Sea Level Rise video

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stellarfun

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With images of Rowe's Wharf, Greenway, Fan Pier;
Back Bay;
Cambridge (Harvard).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=N13oAcUITAM

Not my worry. I expect to be pushing daisies before then.

Image from the video.

nickolay-lamm-sea-levels6-316x3511.jpg


Image/video credit to http://nickolaylamm.com/
 
Sweet. If I live another 587 years I'll be able to sail right to my office.
 
I don't want my generation to be remembered as being stupid and short-sighted. Its time to build sea wall barriers.

Unfortunately, the global warming alarmists don't like sea barriers because they're cheap* and easy, and the climate change deniers don't like sea barriers because it'd represent an admission that the climate is changing.

* Where "cheap" is relative (compared to crippling the economy with energy taxes)
 
^^^ Agreed. There needs to be a combination of mitigation (to prevent sea levels from rising too much beyond preventable levels) and adaptation (because, well, it's happening so we might as well build sea wall barriers).
 
Why should we subsidize the protection of buildings which are primarily owned by multi-billion dollar corporations? If this isn't cyclical and doesn't reverse in time, it is going to happen slow enough that most personal property won't be harmed.

Get your flood insurance.
 
BostonUrbEx said:
Why should we subsidize the protection of buildings which are primarily owned by multi-billion dollar corporations? If this isn't cyclical and doesn't reverse in time, it is going to happen slow enough that most personal property won't be harmed.

Get your flood insurance.
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Once again, with feeling: the defining characteristic of a city (a real city, not just a dense location) is the intermingling or private property and public interest. Everything else is details. It's a feature, not a bug.
 
The pics off the Charles are missing that it's already man-managed, and we'll be able to further dam/alter the Charles to prevent the sort of flooding that the Back Bay and Harvard are shown receiving.
 
BussesAin'tTrains said:
The pics off the Charles are missing that it's already man-managed, and we'll be able to further dam/alter the Charles to prevent the sort of flooding that the Back Bay and Harvard are shown receiving.
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Even with dams on the Charles, East Cambridge apparently floods through the Mystic.

See map below (prepared by a company in Cambridge). Dark brown is a rise of up to 6 feet. Pale brown is a rise between 6 and 15 feet. As the map indicates, structural barriers would very likely be built to prevent the flooding, but the map shows what would flood absent new barriers.

http://plan.risingsea.net/MA/Greater_Boston.jpg
 
stellarfun said:
Even with dams on the Charles, East Cambridge apparently floods through the Mystic.

See map below (prepared by a company in Cambridge). Dark brown is a rise of up to 6 feet. Pale brown is a rise between 6 and 15 feet. As the map indicates, structural barriers would very likely be built to prevent the flooding, but the map shows what would flood absent new barriers.

http://plan.risingsea.net/MA/Greater_Boston.jpg
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Its pretty clear that the best place for a barrier is out at the Nahant-to-Hull distance, similar to the St Petersburg Dam (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Petersburg_Dam)

You need a "far out" barrier in part so that there's someplace to put the river water that continues to accumulate on the "city" side of the barrier while the barrier is closed to the "even higher" sea surge.

It also has the virtue of protecting all the infrastructure around the core (and not just the core only.
 
Here's a graph of sea level from a tidal gauge at the Battery in Manhattan - they've been keeping track since about 1850. Please notice that the rate of increase has been in a straight line for the entire time. No evidence of any increase due to global warming. The problem of sea level rise will be a real one over the century scale, but it is there regardless of predicted changes due to CO2 in the atmosphere.

battery_zps046e04aa.jpg
 
To respectfully disagree, the sea level seems relatively stable with normal variation for the first thirty years of that graph, and starts rising at a noticeable clip after that (truly unfortunate) break in the data. That would coincide with the implementation of steam power through coal in the Second Industrial Revolution. I do wish they had data further back in time before this.

Not to split hairs or start an argument or anything, I know this is a touchy subject for some people. Just feel obligated to defend my views as an Environmental Science/Meteorology student.

Would also like to point out that most (2/3) of sea level rise will come from thermal expansion of water as it warms, not melting ice.

I think some sort of barrier would be a good, prudent idea. I don't go in for causing a panic or heralding imminent disaster but I expect this to be a problem in many cities, not just our own.
 
Downburst said:
To respectfully disagree, the sea level seems relatively stable with normal variation for the first thirty years of that graph, and starts rising at a noticeable clip after that (truly unfortunate) break in the data. That would coincide with the implementation of steam power through coal in the Second Industrial Revolution. I do wish they had data further back in time before this.
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Respectfully - no responsible climate scientist would dream of making such a claim based on eyeballing that graph. No one claims that the industrial revolution caused the end of the Little Ice Age. Your proposal is what is called a just-so story. Look it up.
 
I did not say that the Industrial Revolution caused the end of the Little Ice Age- a big leap, by the way, as your graph and my post described sea level and not global temperatures. I am well aware that the circumstances leading us out of that time are inconclusive at best (as are the circumstances that lead to it, be it reduced solar activity, increased volcanism, a combination of those and other factors. etc.)

I am merely pointing out a casual link I observed in the data. Pardon me for a bit of confirmation bias and hurried conclusions, although I will stand by them.

Apologies for the off-topic posts, I am done now.
 
The scientific consensus is a straight-up finding that climate is changing in a clear direction (higher seas), and the engineering consensus is that the most cost-effective way of dealing with a storm-surge is a flood wall (as opposed to moving cities, letting them be flooded, or trying to deflect the trajectory of planetary climate).

The need to assign a cause (and from that, assign blame or deflect assignations of blame) is a huge distraction.

Arguing blame/cause of sea level rise is like letting a prairie fire sweep across your homestead because you won't act until you know whether it was lightening, raindrop-focused sunlight, locomotive embers, a campstove or a cigarette.

Who should pay? Not the "causers", but those who benefit from not seeing coastal cities inundated, which, AFAICT, is our whole Federal government. maybe an 80/20 Fed/Local cost share.
 
Who should pay? Not the "causers", but those who benefit from not seeing coastal cities inundated, which, AFAICT, is our whole Federal government. maybe an 80/20 Fed/Local cost share.
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Sure, but when the government pays for things it has to determine the funding mechanism, and that's when you get into the rat's nest of assigning blame and deciding who to tax for what.
 
BussesAin'tTrains said:
Sure, but when the government pays for things it has to determine the funding mechanism, and that's when you get into the rat's nest of assigning blame and deciding who to tax for what.
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It's still easy:
1) If you blame the industrial revolution, tax everyone alive today whose wealth, health, or livelihood depends on or has been made better by electric motors, internal combustion, or chemical processes who lives in the United States. (in other words, general tax revenues)

2) If you blame the planet earth, tax everyone alive today whose wealth, health, or livelihood depends on the part of planet earth subject to the jurisdiction of the United States (in other words, general tax revenues)
 
Arlington said:
It's still easy:
1) If you blame the industrial revolution, tax everyone alive today whose wealth, health, or livelihood depends on or has been made better by electric motors, internal combustion, or chemical processes who lives in the United States. (in other words, general tax revenues)

2) If you blame the planet earth, tax everyone alive today whose wealth, health, or livelihood depends on the part of planet earth subject to the jurisdiction of the United States (in other words, general tax revenues)
Click to expand...

It's "easy" on a forum... it's not so simple in the halls of Congress...
 
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