Pirate's Cove

Sigh. Global warming: Shoreline changes as planet warms

Polls indicate an alarming percentage of Americans have doubts about global warming, even to the point of suspecting that scientists are lying about the data. Much of the bluster centers on whether or not it has been colder this year than last.

Instead of relying on thermometers, we should listen to Mother Earth. So let’s take a trip around the northern half of the Western Hemisphere for real-world evidence that our planet is getting warmer.

Most of us do not dispute that the Earth has been going through a slightly warmer spell. Something that has happened numerous times over the past 4 billion years. We dispute that Man is the cause. Did you know that in recent history, around 18,000 years ago, the sea was almost 400 feet lower than it is today, and that the Mediterranean was cut off from the sea?

The first stop on our trip will be to the Outer Banks of North Carolina. As we fly toward our destination, we see a fringe of dead trees stretching for miles in the water along the Albermarle Sound shoreline, a clear indication that sea level rise is drowning the forest edge.

Flying over the Outer Banks, we observe islands eroding on both the ocean and sound sides, another sign of sea level rise. The islands are thousands of years old, yet won’t exist much longer with such erosion. In Rodanthe, the island is so narrow and low that it can be washed over by something as slight as a lunar tide. Sea level rise has clearly changed this shoreline.

Notice, it cannot be normal erosion, which has been going on since the formation of those islands, it has to be man induced global warming erosion. For anyone who lives, or has lived at the beach, you know that erosion and shifting sand/land is always a concern, because the sea does as the sea wants.

If we used the same hysterical methods as climate alarmists, we could say that Pt. Pleasant Beach, NJ, is seeing a sea level reduction, because the shore line has grown.

Pt. Pleasant Beach is the south side of that inlet, Manasquan is the north side.

Of course, in reality, what is happening is simply the nature of the changing Earth. In this case, northern moving currents are dragging the sand, and the jetty stops it. Manasquan has no huge jetty, and loses sand. Some storms will bring in more sand, some will take it away. On the Outer Banks, the same forces are in play.

Once we’ve landed at the Wright Brothers’ airstrip, we drive to the Corps of Engineers research pier in the town of Duck. Because the pier extends into the open ocean and is made of concrete, the tide gauge here may be the best record of sea level rise on the East Coast. What it tells us is that sea level here is rising at a rate of one-and-a-half feet per century.

The average rate of sea rise over the last 7,000 years, the time when the climate and sea level stabilized from the end of the last Ice Age (stabilized in Earth terms,) is 6-8 inches per century. That means during some it is much less, some much more. Sea levels were going down during the Little Ice Age.

For some reason, climate alarmists think that the Earth is a static environment which doesn’t change, and isn’t supposed to change. A rather funny notion for people who have Darwin as one of their deities.

Read: Shore Line Sea Level Rise Alarmism Misses The Obvious Cause »