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Where are America’s Drowned Cities?
Global warming lengthens the growing season, and increases net rainfall worldwide. The enrichment of atmospheric carbon dioxide accelerates the rate of plant growth. These are all very positive developments, both for humanity and for wild nature. As a result of climate change, the Earth is becoming a more fertile planet. Nevertheless, representatives of the green movement call for the imposition of economically destructive — and highly regressive — carbon taxes, lest global warming result in catastrophic floods of coastal areas.
This assertion is problematic because global warming has been going on for four hundred years. We can know this with certainty, not from the doubtful claims of researchers who assert that they can measure average global temperatures to within a tenth of a degree, but from readily available historical accounts. Civil War buffs are familiar with the massive snowball fights engaged in by Confederate armies stationed as far south as Georgia, and everyone who has read Dickens encounters tales describing much more severe winter weather in mid-19th century London than anything we see today. If we read back further in time, we hear of a world that is much colder still, with the Thames freezing regularly, sometimes for months on end, during the 1600s.
The profound global warming of the past four centuries cannot be plausibly ascribed to anthropogenic causes, but it certainly has happened, and the greens cannot deny it. That being the case, the catastrophic effects predicted for global warming should now be apparent. In particular, many proud cities and towns that were thriving in the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries should now be sleeping beneath the waves. It is time that the reality, or lack thereof, of such losses be assessed.
So let’s have a look. Several major American cities were founded during the 1600s. One of the first was Boston. As the seas have grown over the past four centuries, how much of the Puritans’ fabled “City on a Hill” has been lost to the rising tides?
The map above compares Boston’s coastline in 1630 with that of modern times and shows the inconvenient truth: None of colonial Boston has been lost. Far from it; the city’s coastline has expanded considerably.
The greens might argue that Boston is an anomaly, so let’s consider another city of colonial vintage which is very much in the news these days: New York. We have maps of Manhattan going back to Dutch times; do they report a different result?
No, they do not. Rather, what a series of maps starting with the Castello map of 1660 show is that, for the past four centuries, the Big Apple has been growing, not shrinking.
It is also apparent to the casual observer that other celebrated colonial cities, including Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Charleston, are not underwater either.
But these are only the cities that we know about today. Maybe there were others, now lost to human memory — their records of existence having been erased by global warming deniers — whose ruins might still be found sunk in the gloomy darkness of the ocean’s bottom, far out from the ever retreating shore. This is, after all, what allegedly happened to the lost civilizations of Atlantis and Mu. Perhaps the greens might wish to make the case this happened to colonial America as well.
Personally, I’m skeptical. But this is a question of science. Either the drowned cities exist, or they don’t. If they do, then clearly everyone will have to take the warnings of those sounding the climate alarm seriously. But if they are not found, the green’s flood story will need to be rejected as a myth.
This being so, it is apparent that there can be no more important area of environmental research than the hunt for America’s vanished subsea civilization. Unless evidence for its prior existence can be produced, the central case for global warming catastrophe will lack proof. All environmentalist organizations need to stop whatever else they are doing, and refocus all their efforts and resources on the search.
Show us the lost cities, dear greens. Find the colonial American Atlantis. Don’t wait for summer. Start diving today. The fate of the planet could be at stake.
Published in Science & Technology
The belief in global warming is a religion. Religions can explain away anything. If the facts don’t fit the dogma, the faithful just announce a new revelation. Just like apocalyptic prophecies that foretell The End on a specific date– when that comes and goes, cult members blame their own faulty prediction. For the IPCC, it was “50 million climate refugees by 2010!” Well, no–but the total inaccuracy of all the dire predictions hasn’t shaken anyone’s faith.
Because I haven’t read it I’m not sure what this has to do with science and why Scientific American published it.
I was a faithful subscriber to Scientific American for many years, until it was gobbled up by the left. This type of story is sadly typical. Even good publications, like NR, just like good restaurants, can lose their way. Good news is that there plenty of alternatives now.
Here, representing the west coast, is the Port of Oakland on San Francisco Bay, near where I live:
That’s pretty darned steady. I mean, the slope of this data seems to depend more on the exact points you choose to start and stop.
And up the coast… Portland:
Where the sea level is dropping 4.3 feet per century.
There are other places where the sea level is rising slightly.
Note that none of these plots, or the ones I posted on the first page, or going to the NOAA site and clicking around and trying all sorts of places… none of these plots is showing an increase in rate over the past, say, 40 years or so. The plots are mostly straight lines, or straight with fuzz, but we don’t see an increase in rate corresponding to the recent increase in world industrialization. Interesting, eh?
Yup. There is no evidence for catastrophic climate change. This whole hysteria is built on computer models which have been shown to have no predictive value. What a massive waste of energy and capital.
To me, this is the same argument and arrogance regarding species loss. Species come and go. If the habitat changes and species A dwindles, what happens? Species B moves up and takes its place. Who are you, sanctimonious enviro-weenie to say A should remain in place? B provides more biodiversity and maybe it’s just time for B to shine. Its human arrogance to say the current status of the species pecking order or the global climate should be the frozen (see what I did there?) at the current status quo because they deem it good and proper.
I think the universal reference point is the base of the mailbox at Santa’s workshop as reported quarterly by the Tooth Fairy. Either that or the parking lot at 12th and Walnut in downtown Kansas City. I’m sure either one will provide rock solid science.
He’s super something, for sure. He’s super convinced he’s the smartest guy in the room. He’s super-sure he was robbed of the presidency. He’s super-elitist, wanting to make the rest of us live by one set of rules while he lives by another.
I’m super-glad Mr. Gore is no longer so much in the public eye.
Boston isn’t sinking.
There are cities that are actually sinking, and sinking fast. New Orleans is sinking as a result of pumping swamp water, and Bangkok, Thailand, is sinking because of its collapsing aquifers.
And you can tell this because the sea level measured at those cities is rising much, much faster than the sea level measured nearby.
Of course, CNN is happy to blame Bangkok’s flooding on rising sea levels, even though the NOAA data for nearby Ko Lak, Thailand, shows sea levels completely flat.
MANBEARPIG!!!!
Half men, half bear, half pig, is going to kill us all.