Rising sea levels could swamp the US coastline by 2050, NASA predicts

[Admin]

Sea levels are expected to rise around the contiguous U.S. faster than previously thought, a new NASA study finds.

Rising sea levels could swamp the US coastline by 2050, NASA predicts : Read more

 

[Big Crow]

Sea levels are expected to rise around the contiguous U.S. faster than previously thought, a new NASA study finds.

Rising sea levels could swamp the US coastline by 2050, NASA predicts : Read more

Ahahahahaha...... they said the same thing in the 60's: there was a bridge on Cape Cod that had the annual high tide mark painted on every year. They said it was because of global warming of the polar ice caps was causing the ocean to rise, it was shocking! A few decades went by and there were highway engineers there measuring the bridge. They said the bridge was being rebuilt - because the footings were sinking too much!

 

[COLGeek]

Ahahahahaha...... they said the same thing in the 60's: there was a bridge on Cape Cod that had the annual high tide mark painted on every year. They said it was because of global warming of the polar ice caps was causing the ocean to rise, it was shocking! A few decades went by and there were highway engineers there measuring the bridge. They said the bridge was being rebuilt - because the footings were sinking too much!

I'm pretty sure the folks with ocean front property don't share your laughter. Sounds like the bridge you are referring to was not properly designed and I would not count a single incident as an indicator against what science makes clear.

 

[Unclear Engineer]

Sea level rise is real.

And, it is not all due to human effects on the environment.

During the previous warm period before the last ice age, about 120,000 years ago, sea level reached a point about 25 feet higher than it is right now, without any human-induced effects. In at least one earlier warm period between ice ages, geological evidence is that sea level reached about 65 feet higher than it is today. So, no matter what humans do at this point, we need to prepare for sea levels to get substantially higher. What humans do from this time going forward just has an effect on the rate of sea level rise in the next several decades and beyond. We can probably slow it some, but we are not going to reverse it in time to save coastal properties from inundation.

And, if humans have changed the climate enough to prevent future ice ages, we have probably set up the climate to return to its conditions tat existed before a few million years ago, when there was a CO2 concentration in the atmosphere about what we have reached today, and very little ice in the mountains or at the poles. If all of the ice there now does melt, sea level will get to around 300 feet higher than it is today. That seems like a lot, but we need to remember that sea level was about 325 feet lower than it is today, just about 25,000 years ago, at the peak of the last ice age.

So, sea level changes of many tens of feet are nothing new, and even very rapid changes have occurred without being caused by human effects on the Earth's climate. It is just that now, humans are no longer nomads who just move farther inland or take advantage of newly exposed sea floor as the levels change. We have spent enormous effort and resources to build industrial infrastructure that depends on sea level being relatively stable.

Silly us!