Re: "This is the funeral pyre for thought in America today."

In alt.usage.english, Mike Page wrote:
On Fri, 1 Jun 2007 13:58:28 +0100, Vinny Burgoo
In alt.usage.english, Mike Page wrote:

[...]

[1] With rising sea levels I should have thought strategically
dumped rubbish could be used in sea defences.

Neat idea! Let's ship it all to the Maldives.

Not such a bad idea perhaps. But we'll need our own sea defences
soon.

Soon? The oceans are (or will soon be) rising about 3 mm/yr and the land in the south and east England is, on average, sinking about 1 mm/yr (pushed down by a rising Scotland: cut it loose, sez I). Let's take the worst case: Essex. It's sinking about 2 mm/yr. So the combined effects of geology and hydrology are submerging the Essex coast by about 5 mm/year. If we want to stop Essex shrinking (do we?), we'll have to raise the sea-walls by one course of bricks every 20 years.

It might be a good idea to start thinking about laying the first course about 15 years from now if we want to be certain of getting planning permission in time. There are a lot of nimbies down that way.

Incidentally, St George of Monbiot was on the radio yesterday accusing the Wicked West of drowning Bangladesh. The usual "We are all guilty" shtick. In fact the Wicked West is responsible for about one sixth of the apparent (geology plus hydrology) sea-level rise on the coast of Bangladesh; this share is declining; and in any case local human activities such as cutting down mangroves (coastal erosion), extracting groundwater (subsidence, arsenic poisoning, inland salinity) and building dams and embankments (less sediment reaching the delta) are currently a far greater threat to the Bangladesh coast and to Bangladeshis than sea-level rise. Indeed there is no reason to accept that permanent inundation of low-lying areas is inevitable (salt left behind by storm surges might be a problem - but salt is already a problem for reasons that have nothing to do with global warming). Despite the silt-trapping dams, sedimentation is still outpacing erosion: the delta is still growing and, inland, the soil is still getting deeper (thanks to the annual floods). Some areas are expected to be lost - probably those areas where the coastal barrier has been buggered up by loggers - but it's thought that sedimentation should be able to stay ahead of the predicted rate of sea-level rise.

I got quite carried away looking into this and I was going to post a lot more detail, but I'll limit myself to one Fascinating Fact at the Foot of the Page: the sediment in the Ganges delta is so thick (20 km in some places) that it depresses the Earth's crust (it's sinking about 6 mm/yr under the coast) and weakens the local gravitational field, which weakening means that, for reasons that are entirely beyond my comprehension, sea levels are expected to rise more slowly in the Bay of Bengal than elsewhere in the world.

--
V
Honk if you want to save the planet
.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Ahhhh...govt regulation at its finest....
    ... And even if there wasn't any 'evidence' (like this couple of examples I've ... "...New evidence for sea-level rise along the coasts of Maine and Nova ... coast of Nova Scotia as much as 60 cm. ... "This is the first time that the rise has been adequately dated and it is ...
    (soc.culture.scottish)
  • Re: Ahhhh...govt regulation at its finest....
    ... And even if there wasn't any 'evidence' (like this couple of examples I've ... "...New evidence for sea-level rise along the coasts of Maine and Nova ... coast of Nova Scotia as much as 60 cm. ... "This is the first time that the rise has been adequately dated and it is ...
    (soc.culture.scottish)
  • Re: all serious PAs now belive the savanna hypothesis.
    ... churned up as the sea advances. ... In that sediment are minute ... Then the coast will move inland. ... Hadar hominids were close to the paleo-coast is like ...
    (sci.anthropology.paleo)
  • Re: all serious PAs now belive the savanna hypothesis.
    ... churned up as the sea advances. ... In that sediment are minute ... or thousands of miles. ... Then the coast will move inland. ...
    (sci.anthropology.paleo)