Local media is reporting claims that the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard is in imminent danger from sea level rise. The Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS), is asking local communities to prepare for the worst.
What is “the worst?” More than a quarter of the shipyard’s land area, including places currently key to operations, will become part of the tidal zone within the century under a worst case scenario. They are also predicting 80-190 floods per year by 2050. Sea level could rise 6 feet in the next hundred years.
This is utter and unforgivable rubbish.
First off, UCS claims that sea level in the area has risen a foot in the past 100 years and predicts another six-feet in the next century. But according to NOAA, Seavey’s Island has experienced an average of only 1.76 mm of annual increase over the past hundred years. They estimate an increase of 0.58 feet in that time, less than 7 inches in the most recent century of interglacial melt. Their calculations out to 2020 continue this trend with no long-term increase predicted.
If we ignore every other factor, including several necessary to generate accurate measurements of Sea Level Rise (SLR) that NOAA pays no attention too, NOAA’s calculations (as is) would add 0.175 feet (just over 2-inches) by 2050 and only 6.9 inches by 2120.
This trend is supported by the Seavey Island Interannual variation, which shows the historical trend of change in annual recorded sea level. We see no acceleration in the current rate of interglacial rise at the Portsmouth Naval Yard for nearly 80 years.
Combine this with the 1.76mm/year trend and other data and the odds of such a dramatic change are nothing but scaremongering.
Consider. Getting the six-foot increase in the next century that the UCS suggests we should prepare for would require evidence of not just some acceleration but exponential acceleration. We would need a change from the current 1.76mm/year to an 18mm average rise every year for an entire century.
Where could our climate alarmists come up with such an absurd idea in the absence of any evidence to support it, even from NOAA?
In the run up to the Paris Climate Cult Confab the powers that be cranked out as many reports as they could expressing dire predictions in hopes that these ‘scientific’ reports would tweak a majority of the conference into the desired action: A permanent global funding mechanism for alarmist research.
These are the same alarmists who continue to get grants or hold jobs when they can’t explain failed predictions for an ice-free arctic or why Manhatten, despite their past prescience, is not yet underwater.
Did I forget to mention that UCS is one of the sheep in the alarmist research herd, grinding axes across a manifold of progressive “interests”?
[UCS] opposes genetically engineered foods, condemns SUV vehicles, and proposes measures aimed at combating what it deems the imminent dangers of global warming. It also opposes the vast majority of American foreign policy decisions, and calls for a unilateral reduction in U.S. nuclear weapons stockpiles. UCS disseminates to lawmakers and news outlets its opinions about each of these matters, with the intent of ultimately influencing public policy.
UCS was started at MIT in 1969 to oppose US military intervention in Vietnam. The group minimizes threats posed by rogue regimes; they predicted that North Korea was still years away from Nuclear capability (Doh!). It has long worked to eliminate American tactical nuclear capability, opposes deployment anywhere and everywhere, and objects to any anti-missile defense technology. UCS ranted about antibiotics in the food supply, genetically modified foods and was an active backer of the failed Kyoto Protocol.
The UCS was also a force behind the crusade to portray the Bush Administration and Republicans as anti-science in the early 2000’s,
According to UCS President Kevin Knobloch, “We found a serious pattern of undermining science by the Bush administration, and it crosses disciplines, whether it’s global climate change or reproductive health or mercury in the food chain or forestry — the list goes on and on.” The signers of this document portrayed themselves as objective scientists with no political agenda. But in truth, over half of them were financial contributors to the Democratic Party, Democratic candidates, or a variety of leftist causes.
UCS collects buckets of money from the traditional left-wing foundations and in return advances the global progressive agenda. Disarm America. Remove its influence. Handcuff and kneecap the United States through an economically regressive energy policy driven by global warming alarmism.
This most recent report is more of the same rubbish. But it does serve a purpose. It will be used by UCS and sympathetic left-wing groups to organize and build mailing lists. These lists will be churned for Democrat activists to organize at the local level in support of unaccountable planning commissions, politicians who support GMO labeling restrictions, and plastic bag bans. They will be called to rally at town meetings of boards or commissions, or other acts of pressure politics that create the perception of widespread support for the economically crippling regulatory super-state.
It is the science of movement, not of tides but of low-information sheep willing to be herded into action. Any action. Facts are irrelevant. It is about sustaining the narrative until it no longer serves the purpose of organizing. But by then they will have come up with something else.
New Hampshire State Senator David (uncontrollably rising) Watters (D – Dist4) is on board.
“There’s a nuclear-powered submarine that’s in port now, and let your eye draw a line 6 feet above that and add some storm surge, and you’ll see the difficulties that will be here maintaining this shipyard,” state Sen. David Watters, D-District 4, said.
Sure, Dave. And imagine a herd of one million unicorns rising out of Atlantis to bathe the shipyard in magic horse sh*t.
Both scenarios have almost the same probability of happening in the next century. The one significant difference? Democrats and the media don’t feel nearly as convinced of their ability to hoodwink the public into letting them raise taxes and increasingly regulate their daily lives to mitigate unicorn poop. But I bet it’s on the table; holding down the report from the Union of Concerned Scientists.
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