..it’s not science, it’s prognostication from reading tea leaves. Here’s USA Today writer Wendy Koch going full bore stupid
Rising sea levels torment Norfolk, Va., and coastal U.S.
How high will they go? Scientists don’t know exactly how much the seas will rise, but they see an accelerating climb that could range from 8 inches to more than 6 feet by century’s end.
A range of 8 to 72 inches is a difference of 900%. Or, you could say 9 times the difference. After the typical opening sob story, we get
As the 10th part of its year-long series on climate change, USA TODAY traveled to Virginia’s picturesque Tidewater region — bound by creeks, rivers and the Chesapeake Bay — to look at how rising sea levels are affecting America’s coastal communities, where more than a third of its people and wealth reside.
The seas have risen and fallen before. What’s new is the enormity of coastal development that will need to be protected, moved or abandoned. In this 21st century tale, an old fisherman isn’t battling a large marlin (as in Ernest Hemingway’s classic The Old Man and the Sea), but the cities are battling the seas.
What’s new is the number of people who have built their homes and businesses in a coastal area, and are proclaiming “climate change” as a reason for Government to give them piles of cash to protect their property from what has happened before and will happen again.
Sea level has risen nearly 8 inches worldwide since 1880 but, unlike water in a bathtub, it doesn’t rise evenly. In the past 100 years, it has climbed about a foot or more in some U.S. cities because of ocean currents and land subsidence — 11 inches in New York and Boston, 12 in Charleston, 16 in Atlantic City, 18 in Norfolk and 25 in Galveston, Texas, according to a USA TODAY analysis of 2012 tide gauge data collected by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
8 inches would be actually below the historical average for the last 7,000 years of 6-8 inches per century. And the higher data would be well within the historical norm for what one would expect during a warm period during the Holocene. NOAA has a monitoring center in Sewell’s Point, Va, the closest for Norfolk, mentioned as 18 inches
This shows a completely linear rise going back to 1930, with a big spike during the El Nino year. Nothing unusual. This is nature in action. And there is no way to compare it properly to previous warm periods. So, is this unusual?
How much higher will it go? Scientists don’t know exactly but, depending on fossil fuel emissions, they project global sea level will rise about 1 foot to slightly more than 3 feet (or 39 inches) by 2100, according to this year’s Fifth Assessment Report by the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. NOAA has projected sea level could rise higher, as much as 6½ feet, by century’s end.
And there we go, the blame is on Mankind, and especially fossil fuels. Despite there being nothing unusual about the sea level rise. Despite scientists not really knowing, which means they are simply making a WAG. Warmists want to spend a billion dollars in Norfolk alone to deal with “adaption”. A lot of Norfolk is only, at best, a few feet above sea level. What did they think was going to happen? Norfolk is also dealing with land subsidence. Welcome to the reality of natural changes in the earth, Warmists.
“How much higher will it go? Scientists don’t know exactly but, depending on fossil fuel emissions, they project global sea level will rise about 1 foot to slightly more than 3 feet (or 39 inches) by 2100, according to this year’s Fifth Assessment Report by the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.”
So the official variability in the projections (depending on fossil fuel emissions) is 12″ to 39″ or about 3 fold (depending on fossil fuel emissions).
Did you note that the difference between 12″ and 39″ in the projections depended on fossil fuel emissions? The more CO2 emitted, the greater the sea level rise.
In any event, “it’s all magic, er, natural” anyway so the coastal denizens will have to figure out a way to live with it or move out, which, of course, was the point of the article. The seas are rising, will continue to rise, and flooding of the coasts will continue. I’m pretty sure coastal dwellers won’t put their heads in the sand on this because they could drown!
warmist’s logic: “My dead cat was dead. My dead cat was dead yesterday. My dead cat was dead last week. My dead cat was alive the week before.
Therefore, next week, I predict that it will be a dog.”
Since they have a record of normality, they have to project out a version of a possible future where despite all evidence to the contrary, they blame man for this projectionism.