Climate change deniers can choose to ignore the overwhelming scientific consensus of man-made climate change all they want. How long they will continue to deny the evidence before their own eyes? Two immediate examples — Fox Island and the US Naval Academy.
For 40 years, the Chesapeake Bay Foundation has run educational programs on Fox Island, an island between the Tangier and Pocomoke sounds. This is the last year, however. Rising sea levels have effectively washed the island away.
The Baltimore Sun reports that after analyzing historic aerial photos, the foundation estimates the bay has swallowed up more than 70% of the island’s land in the last 50 years.
Foundation educators say sea level rise and erosion are destroying the protective salt marshes surrounding the island, making the foundation’s educational center there unsafe to continue operating for students in the future. The Fox Island Education Program will conclude its final season this fall.
Islands in the Chesapeake are not the only areas being impacted by rising sea levels. Parts of the US Naval Academy at Annapolis are also regularly awash at high tide. In the October edition of Proceedings, Commander Pat Paterson, U.S. Navy (Retired) in an article titled, Climate Change is Coming for Annapolis, writes:
The Academy and Annapolis already are experiencing the effects of climate change. Annapolis has seen the highest increased rate of coastal flooding in the United States. In 2018, the downtown area flooded about once a week from high tides, threatening businesses along the City Dock and Market Street. Next door, the Academy also sees evidence of rising water. Low-lying areas adjacent to College Creek frequently are closed by high water. According to the Union of Concerned Scientists, a group that has warned of the effects of global warming for years, these areas will flood daily rather than weekly by 2050.
Just this month the United States Sailboat Show in Annapolis was shortened because of street flooding. The boats kept floating. The street and bridges, not so much.
Further south, the Mar-a-Lago resort, whose owner calls climate change a “Chinese hoax,” may be awash by the turn of the century, if not sooner, according to recent projections.
Overall, an estimated 126 million people in the United States alone are threatened by rising sea levels.
It may be happening up north. Yet it isnt happening here in Maine. The snows are deeper. The winter is longer. Contrary to the reports of some places being milder. It just isnt happening for those of us in the northeast usa. In 1985 to 1995 our winters ended in April with us seeing May flowers. The last 5 years I have kept track of have us starting to see open ground in May. This last summer we only had 6 weeks of temperatures above 70F. June alone was very cold and our crops did not grow as much of them died from nights still in the thirties.
Climate change maybe in some parts. Yet it isnt a reality for everyone. Rising sea level? At most since 1985 when I moved here from California we have only lost a half inch of average high tide. So pardon me while I say BS to the scientific data. Some one is making it up!
Resident of Sorrento Maine
I should point out. Since I cant edit the above post. I moved here in 1985. Yet we were summer folk since I was a child in 1960. There is a boulder on the shore that I can watch to see where high tide is. Boulder is about 4 ton.
Willy,
Where are you?
Where do you live?
Only 2 questions!
How fortunate you are to live so far north in Maine. Alas that the rest of Maine seems to be sining while Sorrento rises…………where I live (on an island offf Massachusetts, erosion is wiping our island away and the rising ocean is doing its share. Our summers have been hotter and more humid as well as total dought except that this summer we did have enough rain to sustain Mother Nature. Winters are definitely milder. I’m an old woman now and memories extend back to the early 40’s. Climate change is not a hoax; it is real and it will get worse. Ninety seven percent of the scientists who study such things probably aren’t wrong!
Phil? Read the first post. It is there. Look at the last line of the first post.
Ginny? Erosion doesnt mean the sea is rising. Erosion happens because no one has stabilized the soil to erosion. IE beach grasses or riprap stonrs are also good to stop erosion.
Hampton Roads and Virginia Beach have been flooding steadily deeper at spring tide for years, and even normal tides come up in the towns when the wind is foul. Annapolis, and especially the adjacent Naval Academy, are bailing furiously and mostly fruitlessly. Richmond’s getting damn damp, and the National Mall will go back to being a marsh unless wholly unholy sums are spent pretty speedily. But hey nonny nonny, this is God’s country, and we trust in the Lord, and what the Hell anyway, this is the End Times.
Willy,
Sea levels rise at different rates in different locations. The Chesapeake is rising faster than most. If your area’s sea level is not, good. On the other hand, Maine’s waters are heating up faster than 99% of the ocean. Rising water temperatures are a threat to the fisheries on which Maine’s economy depends. So, you can call BS all you want. It doesn’t change a thing.
Why Is the Gulf of Maine Warming Faster Than 99% of the Ocean?
Maine isn’t experiencing flooding because that region is rising at nearly the same rate as the oceans, rebounding from the melting of miles-thick ice that depressed the land during the last ice age. Willy could look it up.
+++ to Hank, who got it right.
Sea level rise rates vary everywhere for a number of reasons, but it’s a net gain/loss situation. Overwhelmingly it’s gain, not loss, but Maine is a special case.
Supposing for a moment that Greenland lost most of its ice, sea level immediately around Greenland would actually fall, because the gravitational attraction of all that ice that has been converted to water is gone.
Sea level isn’t necessarily intuitive.
Thankyou Doug.
The Bay of Foundy may be warming. Yet that heat hasnt gone to Frenchman’s Bay. Frenchman’s Bay does influence our weather. On average the bay makes the surrounding towns 10 degrees warmer in the winter as opposed to inland temps. Yet in the summer we are 10 degrees cooler. You can feel it if your arm is outside in the open air in the summer. Drive route one going north out of Ellsworth. Cross the bridge from Hancock to Sullivan and the sensation is immediate.
Yet I am still not sold on the climate change. There are some places that have been warmer. Alas it could be 80F in Indianna. Yet we are still at 35F. To me, climate change means everyones temp goes up. Right now in the midwest from the eastern side of Washington through to Wyoming they have an early winter. Yet it is autumn weather here in the northeast. Normal weather for us. Nope, if there is truly climate change? Everyone will be posting warmer temps at the same time everywhere.
If wish to limit man’s impact on the world, you must limit man. This can be done in 1 of 2 ways. The first is limit mans numbers. Historically humans had large families to compensate for high mortality rates among children, especially infants. Thanks to modern medicine we no longer need to have large families. Most modern countries have lower birth rates, but too many countries do not so the population continues to grow.
The second way to limit man impact is to impoverish us. Energy is wealth. It is the ability to transform low value items into high value items. Unfortunately our leaders seem to prefer to impoverish us as it makes us more controllable.
Either new technology will address the man-made problem of global warming or we will destroy ourselves. There is no shortage of clean energy. We just need the will and vision to tap into it.
Commander Pat Paterson, U.S. Navy (Retired) must be loosing his marbles.
As a Navy man he should know that Spring Tides happen approximately fortnightly, not weekly.
Sorry, that should be “losing”
Willy, a helpful way to think of this is in terms of ratios of cold weather to warm weather. While it’s true that temperature swings up and down and in fact we’re still setting record cold temperatures (in part because records are not necessarily long for a given location) there’s a trend to the swing.
See this helpful article, in particular the graphic showing the changing relationship of record cold temperatures to record warm temperatures.
https://skepticalscience.com/global-warming-cold-weather.htm
It’s another feature that goes against our intuition.