…is a reminder of rising waters from fossil fuels, you might just be a Warmist
The blog of the day is A View From The Beach, with a post on the coming avocado doom.
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Rising Seas Are Flooding Norfolk Naval Base, and There’s No Plan to Fix It
https://insideclimatenews.org/news/10252017/military-norfolk-naval-base-flooding-climate-change-sea-level-global-warming-virginia
By Nicholas Kusnetz
October 25, 2017
NORFOLK, Virginia—The one-story brick firehouse at Naval Station Norfolk sits pinched between a tidal inlet and Willoughby Bay. The station houses the first responders to any emergency at the neighboring airfield. Yet when a big storm hits or the tides surge, the land surrounding it floods. Even on a sunny day this spring, with the tide out, the field beside the firehouse was filled with water.
“It’s not supposed to be a pond,” said Joe Bouchard, a retired captain and former base commander. “It is now.”
Naval Station Norfolk, home to the Atlantic Fleet, floods not just in heavy rains or during hurricanes. It floods when the sun is shining, too, if the tide is high or the winds are right. It floods all the time.
“It is an impediment to the base accomplishing its mission,” Bouchard said.
Once or twice a month, seawater subsumes steam lines that run along the bottom of the piers where the fleet’s ships are moored. It bubbles up through storm drains and closes roads. “It can actually shut down operations, or make it very difficult for people to get around,” Bouchard said.
Climate change poses an immediate threat to Norfolk. The seas are rising at twice the global average here, due to ocean currents and geology. Yet while the region is home to the densest collection of military facilities in the nation, the Pentagon has barely begun the hard work of adaptation. A detailed study in 2014 by the U.S. Army Engineer Research and Development Center identified about 1.5 feet of sea level rise as a “tipping point” for the base that would dramatically increase the risk of serious damage to infrastructure. But there is no plan to address this level of rise, which scientists expect within a few decades.
The city of Norfolk, which surrounds the base, is also under siege. Sections of the main road that leads to the base become impassable several times a year. Some residents check tide charts before leaving for work or parking their cars for the night.
“These guys are in a whole heap ton of trouble,” said retired Rear Adm. David Titley. Before he joined Penn State’s Center for Solutions to Weather and Climate Risk, Titley served as the Navy’s oceanographer and navigator and led its Climate Change Task Force. “I think Norfolk is, in the long term, fighting for its existence, its very existence,” Titley said. “And this is the part of climate change that I don’t think most Americans have really come to grips with—that virtually every coastal city is in a fight for its existence. They just don’t know it yet.”
While Norfolk is particularly vulnerable, rising seas are threatening hundreds of other U.S. military bases around the world. Now, under a president who has said he will pull the U.S. out of the Paris climate agreement and has begun reversing much of the federal government’s effort to address the problem, it seems doubtful the military will begin new adaptation work. The Pentagon, which wove consideration of climate change into nearly every aspect of its operations under President Barack Obama, declined to discuss the topic for this article.
‘Band-Aid Fixes’
Naval Station Norfolk, which sprawls over the northwestern corner of its namesake city, was established 100 years ago on the former site of the Jamestown Exposition, at a time when the water was a foot and a half lower. It’s the largest of 18 major military sites in the region, known as Hampton Roads, which is home to 1.7 million people.
The area is pancake flat, and much of the base sits on landfill that’s compressing, creating dips in the road here and there. Parts of the facility lie close to sea level, and many of the stormwater outfalls are covered by the tides.
Driving around the base in a white Lexus sedan on a bright day, Bouchard turned off the road to examine a flood gate on a tidal creek that bisects the facility. The gate is better than nothing, he said, but it creates a dilemma for engineers during storms: The choices are to shut it and let the creek swell because rainwater has nowhere to go, or leave it open and allow the sea to surge in. “We just did Band-Aid fixes,” he said, referring to the gate and other stopgap measures.
Since retiring from the Navy in 2003, Bouchard has become an evangelist for adapting the area to sea level rise. He worked on an intergovernmental pilot project initiated by the Obama administration, and served briefly in the Virginia state legislature.
As he toured the base, Bouchard could hardly finish a sentence without being distracted by another site prone to flooding—the road that leads to an electronics facility full of navigation equipment for the runway, ammunition depots tucked away in dense woods, parking lots along the piers. “This area floods,” he said, pointing across a roughly kept field abutting officers’ housing. “It floods right up to the houses.”
…
Sea levels are rising everywhere, but Norfolk has it worse. The land, pushed up by glaciers to the north thousands of years ago, is now sinking as much as an inch-and-a-half per decade. Scientists also believe that a slowing Gulf Stream is causing seas to rise faster along the Mid-Atlantic coast. High tides at the Sewell Point gauge, off the base, have been inching ever closer to the so-called “nuisance flood” level, where many roads and yards become inundated. The hourly water level chart shows the two may not be far off from meeting on a daily basis.
A 2014 Defense Department study determined that “several critical systems” at the base were “likely to be incapacitated” if the sea rose more than 3 feet. Even half that would represent a “tipping point” after which “the probabilities of damage to infrastructure and losses in mission performance increased dramatically.” A 2013 state-commissioned report projected 1.5 feet of rise within 20 to 50 years.
The Union of Concerned Scientists did its own analysis and determined that with sea level rise of just 1.4 feet, the base’s low-lying areas would flood about 280 times each year, spending 10 percent of the time underwater.
To avoid catastrophe, Bouchard said, the base needs a complete overhaul. “The list is endless,” he said. “The electrical systems, telecommunications, everything is vulnerable.”
In 2014, then-Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel wrote in the department’s climate change adaptation roadmap that “we are beginning work to address a projected sea-level rise of 1.5 feet over the next 20 to 50 years” in Hampton Roads. But if you ask the Navy today, it seems there’s little work actually underway.
… click link above for more …
IOW The landfill is compressing. Just like Pisa and the Leaning Tower.
None of that proves anthropogenic climate change, Bill. Just that the climate changes, like it’s done numerous times during the Holocene.
There is no scientific evidence that could prove to Porter Good that anthropogenic climate change is a reality. This is because Porter Good’s denial of the reality of AGW is based not in scientific fact, but in ideology.
Nearly every post Good makes on AGW links it with the great boogeyman of the far right, “socialism” — which, so far as one can see, means “doing anything at all to reduce our reliance on fossil fuels”. His ideological opposition to government (or indeed, any) action on climate change blinds Good to the scientific evidence.
Ideologues like Porter Good will not and cannot discuss climate change in good faith, so there is no point in trying to have that discussion with him. My comments here are not meant for Good, because I know that his mind is closed. I post information such as the article above for those who may stumble across Porter Good’s ideology-fueled denialism and need to see the facts of climate change as a counterpoint.
Then, Bill Bear, it’s up to you to explain how the following provisions in the GND would help fight “Climate Change”:
1- Tell us all how Universal Medicare for all would solve “Climate Change”?
2- Tell us all how $15/hour minimum wage would solve “Climate Change”?
Finally, GND aside, please tell us how allowing China to build and bring online as many coal-fired electricity generating as they want until 2030, (they’re adding 2 new ones per week as of now), as allowed in the Paris Accords, will somehow REDUCE the amount of CO2 entering the atmosphere. Which you see as a threat.
I will take your (usual) inability to answer as an inability to find any cut-and-paste responses on your Socialist Climate sites. Since any critic responses on them are blocked or just answered with insults.
Again: dachs_dude is dismissive of climate science not because of the evidence, but because of ideology. Like Porter Good, he is incapable of good faith discussion of this topic.
Bill,
Give the scientific evidence that taxes would stop global warming or cooling or whatever. Show how global communism would help. Come up with a solution to CO2 that is not government taxing and control.
Now, I suggested that you do an experiment with greenhouses to show the warming effect of excess CO2. Have you done that? It would go a long way to proving that CO2 is truly a problem.
david,
You claimed you conducted the experiment and CO2 has no impact on warming. Did you forget?
As soon as you publish your results, global warming as an issue will end and you’ll be famous.
Jeff
I did and emphasize that you and your friend do the same. Now, oh lished, you have to be kidding. You can not get a contrary article published in this country. That is the problem, the peer review process is nonexistant.
There is no scientific evidence that could prove to Porter Good that anthropogenic climate change is a reality because it is all a lie and reasonable people know it.
Nearly every post Good makes on AGW links it with the great boogeyman of the far right, “socialism†— which, so far as one can see, means “doing anything at all to reduce our reliance on fossil fuelsâ€. His ideological opposition to government (or indeed, any) action on climate change blinds Good to the scientific evidence.
When you know the data is cooked and the hockey stick is a crock and the “consensus” comes from rubber stamped peer review and they dismiss proof because that would blow them out of the water, only an idiot would still believe in it.
And it’s funny how the socialists (of all stripes) are the ones who are all in on this.
I post information such as the article above for those who may stumble across Porter Good’s ideology-fueled denialism and need to see the facts of climate change as a counterpoint.
And this is why their tripe has to be knocked down every time. Like the Village People, they’re always looking for new recruits.
Aaaand… formwiz delivers another sterling example of ideology trumping scientific fact. Denial has nothing to do with the evidence, and everything to do with extreme right-wing ideology and fear.
Bill,
Formwiz makes good points. Your rhetoric is the issue here as you dismiss others concerns without foundation. I have yet to see a solution for your unfounded science that does not incorporate tax or other tyrannical measures, and none of the solutions try to rein in the pollution of China or India in a meaningful manner.
Nice picture, very mid-60s (although the girl is a little slim for my taste).
And another happy note, RCP notes Hispanics are flocking to The Donald.
Looks like Lexit joins Blexit, WalkAway, and Jexodus.
A cougar on a Cougar?
Looks as if the Republicans are growing a spine or reading the polls or something…
GOP goes ‘nuclear’ to speed Trump nominees through Senate
https://tinyurl.com/y6kahvbz
The Greatest Speech of 2018
“I Am The Majority” by Mark Robinson
https://youtu.be/bBEUlJZg5CY
That’s a good one- “Climate change posses an immediate threat to Norfolk. The seas are rising at twice the global average, due to ocean currents and geology.†The old bait and switch. So in other words “climate change†has nothing to do with the rising seas-as said, they’re rising due to ocean currents and land subsidence. Just had to throw a little scare factor in there for good measure….
Again: dachs_dude is dismissive of climate science not because of the evidence, but because of ideology. Like Porter Good, he is incapable of good faith discussion of this topic
No, he thinks analytically. He sees what all this will cost for a specious doctrine.
david7134 wrote:
“…your unfounded science…”
Hmmmm. Someone is dismissing others’ concerns without foundation. Who could it be?
“…that does not incorporate tax or other tyrannical measures”
Many thanks to david7134 for hammering my point home. The climate denial of the far right is based not on the facts, but is a product solely of their ideology.
Of course, let us not forget what passes for “science” among the Trumpkins…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WV66BlSoiLQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=igCrZ23QJ0Q