False, Washington Post, Climate Change Doesn’t Force Retreat From Hog Island – Is It Acceptable?
Recently the Washington Post run a story titled, “On the verge of retreat,” argues that climate change caused sea level rise as the reason many of the remaining residents of Hog Island, Virginia moved inland. This is wrong. The inhabitants of Hog Island may have left their homes in the face of sea level rise, erosion and prolonged land subsidence that cannot be shaken on this barrier island, but there is no data to prove it. for the claim that coastal Virginia has experienced increasing rates of sea level rise over the past century of moderate warming.
The Washington Post (WP) correctly understood some of his facts, writing:
A century ago, about 250 people lived on Hog Island, a seven-mile stretch of land off the coast of Virginia.
But that was when they still had the ground under their feet.
Historical maps show that the coastline of Hog Island was receded more than a century ago. At that time, sea levels rose slowly, partly due to the sinking of the land, a legacy of the last great ice age.
At this point, however, WP began to make claims that were refuted by the available data, leading to crude speculation about the future rate of sea level rise.
The threat today is different: human-caused climate change. John Porter, a University of Virginia scientist who studies barrier islands, said that historically, sea levels rose about a foot over the course of a person’s lifetime. But because of climate change, that number will be significantly higher in the future.
This is wrong, sea levels are not rising uniformly at the rate of one foot per century globally or in Virginia. Instead, they have increased at a faster rate than they are now in the nearly 12,000 years since the end of the ice age. from research, over the past century, some areas have experienced a measured sea level rise of more than one foot per century. Other regions have experienced slower rates of sea level rise, and still others have experienced sea level decline.
Tide data show no significant increase in sea level rise in recent decades along the Virginia coast. As discussed in the previous section Climate realism post, here and here, sea-level rise rates measured from locations along the coast of Virginia with long-term records show a steady, unaccelerated rate of rise. (see figures below).
Each of these three sites is less than 50 miles from Hog Island, with one just over 20 miles away. None of these tide gauges recorded an increase in sea level rise over the record-keeping period. The rate of increase at the site of the highest rate will only produce an increase of 18 inches over the next century, not the 2 or 3 feet speculated in the future. Washington Post story. The rate of rise of the nearest Hog Island station, Kitopeke, will raise sea levels by 15 inches, comparable to what the island experienced in the 19th century.order and 20order century.
Of course, the inhabitants of Hog Island may have experienced greater rates of perceived increase over the past century than those measured at official tidal stations. If so, it could be because it is a barrier island where the land and shoreline shifts due to tides and storms leading to higher erosion than the extent of land-based erosion that isolates barrier islands from other islands. the worst impact of the storm. In addition, as with the nearby Chesapeake Bay, the land is likely to subside. Land subsidence has been observed since the 1940s in the southern Chesapeake Bay area at a rate of 1.1 to 4.8 mm per year (mm/year), continuing to this day.
The authors of Washington Post The stories are well aware of the myriad factors that contributed to Hog Island’s decline, and that Hog Island was dwindling long before humans started contributing to climate change. To prove it, they mentioned each element of their story. Damn data, however, they still attempt to link the woes of Hog Island residents to climate change. This is the unfortunate situation for much of modern journalism. Write a story to fit the preconceived narrative that humans are causing the climate crisis, while ignoring facts that undermine the story; in this case, hard tide gauge data.
H. Sterling Burnett, Ph.D., is Director of the Arthur B. Robinson Center for Climate and Environmental Policy and managing editor of Climate & Environment News. In addition to directing the Heartland Institute’s Arthur B. Robinson Center for Climate and Environmental Policy, Burett is associated with Environment & Climate News as editor of Heartland’s Climate Change Weekly Email and host of the Environment & Climate News Podcast.
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