tall cliff are cliffs and not hills is erosion and collapse into the sea. Low rise formations can and do suddenly disappear in a single storm event. Channels and passes suddenly open up or close up in a matter of hours.
Any boater who cruises coastal waters knows this.
The Yucatán is a very flat low lying expanse similar in geology to Florida, sands on top of flat limestone pockmarked with sinkholes and the coastal waters are shallow and very flat bottom gradients. That coastline is always subject to storm damage.
Even volcanic islands are not immune, the Galapagos being good examples, the oldest islands having all but disappeared.
This is another variation on the climate change disasters endured by Alaskan villages on the Bering and Chukchi coasts and even those on inland rivers. The fact is that all land is dynamic but some land, El Bosque, for instance, operates on a smaller time frame than tectonic movements. The reason these locations became occupied by humans in the first place is that they were close to the water, making it easier to access the resources that they were there to exploit. A few hundred years ago the same things occurred but there was no international media to inform the rest of the world.
When the US government made it a policy to change the living conditions of the native Alaskans part of that effort was to provide the villages with schools. The riverine villages were close to the easy access of beaches and sand bars and often flooded because of ice jams during spring breakup. When water got high they moved their possessions inland and returned when it subsided. Construction of schools and clinics couldn’t be allowed to follow this schedule so they were built on higher ground, usually on permafrost, a poor choice for a building location. Residents were encouraged to move near the new school and the original sites were abandoned. As people moved about and lived on the permafrost it melted near the surface and the new town sites became islands of gooey mud in the forest. This is a problem even now in rural Alaska.
general custer ==> I wrote about one such case many many years ago, a village in Alaska at the bend of a river, on a sand bar. Baked Alaska
Great post, Kip.
There was a small Inuit village on Alaska’s Bering Sea coast that suffered the same fate, although not from tropical storms—rather Dangerous Catch storms. Willis debunked it here at the time it was being promoted. This despite the alarmist overlooked fact that sea level along the Alaska coast is actually falling because of significant tectonic land upthrust.
The following article is about the Highland Light, also called the Ca[e Cod Light.
https://www.nps.gov/caco/learn/news/national-park-service-to-host-a-highland-light-rededication-ceremony.htm
This lighthouse, originally built 500 feet from the ocean side cliff on Cape Cod was moved hundreds of feet father back to save it from the continually eroding beach and cliff.
As can be expected, per the article, the geniuses of the NPS screwed up the ventilation (by natural convective air movement through the structure) when they moved it in 1996. The lack of ventilation caused damage from excess moisture.
My mom lives in the other (bay) side of the cape and her property is continuously getting farther from the water on the bay side and closer to the water on the ocean side. Her location is probably good for a couple thousand years. Her house is above a marsh that at one time was tidal with boat access to the bay (150 years ago). It is not tidal now due to a dike built to help control salt water mosquitos. The dogooders are wanting to remove the dike and return the tidal nature. Hello salt water mosquitos. Luckily there doesn’t appear to be any free money to do the damage.
Drake ==> The restorers can cause a lot of damage by worshiping the past in very unscientific ways.
If you build your house ( town) upon the sand it will fall . If you build it on the rock it won’t . A wise man said that more than 2000 yrs ago, and I’m sure the good Catholic people of Mexico can point to the source
Safe upon the solid rock the ugly houses stand,
Come see my shining castle built upon the sand!
Edna St. Vincent Millay
I see deforestation. See? This IS man made calamity.
Sure, there has been a great deal of deforestation- most of China, Europe and the eastern half of America were deforested. But, now the climate nut jobs are pushing to end all forestry- they call it “proforestation”. Proper forestry is not deforestation- but try telling that to those nut jobs.
I was thinking along the same lines. Given the name, was there previously a forest there that helped stabilise the sand and prevent erosion?
The Aztecs practiced human sacrifice with the belief it would change the climate to help farming.
Today, the same superstitions remain, but they’ve learned to encourage sacrifice in a manner more consistent with goals of the United Nations.
The UN are working towards sacrificing more people than the Aztecs ever dreamed of.
Assateague Island Light was on the coast. Now, it’s in the woods. Tom’s Cove didn’t exist but now it is a large sandy sheltered cove people with kids use instead of the ocean beach. Something somewhere about houses built on sand.
In some cases sea level rise is entirely negligible
“”A new image taken from space shows that an island forged in volcanic fire on the Pacific Seas off Japan at the end of Oct. 2023 is still rising from the sea.””
https://www.space.com/satellites-japan-new-island-still-growing
China has built several islands in the disputed South China Sea that I fully expect to go the same way as El Bosque
Reportedly they have a significant number of unused, recently built cities, full of concrete and steel that could be repurposed to secure that hold against the sea (and the US Navy).
China hasn’t swallowed the CAGW BS and it’s various “Existential Threats”.
They are not Watermelons. No “green” on the outside.
The peninsula is dissolving away far too quickly for it to be any natural process, esp as it was natural process that created anyway.
IOW: Why has the sea taken such a sudden (20, 30 50+ years) and violent dislike to the very thing it created?
What has changed in that time is the sediment load coming down the Grivalva River – from the activities of farmers, foresters, road & city builders. Primarily due to the population increase.
The extra sediment has settled out into an underwater delta all around the mouth of the river and around El Bosque.
As a result of the now shallower water and changed seabed, long-shore currents will have changed, probably depriving El Bosque of stuff that actually built and maintained it. Simply by diverting themselves around the huge pile of dirt that is now sat in the water at the mouth of the river
Also the direction, strength and type of waves hitting the peninsula will have changed – creating the big breakers we see in the photo.
That is why El Bosque, after 1,000’s if not 10’s thousands of years is so rapidly disappearing.
Soil Erosion did it and soil eosion is changing the climate.
Soil erosion also prevents plants from absorbing anywhere near the amount of carbon oxide they previously did and why atmospheric levels are skyrocketing these last 50 years.
It is a ‘puzzle’ that fits together perfectly and explains everything you see there.
The exact same thing is happening not far from me, along the North sea coast at Hemsby.
Primarily because the amount of soil, silt and sediment that UK farmers shovel into the water is frankly obscene.
Barrier Islands are generally in constant motion, people or not.
Peta ==> I am familiar with a tiny beach on the north shore of the Dominican Republic that is created and destroyed, built up with 6 vertical feet feet of sand only to have that 6 feet of sand removed overnight — over and over, shifting states from one week to the next. That is Nature. That is the sea.
I am afraid that we have no idea as to the longevity of the El Bosque peninsula….it is really just a high spot on a very large shelf of sand. It is an error to think of it as “land” vs “sea”. It is ocean shore sand — some of it above water at the moment — look at the sat images.
Is Hemsby gaining or losing?
Losing.
To what extent does building on such a sand spit enhance erosion? I should think it must.
Stand on a sandy beach and let the waves flow past your ankles, you will slowly sink in a bit as the sand under your feet is compressed and wants to get out with the water flow.
Nice report.
Just a thought experiment — If rising sea levels were to blame, why is only one village in Mexico affected? Why not all the surrounding villages?
More ==> Because it isn’t SLR. It is he ever constant yet ever changing interaction of the sea with the shore.
And why does the Inland (or Intracoastal) Waterway on the East coast of the USA still exist?
Why is Key West or Key Largo or the rest still there?
Are you sure the Intracoastal Waterway still exists? Have you seen it lately? Who you gonna believe, the experts or your lying eyes?
More ==> I have sailed the Intracoastal Waterway (known more commonly as the ICW) as recently as 2020…still there then. There is a whole business concerned with warning of changes in the ICW especially at inlets open to the Atlantic.
I have gone aground half a dozen times on unmarked shoals (and one marked shoal, I am ashamed to admit!)
The Florida Keys are exposed, fossilized coral reefs, not barrier islands.
And Tuvalu was submerged by a “Super Moon” a decade or so ago because of rising sea levels.
Why did they build a new airport since then?
A base to refuel Boeing Clipper Ships?
Forgot to add a 😎 and/or /sarc tag.
Of course, this has never happened before on such a scale
Caesarea Maritima https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caesarea_Maritima
Hasankeyf https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/hasankeyf-cordon-turkey-scli-intl/index.html
Pavlopetri https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PavlopetriIslamorada, Florida https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamorada,_Florida
and no one survived.
I recently watched an NPR documentary about the discovery of the semi-submerged ruins of a 4th century Christian basilica in Lake Iznik, just off the beach of the town of Iznik, Turkey. Iznik is the Turkish name for Nicaea, which was where the Council of Nicaea met in 325 to attempt to unify the differences among the various versions of early Christianity. (The Nicene Creed was one result.)
Before the actual documentary began, an NPR narrator began an introduction by explaining that the ruin had only recently become known because it had become visible due to the lake’s water having receded. Two sentences later, he ended his introduction by asserting that the ruin had been exposed by forces of climate change.
Huh? I thought climate change was supposed to cause land to be submerged, not exposed.
Of course, nowhere during the actual documentary did anyone mention climate change, and the focus was totally on earthquakes (3 fault lines through the lake) and the empirical evidence that the bottom of the lake had subsided and subsequently lifted over the centuries. (Shortly after filming ended, there were 2 nearby earthquakes at 7+ on the Richter Scale that killed 10Ks.)
NPR, like all lefty media, claims climate change works both ways – and both ways are bad.
Nik ==> Thanks for the information about Iznik (Nicaea). The lake involved is Lake Inzik — and the basilica is here.
I suggest that the survivors will be the ones who don’t wait for a handout.
Dunwich https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20220227-dunwich-the-british-town-lost-to-the-sea
Matthew 7:24-27English Standard Version
Lovely pictures of waves transporting sediment (longshore drift ).
1saveenergy ==> Yes, seem to be taking it from the village and spreading it down along to the southeast.
If you zoom in on Google Earth 18°36’54″N 92°41’10″W
Looks like the Grijalva River on the left has deposited lots of sand over the millenia and the beach has come and gone many times judging by the old shorelines on the bottom right.
DMacKenzie ==> Well, something has created that huge sand shelf that wraps around the entire point, including El Bosque. It could be prevailing winds and waves, it may be sand supplied by the river, it may be sand pushed up from the floor of the Gulf. The sand shelf extends to the East all the way to Ciudad del Carmen (about 60 miles)
So, just like Cape Cod tidal erosion is causing this “village” to be washed away. Got it.
Nice article, Kip, but one thing left unmentioned is the possibility of land subsidence in the area of El Bosque leading to greater apparent surface water intrusion . Land subsidence could be natural or man-made (from withdrawing water from underground aquifers or withdrawing oil from underground deposits). In this regard, tide gauges even if they existed locally would not reveal the degree of absolute sea-level rise since they are anchored to local ground level and almost certainly haven’t been linked to GPS-determined geoid-referenced elevation.
As for natural subsidence, Since the Chicxulub impactor appears to have hit just off the Yucatan peninsula not that far away from El Bosque (see attached image), I wouldn’t at all be surprised to find the whole coastline arc from Veracruz to Cancun having a relatively high degree of land subsidence.