If Sea Levels Rise While Your Head is Stuck in the Sand...Follow

They let people rebuild in areas that actually flood regularly despite the certainty of another flood, so I'm not sure why you'd be surprised they'd allow people to build in areas where only imaginary potential flooding might occur.

You honestly think that's the issue here?

I don't understand the problem (and I'm at work, so I can't watch the Colbert).

You're incredulous because North Carolina wants to limit the way in which one of their agencies can calculate future predicted sea levels? Or that they want to limit it to linear regression dating back only over a century and change?

This is true. I think it would be more accurate (both in reality and to the topic) to say "It wasn't caused by flooding due to rising sea levels caused by global warming." Global warming might have played an effect, but the article in question is about rising sea levels, not your run-of-the-mill storm-caused flooding in low lying areas.

At least that's how I read it?

Only the NC state agency can calculate sea level rise, and that agency can only use a linear formula for extrapolation.

Climate change aside all variables may not lead to a linear rate of sea rise.

National Flood Insurance is a federal program.

Private Insurance companies don't care if all your calculations, mandated by your short-sighted law-makers conclude that an area is not in a flood zone.

It's tells the experts how to do their job - down to what math to use.

What if NY passed a law telling stock-brokers that only the NY State Agency that governs banks could make market predictions and that they'd only make those predictions with this one over-simplified, highly-limiting formula?

Are these the same people wanting government 'out of their lives'?









Edited, Jun 5th 2012 10:25pm by Elinda

I don't have a strong opinion about this aside from pointing out the irony that the stock phrase of the deniers is "We don't have enough historical data to tell" and this law is specifically written to exclude any historical data prior to 1900.

Also, time to sell NC folks some real estate in the Maldives.

But if you visit afterward, it could be more interesting. Like snorkeling through a giant coral reef.

On a long enough time line, the average change in sea level is zero.

If you go back far enough, I'm sure you'll find someone pointing out that building a city six feet below sea level next to the ocean is probably a bad idea.

And how many major hurricanes have hit you directly?

We don't do that kind of thing down here.

Our last near miss was 1995 when there was a fear of dikes breaking from the heightened water level of the Maas and Waal rivers at the place where they are the closest together. Had the dikes broken at that time many homes would've been submerged in about 15 feet of water.
The last real disaster we've had was the North Sea flood of 1953.

There's a good reason people call the Dutch after major disasters involving water.

They make good Potato chips. I got fat once eating Old Dutch chips. Fortunately, I was only ten and grew right out of it.

I can't get Old Dutch out here.

There are two things in this world I hate; people who are intolerant of others' cultures and the Dutch!

Do you even read what you type?

http://imageshack.us/f/805/81530799.gif/

Bored enough to draw it. Dumb enough to think it'd make a difference.

I wanted to see what data before 1900 looked like.



I suppose that fact that they can't plan for greater than average increase than indicated over the last 100 years is a little odd, I mean at that point you're pretty much going to underestimate the change. It's looks fairly linear though to my untrained eye though. I don't know if you're really changing anything by say excluding stuff before about 1870 or so. That seems to be were the error bars get smaller, and the slope changes. It all seems pretty consistent after that.

Suppose it's more the principal of the thing, politicians dictating science or something. On the flip side, at least they're preparing for some change.

I'd assume their constituents would be negatively impacted if told their homes would soon be underwater. Can't imagine that'd help the property value or anything, or be good for the communities losing money on taxes as the homes lose value. Not that sticking your head in the sand keeps the inevitable from happening or anything. Still not news you want to hear as a home owner I'd imagine, and you probably have deep pockets if you can afford oceanfront property.

Yes. What part of what I wrote confused you? My point is that in order for what Colbert to have said to be true, then the rate of increase (well, rate of rate of increase if you will) was higher relatively speaking in the early part of the 20th century (or even later part of the 19th) compared to the end of the 20th century. But this flies in the face of what Global Warming proponents claim (that the biggest temperature spike began in the late 20th century).

I'm still scratching my head trying to figure out what you think is wrong about what I wrote. Care to clarify that? I was just responding to information in the thread itself (and the link in the OP) and making an assessment of that data. Let me be clear *I'm* not making any claims about what is true or not true here. I'm just examining what others have said and saying that it doesn't make any sense. If the rate of sea water increase appears more steep if you include the pre-1900 data versus if you don't, then this suggests that sea water levels haven't increased as fast during the very time period in which the Global Warming folks claim it did. Again. Let me be abundantly clear. I'm just questioning what Colbert said. I have no clue if what he said was 100% false.

Actually, most climate change believers know that the spike in CO2 emissions, and thus the cause of the temperature increase, began in the 1800s when we started spewing coal into the atmosphere on industrial scales.

I have no idea where the "late 20th century" figure Gbaji is citing even came from.

*cough* I even put the word in italics for you.



Because rising sea levels would be an effect, not a cause (at least in the Global Warming model being used). Sea levels are rising *because* temperatures have increased. Temperatures have increased *because* of increases in CO2 emissions over time. Each cause must predate the effect (by a period of time). A chart showing that the current trend slope of sea level change appears to have really happened sometime in the early 19th century (very early even for industrial revolution to have even started this presumed chain of events) would tend to blow a huge hole into that logical progression.


This was why I asked the question I asked. That chart certainly shows a continuing and relatively linear trend of sea water level change over the last century, but the point where the slope of that trend seems to change is just after 1800. That *can't* be the result of global warming as it's currently argued.

Edited, Jun 7th 2012 5:12pm by gbaji

He's not going to let a little thing like reading what he's responding to get in the way of repeating someone else's opinion.

Um... You even put the stuff in red. Do you see how "just after 1800" (the year) is not the same as "in the 1800s" (the century). The industrial revolution is generally considered to have started in the mid 1700s, but most of the increases and adoptions occurred in the mid 1800s (1830 to 1880). Which is why Cat spoke of CO2 levels beginning to rise "in the 1800s". Not before the 1800s, "in" the 1800s. Specifically in the mid 1800s.

I'll point out again that the assumption of global warming is that CO2 levels cause temperature increases and temperature increases cause water levels to rise (melting icecaps/glaciers/etc). If CO2 levels just started to spike in the 1800s, there's no way that this whole cause/effect process could have started a dramatic rise in sea levels in the first decade of the 1800s. Something else must have caused that, completely unrelated to human production of C02.

This should be logically apparent just because of the time constraints involved. If rising C02 levels is responsible for an increase in the rate at which sea levels are rising, shouldn't we see the most increase during the time period in which the most C02 is being released? And even if that logic isn't sufficient for you, then how about the temperatures? The time period during which this sudden shift in slope on the sea level chart occurs is at the tail end of what's known as the "little ice age". Temperatures were noticeably cooler then. Hell, it's part of the global warming argument itself. Temperatures significantly increased between the last couple decades of the 1800s and through the 20th century. That's where all the statistics about how global temperatures have increased by X degrees "over the last century" come from.

So how in hell, if our model assumes rising sea waters result from temperature increases (caused by C02 increases), can we see the largest shift in sea water level increase rates 60-70 years before the temperature increases that global warming folks use as proof of their claim? Clearly, something other than temperature increases caused by industrial activity caused that water level shift. So yeah, there's no reason at all why those opposed to the nutty global warming people would want to hide this information. If there was any desire to hide the history of this data for global warming related reasons, I suspect that most people are looking at the wrong side of the issue.

That data pokes big holes in global warming theories. At least the parts that might attempt to attribute rising sea levels to human activity.




Yeah. There's some irony for ya.

Edited, Jun 8th 2012 1:19pm by gbaji

It's bad enough very few people even know what the word means, but now they went and changed irony's definition to "accurate summation of posting habits" ?

Edited, Jun 8th 2012 6:38pm by lolgaxe