Recent studies suggest that sea levels are now rising at the fastest rate in the last 28 centuries. According to two reports, increased flooding in coastal communities in America can be traced directly to increased the production of greenhouse gases from human activity. The report authors say that the problem will grow far worse in coming decades. Nevertheless, the governments of some states most impacted by the rising waters are opting to deny that the problem even exists.
As reported by the New York Times: “I think we need a new way to think about most coastal flooding,” said Benjamin H. Strauss, the primary author of one of two related studies released on Monday. “It’s not the tide. It’s not the wind. It’s us. That’s true for most of the coastal floods we now experience.”
In the second study, scientists reconstructed the level of the sea over time and confirmed that it is most likely rising faster than at any point in 28 centuries, with the rate of increase growing sharply over the past century — largely, they found, because of the warming that scientists have said is almost certainly caused by human emissions.
They also confirmed previous forecasts that if emissions were to continue at a high rate over the next few decades, the ocean could rise as much as three or four feet by 2100. Experts say the situation would then grow far worse in the 22nd century and beyond, likely requiring the abandonment of many coastal cities.
The findings are yet another indication that the stable climate in which human civilization has flourished for thousands of years, with a largely predictable ocean permitting the growth of great coastal cities, is coming to an end.
As we posted a few years ago, the North Carolina legislature considered a bill to make it illegal for local planning boards to consider climate change for zoning purposes. The planning boards would be required to use to only use predictions of sea level rise based on linear projections from 1900. The increased rise in sea-level due to climate change would not only be ignored but would be illegal for land use planning.
Just last year, Florida state environmental officials were ordered not to use the terms “climate change” or “global warming” in any government communications, emails, or reports. The policy affects reports, educational efforts and public policy at the Florida Department of Environmental Protection, a department with about 3,200 employees and $1.4 billion budget.
In Florida, rising sea-levels threaten 30 percent of the state’s beach communities over the next 85 years.
Despite the fact that there is a broad consensus in the scientific community regarding the problems associated with climate change, there is also a deep divide in the American political circus. While the two primary Democratic candidates running for president in 2016 call for action on climate change, the Republican candidates deny that there is a problem. Donald Trump is quoted as saying, “The concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make US manufacturing non-competitive.”
They LIE!
No flooding from rising seas!
Both NASA and Physics on 2/11 and then LA Times on 2/15 did a follow-up report.
Feb 11, 2016
NASA, University Study Shows Rising Seas Slowed by Increasing Water on Land
New measurements from a NASA satellite have allowed researchers to identify and quantify, for the first time, how climate-driven increases of liquid water storage on land have affected the rate of sea level rise.
A new study by scientists at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California, and the University of California, Irvine, shows that while ice sheets and glaciers continue to melt, changes in weather and climate over the past decade have caused Earth’s continents to soak up and store an extra 3.2 trillion tons of water in soils, lakes and underground aquifers, temporarily slowing the rate of sea level rise by about 20 percent.
http://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-university-study-shows-rising-seas-slowed-by-increasing-water-on-land
Parched Earth soaks up water, slowing sea level rise: study
February 11, 2016
Satellite measurements over the past decade show for the first time that the Earth’s continents have soaked up and stored an extra 3.2 trillion tons of water in soils, lakes and underground aquifers, the experts said in a study in the journal Science
http://phys.org/news/2016-02-parched-earth-sea.html
Thirsty continents are slowing down expected sea level rise …
Los Angeles Times
Feb 15, 2016 – Despite the accelerated melting of glaciers and ice sheets, sea levels aren’t rising quite as quickly as scientists anticipated. The reason: Continents are absorbing more of the water before it flows into the seas, according to a new study.
http://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-water-land-gravity-sea-level-20160215-story.html
Whether or not we are causing this, why not change course? I mean, we don’t really lose anything by shifting to renewables either way, and of course if we are causing global climate change, then we can save the world. Seems an obvious choice to me.
Better safe than sorry.
Egbert L Veile’s 1865 Sanitary, and Topographic Map of Manhattan Island:
A lot of land fill, and development has taken place since this 1865 map,
Couple this with rising seal levels…….
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a3/Viele_Map_1865.jpg
Somebody better tell the Chinese, Indians, and any other growing manufacturing country. We’ve spent billions, if not trillions over the past 40 or so years mitigating emissions from vehicles, power plants, sewers, factories– even shutting down many altogether, and in investing in and developing alternative means of power. Unless they play catch up I can’t see bankrupting ourselves to try to fix a global problem. We can’t do it by ourselves. Besides, one volcanic eruption could turn everything on its head.
I linked to the video you posted, and it’s the usual piece of model-driven “science” fiction posted by an “activist” organization. Beneath the emotionally-grabbing arguments from authority and the catastrophic CGI, its narration is loaded with weasel-words like “if,” “might,” “could,” “expect,” and “possible.” Well, ALL things are POSSIBLE.
The truth of the matter is that the seas have been rising at a more or less steady rate since the end of the last glaciation, 12,000 years ago. That rate of rise has been measured by satellite at roughly TWO MILLIMETERS per century. About the width of the wire that makes up a small paper clip.
That is not disputed, it’s not in question, it IS the observation and all else that you read is speculative.
The fact is that many of our largest coastal cities, such as NYC and Tokyo, were built in whole or part on reclaimed land that had once been esturary. This was most evident during H. Sandy, when everything below 34th St. flooded. Can you guess which part of the city was below the historic high-tide line? In Tokyo, all of Narita Airport is built on a base of landfill.
Additionally, our draining and filling of hundreds of miles of buffering estuaries, our insistence on siting large non-water-dependent buildings and infrastructure on the very edge of the sea, and our short-sightedness in believing the Earth’s climate will NOT change in spite of a robust and unquestionable historic evidence, has everything to do with storm-surge inundations where that 2 mm. “global sea level rise” does not. Even the IPCC’s studies do not claim this–or that any extreme weather is a direct result of man-made CO2. There is simply no evidence now in existence that is capable of proving this. Nor has there been.
Conversely, there is extremely good satellite-based evidence that the global warming observed cyclically many times over the past 1,000 years has turned to a cooling phase, in fact roughly 18 years ago now, which 100% sends the “greenhouse” theory to the dustbin of history on a scientific level. All that is left presently is the politicization of a “problem” which is NO problem.
What we NEED to be talking about is intelligent development of our coastal areas to sustain water-dependent uses, rather than condos, office buildings and “attractions.” Please educate yourself about the facts before parroting what has become nothing more a tiresome, debunked and fictional media meme. Thank you!
When two groups of scientists come out with the conclusion that sea levels have been rising faster than any time in recent history, I want to at least stop and consider the implications. Frankly, all the climate change denier claims I have come across thus far have been either fiction, fraud or both. I agree that we need netter city planning. I do not agree with your foolish denial of climate change. I have heard all that before.
It is not just the Chinese, who by the way are leading the world in the production and installation of solar panels. The damage being done in this country from natural gas leaks is horrific. Methane from natural gas is twenty-five times more damaging than CO2. The Aliso Canyon leak alone is comparable to the BP Deepwater Horizon disaster from a few years ago. And that is just a fraction of the methane leaking across the country.
For better or worse we are all in this together.
Not to worry, 50,000 delegates Flew to Paris, COP21
United Nations Conference on Climate Change.
That’s another carbon footprint we really don’t need right now.
They couldn’t teleconference, Skype or use Cisco’s software.
Courts, Corporations, and Hospitals utilize these
systems, in lieu of face to face meetings.
Warmists still have a capacity to surprise us
After the shoddy attempt by Tom Karl to “adjust” the warming “hiatus” out of existence, a brand new paper comes as a surprise. In it, some hard-core Warmist scientists REVIVE the hiatus. Perhaps they are scientists enough to conclude that they cannot just ignore the satellite data. Though they do not accept the complete plateau that the satellites indicate. They say that the temperature rise has slowed down to a crawl but there is still some warming going on.
http://interested-participant.blogspot.com/2016/02/warmists-still-have-capacity-to.html
“Warmists?” Funny. Man-made climate change is overwhelmingly accepted by the scientific community.
Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway annual meeting in Omaha Nebraska
will be streamed online: Stay home, don’t fly to Omaha, It’s on the computer:
http://bigstory.ap.org/article/8361665a3aa548fd845f8bd391f040c0/investors-can-now-watch-berkshire-hathaway-meeting-online
Maybe the United Nations can do something this next year, right!
Isn’t it remarkable how an otherwise relatively quiet and well-mannered comment area is suddenly the scene of passionate* counter-factual declarations, when the subject of climate change is mentioned?
Given the juggling act China must perform in order to maintain growth and hence social stability while also updating their energy systems, they’re doing remarkably well. In fact, given our own relative wealth and opportunity coupled with simultaneous indolence and complacency over climate change, the Chinese shame us in the rapidity with which they’re modernizing their energy supply options.
The US will appear as a sad backwater of troglodytes in comparison to the rest of the world in a few short decades, if we allow ourselves to be suckered into helping to freeze energy cash flow so as to remain in the 20th century, which is what the “debate” about climate change is actually deciding. As the deniers love to say, trillions of dollars are at stake, but not in the way the deniers think. It’s simply a choice of where those trillions go: caveman combustion and old bank accounts, or new bank accounts to pay for something newer and better.
* some might say “spluttering.”
I agree, Doug. I do find it funny, and more than a bit scary, that while the science of climate change is still developing, as science does, the fact of man-made climate change is beyond dispute. As the comedian John Oliver commented, “You don’t need people’s opinions on a fact. You might as well have a poll asking which number is bigger, 5 or 15? Or do owls exist? Or are there hats?”