Which part of the US will succumb, to SEA LEVEL RISE, first?

What are some factors which determine sea level?

 

Predominantly it is the amount of water in the oceans. More water, higher coastlines. Less water, lower coastlines.

And sea levels have been rising for over 20,000 years now.

 

So in my earlier post, you only read the part about the Panama Canal and ignored this part: "Factors influencing sea level include temperature of the water, salinity of the water, ocean currents and atmospheric pressure. Because these factors vary in places, all sea level is not the same."?
If you don't believe me, will USGS do?

 

And did you notice that your own reference states "slightly"?

I have been waiting for you to say how much, but obviously you do not know. The total difference? 20cm. That is less then 8". And in this case it is attributable to being a larger basin, so it holds more water so is affected more by tidal forces. But it still makes no difference in average mean level. There is simply more water to "slosh" around due to the effects of the moon's gravitational pull.

 

20cm is the difference in sea level due to none tidal forces. Differences in height due to tides can be as high as 6m.
I don't understand your confusion. You now acknowledge that sea level can vary from place to place. How "slight" it varies is irrelevant as I never claimed the variation was great. So if factors such as ocean temperature, ocean salinity, atmospheric pressure, among others, varies from ocean to ocean and place to place why would some areas not see a greater sea level rise. Or are you claiming that the factors, say ocean temperature, are uniform throughout the globe?

 

deleted...

mannie explained better than I could...

 

people also look at a map and make the common mistake of assuming sea rise will effect all coast lines equally...some areas with steep shorelines will feel little effect but others with long gradual slopes away from the shoreline will suffer enormous damage/loss with just a small rise in sea levels...areas like New Orleans, San Fran Bay area, Bangladesh, south Florida, will experience serious effects sooner than others...

 

Thanks. I never know if I explain things poorly or if it's an unwillingness to learn by those whom I'm addressing.

 

So then why would California and the San Francisco Bay be impacted more?

Funny how you state that areas with :steep shorelines" would be little impacted, yet that is exactly what most of the California shoreline is like. If you actually knew what the shore was, you would realize this is mostly the case. Almost all of your famous "California Beaches" are actually very shallow, only a small stretch of land before high cliffs and bluffs.

And San Francisco area is even worse. There, you actually have almost no waterfront at all, with the hills running directly into the water.

Believe me here, I see more of the "San Francisco Bay Shoreline" then just about anybody else on a daily basis.

 

Which part of the US will succumb, to SEA LEVEL RISE, first?

I'm sure it will be California. Cal already leans so far to the left I'm surprised it hasn't dipped into the Pacific already <ker-plop!>

 

*laughs*

Actually, I am still waiting for an explanation of how California will be impacted more. Especially since it runs completely counter to what they had just stated shortly before (that steep coastlines are little impacted).

This is why I largely ignore the illogic and junk science of the Man-made Global Warming crowd. They can explain nothing behind their claims, insisting that we all take it on faith. They can't explain how the last ice age began or ended, they can't explain what caused the Medieval Climate Optimum, nor can they say what caused or ended the Little Ice Age.

Nor can they adequately explain how we should accept as the "norm" temperature readings that were first accurately taken in the 18th and 19th centuries. Yes, this was the beginning of the modern age of science. It was also some of the coldest periods in recent history ("history" being some 15,000 years).

They believe all kinds of absolutely illogical things, and expect us to simply follow along like sheep.

"Greenland's ice sheets are melting!"
OK, and this is what you use for ice core samples. And I am sure they have melted before, does this throw off your interpretations and readings at all?
"No, because..."

And This is generally the rule. Doubleback, change directions, it does not matter if the facts do not fit the theory, just adjust the theory until they do fit.

 

My question is, Which part of the US will succumb, to SEA LEVEL LOWERING, first?

 

where did I say california???? cities are usually built next to water, which on oceans and seas means sea level, much of the Bay area developments are built on reclaimed land...even a rise of meter in sea level the damage in lost land will run to 100 billion...

if you were that familiar with the san francisco you would've heard discussion of a possible sea gate at the sea entrance to the Bay(how many billions do think that will cost)... but this only demonstrates how uniformed you are which is the problem with the denier world, incredibly uninformed or a general lack of education...

here's a link to a nice interactive map that will let you play with sea rise and it's effect on coastlines... http://geology.com/sea-level-rise/san-francisco.shtml you could learn something but you'll likely ignore it and continue your least it spoil your delusions, ignorance is bliss after all...

 

Actually, that is a rather interesting question. And it all depends on what you are looking for.



Now this is the coast of North America, around 18,000-20,000 years ago. And the two places where the difference is most obvious is on the East Coast (specifically Florida), and Alaska. At this time, North America is directly conjoined with Asia. And a lot of the islands off of Florida (including Cuba) become one large land mass. The Sea of Cortez (between Baja California and Mexico) completely vanishes.

To anybody with even a basic understanding of Geology, the claim that sea level rise would most impact the West Coast is blatantly false. The entire West Coast is basically a mountain ridge, caused by the uplifting of the North American Plate but the subduction of the Pacific Plate. As such, almost the entire coastline is raised up, causing the famous cliffside seascapes that the West Coast is famous for.

In fact, during this time San Francisco was a winding river valley with steep sides that carved into the hillsides and passed into a delta not to unlike a smaller version of the Mississippi today.



When the sea levels rose at the end of the last ice age, the small coastal shelf disappeared, but the water rise pretty much stopped after that. High cliffs and mountain ranges that separated the coast form the inland valleys (Los Angeles, Inland Empire, Central Valley, Willamette Valley, etc) prevented the landscape from changing as drastically as it has on the East Coast.

Now granted, if it rises more, the San Francisco Bay will get a bit larger, and some of the inland areas will become "below sealevel". Stockton (which is in the center of the state, with an ocean port) is only at 13' elevation, so some of that area might vanish.

But this in the entire scheme of things really does not matter much. In another 15,000-25,000 years (unless we get a new ice age), polar ice caps are expected to vanish. Life will start to flourish on South America, and North America will split into 3 separate islands (both because of rising sea levels, and the rifting that is already happening in the Mississippi Valley).

 

First of all, interesting map. Notice something though, the San Francisco Bay is almost totally untouched. Some land will be lost inland, but even that amount is questionable because of a great many factors.

As for how well I know the city, let's just say this is the view from my office at work:



And this is my typical morning commute:



Great shot in that one of the Marin Headlands in the background. Actually fairly typical of the terrain in and around the region. As such, most of the coastline changes very little.

And as for the fill areas like The Marina, that is already in trouble and is having flooding issues. Not because of sea level rise, but because of settling. Much like New Orleans, this land (which as largely loose dirt and rubble simply thrown into the bay) is already sinking, with or without sea level rise. We saw that most spectacularly back in 1989, when water started to shoot up during the Loma Prietta Earthquake.

Most people have no idea how much of San Francisco is built on poor quality fill. To give an idea of my location, I work right across the street from the Trans America Pyramid. Today, this sits about ½ mile inland. But if you walk one of our short blocks East of there, you find this unique historical marker. That is not land at all, but the building is built on the remains of a ship that was sunk on the original coastline.

Huge sections of the North and East sides of the bay was made by land speculators in the mid 1800. They simply took a boat, sank it on the shore, and filled it in with dirt, trash and rubble. Then they built on top of it. Very unstable, but very cheap. A lot of the rubble from the 1906 Earthquake and Fire became new land (specifically the Marina District). And Treasure Island is made up of the rock blasted out of Yerba Buena Island for the Bay Bridge tunnel.

Yea, yea, yea, I know all about that. And here is another thing, should I really care that huge sections of cheap speculation land that is not natural someday will disappear? Cause I don't. The same way I am aware that most of the Central US is living on borrowed time.

And I have yet to see any evidence which shows that the changes are anything but natural. If you talk to me about "Global Warming", I will agree with you. Otherwise we would still be in an ice age, and you could walk to Moscow. But when you talk about "man made global warming", to me that is just arrogance.

BTW, for one more week I am commuting to work by boat, until my shift changes. Then I have to ride my motorcycle in to work every day. I often wonder what those who "want to save the planet" use to get to work.

 

Ummm....uh-huh.....mmmm......uhhh....... considering that Stockton filed bankruptcy a coupla months ago, wouldn't you say that they're already underwater??!!

 

What you are calling an ice age is really a glaciation period. We have been in an ice age for 2.5 million years interspersed with inter-glacials like the one we are in now. At some point in time in the relatively near future, this inter-glacial will end and we will have another glaciation period.

What is now New York City was once covered with a mile thick glacier. At other points in time during this ice age the Arctic has been ice free.

 

Exactly!

This is something I am all to aware of, being that Geology is the "Earth Science" I have studied most. The glaciers have expanded and retreated many times over the eons. At times covering the top half of North America, at other times retreating so that palm trees grow in Northern Alaska. In fact, I used to hunt for fossils on the shores of what was Lake Bonneville (now the Great Salt Lake), and have traveled through the scablands of Washington, remnants of the Lake Missoula floods.

To me, the "Man Made Global Warming" crowd is just as ignorant of science as the "save all animals from extinction" crowd. They seem to be like the medieval Catholic Church, which wants to believe in a static universe that never changes. The way things were yesterday is how they should be today, and how they should be tomorrow. They completely ignore all the evidence that change is constant, that is part of the life of the planet.

I was aware that as the ice caps started to melt that the planet would warm faster over 35 years ago. Less ice caps means less solar radiation reflected back into space, so accelerated melting and faster temperature rise. Now it is becoming more visible, and the MMGW crowd goes nuts. And interestingly enough, at the time I learned that, a great many of the same nuts were screaming about "man made Ice Age" with the same fervor and passion.

Yes, these fools want to live on a static Earth, where nothing ever changes. A single volcano belches out more CO2 and other "Greenhouse Gasses" in a single eruption then we do in an entire year, yet they scream we are causing it. I have pretty much learned to tune out their ignorant claims, like I do over the screaming of the "Ozone Holes". Ozone holes are nothing new, and the largest screams seem to come in the Summer Months, when people whine and cry about the hole growing over Antarctica.

Well duh! Ozone, created by sunlight hitting the upper atmosphere, which by the oxygen-ozone cycle O2 molecules stuck by UV light form into O3, which when struck by more UV light breaks back into O and O2. This layer absorbs and reflects most of the UV light from the Sun and hits the planet. Ozone Hole! Everybody cooks and dies!

Sounds frightening when we hear about it every Summer. But wait, there's more. Because of the tilt of the planet, our Summer is Antarctica's Winter. And what do you not have a lot of in winter (especially over the poles)?

That's right, sunlight. Antarctica has roughly 5 months of summer, 5 months of winter, and 2 months of dusk. No sunlight hitting the upper atmosphere, no Oxygen-Ozone Cycle, ozone depletion. Cause and effect.

If people want to know why I ignore most of those that scream "Global Warming", it is because of the lack of real science in their studies. To me it is much like scientists in Medieval times using complex formula to explain why the Sun and planets revolved around the Earth. You had to buy in and believe, because to do otherwise would have you branded a heretic.

I have had a basic challenge I have given to many of those fools, who believe that the Earth is static and never changing. Explain some of the climate change in the last 3,000 years, and how it fits logically into the models. Explain to me the Little Ice Age and Medieval Warming Periods. Explain to me Lake Manly, and what happened to it (and how 2,000 years ago a large freshwater lake with abundant life cycle became Death Valley). Explain the difference between the Middle East of our most ancient literature (a lush fertile landscape full of trees and grasses as far as the eye could see, a land of "milk and honey"), and explain how it is now among the most desolate places on the planet.

All without any interaction of "Man Made Global Warming". So did this cycle suddenly stop? And only start again when we invented cars? How were things cooling even more during the height of the Industrial Revolution, when we were spitting out much more pollutants and "Greenhouse Gasses" then we are today?

The claims and "science" do not mesh when compared to past cycles of heating and cooling, and are constantly being "adjusted". When a theory needs that much fudging and guessing and adjustment, most times scientifically we toss out the theory because it foes not work. But in this, oh it must be right, so we fiddle with it some more, and even come up with "regional formulas" to explain how the same cause creates different changes.

 

I find your statement ironic, given how you don't understand how cultlike your own behavior looks to anyone outside of your cult.

Now, each of us thinks the other is a cultist. Difference is, you get all the science wrong and we don't. Hence, it's pretty clear who the brainwashed cultists are.

If you knew the science, you'd have known that even in the 1970s, most scientists were predicting global warming.

According to the natural causes at play, we should be cooling slowly now. That's how the natural cycles work. Because of the orbital effects, each ice age ends with a fast warmup, and then there's a slow cooldown in to the next ice age. The rapid warming ended 6000 years ago. It's been cooling since, and should be cooling for at least another 23000 years. Yet instead, it's warming up fast.

So exactly what natural process is driving the current warming? No, don't just wave your hands around wildly and yell "natural cycles!". That's an evasion. What is the specific cause driving the supposed natural cycle which is causing the fast warming?

No. Not even close. Humans put out far more CO2 than volcanoes. Yet another example of you getting the science totally wrong.

I can pretty much guarantee, for example, that you'd tell us DDT is harmless and never should have been banned. AGW theory, ozone depletion, DDT ... there's a long list of crank science that your political fringe cult orders it members to espouse.

The models hindcast that fine. Are you not aware of that? You haven't been brainwashed into thinking models don't hindcast correctly, have you? Remember, not being idiots, scientists know full well that a model that can't hindcast won't be able to forecast either.

Because over the centuries, the climate in some areas got wetter, and in some areas got drier. What, are you confusing temperature with precipitation?

The cooling cycle did suddenly stop, and then made a hard reverse into fast warming.

Sulfate aerosols. Come on, at least get familiar with the basics.

The science doesn't mesh up with your cult's nonsense, but that's a problem with your cult's nonsense, not with the science.

Meanwhile, explain the smoking guns.

Why has outgoing IR flux squeezed down over the CO2 absorption bands?

Why has backradiation increased?

Why has the stratosphere cooled?

Why is warming greater at night, and in the polar region?

AGW theory explains all of that. None of your side's theories do. Your theories do not match observed data, hence they are wrong. AGW theory has been making successful predictions for decades, hence it has credibility. Scientific method. If you want your pet theories to have credibility, you need to build up a similar record of success.

 

And on your end, complete evasion of the Medieval Climate Optimum, which had temperatures even warmer then we are experiencing today. If "rapid warming" ended 6,000 years ago, then how do you explain that?

I for one do not even claim to know or have a singly belief as to what causes these cycles. I believe it is a lot of different separate things. From volcanic eruptions to a change in the amount of fresh water that enters the oceans. But I also do not believe in Static Earth, and acknowledge that these changes are normal.

And when you talk about "(t)he cooling cycle did suddenly stop, and then made a hard reverse into fast warming", that is the exact opposite of the Little Ice Age, when within a short period of time temperatures plunged to the point that glaciers were once again expanding and spreading across parts of Europe.

 

Earth's normal sea level was 30 feet higher than it is today. The reason it is low is because we have been in an ice age for 2.5 million years. If this ice age ever ends, sea levels will return to their norm.

New York was once covered with a mile thick glacier and sea levels were lower.

Begs the question, what is normal for sea level?

 

Well, for most of the history of the planet, there were no polar ice caps. So melt all the ice off of Antarctica, remove the North Polar Cap, and then you will have a good idea of what "normal" is for our planet. The only reason we even have polar ice caps at this time in geologic history is because of how our Continents have been arranged, and it is not going to last much longer.

Antarctica will continue to move North, Australia will continue to move North and West, and the Atlantic Ocean will continue to expand. And if the suspected ridge between Antarctica and South America does indeed develop, expect the planetary weather to become almost impossibly hard to predict (but much hotter then it is today).

The problem is that the "norm" most of these people use is flawed. It is generally at around the end of the 19th or early in the 20th centuries. And we know that was among the coldest period of the Little Ice Age. That is like asking your spouse for the temperature inside your house and they take it from inside the fridge.

 

A mostly localized phenomenon, and not as warm as it was today, nor did the climate every change as rapidly. Why do you think it's significant?

So you have faith that it must be natural. Meanwhile, the scientists have actual data, and theories that have been successfully making predictions for decades. "Natural cycles" don't explain why the outgoing IR is squeezing down, or why the backradiation downward has increased. AGW theory does explain it.

A modest cooling in the northern hemisphere, that came on over a span of centuries, caused by very low solar activity and a series of massive volcanic eruptions. Totally unlike the current sudden warming. And no, the glaciers were never overrunning europe. Expanding mountain glaciers yes, but there were never ice sheets advancing over the lowlands.

 

Yea, localized. It just covered almost all of the Northern Hemisphere, including North America, Europe and China. Very "local".

Same with the extent of glaciation, which you downplay. Entire villages and regions were wiped out in Europe, and some in the Southern Hemisphere (specifically Chile and New Zealand) reached record sizes. And still you ignore why this unusual cool period is used as a benchmark of what temperatures "should be".

 

The sea level used to be higher than it was today. The ruins of the Biblical port of Ephesus (in modern day Turkey) is now 15 kilometers away from the coast.

1900 years ago, this was a harbor side street next to a boat landing: