Headline: The Washington Post, August 20, 2018 | Sea level rise is eroding home value, and owners might not even know it
Well, not exactly.
My hometown of Palacios, Texas is subject to all the laws of nature as is South Carolina. Mean Sea Level (MSL) affects all coastal cities and communities alike.
So, why does Palacios, Texas not experience the same effects of apparent rising sea level? This is due to a concrete seawall that protects our shoreline from erosion.
The same goes for Galveston, Texas where the beach is forever eroding as waves on the Gulf of Mexico persistently lap at the sandy beaches. Galveston also has a concrete seawall. At present, the city is restoring the beach by dredging sand from the gulf and pumping it to the beach.
Meanwhile, back in South Carolina…
Three factors contribute to the apparent sea-level rise on the shoreline of Edisto Island: (1) extraction of ground water, (2) natural beach erosion due to wave action and storms, and (3) greatly diminished sedimentary deposits from mainland waterways due to the impoundment of river water.
A Few Facts
Sea Level Rise – Yes, there is measurable sea level rise but it’s merely about 3.4 millimeters per year, 0.011 482 939 633 feet. Smithsonian Ocean | SEA LEVEL RISE
Ground Water Extraction – Coastal population explosion has dramatically increased the demand for fresh water at rates faster than replenishment. USGS Professional Paper 1773 | Groundwater Availability in the Atlantic Coastal Plain of North and South Carolina
Coastal Land Subsidence – “Although land subsidence caused by groundwater pumping has caused many negative effects on human civil works for centuries, especially in the highly developed urban or industrialized areas of Europe, the relation between subsidence and groundwater pumpage was not understood or recognized for a long time.” USGS | Aquifer Compaction due to Groundwater Pumping
Loss of Beach Front Properties on Barrier Islands – “While rates of erosion and accretion and the direction of sand movement are often unpredictable, it is generally believed that most barrier islands tend to migrate, over years and hundreds of years, toward the mainland shore.” South Carolina DHEC | The South Carolina Beachfront Management Act
Summary
Climate activists attribute natural forces and ever-changing weather patterns to human activities. Such a worldview is distorted through political propaganda. Is the earth’s climate changing? Yes, just as it has since the dawn of creation.
There seems to be widespread hysteria over global warming. Well, that’s okay because, as you can see in the above chart, we are in an inter-glacial period. We are moving slowly and surely into Maunder Minimum which signals the next ice age which will last a very long time.
Orbital variations, obliquity (change in axial tilt), and axial precession dramatically determine global temperatures. NASA Earth Observatory
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| “Using these three orbital variations, Milankovitch was able to formulate a comprehensive mathematical model that calculated latitudinal differences in insolation and the corresponding surface temperature for 600,000 years prior to the year 1800. He then attempted to correlate these changes with the growth and retreat of the Ice Ages. To do this, Milankovitch assumed that radiation changes in some latitudes and seasons are more important to ice sheet growth and decay than those in others. Then, at the suggestion of German Climatologist Vladimir Koppen, he chose summer insolation at 65 degrees North as the most important latitude and season to model, reasoning that great ice sheets grew near this latitude and that cooler summers might reduce summer snowmelt, leading to a positive annual snow budget and ice sheet growth.” |
Summary
Natural forces like the Milankovitch Cycle, volcanic eruptions, the ice age cycle, and the eleven-year solar cycle dramatically affect our global weather. Such are natural.
Helpful Definitions
- Natural: existing in or formed by nature and not by humans.
- Nature: the natural world as it exists without human beings or civilization.
John White
Rockwall, Texas
