This is clearly just god punishing east coast liberals.

What?

They will be denying when the water is up around their necks.

And everyone made fun of Howard Hughes with his ‘Spruce Goose’. Sounds like we need to revive it so that we can continue to use San Francisco International.Airport. See everything is solvable if we can just get a few of our Al Gore brainiacs on the problem.

I can not see the part where those studies show that the rise is faster in those areas than anywhere else in the world. Those studies appeared to be just for those geographic areas and not other places on the globe, so I am confused by the ‘journalists’ choice of wording there.

Is that your little joke, @ETpro?

The several North Carolina local governments have made it illegal for the ocean to rise any faster than it has historically. Only a 8 inch rise instead of the predicated 39 inches by the year 2100.

Nature is not a conscious entity, so no.
But even if it were the case, they would deny and ignore it, as they are in fact doing right now.

It obviously wouldn’t be trying, but perhaps it is succeeding. If the sand is washed away, the ostrich will have no place to hide its head.

HA! You are so funny! I gotta to love ya!

I admit that there is likely some man caused climate changes going on. But “global warming” may not be an accurate way of describing the changes. Also the sea levels raise as such a slow rate that it is unlikely to catch anyone off guard.

By the way, the seasons in the Seattle area have been cooler than normal for the last two years. “Get ready for another blast of “June-uary” weather” according to KING5 News.

I’ve noticed that certain plants in our garden do not grow as fast or as hardy as they use to go most likely the cooler and wetter weather. Is it due to climate change or is it just anther “La Nina”? Anyway If there is such a thing as global warming, then we could benefit from some of it in the Seattle area. It is almost July and it warmed up to 67ºF at noon time today. My tomatoes are not happy about that. HA!

“Climate Disruption” is a more accurate way of describing any possible man made climate change, especially for those of us freezing our butts off. HA!

On the other hand I won’t have to drive as far to get to the beach and California will lose a couple of congressional seats. Could be worse.

Trying, but considering the intelligence level in North Carolina, I seriously doubt that she will succeed until the North Carolina coast line is actually below the waterline.

Not even Mother Nature could budge a stubborn frog sitting on water that is very slowly getting ready to boil. Ribbit!

@gondwanalon Weather and climate are two different things. Global warming (climate) will actually cause local cooling (weather) because of increased water in the air causing higher precipitation rates, more snowfall, etc. Global temperature trends have been going steadily up with a few statistical blips. http://www.aip.org/history/climate/images/WMOtemp2008.gif

@Rarebear Of course!!! Thank you for that information. By the way the temperature in Tacoma, WA where I live was cooler than North Pole Alaska today. I like to complain about our pea-soup weather/climate but I really do love it here where air conditioning is free (just open up a window) and the clouds almost always are overhead to protect people from the sun’s harmful rays/radiation.

@josie Congressional seats are determined by population. The population will simply have to consolidate, the effect of which will probably be to make it harder for conservatives to get elected in the state. So yes, I guess it could be worse.

@Patton I was figuring people would get swept away by the encroaching water levels and drown in the ocean. It’s already hard if not impossible for conservatives to be elected in CA. All the water in the Pacific won’t change that.

@josie That’s why I said “harder,” not “hard.” Also, Orange County is one of the places that would get submerged, whereas many of the rapidly reproducing welfare queens live further inland. So the population will be quickly replaced with people asking for handouts.

[/sarcasm]

@tom_g Ha! Maybe the GOP is right, God is a Republican. :-)

@syz This..

@marinelife And when they have to do it like this.

@Jaxk Ha! I like that plan.

@cazzie No joking. It’s a VOA news release, not a peer reviewed scientific paper. It cites its sources, which you are welcome to dispute. But it very clearly says exactly what I alleged. That is, in fact, the headline of the piece. And if you read down a ways, you come to a direct point from the USGS study it was drawn from, As the climate warms, more extreme storm surges and high waves are expected, raising the risk of flooding, coastal erosion and wetland loss. Up and down the California coast, highways, sports stadiums and housing developments are only a meter or so above the highest tides.

San Francisco International Airport would flood with 40 centimeters of sea level rise, a likely scenario within a few decades, according to the report.

Oregon and Washington state are particularly vulnerable due to likely subduction under the Pacific plate lowering their elevation above sea level.

As to the East Coast, you find this.

_Sea level rise also threatens the U.S. east coast. A United States Geological Survey (USGS) study looked at a 1,000-kilometer stretch of America’s Atlantic seaboard, from Massachusetts down to North Carolina. _

The area had already been labeled a “hotspot” for sea level rise but the outlook could be even worse than the experts thought.

“Over a 60-year period, the rates within that hotspot area have increased between two and 3.7 millimeters per year,” says USGS oceanographer and lead author, Asbury Sallenger. “An increase like that is three to four times greater than you find in the average increase in rate of sea level rise over the same period.”

Is saying none of that is there your little joke, @cazzie?

@Tropical_Willie I asked about that very move Here.

@ragingloli It may impact our choice of words, but nature is driven by cause and effect, and responds to what we, the body politic, do.

@Sunny2 What’s wrong with the ostrich hiding it’s head under water?

@gondwanalon Global warming is a perfectly accurate way of describing it. However, your house is actually not the entire globe. Sticking your head out the window is not an accurate way of recording global temperature change.

You’re quite right that global warming drives climate change, and that locally, those changes may bring extremes of all types of weather, including cold and snow. You can visualize it like a pot of water sitting atop a stove with a bunch of beads immersed in it. If the beads have the same density and compressiblity as the water, after the water came to equilibrium with no currents circulating, the beads would be randomly dispersed throughout the water in the pot. Now turn on the burner under the pot. The beads will begin to form circulations and move. This is exactly what happens when we put energy in the form of heat into Earth’s atmosphere. If a circulation sweeps down from the Arctic or Antarctic, it brings a big chill. It even brings more snow die to arctic ice melt off exposing more open sea to evaporation. Surely you are aware that the Western states being ravaged by wild fires this year are not the recipients of this localized effect. Enjoy it while it lasts. You get your turn in the barrel too.

@josie I don’t think you should be co sanguine about the change the encroaching sea will bring to the legislative landscape of California. It is those who claim to be “conservatives” who refuse to budge on any position.

@Linda_Owl Maybe the Joker was right.

@mazingerz88 So let’s see what frog stew tastes like. :-)

@Rarebear Good link. Thanks.

@Patton Great point.

@ETpro I am not saying that the increase is not greater than they expected. I completely believe that, but they don’t quote any comparative studies in other regions to show that it is worse along the coastlines of the US than anywhere else in the world. I think it is much worse EVERYWHERE than they originally thought. That was my point.

@ETpro Thank you for your thoughts on this important topic. Of course we all know that the Earth’s climate is far more complex that your beads in a pot analogy. A comparison of the Earth’s climate to a lava lamp on an infinitely variable dimmer/timer switch may be worth consideration. Anyway, I just don’t like the name “global warming” because after all the Earth has gone through so many natural cycles of cooling and warming during the Earth’s geological history. If the Earth’s climate is in fact getting warmer unnaturally due to the effects of an over populated (7 billion of us and growing) and industrial Earth then why not call this phenomenon a name that reflects the cause? I like the descriptive names like “human climate disruption”, or “industrial climate warming”, or well you get the idea.

As far as having my turn in the barrel, boiling bead pot or lava lamps goes, I will likely be long dead before the really ugly effects of global warming takes effect. Meanwhile I’m chill’n here in Tacoma. HA!

@cazzie Aha. Please pardon my snippiness, then. The data are available on the NOAA site. In the article, they mention that changes in ocean currents appear to account for the higher rise along US coastal zones than the average around the planet. Coastal features, ocean currents and prevailing winds play a huge role in the exact amount of rise in any given location. I recall being amazed to notice that while most of the Eastern seaboard of the US and Canada has seen significant rises in sea levels over the past 100 years, one bay in Eastern Canada actually saw its sea level drop slightly.

@gondwanalon No question that Earth’s climate is a very complex dynamical system with lots of strange atractors. The butterfly effect is not really a joke. It’s a stretch, but not much of one, and serves to get at a very important truth about dynamical systems reacting to strange atractors. I have to agree that the nomenclature you prefer is more accurate. But we live in a bumper sticker mentality world where scientists can speak in accurate terms, but feel compelled to dumb down their discourse for public consumption. Looking at this map, if you like cool and damp, be very, very thankful the Northern Jet Stream has set up where it currently is.

Denying global warming is like denying our planet being a sphere. People with an IQ of less than 80 might have trouble reading thermometers and recording temperatures. The same might apply to more intelligent people who unfortunately became the victims of massive-scale ultra-conservative brainwashing.

So maybe this question is about climate change denial and how much humankind contributes to climate change. And even then I fear that news from scientists won’t be taken seriously. Ultra conservatives suspect that there’s a conspiracy going on. Being in denial makes life a lot easier. Or so they thought.