Sea-Level Rise
In an attempt to discredit my recent post on sea-level rise, a frequent commenter writes, “Meanwhile, the coast of beachfront real estate keeps increasing!”
This actually is true. There are some people who couldn’t afford to buy beachfront property whose net-worth is about to skyrocket.
The larger issue, of course, is that, as our scientists predict, once the levels of our seas start to rise in earnest, a stable coast line will no longer exist. Think for a moment, about what that means. Boston, New York City, Washington D.C., Miami, et al., were built on the premise of a stable climate. Once we’re forced to discard that paradigm, all bets are off. When Miami is under water in a few decades, where would you re-establish it, given that all locations on what is now “the beach” are going to be lost over the following years?
As I wrote previously re: a fantastic lecture on the subject, we have three choices: mitigation, adaptation, and suffering. The more we have of one, the less we’ll have of the other two.
Craig,
Shrewd doomsday prophets and pundits always prophesy Armageddon just a little beyond the pundits lifetime! (thereby avoiding the inevitable criticism when the predictions fail to eventuate).
Often these alarmist predictions are the result of faulty reasoning, substituting selective and subjective information is place of objectivity.
Over the last few centuries, coastlines have undergone considerable changes. In some places, erosion is evident, while in others, once prosperous ports and fishing fleet now finds themselves stranded miles inland from the coast.
In 2009 two large new Pacific islands emerged from the sea and merged with one another as a result of volcanic activity. The Island is about 2 miles long by 1.25 wide and a peak elevation of just under 500 ft.
Initially, both NASA and a “consensus” of scientists, especially climate scientists, confidently assured everyone in an assertive study these island would only last at the most, a few months.
By 2014, NASA revised the estimate to the islands disappearing in a long dissertation proving the island’s doomed existence but extending the deadline to 30 years.
In January of 2019, NASA again revised the estimate having overlooked the make up of the islands which contains not just volcanic ash and mud, but a sticky, heavy yellow clay. The scientist were also astonished to discover how quickly the islands were colonized by flora and fauna. The Vegetation held to preserve the island from erosion.
Equally interesting is the discovery that in the last 40 years their has been a rise of over 58 ft on average in the pacific sea floor across an area the size of Greenland (about 50 million cubic ft).
To the best of my knowledge, this fact is not included in any of several hundred papers or modelling of sea level rise advanced by alarmist advocates.
The few models that do calculate such elements are derided as the work of “denialists” . What’s even curious, is these facts are from NASA’s own research.
[ My observation, “the cost of beachfront real estate keeps increasing” wasn’t intended to dispute degree or causes of sea-level rises, but merely point out that there is no evidence of a mass migration away from the coastal areas for fear of Global Warming among the general populace!]