At the year 2014, there are 86 years left in this century.Their claim is for the “business as usual” scenario: “ by the end of this century, the sea in Norfolk would rise by 5½feet or more.” with no “mitigation” done in the last century of measurements. We’ll use the worst case value from Sewell’s Point tide gauge of 4.44mm/year, which over the last century measured the actual “business as usual” history of sea level in concert with rising greenhouse gas emissions in the atmosphere. So, let’s do the math to see if the data and claims match. They illustrate the slow, linear, subsidence that Nature has been doing for thousands of years. The most important thing to note is that unlike the steeply vertical graph in the WaPo article showing up to 8 feet of projected sea level rise, there is no acceleration visible in either of these two tide gauge graphs. You’d think that with such a “crisis” looming, they’d have kept that tide gauge operational. The Sewell’s Point tide gauge is the closest fully operational one, as apparently NOAA closed the one nearest downtown Norfolk back in 1985: Let’s look at some less scary graphs, like this one that should have been included in Ms. Put it all together, as VIMS scientists did when they were asked by the General Assembly to study recurrent flooding in tidewater Virginia, and models suggest tides ranging from 1½ feet to 7½ feet higher by 2100. Plus, the city is slowly sinking into the crater of a meteor that slammed into the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay 35 million years ago. Third, the land around Norfolk is sinking, a phenomenon called “subsidence,” due in part to continuing adjustments in the earth’s crust to the melting of glaciers from the last ice age. Geological Survey declared a 600-mile stretch of coastline, from North Carolina’s Cape Hatteras to Boston, a “sea-level rise hotspot,” with rates increasing at three to four times the global average. Second, the Gulf Stream is circulating more slowly, causing more water to slosh toward the North Atlantic coast. First, the seas are generally rising as the planet warms. The problem is particularly urgent in Norfolk and the rest of Tidewater Virginia - which the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has ranked second only to New Orleans in terms of population threatened by sea-level rise - due to a fateful convergence of lousy luck. The claim is accompanied by this graph and text, which ups the rise to frightening levels based on model projections: In her article is this easily challenged statement:Īs the city was contemplating that enormous price tag, the Virginia Institute of Marine Science (VIMS) last year delivered more bad news: If current trends hold, VIMS scientists said, by the end of this century, the sea in Norfolk would rise by 5½ feet or more. Montgomery doesn’t seem to have the skills to even investigate the ridiculous claim of over 5 ½ feet of sea level rise by 2100, much less apply a sanity check to it. I’m not sure if the Chrysler Museum (seen in the background) is mocking posited climate change induced sea level rise or preparing for it. You just have to laugh at one of the pictures included as seen above. Lori Montgomery of the Washington Post illustrates this lack of competence perfectly in a piece this weekend titled: In Norfolk, evidence of climate change is in the streets at high tide. One of the problems with so called “science writers” in the mainstream media today is that few of them have the wherewithal and training to do some basic sanity checking.

Patrick ross rising tide interactive