Washington Post Fuels Flooding Fear

An article in today's Washington Post trying to keep the fear mongering alive for global warming driven catastrophic sea level rise: When sea levels rise, high tides will spill into communities far more often, study says

Daily flooding caused by high tides will occur in the District and Annapolis within three decades as sea levels continue to rise due to global warming, a new study says.

The study by the Union of Concerned Scientists predicts that by 2045 the nation’s capital and the capital of Maryland will experience about 400 floods per year, sometimes twice in a single day, and several other cities and towns on the Atlantic coast will have tidal flooding almost as bad. Miami, Atlantic City, Cape May, N.J., and Lewisetta and Windmill Point, both on the Chesapeake Bay in Virginia, can expect at least 240 days of flooding by 2045.

High-tide floods along the Atlantic coast in Baltimore, Norfolk, Philadelphia, Charleston, S.C., Key West, Fla., and Sandy Hook, N.J., will happen less frequently, with about 180 events or more per year, according to the study released Wednesday.

Tidal flooding is sometimes called nuisance flooding. It’s considered minor when it is the result of the gravitational pull of the moon and sun. It’s considered moderate when heavy rains increase its size, and major when storms supersize it. Sea-level rise is considered an X-factor that could make each factor irreversibly worse.

Oooh, sea level rise is the scary X - factor!

In a sense, it's inevitable if sea level rise continues at it's current rate which is about 3 mm/year. If you don't raise the city, or build structures to keep out the water (has anyone else walked down in New Orleans eating a beignet from Café Du Monde, and seen the ships roll by on the Mississippi over your head?).

So, the question is, what rate of sea level rise is the UCS assuming?

William Sweet, a NOAA oceanographer who authored the July study, called the Concerned Scientists’ study a solid piece of work. He had one quibble: that its findings are based on a single scenario — a sea-level rise of four feet by the end of the century. Climate scientists usually offer four scenarios of varying sea-level rise based on assumptions on how the world’s governments limit greenhouse gas emissions that heat the atmosphere, cause ice to melt into the ocean, and water to warm and expand.

“It’s hard to tell what the ice sheets . . . will do,” Sweet said.

That's a bit of an understatement but four feet by 2100 is beyond even the wildest fever dreams of to IPCC:

IPCC_AR5_13.11. Fig. 4.

Of course, sea level rise currently is approximately 300 mm per century, about 1 foot. with no evidence of acceleration for any reason:

But just to be sure, we should move the Federal Government to North Dakota. Don't want them to drown in those rapidly rising seas or anything.