For forty years we have been predicted a new Flood in the near future. It must happen due to anthropogenic global warming. The ice caps at the poles will melt and the world will drown.
- “Whole nations could be swept off the face of the earth by rising sea levels if the global warming trend is not reversed,” said Noel Brown, head of New -York office of UNEP (United Nations Environment Program).
- “Flooding and crop failure will lead to an invasion of eco-refugees,” he told the Associated Press. «Governments have 10 years to cope with the greenhouse effect.» Otherwise, “warming will melt the ice caps at the poles, and the ocean level will rise by three feet, which will be enough to completely cover the Maldives and other flat islands.”
that these terrible predictions appeared in print on June 29, 1989, and, therefore, some nations should have been wiped out by 1999
22 years have passed since then — and the Maldives and other flat the islands are still in place.
And here is another prediction: within five to seven years, the entire Arctic will melt. It was made by none other than former US Vice President Al Gore.
- “We have a 75 percent chance that the entire northern polar snow cap in the summer can be completely ice-free in 5 –7 years, ”he said.
Gore made this prediction at the 2009 climate summit in Copenhagen.
12 years have passed, the ice cap is still there.
Usually in science, when predictions turn out to be so unfortunate, it gives impetus to rethink the whole concept. Indeed, if you came up with a new theory of gravity, according to which the Moon should fall to the Earth on June 15, 2003, but it did not fall, this is a good reason to reconsider this theory.
With apocalyptic predictions, the sect's brains, things are different:
if the world does not end at the predicted hour, it is immediately re-predicted.
This is exactly what happened with the predictions of a new Flood. After it did not take place either in 2000 or in 2010, it was reassigned to 2100.
With each new round of forecasts, the size of the disaster grew.
The seas, we were told ,
- will rise by one and a half meters by 2100.
- No, they can rise above 2 meters.
- No, they will rise by nine meters !
The flood zone will be
- 115 million people.
- No, 150 million
- No , 187 million people
- No, 410 million
- No, 630 million people.
All this, we note, not from the words of some clickers, it was said through the lips of the most titled scientists in the most that neither is Science and Nature.
“It is imperative to panic about climate change,” reads a Vox headline on The Uninhabitable Earth by David Wallace-Wells. «The sea will rise and land erosion, flooding and resettlement will threaten millions of people,» the Washington Post writes. “Miami and other cities on the coast could drown in 80 years,” Bloomberg panics.
This all becomes background discourse, in which it is also strange to doubt, as, for example, it is strange to doubt the existence of witches in the Middle century.
The height of London above sea level is “11 meters, it is predicted to be washed away within 50 years,” economist Andrei Movchan notes in passing. He does not write about the rise in sea level, but about something completely different, but just casually notices this: everyone knows this. It goes without saying.
Which of all this is worth anxiety? How does the sea level rise and how does it actually threaten us?
Let's look at the graph taken from the NASA website. It shows how sea level has risen since 1993
As we can see, everything is correct. The sea level is really steadily rising.
Now let's look at another graph that shows how sea level has been rising since 1900.
That's right, sea level is rising.
Now let's look at another graph that shows changes in the level of the World Ocean over the past 22 thousand years.
/p>
As we can see, the sea level has been rising for the last 21 thousand years — since the peak of the last glaciation — and has risen by 120 meters during this time.
If we talk about longer trends, then The water level in the World Ocean for the last 400 thousand years looks like this and depends, as we see, on the alternation of ice ages and interglacials.
/p>
The graph clearly shows that there is no natural «normal» sea level. 22 thousand years ago, the sea level was 120 meters lower. And 115 thousand years ago, in the previous interglacial, it was 6 meters higher. Scandinavia at that time was an island, and Karelia was the bottom of the sea.
These changes in sea level were of decisive importance for the dispersal of man on the planet, because when modern man, allegedly, left Africa about 65-50 thousand years ago, he settled on a completely different planet, where there was much more land. >
In particular, 50 thousand years ago, the sea level was 75 meters lower, and the Indonesian islands of Java, Kalimantan and Borneo were one with the continent. This part of the mainland was called Sunda. Australia and New Guinea also made up one continent — Sahul.
/p>
Primitive man actually reached Australia on dry land, and he never had to cross the strait wider than 100 km. Even if he did not see the land directly from the coast, he saw it from the tops of the coastal mountains. Actually, it was the wide shelf between Australia and New Guinea, now hidden under water, that people probably inhabited first of all.
Moreover. Judging by the haplogroups of the Australian aborigines, people inhabited Australia more than once (and in rather large groups, up to a thousand people) 50–47 thousand years ago, but, apparently, did not come later when the sea level began to fall. This may be surprising: if people sailed when the sea was 75 meters lower than it is now, what prevented them from continuing this business, when the sea level dropped another 45-50 meters, and the island of Timor became practically part of Sahul? p>
One of the likely answers to the question is that the cause was precisely the sharp drop in sea level — and the corresponding environmental disaster. The sea, whose level was gradually decreasing, suddenly suddenly collapsed by 40 meters over two thousand years — between the 31st and 29th millennia BC. Coral reefs were above the water and died. The climate became sharply drier, as always, during sharp cold snaps.
Imagine the modern coastline of New Guinea, with its coral reefs, swamps and tropical thickets, suddenly turned into a desert with coral fringing an arid island and protruding teeth of corals.
A «sea highway» that facilitated the arrival of anatomically modern man to Sahul, became less productive and less accessible by the 35th millennium BC. and very difficult — during the glacial maximum, «writes Allen et O'Connell.
In the same way, America: during the Ice Age, Eurasia and America were connected with each other by the so-called. mainland bridge, and 15 thousand years BC, when the warming had already begun, and the bridge had not yet flooded, mammoth hunters simply crossed it from Eurasia to America.
However, this is called a «bridge» not quite right. It was a gigantic territory, a good thousand kilometers wide, most of which was occupied by an ecosystem that is now almost not observed on earth — the tundra steppe.
It is very dry in the tundra steppe. In such a dry, extremely continental climate, tall and high-calorie grasses grew (and not moisture-demanding mosses, as in the tundra today). These herbs were eaten by numerous animals: steppe bison, horses and, of course, mammoths. In the fall, again due to dryness, the grasses did not grow out, but dried out at the root, turning into nutritious hay. This hay could be eaten in winter, as there was little snow in Beringia, despite the Ice Age. High snow cover in winter requires high air humidity, and moisture simply had nowhere to come from. The Arctic Ocean, adjacent to Beringia, was ice-bound even in summer.
The modern tundra, with its mosses and «drunken» trees, requires high humidity arising from the evaporation of the sea during the short circumpolar summer: a damp, dank strip, like a compress, hangs over the flat plain. But there was no moisture in Beringia, and in winter the mammoth could easily find hay, a small layer of crust with its specially twisted tusks.
In the midst of this bleak landscape, occasionally came across «baths» — lakes, surrounded by a rearing rampart of permafrost. Due to the destruction of the glacial veins, the lakes flowed out, and then their bottom quickly grew with especially tasty and tall grass. “It was terribly cold and very dry in Beringia” (see footnote 1).
Consider that it was the Arctic prairies — a landscape that is no longer on the planet.
It was along these Arctic prairies, a thousand kilometers wide, that a man crossed from Eurasia to America.
As Beringia or the Sahul shelf filled with water, man retreated inland. This rise in water was much faster than in the twentieth century, it reached up to a meter and even two or two and a half meters per century.
There have been catastrophes.
For example, a completely monstrous catastrophe occurred 8,200 years ago, that is, 6,200 BC. Then, when the world was very warm, it was the so-called Holocene Climatic Optimum, temperatures were much higher than the current ones. The glaciers that covered Canada melted, and two huge glacial lakes — Ojibwe and Agassiz — empty into Hudson Bay. The water rose by 2-4 meters at once, the temperature in Greenland crashed by 4-8 degrees.
For 5150 BC. and about that, again, the rising ocean broke through the Dardanelles into the future Black Sea, which until then was a fresh lake or even a series of fresh lakes, according to the hypothesis put forward by William Ryan in 1997
This flood may help shed light on one of the most fascinating archaeological mysteries of early humanity. Traditionally, the Middle East is considered the place of emergence of the first states and stratified societies. The First Dynasty united Egypt around 3100 BC, Gilgamesh ruled Uruk around 2700 BC. All these places were dug by eminent archaeologists — Egyptology, Sumerology, Assyrology were an honorable occupation for the pupils of Eton, who had already pushed the horizons of the Earth and in the late 19th — early 20th centuries began to dig its past.
And suddenly, in 1972, an excavator , turning the soil at a construction site near the city of Varna, in Bulgaria, turned out into the light of day pieces of the necropolis, in which three thousand golden gizmos with a total weight of about six kilograms were buried.
The necropolis existed for four centuries, from approximately 4600 to 4200 BC. At that time, there was nothing like it in the Middle East!
Egypt was not yet united, the pyramids were not built, Uruk was still a tiny village, and more gold was found in the necropolis of Varna than in the entire then world taken together.
The necropolis of Varna belongs to the Balkan culture, which is now called the Vinca culture. Vinca left few traces — it was completely destroyed by the Indo-Europeans, and Vinca did not have a written language in the full meaning of the word. Nevertheless, we know that, most likely, they were relatives of the Sumerians.
The question arises: how did the Sumerians, who later created the Mesopotamian civilization, end up in the Balkans?
Answer: with legs. In the 6th millennium BC. they went to the Balkans along the future bottom of the Black Sea.
It is very possible that this event — a sudden catastrophic flooding of civilization centers at the bottom of the future sea — we know as the Flood.
It penetrated from Sumerian and Babylonian legends into the Bible, entered the subconsciousness of Western humanity and is mercilessly exploited by the prophets of horror and sorrow in our time.
Flood 1953
/p>
As we can see, the floods on the shores of the North Sea did not begin at the time of the terrible anthropogenic warming. They have happened before. More importantly, they were much worse.
- Cimbrian Flood Despite the fact that Jutland was then much less populated, it killed countless people, removed huge masses of people from the inhabited land and led to an age of wars and massacres.
- The Flood of All Saints in the Netherlands, the Creiler Woud flooded, turned the Zuisersee from fresh to salt lake and put an end to the prosperity of the then large city of Rott. After 90 years, a dam was erected on the flooded lands, the city was revived and now (in honor of this dam, in fact) it is called Rotterdam. It is the largest seaport in Europe.
- St. Lucia (December 14, 1287) killed 50-80 thousand people and completely destroyed the significance of the large and prosperous city of Stavoren located on the banks of the river flowing from the Zuidersee, which, by the way, was completely flooded again in 1657. li>
- St. Marcellus (January 16, 1362) killed at least 25 thousand people.
- The flood of st. Elizabeth (1421) — 10 thousand
- The mentioned Flood of All Saints (November 1, 1570) killed about 20 thousand people, flooded the islands of Vulpen forever, Kezland, Gasand and Steuwezand completely destroyed the economic importance of the wealthy city of Saeftinghe. The city itself sank into the swamps near the mouth of the Scheldt 14 years later when Dutch soldiers destroyed the last dam that protected it during the Eighty Years War.
- Flood in 1953 In 1953, the elements struck again. The storm, low pressure and high tide raised the water 5.6 meters. The dams were broken in 67 places. 30 thousand heads of cattle drowned, the flood covered 1,365 sq. km.
However, the consequences of the huge flood of 1953 were radically different from the previous ones. The flood did not cause migration of the then 10 million population of Holland and a new world war. Amsterdam and Rotterdam were not flooded forever. The number of victims of the 1953 flood was 1835, which, despite the growing population density, was an order of magnitude less than in large medieval floods.
The flooded lands were returned to agricultural use. The dams were reinforced. And by the way, even the Zuisersee, formed from the Roman lake Flevo as a result of a gradual rise in sea level and devastating floods, was cut off from the sea and partially drained.
What a Zuidersee! The cunning Dutch even drained the Crailerwood forest, which was flooded in 1170, and now there are villages, fields and windmills.
In the Middle Ages, the Zuidersee was part of the sea. And now, despite the rising sea level, it has become dry land!
Wieringermeer (literally — Lake Viering) — lands in the place of the Crailerwood forest, which were flooded in 1170 and became dry land again in the 20th century.
So how much has it gone up?
Let's return to our first graph — the one that shows a catastrophic rise in water — to the abscissa axis, on which numbers from zero to eighty are written, and let's take a closer look at what they mean. What are these eighty? In meters? Feet? In fathoms? In tsuny?
Answer: they are in millimeters. Since 1995, the water in the oceans has risen by 8 centimeters. It rises by as much as 3 millimeters per year.
And how much has it risen since the beginning of the twentieth century?
Answer: by 18 centimeters. On average, it rose by 1.8 mm per year, but in 1925-1940, when the world was rapidly warming (this warming in 1940-1970 was replaced by a cooling), it also rose by about 3 mm per year (see . footnote 3).
How has this rise in sea level reflected and is reflected in individual countries? Let's take a concrete example.
On June 13, 2019, Time magazine published an article titled «Leaders of these sinking countries are fighting to stop climate change» … The article began with a description of the tragedy that befell the tiny Fijian village of Vunidogoloa, in which «more than a hundred people» lived. No, no, the village had not yet sunk, but the tide began to flood it little by little, and the dwellings were moved higher. Now the ruins of the village are «swallowed up by the rainforest,» and «the stench of decomposing rodents comes from abandoned houses.» Tuvalu atoll.
Marshall Islands Photo: Pablo Garcia Saldana/Unsplash
Of the 709 atolls in the Pacific and Indian Ocean, 88.6% have increased in size and only 11.4% have decreased in size. At the same time, the level of accretion directly depended on the area of the island, and not a single island larger than 10 hectares decreased in size.
As for the lobbying efforts of Tuvalu and Kiribati, this is holy truth. What kind of fool would refuse to receive several billions of reparations from wealthy Western idiots?
Moreover, most of this money will go directly into the pockets of politicians lobbying for reparations and will be used partly for personal needs, partly to buy votes for a bag rice, thereby freeing the authorities from the need to develop the economy of the islands and somehow pull their inhabitants out of the primitive communal system.
What else is the sea level fluctuations associated with?
The example of coral atolls shows that the rise or, conversely, the retreat of the sea near each specific coast is not always associated with a rise in the level of the World Ocean that has been going on for about 20 thousand years. p>
For example, at the turn of our era (in 20-9 years. BC) Herod the Great built a huge palace in Caesarea. Now its foundations are submerged in water.
/p>
And the ruins of the modern palace of Herod the Great Port of Ephesus, one of the busiest Mediterranean ports, are now 5 km from the sea.
However, neither case has anything to do with rising or falling sea levels. Herod's palace plunged into the sea due to the subsidence of the coast and small fluctuations of the continental plate (moreover, during the Byzantine era, the sea level was 30 cm higher than now), and Ephesus moved away from the sea due to river sediments carried far into the sea by the Kaistr River. They simply stopped cleaning the riverbed.
Due to the fluctuations of the continental plates, the sea level in Aden, Mumbai and Karachi, according to Parker et Ollier, remains constant. But in Stockholm, the sea level is dropping altogether.
/p>
Why? Oddly enough, due to global warming. The fact is that as the glaciers melt, they put less pressure on the continental plate, it emerges from the mantle, and the sea recedes.
But this is all, however, trifles.
Accretion, river carry-overs, the emergence of lithospheric plates from magma in connection with the melting of glaciers are quite common cases that do not refute the main fact that the level of the World Ocean in general is increasing.
Therefore, we will consider a very important, key one in a rather unfortunate example.
Mekong Delta
On October 29, 2019, The New York Times ran a panicky article titled Rising Seas Will Erase More Cities by 2050, New Research Shows. The article reported that, according to new data, Basra and Bombay, Saigon and Bangkok — an entire territory with a population of 150 million people — will be under water in 2050.
Among other things, the article showed a terrifying map, according to which by By 2050, most of South Vietnam should have been under water at high tide.
«More than 20 million people in Vietnam, almost a quarter of the population, live on land that will be flooded,» the newspaper wrote .
A small detail that the newspaper forgot to mention is that almost all of these 20 million people already live below sea level at high tide. In his book False Alarm, Bjorn Lomborg compares two maps: the area that will be “below tide” in 2050, and the one that is “below the tide” now. The differences between them are extremely minor.
“Both cards just show what everyone knows,” writes Lomborg. “People in the Mekong Delta literally live on water. In the South Vietnamese province of An Giang, virtually all land that is not mountainous is protected by dams. It is «underwater» in the same sense that much of Holland is underwater, where vast areas, including Schiphol, the world's fourteenth largest airport, are literally built below high tide. There are a million people living below this level in London. But no one in Holland, London or the Mekong Delta needs a scuba gear to move from place to place, because mankind has learned to build dams and protect themselves from floods. ”(See footnote 4).
It so happened that at one time I had a chance to visit the Mekong Delta for a short time. It was one of the most unusual ecosystems that I have seen in my life. Everywhere from the endless water stood completely flat spits and islands, running on a level with the river.
Boats were such an important part of the habitat that eyes and mouths were painted on them.
People moved in boats, slept on boats, fished from them, traded in boats — in there are special floating markets in the delta.
The delta was unusually overpopulated: such a population density, despite the abundance of water, can usually only be found in the city. Every piece of land was either a garden or a rice plantation. All these scraps were cut by canals and channels running almost level with the ground. Wooden bridges in the villages were laid over the splashing water, along the gardens with jackfruit and breadfruit, streams overgrown with bananas stretched, and the large water not only did not interfere with this biome, but, on the contrary, was its natural component: half of the cultivated land in the delta, and before in all, rice paddies depended on regular floods, bringing along silt and nutrients in addition to water.
This, of course, did not mean that the delta was in good condition. Not at all. Her main trouble was … drought. In 2019, for example, the highest spill level reached by the Mekong in the spring was 1.12–2 m below average and 1–1.65 m lower than in 2018. This drought was a disaster for the peasants, who, in essence, as in ancient Egypt, relied on the annual flooding of the river to fill the rice paddies with water.
However, the drought in the upper delta had nothing to do with climate change … It was caused by the fact that rapidly developing China built a whole cascade of hydroelectric power plants in the upper Mekong. Park et al cite another reason for the insufficient spills of the Mekong — this is the barbaric extraction of river sand in its channel, which is inevitable with a rapidly growing population and equally rapid industrialization of Vietnam.