Geologist Dr. Don Easterbrook debunks ‘absurd’ new warmist study claiming 1,700 U.S. cities will be below sea level by 2100 — Easterbrook: ‘The rate used by [Lead Author] Strauss for his predictions is more than 10 times the rate over the past century!’

Climate Depot Exclusive

Analysis by Geologist Dr. Don J. Easterbrook, an Emeritus Professor at Western Washington University, who has authored ten books and 150 journal publications. Presented 31 research papers at international meetings in 13 countries outside the US.

Easterbrook: ‘More than 1,700 U.S. cities will be partially underwater by 2100? What is going to cause sea level rise to accelerate and where will the water come from?’

More than 1,700 American cities and towns – including Boston, New York, and Miami – will be drowning by the end of this century accoroding to a paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences by Benjamin Strauss. Twenty five percent of the populations of these 1,700 cities would be living below sea level by 2100 and 79 cities with a combined population of 835,000 would be submerged by 2023 and about half of the population of Fort Lauderdale, Hoboken, and Palm Beach would be submerged by 2023 according to Strauss. The basis for these amazing conclusions is apparently a 12 inch (222 cm) per decade rise of global sea level, the maximum IPCC estimate, which is postulated to be caused by increasing atmospheric CO2.

According to Strauss, Norfolk, Virginia, the largest naval base in the U.S., would be at risk by the 2040s and the Pentagon has already begun actively planning to relocate bases. Much of Miami would be under water by 2040 and half of Palm Beach, FL would be submerged by the 2060s.  Fort Lauderdale would be well below sea-level. About half the population of Cambridge, MA, across the Charles River from Boston would be submerged by the early 2060s

How does this compare with sea level rise over the past century? Sea level rose 12 cm (6 ½ inches) from 1900 to 1980 (Fig. 1) or about 7 inches per century.

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Figure 1.  Sea level rise from 1900 to 1980.

Projecting this same rate over the next century would give a sea level rise of about 2 inches by 2030 and about 6 inches by the end of century.

 

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Figure 2.  Sea level rise based on projection of past rates.

A comparison of the projection of sea level rise over the past century with the projected sea level rise of Strauss is shown in Figure 3.

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Figure 3. Comparison of projected sea level rise based on rates over the past …

Obama was right–‘the rise of the oceans began to slow’

From his June 4, 2008 speech on winning the Democratic primaries:

“This was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow, and our planet began to heal.”

Here’s the proof: Ten year running mean sea level rise from satellite altimetry.

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Figure 1. Decadal (overlapping) rates for sea level rise as determined from the satellite sea level rise observations, 1993-2011 (data available from http://sealevel.colorado.edu/).

h/t to Dr. Pat Michaels

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