King Canute in Reverse?
The Popular Science blog has links to a photo essay "on the rapidly disappearing town of Shishmaref on the ABC News Web site. The coastal Alaskan village has about 600 residents and is believed to have been inhabited (on and off) for 4,000 years. Today, with water rising about 10 feet a year, it's in danger of sinking. The population of Shishmaref may soon count themselves among the first wave of global-warming refugees."
The Popular Science accounts gives the impression that the sea levels have risen by 10 feet a year on the Alaskan coast. But accounts of islands that are "sinking" have been shown due to factors which cause subsidence in the land. Anyone who claims that the sea level goes up 10 feet a year in Alaska due, presumably to melting Polar ice caps, should explain why the Sydney Opera House is still visible, or why anyone with beachfront property is not drowned unless the sea can change its level in one place and not in another.
Any thoughts?
posted by wretchardthecat at 5/04/2007 05:53:00 PM
52 Comments:
Wretchard, remarking on such details are the sign of heresy. Maybe the water is thick around there or something. Gore in 08!
buddy larsen,
It's what I feared: dihydrogen oxide. The planet is doomed.
Gore NOW!!!!!
Oh, buddy.
Those indians live in a subsidence zone, anyone that has cable tv could tell you that.
The oceans raising, or. land is falling, an event of such locality is not to be believed.
The earth mother, Gaia, being static, except for her reactions to the trespasses of man
Oh, I get it--those indians are subsidence farmers. I've heard of that. They should hold their own Iowa primary--that'd keep 'em high & dry!
OT:
Michelle and Laura are the first people to take on and win against a bigger censor and manipulater of "news" than CBS, CNN, NY Times, WaPo, Drudge, and the rest, combined:
Google/You Tube,
this time at the direction of VERIZON.
Please do whatever you can to support these courageous ladies.
----
I'll be back in the No-Spin Zone again tonight, guest-hosting for Bill O'Reilly.
Tune in at 8pm Eastern.
Verizon Wireless ends Akon partnership
By Michelle Malkin
Thank you, readers.
Thank you, Laura Ingraham listeners. Thank you, Verizon
Wireless:
Verizon decided this week to end its support and sponsorship of Akon.
Jim Gerace
Vice President, Corporate Communications Verizon Wireless One Verizon Way
Basking Ridge, NJ 07920
Akon's ringtones have been
removed by the Verizon Wireless website.
I just spoke with Gerace by phone, and he told me Verizon Wireless had made
a mistake partnering with Akon.
It's good to see some corporate responsibility here. Will others step up to
the plate?
***
Update: A reader notes that
Verizon is still sponsoring Gwen Stefani's tour--with Akon as the opening
act.
What will they do now?
Update II: Verizon writes that they are no longer sponsoring the Gwen
Stefani tour with Akon as opening act. Jim Gerace:
"We are no longer -- that was the decision we made this week. If the
reader is seeing a poster or something promoting our sponsorship of the
tour, it's only because that material has not yet been destroyed."
***Previous:
Akons record
company abuses DMCA to stifle criticism on YouTubeLook
whos promoting a vulgar misogynist
Rapper
molests girl on stage (graphic warning)
digg
Akon's dad a Senagales Muslim with 3 wives and a felony record.
Not Platinum, I should add.
"explain why the Sydney Opera House is still visible"
The fat lady ain't sung yet.
She be puttin on the pounds.
"Any thoughts?"
---
I've been wondering why my sister in Long Beach CA stopped writing.
I thought it might have been something to do with New Century Mortage going belly up.
Now I know why.
"Mortgage"
It always begins this way, and the next thing you know the guy is blogging.
"We're not talking about the right to vote here."
Activists want chimp declared a ‘person’
***
"Important notice: New Century Mortgage Corporation and Home123 Corporation are unable to continue the origination or funding of mortgage loans, and no new loans are being accepted. We are committed to helping borrowers who have been affected by this."
---
Maybe Mike Brown can take care of them w/some relocateables.
Maybe a way to reverse this disasterous trend would be to get rid of Daylight Savings Time. Surely, with an hour less sunlight each day, the earth wouldn't warm up so fast and the village would be saved.
Global warming makes no exceptions:
---
"The campaign began after the animal sanctuary where Hiasl (pronounced HEE-zul) and another chimp, Rosi, have lived for 25 years went bankrupt.
Activists want to ensure the apes don't wind up homeless"
Not funny, fasteddy:
Some Democrat group of Union thugs met in San Diego this week, and saved the world by turning off the lights for 1 minute in the middle of their program.
(not sure if they bought carbon offsets for the extra minute at the end of the meeting)
Take the Test and see if you know about Global Warming!
Ten feet a year must be a typo. From the looks of the level of the "frozen" ocean they don't have ten feet to spare.
Did I say "frozen" ocean? These guys have no shame.
They obviously feel they can say anything they've been told to say and its acceptance by their editors constitutes reality. I'm trying to understand this. Their lives are validated because the paycheck cometh and cranks their minds in reverse. It must be global warming because they got paid. Truth apart from paycheck must be unknown to these people. If they get paid, then what they said must have been the truth, or whatever! This is way beyond whoredom. This is a new level of abandonment of reality. If you put this in a book of fiction no one would believe it.
What will it take to stop this global warming hysteria? Why does it still persist as though nothing has been written about the falsity of it? Why havn't these people been laughed off the stage?
Of course this is better than Islam for which I am grateful. But certainly this does not bode well for tomorrow and tomorrow. The stuff will, I suppose, hit the fan sometime.
I want to be in a safe place when it happens.
Higher tides due to a change in the ocean bottom? The second- highest tides in the world are at Cook inlet in Alaska. Just a guess.
10 inches a year might be more believeable, but even then...
Reading that item by the hapless Abby put me in mind to look up Bangladesh which also comes in for a swipe with the crying towel.
The Wikipedia entry points out that the country is basically the Ganges (plus two more rivers) delta and states that it is about 39 meters on average above the sea level and that if the oceans rose 3 (three) feet 10 percent of the country would be underwater. No it seems to me that if the sea level in Alaska was up ten feet we'd be missing around 33% of Bangladesh right now.
"10 inches a year might be more believeable."
No, even that is a huge exaggeration. The actual rate of sea level rise today is three millimeters per year.
"Ten feet per year" is a blatant lie. The true rate is ten feet per millennium.
Beware of Stupid People in Large Groups
Many of the High-Priests & Priestesses of the First Church of Global Warming warn the popular media not to question the orthodoxy. Seems like PS is caving in to this orthodoxy. If it is not permitted to broadcast messages contrary to Global Warming it must be okay (perhaps even praiseworthy) to spread BS supporting global warming. Look at the SI cover some time ago with the pitcher posed in water.
Also, perhaps they are doing this to attempt to regain the grace of the Left after their sister publication earned the left's ire with the 9/11 truther debunkification.
et tu Vanuatu?!
Seriously thopught, the town exist on what appears to be a barrier island at the opposite end of the landmass from the subduction zone of the Great Pacific Ring of Fire. Receiving plates along that front rise rapidly (geologically speaking) like here in Oregon, while the opposing ends can tilt in response. The smaller the plate, the greater the effect of tilt. Without more research, its hard to say what is happening to this village. It exists in one of the active geologic areas on Earth. Traditionally sea level changes have effected the area significantly. 10000 years ago it looked like this,
http://www.lib.utexas.edu/maps/national_parks/beri_past95.jpg
NOW we know what the global warming mavens have been smoking.
Give the pestiferous movie stars some credit though - they're concerned about the value of their Malibu beachfront property - although the actuarial odds are much higher that their properties are washed into the ocean by a landslide.
Shazzzbuttt,
It looks like spambots have cracked the Blogger spambot challenge.
Now that the Elephant Bar has decided to close it's doors I would imagine the BC will be seeing some old familiar faces.
It's all Bush's fault.
I haven't read the Goracle's book or seen his movie, so I'm not sure how much CO2 humans are pumping into the atmosphere but based on the following numbers, I think we had better speed up the process.
In the Cretaceous epoch (67-101 million years ago), the atmosphere contained 4070 billion tons of CO2 and a concentration of 1800 ppm.
By the Oligocene (25-37 million years ago), levels had dropped to 770 billion tons of CO2 and a concentration of 320 ppm. The antarctic ice cap started forming at this time.
In the Miocene (9-25 mya) levels had risen to 1760 billion tons of CO2 and a concentration of 760 ppm. No humans were involved and the antarctic was still covered in ice.
During the Pleistocene (2 million to 10,000 years ago) levels dropped to 550 billion tons of CO2 and a concentration of 250 ppm. The entire Pleistocene was an ice age with glacial-interglacial periodicidy of 100,000 years. By 1988 levels were up to 814 billion tons of CO2 and a concentration of 351 ppm.
Based on past CO2 levels, humans could pump another 1000 billion tons of CO2 into the atmosphere to reach Miocene levels and still keep an antarctic ice cap. Ocean levels would rise somewhat but wouldn't reach the catastrophic levels the Goracle pronounces.
Wow!
1000 billion tons. That's a lot of carbon credits - somebody's gonna get rich.
Data from a joint US/USSR report on future climate.
Gang green.
Well, the stupid article in reality does not even offer evidence that the sea levels are rising.
Here is a photo caption from the article:
Rising temperatures mean the ice forms later, breaks up earlier and is not as thick. This leaves the shoreline vulnerable to the powerful storms that come in during the fall.
All right, so it is a tad warmer in the Arctic, or at least in parts of it. Obviously with the ice and snow melting more, when it does it carries off the soil – or sand – and more of it. And if you look at a satellite photo of the place, you will see that the island looks to be eroding from the BACKSIDE – where the lagoon is. And there is considerable evidence of silting in the lagoon. In fact, it looks like that the ends of the island (which, by the way, is all of a kilometer long) are getting BIGGER – as the silt laden water flows back out with the tide changes. If it was simply rising sea levels you would think the ends would be the first places to disappear. So move the village to where the sand is going.
It is beach erosion, plain and simple. Ask the folks over in Cocoa Beach if they have a problem with that. Everyone who has a beach has a problem with that. Nothing has to rise and nothing has to sink.
This is all part of an obvious plot to sell refrigerators to Eskimos – or the Goretext equivalent thereof.
Not a bad idea, rwe:
Sink a couple of million Freon-Free Fridges offshore, creating a protective reef and breeding grounds.
Tremendous tourism potential for glass-bottomed boats, snorkling, and the like.
T-Shirts:
"I Saw the Reefs of Saint Gore"
dmqBush Is Not Incompetent - by George Lakoff, Sam Ferguson, Marc Ettlinger
...Conservatives continue to deny the validity of global warming, because it runs contrary to their moral system. Recognizing global warming would call for environmental regulation and governmental efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Regulation is a perceived interference with the ...free market, Conservatives’ golden calf.
Global Warming's Globalist Backers - By J.R. Dunn
...the aim of all these schemes, from Annan's tax plans to the Kyoto Treaty to the climate change authority, is simply to...bridle the United States. If not to bring it under complete UN suzerainty, then to exercise some form of bureaucratic restraint over what the UN hierarchy has long viewed as an out-of-control colossus. The UN effectively controls many derelict third-world states (and even the occasional European example, such as Kosovo). Why not the U.S.?
So we can probably leave any sort of global warming authority out of our future calculations. Excepting one possible case: we've previously pointed out here that environmentalism displays all the aspects of a pseudo-religion. And religions - as we've seen in recent years with the Jihadis - represent the sole existing example of a working transnational structure. A militant global environmentalist creed might very well be capable of pushing such a program through. It wouldn't necessarily establish a warming authority as much as it would become one, in and of itself. A very spooky possibility, if only because there are plenty of people in the U.S. who would welcome such a thing. So it might be worth keeping one eye on the situation. But no more than that. For a religion to spread in such a manner it would require a messiah. And the Greens, despite Al Gore's best efforts, don't have one of those yet.
Yet.
Interesting take on the concept known as "mental models" = how people percieve things important to them. Try asking a woman for directions, if you're a man, and vice versa.
To a surveyor with proper tools and mensuration techniques, such as myself, this is absurd (0.01 m would be more appropriate, per annum, from nean high tides).
To someone who lives on a gently sloping beach, who knows the way the few rocks are covered and uncovered over the tidal cycles, "10 feet" makes sense, too. Think of someone who says: it used to come to that rock, and now it comes up to here!
Gross discrepancies such as this can be due to measuring a vertical displacement, vs a visual appearance.
You remind me, Leon, that every year that we get a heavy Kona (storm from the South) Storm, 10 feet or more of sand can disappear overnight from a local beach, only to gradually be replenished, no doubt from when someone makes a particulary large purchase of Carbon Offsets.
Harry Reid, Geologist:
'“It’s a known fact that every time a [island] is [sunk], another rises to take [it]s place,” said [Dr]. Reid. “Therefore, the only way to stop the spawning of new [island]s is to halt the slaying of the current ones.”'
Someone explain to me how evolutionists can be Global Warming disciples. Seems to me that Global Warming theory requires a belief ion a static universe, while Evolution is a story of adaptation to changing environment(s) over eons.klcl
3case - How about a bumper sticker that says: Global Warming -- don't blame me, I'm a Creationist.
I have worked at Sishmaref from time to time for about 10 years as an engineer working on their water source and water treatment system. The island is a sand barrier island on the Nw corner of the Seward Peninsula of Alaska. They get hammered hard by storms from the Chukchi Sea, which causes erosion of the island from the west. A number of villages in western and Northwest Alaska are facing the same issues. Kivalina to the north of Kotzebue is eroding, and many Yukon-Kuskokwim villages on the coasts are getting flooded by storm surges. Things are changing in the arctic,climate wise. Sorry, Al Goriolioni, you can't claim this one. Mother nature has her whims. Nothing is static in nature. The world is not a full-sized theme park. Continents move, advancing glaciers cut off fjords and trap seals and kill them. Big landslides take out pretty forests. Everything rises and falls.
gdude,
LOL
Why Asia Is Ignoring Global Warming
Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't the ocean on one side of the Panama canal higher than on the other side of the canal? And has it not been that way for a *long* time?
...remarking on such details is the sign of heresy...
Heresy is used correctly here, too, because the Global Warmists are True Believers, in The CONCEPT/IDEOLOGY of "Global Warming", so reference to facts which might break through the True Believers' egg-shell faith MUST BE acts of heresy, BECAUSE
(inhale)
Global Warming IS HAPPENING, therefore you kffirs and non-believers are only showing your HATRED for The Earth and your IGNORANCE OF THE TRUTH when you try to confuse us with insane blather about 'islands sinking' when anyone can see with their own eyes that the WATER IS RISING!
/at which point, the ranter swipes his spittle-flecked mouth and tries to control his utter revulsion at even ASSOCIATING with such unwashed, STUPID and UTTERLY IGNORANT 'people' as you and me!
Doug,
I note (rather sarcastically if truth be known) that the IPCC states loudly that "the facts are in" and "there's no excuse for waiting..."
However, STUDYING the IPCC reports, and contrasting them with various DISSIDENT SCIENTIFIC OPINION shows a remarkable reality:
"The FACTS are NOT in!" We do not, in FACT, know fully WHY globe-wide temperatures SEEM to be on an upward swing, but we KNOW it is VERY IMPORTANT to the IPCC spokes-persons TO ACT AS IF everything is as THEY say it is!
/and NOT accusing you, Doug. You posted a good link re: Asia Not Warming to Global Warming!
I posted this piece on water desalination April 27. The piece discusses one aspect of the NAU meetings happening behind closed doors. They're talking about doing massive water transfers from Canada to Mexico & the USA. Its kind of a Chinatown water grab. But its incredibly expensive. Likely Bush has some kind of symetry in his mind whereby they send illegals north and water south. Its a bad way to treat a country & a civilization--but there you are.
What does this have to do with the climate. The present danger is not that the seas are drying but that large areas are getting lless water. There's a scramble to do something about it.
However, one consequence of "doing something about it" is the possibility of really bad water policy...on the one the one hand....or the possibility of the state taking a hand in one of the great coming innovations of the 21st century. Cheap efficient low maintenance semipermiable membranes.
These membranes will make it possible to simply stick a pipe in the ocean and pump fresh water out. The cost of this is a fraction of the cost of building & maintaining a complex water desalination plant. The consequence of this is that since most deserts are beside the oceans--it will be econmically possible to turn the deserts green & double the size of the habitable planet.
Now I think the role of carbon dioxide in global warming is over rated...but if you care about such things --then its appropriate to point out that a l of extra green in the trees on a planetary scale will reverse the work of industrialization over th e last two centuries. How? Trees convert carbon dioxide to oxygen.
then its appropriate to point out that a l of extra green in the trees on a planetary scale will reverse the work of industrialization over th e last two centuries. How? Trees convert carbon dioxide to oxygen.
////////
should read
then its appropriate to point out that a little bit of extra green in the trees on a planetary scale--(ie if you turn the deserts green--it) will reverse the work of industrialization over the last two centuries. How? Trees convert carbon dioxide to oxygen.
I actually came up with a simple, low cost solution to global warming (assuming it exists). It could be instituted in a few years and would be far more effective then a dozen Kyoto Protocols.
My solution: genetically engineered white dandelions. This would significantly change the albedo of 10% of the Earth's surface for several month's each year. Reflecting more sunlight back into space would reduce Earth's average temperature more than enough to compensate for the trivial contribution of manmade CO2.
Richard Branson is offering a $25,000,000 prize to anybody who can figure out how to sequester CO2. I can solve Global Warming, but I wouldn't qualfy for the prize so screw it. I like the heat anyway. I get to put the top down on my three convertable sports cars more often. Who cares if penguins get sunburn? Besides, if I solved Global Warming then the eco-freaks could go back to being anti-nuclear.
The sea aint level. For instance, the Mediterranean is, on average, 40 feet lower than the Atlantic thanks to evaporation. The Black Sea in turn is lower than the Med. The Pacific Ocean has low spots and high points.
Now add in the fact the Arctic region is warming up faster than the rest of the world, and that warm water expands, and you get a faster than usual rate of sea level rise.
But, according to the last figure I've seen on the average world wide rise in sea level, it's about 1 millimeter a year.'Bout an inch since 1970. In the case of that Alaskan island we could be talking about 10 millimeters a year average rise in sea level.
Now add in topography. land flattens out, water can spread out. Land gets bumpier, water will be forced to rise as volume increases. And as water melts and expands volume will increase.
Nothing but bare sand where Algore parts the waters.
It never ceases to astonish me that on a blog that features clear-eyed discussion of the danger to Western civilization posed by Islamic extremism, and critiques of the failure in many circles to recognize that danger and respond to it appropriately, when the subject changes to global warming it's like walking into a meeting of the flat earth society.
Wretchard says "how can this be?" and the answer comes from the chorus: "It can't be!" The only real effort to answer the question comes from Alaska Paul, to whom we are all indebted.
Alaskan fishing villages and Pacific atolls making plans for evacuation are just the tip of the melting iceberg. We have already lost a major U.S. city to a hurricane off a heated sea.
There are none so blind as those who will not see. The debate in the scientific community is essentially over. The only disagreement is which bad things - droughts, floods, monster hurricanes and tornadoes, tropical diseases, crop failures - will happen, and when and where. The Pentagon is already making plans for the civil disturbances that will accompany these events.
There is more scientific proof of global warming than there is of the divine origins of the revelations that started such major world religions as Christianity and Islam. But the parallel to religious belief is not entirely inaccurate - there is a leap of faith involved between the observation of crocuses blooming in a Massachusetts January and the conclusion that there's big trouble on the way.
What we have here is a contemporary version of Pascal's wager: the annoyance of religious observance is nothing compared to what they tell us of the pains of Hell, so a reasonable man should go to church. If the climatologists are right, the consequences of doing nothing - agricultural collapse, destruction of coastal cities - so far outweigh the costs of reducing carbon emissions, that getting religion and changing our ways is the only reasonable thing to do.
Frogman, did the warming seas melt the sea walls that had been keeping the Gulf of Mexico out of New Orleans?
The Earth may be warming, but this does not mean the end of the world is near. The climate will be different in the distant future. So what? That has always been the case--even before the Earth was infected by the Human virus. So relax chicken little, its only an acorn.
Global warming is a very serious subject of which only facts should be discussed.
Any false claims will only go to ridicule the real dangers.
Lets just keep it honest, so we can deal with the real issues not the made up.
mark
Tony Robbins
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