By Paul Homewood
More overhyped nonsense from Roger Harrabin:
England’s coastal communities haven’t faced up to the reality of rising seas through climate change, a report says.
An increase of at least 1m is almost certain at some point in the future, the government’s advisors predict.
The Committee on Climate Change (CCC) warns this huge rise may happen over the next 80 years – within the lifetimes of today’s children.
A government spokesman said the public would be protected from the impacts of climate change.
But the CCC says current shoreline management plans are unfunded and hopelessly optimistic.
It estimates that by the 2080s, up to 1.2 million homes may be at increased risk from coastal floods.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-45983260
Let’s look at the CCC report itself:
It starts by saying the obvious, that coastal communities already face threats from coastal flooding and erosion. They quantify this:
520,000 properties sounds a lot, but these are in areas with a risk of only 0.5%, ie once every 200 years. There is also does not appear to be any quantification of how severe such flooding might be.
As the report does point out, coastal flooding only occurs when the “sea water level is extremely high”, mainly during storm surges. By definition, these are very short lived and low impact events, certainly not in the same league as inland floods.
The BBC’s headline about “swamping homes” is irresponsible alarmism, that has more in common with “The Day After Tomorrow” than fact. Having a few inches of sea water outside your front door for a couple of hours is hardly Armageddon.
What is also notable is the the extremely low number of properties at risk from coastal erosion, despite the apocalyptic stories we often hear. Losing your home over a cliff edge is something nobody would want, but all 8900 households could be re-homed at a tiny annual cost, if spread over a decade or two.
But then we get to the nitty gritty:
In evidence, the CCC begin by showing the Woodworth et al graph.
Woodworth states that since 1901, the rate of sea level rise has been 1.4mm/yr, after allowing for land movement.
The rate of rise has not accelerated over the period as a whole, and sea levels have actually dropped in recent years (something not uncommon).
The 1m of sea level rise predicted by the CCC would take 714 years at this rate. Of course, some parts of England are sinking, but there is nothing the CCC can do about this anyway.
So where does the CCC get it’s “1m in 80 years” from, something that would mean sea level rise immediately increasing from 1.4mm to 12.5mm/yr?
It is in fact based on the much criticised RCP8.5 scenario, which assumes high-end emissions of GHGs.
RCP 8.5 has long been dismissed by scientists as being unrealistically high, even if there is no international agreement to cut emissions. The central temperature rise for RCP 8.5 has also been dismissed as unrealistic as well.
The more alarming projections also involve one outlier study by DeConto & Pollard. In contrast, most of the IPCC AR5 projections only represent a rise of about half a meter by the end of the century, something that is still well above the current rate of rise. Even IPCC’s RCP 8.5 only estimates sea level rise of 0.74m by 2100.
Even under the worst scenario of a 4C rise in global temperatures, the CCC only reckon that the number of properties at risk will triple. But this assumes that there will be no adaptation.
Given that we have a century or more to prepare for such an eventuality, it is hard to see that we would just sit back and watch the tide come in.
In practice, flood defences will be strengthened, areas close to the sea will be not be redeveloped, and instead new homes will be built on higher ground, maybe just a few hundred yards inland. And infrastructure will be made more resilient.
None of this is rocket science, and is the sort of thing we have been doing for the last century or so when sea levels have been rising.
None of this should need for the sort of blind panic recommended by the CCC, and would be much better handled by local communities in years to come, who will be in a much better position to assess the risks and plan solutions.
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October 26, 2018 at 09:37AM
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