So a fantasy sea level rise sufficient to render a coastal nuclear station unusable will presumably have no effect on a tidal barrage?
From commenter Mark
So a fantasy sea level rise sufficient to render a coastal nuclear station unusable will presumably have no effect on a tidal barrage?
From commenter Mark
Thinking of the Thames Barrier, to resist any rise in sea level also means raising flood defence embankments downstream, and there are practical limits to what is possible.
Besides, all power stations have a design life, extendable in cases of need, but very definitely finite. You could build anything with a design life of (say) 50 years somewhere where it is likely to become submerged in 100 years without any problems at all.
The rate of any sea level rise is limited by the amount of water locked up in snow and ice, so if there was climate change, the rate of sea level rise would naturally slow down with time. This is what happened after the last glacial maximum c. 22.5 ka BP. What is left is a tiny amount on the main mountain belts (where it is cold at altitude), a somewhat bigger amount in Greenland (also at altitude) and a lot in the Antarctic. So why not consider Arctic ice? That’s because it is (a) all floating and (b) not very thick. Point (a) means that even if it all melts, it doesn’t affect sea levels, and (b) the quantities are tiny anyway. (Nuclear submarines regularly pop up at the North Pole!)
The last time I looked at the Antarctic air temperatures the ice there wasn’t going to melt soon, and also, the floating ice shelves have no effect on sea levels as per (a) above.
There simply isn’t enough meltable ice to cause dramatic sea level rise, especially not with even the most adverse IPCC prediction.
As usual, total bollocks from lefty-greeny ignoramuses …
You could build anything with a design life of (say) 50 years somewhere where it is likely to become submerged in 100 years without any problems at all.
That’s happening in Red Hook in Brooklyn. An old meat packing area is being gentrified in spite of the fact that it’s predicted to be under water by 2100. The new buildings are predicted to have a positive ROI by 2050 so it makes sense to build them.
Mr Obama has bought two seaside mansions therefore there is no prospect of catastrophic sea level rise.
A glarge tsunami caused by a landslide in the Canary Islands would be a plain different thing.
Just don’t put the backup diesel generators for the tidal barrage down in a basement, like the Japs did at Fukushima…
For someone so convinced of major sea level rises in the near future, Ely seems a very strange place to buy a house.
+1 BIS, Tater is the gift that keeps on giving
Arthur the Cat,
Do they know nothing? Has nobody read their Lovecraft? Isn’t Red Hook full of murderous, demon-worshipping foreign types?
The sooner it’s all underwater the better, if you ask me…
Most of the polar ice is on land and maybe 1km or more deep. This huge mass compresses the underlying land, so most of the ice mass is below sea-level. There was a Greek gent who had something to say about a body immersed in water displaces its mass.
So as the top polar ice melts, the release of pressure will cause the land to rise and push the ice mass above sea level causing the sea water level it has displaced to fall. Overall sea levels will not change.
Sea currents pushes Arctic ice and cold water into the Atlantic where it evaporates due to warmer temperatures, Gulf Stream and all this global warming we hear about. The water vapour carried high is carried by upper atmospheric currents over to the Antarctic where it falls as snow and ice to be fixed on land. This is why, Arctic ice mass is growing.
Religious doctrine doesn’t have to be factual, just plausible enough for dumb people to believe it without question.
“There was a Greek gent who had something to say about a body immersed in water displaces its mass.”
Not exactly. An immersed body displaces its own volume. A floating body displaces its own mass.
I like your argument about the land rebounding. It takes time: consult the Deborah Number. *
Anyway, the reason that Scotland is rising – all those pretty raised beaches – is, as you imply, that Scotland is still responding to the removal of the Ice Age ice. People claim that it also explains why the South of England is subsiding.
* Because in yer ‘oly Book Deborah sang that “The mountains flowed before the Lord”.
@ bis
Ely is a long way from the coast and he presumably reckons that he can rely on those living between Ely and The Wash to build protective dykes at no cost to himself.
Ely exists because it is on relatively high ground at 26m; it used to the Isle of Ely when the surrounds were swamps. If that’s not high enough don’t buy a house in Mayfair either.
@PJF
Sure, Ely town is the island. But Potato Towers is new development build. Firmly* in the swamps.
*Or not so firmly, should his premise be correct.