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How Fast Are Oceans Rising? The Answer May Be In Century-Old Shipping Logs
NPR ^ | March 1, 2021 | Lauren Sommer

Posted on 03/04/2021 7:43:52 AM PST by Tolerance Sucks Rocks

Off the coast of England, there's a tiny, wind-swept island with the remains of a lifeboat rescue station from the mid-1800s. The workers who once ran the station on Hilbre Island did something that, unbeknownst to them, has become crucial for understanding the future of a hotter climate: They recorded the tides.

The data, scrawled in long, handwritten ledgers, is just one example of the tens of thousands of pages of tidal measurements stored in archives around the world. Now, scientists and historians are racing to digitize them in an effort to understand how fast oceans are rising. The aging notebooks establish a historical baseline to compare with today's changing world.

Sea level rise is accelerating around the globe, likely to displace millions of people who live in coastal communities. Forecasts show between 3 and 6 feet of rise by the end of the century, or potentially more, depending on how much heat-trapping pollution humans emit.

Knowing exactly how much inundation to expect and how fast it's happening in each city can be tricky. Sea levels rise at different rates in different places due to the movement of the Earth's crust and ocean currents.

Long-term historical data, diligently tallied when the shipping industry was king, provide a window into these geologic processes and help improve the complex computer models scientists use to forecast the future. Those forecasts are crucial for helping cities prepare, whether it's building infrastructure to protect themselves or moving people out of harm's way.

Still, the vast majority of these historical records come from Europe and the U.S., leaving a glaring data gap in the Southern Hemisphere. That has researchers scouring archives of the Global South, including the ledgers of former colonial powers.

(Excerpt) Read more at npr.org ...


TOPICS: Business/Economy; Chit/Chat; History; Miscellaneous; Science; Society; Weather; Weird Stuff
KEYWORDS: africa; climatechange; europe; globalwarming; globalwarminghoax; greennewdeal; icemelt; models; sealevelrise; shippinglogs; southamerica; uk; usa; waterlevelreadings
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To: Tolerance Sucks Rocks

Since I’m not a PhD climate scientist, I assess things like global warming/sea level rise by observing the behavior of those who claim to be experts and who claim to believe it. By that measure there is nothing to worry about.

If they really believed sea levels were rising, the newspapers of every coastal city on the planet would be filled with debates about selling municipal bonds and other ways to raise money for levees and seawall construction and other countermeasures to cope with a rising sea. And advocates like Obama and Bill Gates would not be buying sea level property despite the lack of meaningful progress in curbing global CO2 levels.

So take it from the experts and alarmists: There is nothing to be alarmed about.


81 posted on 03/04/2021 8:44:27 AM PST by EnderWiggin1970
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To: Tolerance Sucks Rocks

This is easier to measure than all this expensive research. Just keep track of the Obamas’ mansion in the Vineyard. If their lawn disappears, the sea is rising.


82 posted on 03/04/2021 8:44:41 AM PST by lurk ( )
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To: ProtectOurFreedom

Ledgers are books. Burn all books.


83 posted on 03/04/2021 8:45:03 AM PST by Tolerance Sucks Rocks (GOP-free since 10/9/20)
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To: Tolerance Sucks Rocks

My grandmother use to sing “How deep is the creek, Mama? Six feet high and rising!”


84 posted on 03/04/2021 8:49:42 AM PST by salmon76 (They call me Big Boomer McKraken. I live at the corner of Breaking Street and Bombshell Avenue.)
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To: redshawk
Yup. Higher water on one side, lower on the other.

It must be a cool dive experience to swim under Guam. Or, is it restricted? We could hide our submarines under there.

85 posted on 03/04/2021 8:50:20 AM PST by gundog (It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen. )
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To: GOPJ

They should sue NPR for infringement.


86 posted on 03/04/2021 8:54:00 AM PST by Tolerance Sucks Rocks (GOP-free since 10/9/20)
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To: Tolerance Sucks Rocks

The federal government has been keeping this information for a very long time, back into the 1800s for most places. It is used to calculate the legal boundary between the coastline/fast land (private property) and the water/submerged lands (government property), which is generally called the mean high tide line.

Where I live, sea levels have steadily increased about a 1 and a half millimeters per year for the past 120 years or so. This translates into roughly six inches of sea level rise per century.

https://tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/sltrends/sltrends_station.shtml?id=1612340.

Where I live (and I’ve gone jogging past the same beaches the past 40 years) I have not noticed an appreciable change in sea levels.

All this nonsense about 3-9 feet of sea level rise by 2100 is total bullcrap.


87 posted on 03/04/2021 8:55:22 AM PST by kaehurowing
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To: fireman15
This is a photograph from 1895 showing the seawall looking pretty much exactly as it is today:


88 posted on 03/04/2021 8:56:03 AM PST by JewishRighter
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To: Tolerance Sucks Rocks

Especially the ultra-evil colonial power books.


89 posted on 03/04/2021 8:56:20 AM PST by ProtectOurFreedom (The Weak Never Started, The Cowards fail along the way, Only the Strong Survive)
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The CO2 has heat trapping because it weighs the air down. If the concentration gets to the dangerous 0.045% level, the air will become so heavy that convection at the equator will stop completely, and thus that very moisture laden air with the high heat capacity evaporated from the ocean by the tropical sun will no longer have a means to rise to the stratosphere, recondense and expel all that heat to space


90 posted on 03/04/2021 8:58:12 AM PST by dsrtsage (Complexity is merely simplicity lacking imagination)
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To: Tolerance Sucks Rocks

There is a legal pathway in England called the Broomway. It is considered dangerous because it is covered by the tide twice a day. The tide comes in fast and many people have drowned. It has been in use for roughly 700 years. Ponder that for a bit.


91 posted on 03/04/2021 9:00:20 AM PST by hanamizu
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To: Tolerance Sucks Rocks

I’ve lived within a mile of the ocean most of my life, and it’s still right where it was when I was a kid. The same combination of wind and tides still flood the same areas they flooded in the 1940s and ‘50s. More damage is a given, as more homes have been built where they shouldn’t be.


92 posted on 03/04/2021 9:07:51 AM PST by JimRed (TERM LIMITS, NOW! Build the Wall Faster! TRUTH is the new HATE SPEECH.)
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To: Tolerance Sucks Rocks

...”by the end of the century”...

No one frightened by those predictions will be around to see that they were WRONG!


93 posted on 03/04/2021 9:09:42 AM PST by JimRed (TERM LIMITS, NOW! Build the Wall Faster! TRUTH is the new HATE SPEECH.)
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To: Tolerance Sucks Rocks

Total horse dung. Survey the ancient drydocks, the in-ground ones. Or ocean bound locks. Have they been raised recently? I doubt it.


94 posted on 03/04/2021 9:10:40 AM PST by ClockDoc ( - Let the churches attend to the poor and the Gov. attend to our enemies.)
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To: Tolerance Sucks Rocks

Forgot to consider the source: NPR. IOW, commie BS.


95 posted on 03/04/2021 9:10:41 AM PST by JimRed (TERM LIMITS, NOW! Build the Wall Faster! TRUTH is the new HATE SPEECH.)
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To: Tolerance Sucks Rocks; Alas Babylon!; All; Kaslin; ebb tide; SunkenCiv
What BS. 8 inches versus 6 feet. Which will it be?
I don't see it being 6 feet, either, given that Global Warming is logarithmic - if CO2 rises at a constant rate, the temperature will rise more and more slowly as time goes on.

Accurate (calibrated) sea level rise has only been “measured” since the 1920’s: 1920 - 2000, the rate was stable at 2.2 - 2.4 mm per year. It is a value I trust based on all the numbers from around the world for “global average sea level rise”.

Now, 2.3 - 2.4 mm per year =
1 inch per decade,
10 inches per century,
1 meter in 400 years.
Now, for a great change they (NPR propagandists) actually “started to get” their message right! They did actually use 8 inches higher by the end of the century! Then NPR went off the deep end and used up to 6 feet, and “millions of people displaced” with the scary “increasing rates of sea level rise!” They just can't use the actual rates and the actual exaggeration their ownders demand.

BUT! Local areas rise and drop substantially more - or much less!) than this global average: Baytown TX dropped 6 feet in only 8 years when they pumped down their aquifer for water, then pushed the land back up again when they wised up. Taiwan, Philippines, Hong Kong, many small islands see the same thing. The very tip of Manhattan is going down while Hudson Bay shoreline base rocks are going up. So Manhattan is dropping at 3.1 mm per year, Hudson Bay is going up! (Sea level rise is negative, if you will!)

The Smithsonian's Air and Space Magazine recently turned that 3.1 mm per year sea level rise into 3.1 feet per decade, by the way. No apologies or explanations yet either.

96 posted on 03/04/2021 9:53:27 AM PST by Robert A Cook PE (Method, motive, and opportunity: No morals, shear madness and hatred by those who cheat.)
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To: Alas Babylon!

That is cool. Ocean levels have risen at different rates despite being connected.


97 posted on 03/04/2021 10:03:23 AM PST by zek157
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To: Tolerance Sucks Rocks
Sea level rise is accelerating around the globe, likely to displace millions of people who live in coastal communities. Forecasts show between 3 and 6 feet of rise by the end of the century, or potentially more, depending on how much heat-trapping pollution humans emit.

Yeah, sure.

We’ve heard that story before.

Right now, I’d be happy with a little global warming I wouldn’t mind longer growing seasons and lower hearing bills.

98 posted on 03/04/2021 10:21:00 AM PST by metmom (...fixing our eyes on Jesus, the Author and Perfecter of our faith...)
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To: ProtectOurFreedom

You think YOU’RE in trouble? I am 1/2 mile from the sea, and at only 65 feet ASL. My home is doomed!


99 posted on 03/04/2021 10:24:47 AM PST by Don W (When blacks riot, neighbourhoods and cities burn. When whites riot, nations and continents burn.)
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To: Don W

Oh, I feel your pain, Don. I’ll ease your mind and buy your place for half of your asking price. Let me know if interested.


100 posted on 03/04/2021 10:30:31 AM PST by ProtectOurFreedom (The Weak Never Started, The Cowards fail along the way, Only the Strong Survive)
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