Beautiful images and graphic effects to accompany such a heart-stopping story. Still, the burden of this truth is unbearable.
37
Fantastic and fascinating article; and although I appreciated the art direction, I'd rather have seen the unaltered photographs of G Demczuk more (especially the last one.)
20
In 500 years there will be perhaps 20 million humans still alive in various areas of the planet that still support life. However, if the wars that are certain to occur over land and natural resources involve nuclear weapons, there will no humans left, perhaps no mammals or fish, or anything other than basic life forms. We have intelligence, but it is the wrong kind of intelligence. The native Americans had superior intelligence. They understood the land and the animals and the relationship you need to have with your surroundings. White Europeans had technology - weapons, tools, armor, ships that would travel long distances and more. So they were able to defeat the natives and destroy the land. And here we are.
38
@Gerry Native people still have the elevated evel of intelligence you refer to. Listen to them, rather than relegate them to the past.
26
The upper 1% better start spending their money before its too late. Many of them worked hard to cheat and steal their way to the top. I can say something none of them can or will say. "I have enough."
34
Beautiful images.
4
I don't recall the article discussing why Phragmites are so undesirable, or even what they were. They sound like something that's going to greedily eat the warp core on the starship Enterprise. They are actually invasive reeds.
10
I'm 83 years so I probably won't see the demise of the human species. But my childrena and grand children might. I say might because we may be able to save this old world but only if we get rid of the climate change deniers like traitor trump and his minions.
The proof is incontrovertible. The ice caps are melting at an alarming rate. The permafrost is also melting which causes more CO2 to be emitted into the air. That's because it exposes animals that died thousands maybe millions of years ago and were entombed in the ice. Now their bodies are exposed and decaying. That means more CO2 in the air.
Is there any hope for our species? Maybe. But it may be too late.
34
ur government needs something to wake it up. Sea levels rising exceptionally fast on the East Coast seems like justice, in a way, since the U.S. is one of the biggest polluters and is going backwards. When the Jefferson Memorial is threatened, maybe Congress will take notice.
If salt water infiltrated the water table of DC and killed all the greenery it might be the best thing that could happen to this planet.
13
There is a lot of this down in Lousiana between Baton Rouge and Lafayette in the Atchafalaya Basin.
Been going on for at least 20 years.
12
Oh America, why not look north? It's okay, we understand, but love you anyway. The Acadian settlers, casualties of what is probably the first modern instance of ethnic cleansing when the British deported them in 1755 (your 'Cajun' culture the result), turned saltwater marshes well below sea level into gorgeous farmland through a system of "aboiteaux," or dykes, the sluice gates of which prevented saltwater tides flooding the land but permitted freshwater rain to rinse it and exit, turning what had been the bog of what is now the Annapolis Valley into one of the most fertile agricultural basins in all of Canada. Would not work in Florida, not enough rain, but would in Chesapeake, though of course we'd need patience and commitment and the whole of North America is generally bereft of that. Still, Kate Tully, agroeceologist at the University of Maryland, you might want to take note: those ditches are not a "threat," they simply need the application of a little Acadian traditional knowledge - as even the Nova Scotian government recognizes. Read, published recently, the cbc.ca story "$114M announced to help N.S. prepare for rising sea levels, storms" for its reporting of the deliberate restoration and improvement of the old aboiteaux (look up landscapeofgrandpre.ca, for a good illustration of the old technology), or simply come visit, and you'll see.
32
@Noah Richler Oh, Canada, look west, and try to figure out how to end the destruction of the prairie and the boreal woods by greedy multinational extractive companies, all too often owned entirely by Canadians.
8
@Noah Richler ,
what a way to ride on, what a way to go!
@ Erik Frederiksen
What you don't want to see:
1. CO2 increases after temperature rise.
2. Within that margin we had real ice ages.
We had warm times higher than today, trees comming to light from 5000 years ago from retreating glacies.
The timberline was therefore higher than today, for a very long time.
These are facts.
Graphs are a product of some rules applied to relatively inaccurate "measurements".
From pure Physics there is still missing a proof of the of induced "green house effect".
It is all propaganda.
Not climate change, but human induced CO2-effect.
For example , here in Germany a CO2-tax , increassing over time, will be introduced.
Money will be syphoned in the trillion to clumsy channels, 3rd world e.a.
@Against Lunacy
Here is NASA's former lead climate scientist James Hansen to explain your point 1.
"These curves for global temperature, atmospheric CO2 and sea level were derived from ocean cores and Antarctic ice cores, from ocean sediments and snowflakes that piled up year after year over 800,000 years forming a two-mile thick ice sheet.
As you see, there's a high correlation between temperature, CO2 and sea level. Careful examination shows that the temperature changes slightly lead the CO2 changes by a few centuries. Climate change deniers like to use this fact to confuse and trick the public by saying, "Look, the temperature causes CO2 to change, not vice versa." But that lag is exactly what is expected.
Small changes in Earth's orbit that occur over tens to hundreds of thousands of years alter the distribution of sunlight on Earth. When there is more sunlight at high latitudes in summer, ice sheets melt. Shrinking ice sheets make the planet darker, so it absorbs more sunlight and becomes warmer.
A warmer ocean releases CO2, just as a warm Coca-Cola does. And more CO2 causes more warming. So CO2, methane, and ice sheets were feedbacks that amplified global temperature change causing these ancient climate oscillations to be huge, even though the climate change was initiated by a very weak forcing."
https://www.ted.com/talks/james_hansen_why_i_must_speak_out_about_climate_change/transcript?language=en
21
@Against Lunacy - the physics of the greenhouse effect were first proposed just about 200 years ago by Joseph Fourier in two papers in the 1820s, that documented that something in the atmosphere was the only way our planet could be above freezing at the current distance from the sun and the current output of the sun.
And the increased surface warming from infrared bouncing back to the surface from CO2 and methane were both observed in a ten-year-long experiment at sites in Alaska and Oklahoma.
As the gas concentrations increased, the heating of the surface increased.
Just as predicted by physics worked out over a hundred years ago.
https://newscenter.lbl.gov/2018/04/02/methane-greenhouse-effect/
https://newscenter.lbl.gov/2015/02/25/co2-greenhouse-effect-increase/
5
@Against Lunacy
"1. CO2 increases after temperature rise."
CO2 increases where? and after what temperature rises?
"From pure Physics there is still missing a proof of the of induced "green house effect"
Sorry, but this is proof that you really don't know pure physics. A very simple black body calculation proves the greenhouse effect on earth and every other planet.
"Graphs are a product of some rules applied to relatively inaccurate "measurements"."
Platinum RTDs are very accurate, repeatable and durable. The long term data is very robust. But one must understand instrumentation.
Money will be needed anyhow for new energy source since fossil fuels are rapidly being depleted....should have started decades ago. (and the third world would are going to just suffer since rich countries are not helping them.)
3
Our natural heritage and public lands like Assateague National Seashore and Chincoteague National Wildlife Refuge and Eastern Shore of Virginia National Wildlife Refuge are doomed as the sea-level rises. We have no one to blame but ourselves.This is not a hoax. It is real.
26
Troubling and very sobering!
7
@Richard Marcley
Yes. Very sobering. That's why I'm sipping on a Martini right now.
2
Productive agricultural regions around river deltas are also seeing damage from salt water intrusion. The deltas are sinking and eroding while sea level rise is accelerating and maximum storm strength appears to be increasing.
"Egypt’s fresh water is decreasing at alarming rates, and the country will face nationwide shortages by 2025, according to a report published in the Geological Society of America’s May issue. The report forecasts that dwindling freshwater supplies and the increasing salinity level of the Nile Delta’s agricultural land threaten to make the country uninhabitable by 2100."
Egypt is far from the only country to be rendered "uninhabitable" in the coming decades and centuries.
https://madamasr.com/en/2017/03/16/news/u/nile-deltas-increasing-salinity-and-rising-sea-levels-may-make-egypt-uninhabitable-by-2100-us-geological-report/
24
This phenomenon is in some evidence on the west coast and must be creeping around the globe.
Seeing however, is not believing for the deniers.
17
The carbon cycle for the last 2 million years was doing 180-280ppm atmospheric CO2 over 10,000 years and we’ve done more change than that in 100 years.
The last time CO2 went from 180-280ppm global temperature increased by around 5 degrees C and sea level rose 130 meters.
Here’s a graph of the last 400,000 years of global temperature, CO2 and sea level: http://www.ces.fau.edu/nasa/images/impacts/slr-co2-temp-400000yrs.jpg
The change we are starting to undergo is faster than anything we've found in the record, likely too fast for ecosystems we depend on to adapt to.
28
I've given up on man doing much to prevent Global Warming and have come to believe we will mess this world up to the point there will be mass migrations of people.
That has already begun. Many of the people on our southern border are from Central America and the changing climate has helped make growing coffee there unprofitable. They are unable to earn a living there and the collapsing economies there have given rise to organized crime. The end result, many have picked up and tried to leave.
Many of the migrants from Africa are trying to find a better life in Europe as their environment degrades around them.
I fear that the ability of the earth to support an ever growing population as the world's environments change, will eventually lead to wars as populations find it impossible to survive where they are and other areas are unwilling to accept them.
Global Warming is real but too few are willing to do anything about it and many simply do not believe it is happening. The end result is going to be tragic.
45
The CO2 catastrophe will entail all sorts of nonlinear reactions from nature. Cedars died from salt water intrusions after centuries of a warm spell, centered around 2,000 years ago, and which ended abruptly, stressing hard Greco-Roman civilization: that Roman climate optimum occured naturally, from Earth’s orbital mechanics. Although its end was brutal, temperature-wise, its onset was gradual, and consequences enfolded even after it passed away: so these “Cedar cemeteries’ happened, close to the end of the warm climate, showing how much inertia the climate has. After many centuries, the ongoing warming made glaciers melt, and recess, including in Greenland. So the same phenomenon was at work in Chesapeake Bay as now. However, right now the warming is from a tremendous rise in CO2, not seen in millions of years.
Similarly, although the present warming is extremely rapid, its most dreadful consequences are slow to appear. Even if we stopped right away the CO2 emissions, the consequences of the present rise of CO2 would be increasingly felt for centuries (absent science fiction terra forming technologies which we do not have… yet) In other words, the nonlinear effects are starting, and we will not be capable of stopping them. And they will accelerate.
The collapse of the Ross ice shelf in Antarctica is guaranteed: it happened 450,000 years ago, in colder conditions than the ones we are going to reach within decades, at most. That collapse will rise sea levels 3.3 meters.
13
@Patrice Ayme
And there's no need to lose the Ross ice shelf to lose the West Antarctic Ice Sheet.
Thwaites Glacier in the Amundsen Sea Sector drains around a meter of sea level rise equivalent of ice, but when it collapses it will entrain the rest of the ice sheet because it gets hit from behind.
The retreat rate of Thwaites Glacier is below, about 14 km in 19 years in the main flow. Maybe 70 km until it gets deep and starts a rapid retreat.
https://cloudfront.escholarship.org/dist/prd/content/qt0wz826xt/qt0wz826xt.pdf
8
Agreed. Excellent remark. I was space limited. I have a more robust list of melting horrors on the essay I wrote on my site, developing that theme (of which I have spoken for more than a decade). The Ross shelf melting 400K ago is new science (2019). The gigantic Twaites glacier has long been known to be very dangerous: as the grounding line retreats, the bottom will fall off, warm water will get below, and the whole thing could collapse in a matter of years. See details in:
https://thwaitesglacier.org/about/science
There is so much melting there that local gravity is going down, and satellites can measure that.
Even worse: the giant Wilkes and Aurora basin in East Antarctica, four kilometers thick, are in a similar situation, with their bottoms a mile below sea level. Also their outlet are nearly at the Antarctic circle, very north, so potentially very warm. If they melted, sea level would go up 200 feet... "Experts" used to say, not before 5,000 years... But, all well considered, melting very soon is entirely plausible. Actually a French scientific panels of all top French climate experts just predicted a possible seven meter Sea Level rise by 2100...
8
@Patrice Ayme
In support of that potential for a 7m rise by 2100, here is the most respected glaciologist in the US, Richard Alley last year.
“If we don’t change our ways we’re expecting something like 3 feet of sea level rise in the next century, and it could be 2 and it could be 4 and it could be 20.
The chance that we will cross thresholds that commit us to loss of big chunks of West Antarctica and huge sea level rise is real.
So when you start doing “Well you’re not sure,” but there’s a chance of really bad things and the uncertainties are mostly on the bad side, could be a little better or a little worse or a lot worse, but we’ll be breaking things.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l2yclMcDroQ&feature=youtu.be&t=47m4s
5
Is not adding photo captions the latest in design? This seems to be a growing trend with your photo essays. Please put them in so we're not left scratching our heads.
53
@Velo Mitrovich Indeed! Thank you!
4
Could you add a map to this piece? Thank you.
40
Nero fiddled while Rome burned.
What world leaders fail to or purposely ignore is although there are many issues one of them is going to kill us.
Whether we are 1 percenters, corrupt dictators or just ordinary folk we are all toast unless we devout all our efforts and resources NOW to change the way we live and keep the planet habitable.
It won't happen I'm afraid. The future will just be a slow motion fatal train wreck.
Sorry kids, we failed.
13
I wonder if an effect similar to that described in this article is occurring in the St. Lawrence River estuary.
9
@Harvey Botzman I observed dead trees at the edges of overgrown sandbar islands on the Nova Scotia side of the Bay of Fundy. Healthy trees in the middle, dead ones on the edges.
4
If only the Australian government would take notice of the facts.
8
Good article ... a map showing specific affected locales would make it more effective.
30
Awesome. Another sad climate reality for people in power to ignore.
10
This is column is ridiculous because it is just based on facts and science. 40 percent of America KNOWS that science like mathematics is part of the liberal conspiracy. Humans have no need to change our actions on planet earth. Full speed ahead.
30
@Son Of Liberty Please tell me this is biting sarcasm and nothing more.
4
How can we view the photos without the washout effect?
22
Not a fan of the darkening photo effect, seemed cheesy and distracted from the pics. More and better captions would have helped, but still it's good work and illustrates how climate change is already with us.
36
We are the global beaver. Rise water rise.
3
Love the salt prints. Thanks for you ur skill.
4
Hi, If you travel down interstate 95 from MD TO FL you will see much saltwater intrusion
9
@Robert yes, my thoughts exactly. It was astonishing when I drove down 2 years ago.
5
I found the photo treatments derivative of the ones created by Claire Harbage at NPR on the same subject back in August: https://www.npr.org/sections/pictureshow/2019/08/25/752893880/painting-the-ghost-forests-of-the-mid-atlantic-coast
4
@Edwards All art is derivative and I find the pitchas (treatments) very good.
I was told by my Liberal California State Senator ( J. Hill) that sea levels on the California coast have not risen in 20 years, Please write about that and have a Global Warming analysis done.
1
@Norman Citation? And how exactly is he an expert on the subject?
@Norman
California isn't the entire world....but the information is wrong anyhow from the state senator....the link below shows that sea levels are rising along the California coast. Analysis complete.
https://tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/sltrends/sltrends.shtml
1
So what should we do? Stop driving cars? Stop flying?
3
@Jerome You don't have to go that far, but there are a lot of things you can do right now that make a difference. If it matters to you, get a hybrid or electric car, for starters. Recycle. There are dozens of ways you can help. Google the subject.
7
@Richard GS And by what feasible means are we going to create the electricity needed to charge those cars?
2
@mk Solar. It's not there yet, but it is on its way to becoming cheaper and more ubiquitous.
6
The East coast is settling generally lower which is why the apparent rising of the sea level is greater on the East coast. Even without the effects of rising oceans generally, the East coast has this problem.
By contrast, the West Coast is generally rising, which somewhat mitigates the effects of rising oceans due to melting of ice near the poles.
5
@Mac Sorry. This makes no sense.
1
Thank you for this article. My husband and I and his family are fortunate in that we get to spend a lot of time in Dorchester Co. The landscape is beautiful and haunting.
I noticed exceedingly wet forest trails in Blackwater last March. I wonder if it was a particularly wet season or it this is where the marsh is heading? I also witnessed large scale controlled burns at Blackwater on that visit. Seeing the burn and reading this article make me appreciate the research and land management that occurs at Blackwater.
I'll also mention flip side to the issues addressed in this article-- the increasing occurrences of record rainfall in the MD/PA region. The deluge of freshwater flowing into the bay effects the salinity of the bay, killing immobile underwater residents like plants and oysters, as happened in summer 2018. Swinging ever more wildly between these two extremes-- high rainfall/low salinity and drought/high salinity unfortunately leaves little recovery time for some species. I hope we can acknowledge and adequately respond to climate change before it's too late.
101
Ghost trees are the canary in the coal mine. People will belatedly wake up when the freshwater aquifers turn salty and water buffaloes will be in everyone's backyards. Welcome to the East Coast's new reality.
68
@macman2 I always say that people will wake up when "the pool turns green" and then there will be nothing but more of the same. Environmental destruction. Fear comes next. Then panic. No one in the United States wants to give up the lifestyle they have. Dooming everyone.
25
@macman2 Ghost trees are canaries, birds are canaries, insects are canaries. There are canaries everywhere but we don't see when we close our eyes.
81
You can see the same chain of events happening in small parts of CT. The author of Rising: Dispatches from the New American Shore ends the book talking about the plants being killed by the rising water around her home in Maine. Its happening almost everywhere along the coast. I'm guessing Florida will have to be abandoned long before it goes under the waves because you can't live in a place with no fresh water and no vegetation. For a hoax, climate change is sure packing a punch.
76
This thoughtful article provides strong insights about the inland encroachment of salinity. Until our nation is governed by those that understand evidence-based science, we collectively ignore unambiguous natural signals speaking to us all with unmistakable warnings.
229
@Richard Those that vote need to appreciate science in order to get leaders elected that do the same.
21
@Richard Oh, they understand evidence-based science. Don't let them fool you. They just don't profit off of evidence-based science, so they CHOSE to ignore it.
44
@Richard Maybe when the trees start dying in DC the deniers will take notice? The only thing more powerful than climate change appears to be greed.
13
Just drove to Caswell Beach, NC from Greenville, NC on Saturday. Off Hwy 17 I saw plenty of ghost forests but I did not know their name. In the moment, I thought Dorian (the last hurricane) or even Matthew (the time before) was at fault for the bare branches. Now I know better. Working with researchers I have observed salinity impact on organisms. What I saw off Hwy 17 is catastrophic.
12
Finally, a well-written piece on the effects of sea level rise on coastal communities. Many years ago my doctoral dissertation focused on wetland ecosystem migration in the context of post-glacial sea level rise. I'm delighted to see it happen in my lifetime.
6
@Eugene - Delighted? Not sad?
2
The article states that this process has existed for a recorded ,some 1500 years ,but for political purposes industrialization just caused it all in the last century. As ,said in the article ,the minute someone was told about climate change ,they're convinced it's the fault of modern day politicians.The comment concerning the dikes in Europe are especially misleading since they were built in the 14 th century when sea water threatened cities ,hundreds of years before industrialization ,the ignorance is palpable. Then of course most of the N Eastern coastal region was drained and the millions of acres of cypress forest protecting from the ocean was cut and removes for plantations ,briefly touched on in the article. However there no mention of modern and massive filling during the 19th and 20 th century .From JFK on down through the New Jersey shore cities are built on billions of yards and square miles of rock and soil fill directly upon tidelands. The real true is that this process many thousands of years old is simply nature just retrieving it's original place.
5
@Alan Einstoss
So many grammatical errors this is almost impossible to read. But, typical of climate deniers, you latch on to bits and pieces of evidence, "The article states that this process has existed for a recorded ,some 1500 years" but ignore the real point:
"sea level rise first quickened in the late 19th century after the Industrial Revolution, Dr. Walker said, and then sped up again in recent decades. It’s now rising faster than at any point in the past several thousand years."
This is nature alright, nature responding to anthropogenic climate change"
27
@Alan Einstoss
People point to change in past centuries or eons and hold that up as proof that what the overwhelming consensus of scientists say is wrong.
The scientists must be part of some worldwide conspiracy to promote... something!
Or, while acknowledging the obvious - that it is a dynamic planet we live on - scientists are actually able to distinguish between natural occurrences and those caused by a build up of green house gases.
For some people, it seems far fetched that scientists, after decades of study, are somehow unable to correlate greenhouse gas emissions with a fairly specific temperature rise, and apply that to the melting temperature of ice or the expansion of sea water.
However, for a layperson like me, those calculations seem to be well within the abilities of science.
Perhaps the political bias runs the other direction?
It would not surprise me that given the stridency of climate deniers, the rationalizations for the huge melt of Greenland, the disappearance of glaciers around the world, the sunny day floods in Florida --- that someday there will be people scrambling up PIke's Peak to avoid the rising seas, still urging us to believe it's all just nature doing its thing.
13
@Alan Einstoss
As you say "the ignorance is palpable". That is extremely true of deniers of human caused climate change. Yes, climate is always changing naturally (though usually slowly) but the rapid warming of recent decades is caused by us. The science is sound. It was clear back in the late 1800s when they were first working things out that carbon dioxide and several other gasses were recognized as blocking the energy in the form of infrared light that the earth radiates in large amounts into space. The human effect was small at that time, before automobiles, etc. and with only 1 or 1 1/2 billion people on the earth. But it slowly increased. Starting several decades ago the fossil fuel companies have been paying people to lie or mislead about climate change. Hey, it's not new: the cigarette companies did similar things before them. But the cigarette companies never bought off most of an entire political party as well as significant chunks of the media.
Let me summarize: Human caused climate change is real. We have a truly serious problem. People like the Koch brothers are going to continue spending tens of millions of dollars on denial to try to ensure that their billions of dollars of income from fossil fuels remain safe from any "carbon tax" or other restrictions. And people who aren't paying attention believe the obfuscation while mostly Republican politicians collect "donations" to get reelected on anti climate change platforms. I am scared.
14
I was just in one of the areas the author mentions, in and around the Blackwater National Refuge. I saw the ghost trees and phragmites. We drove a little bit south to Fishing Creek and Hoopersville, fragmented bits of land that cozy up to the Chesapeake Bay. It was obvious that those areas will be under water soon. The water was ready to top the road and now and then you'd see a side road behind a closed gate that was nothing but standing water.
Back home in Baltimore I've also seen stands of dying trees, some succumbing to the increase in insect pests like the emerald ash borer that have thrived during global warming. But oddly, we have had old oak trees dying in our large parks as well. And we have had a flash drought lately. There was hardly any rain in September, until it finally rained last night. This is abnormal.
You can help by planting trees, donating to organizations that do so, and watering young trees in your neighborhood which need consistent watering in their first two years of life in order to survive. Also, call your representatives to demand action on climate change. And vote for candidates that support action. Otherwise, we lose everything.
27
Given how many people's lives are impacted by the Gulf Stream, one would think that this story should be front page. We need a big debate on what we are going to do along coastal US in the coming years to deal with beaches, residences, fisheries, and anything that depends upon a stable sea level.
Unfortunately, such a discussion is impossible given a climate that is hostile to discussing the climate.
13
The article states pretty clearly that Greenland melting "might" be causing the changes in the Gulf Stream.
I'd say it's a safe bet that if and when research proves that conclusively, it will be on the front page of the NYT.
4
You think you've got it bad on the east coast. Out here, the land west of the Cascades is rising, obscuring sea level rise, due to the ongoing collision between the Pacific and North American plates and the fact that the plates are locked together by friction. Eventually the strain will be too much and the North American plate will jump westward and drop a few feet in a few seconds. Then we'll suddenly have plenty of ghost forests here too.
10
At what point do we conclude "it's over"?
We do not have the broadband intelligence or social
empathy to care about each other or our descendants. Competition to make money and wield power at the expense of others is our core foundational principle.
The belief in "survival of the individual vs. the species"
is too deeply and completely embedded in our societies
to change without existential threat. And as that threat becomes more evident, that belief will metastasize into
"me & mine" vs. "you & them" at the international and
interpersonal level.
WAKE UP! STOP SPINNING THE FAIRY TALE ENDING "AND THEY LIVED HAPPILY EVER AFTER". IT'S OVER.
WE HAD OUR SHOT. WE FAILED OURSELVES. WE'RE DONE.
15
@tashmuit
Actually, NOT DONE. Ours, our children and their children’s generations will continue to flop around, find happiness, make mistakes and live life while adapting to new realities, some expected and others unforeseen. The most vulnerable areas, such as described in this article, will be abandoned and many will lose their livelihoods and fortunes but many will rebuild their lives elsewhere and otherwise find a way to get on. Governments and politics may fail us but people are resourceful and will find a way to adapt, full caps or not.
2
For years, as I drove along the highways of northern NJ, I’d notice intermittent patches of what can only be described as ghost forests.
Can the over-salting of roads in the winter also be a root cause?
4
@trblmkr - it doesn't help, particularly in places where snowmelt might pond up instead of having somewhere to drain off to.
In a similar way, the farmlands out in the arid West are going to suffer from increasing damage from salt as irrigation water evaporates, and as the sources of water in some places get saltier. Drain the fresh from underground, often saltier water below is what's next in the pipes.
2
If you think sea level rise won't affect you, you need to look at maps of where the water will go. When I lived in Lake Village, Arkansas, on the banks of the Mississippi River and on the border with Louisiana and Mississippi, I used to tell my husband that we should buy land because when Louisiana disappears, we'd have oceanfront property. Then I looked at a map of where the rising seas will go. They will go up the rivers that empty into the sea. The land that borders the Mississippi River was all under water clear up to St. Louis. The land along the Columbia River on the West Coast was under water, including much of Portland. My little town of Lake Village was under water even though we were a 6 hour drive from New Orleans.
The water will cover much more than only the coasts.
33
From the most respected glaciologist in the US last year, Richard Alley
"If we don’t change our ways we’re expecting something like 3 feet of sea level rise in the next century, and it could be 2 and it could be 4 and it could be 20.
The chance that we will cross thresholds that commit us to loss of big chunks of West Antarctica and huge sea level rise is real.
So when you start doing “Well you’re not sure,” but there’s a chance of really bad things and the uncertainties are mostly on the bad side, could be a little better or a little worse or a lot worse, but we’ll be breaking things.
It's the same for most other projected impacts from global warming, could be a little better than we think, a little worse, or a lot worse.
There's no a lot better.
At 47:35 here. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l2yclMcDroQ&t=2891s
20
We're doing similar work here in Alaska with the Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium's Local Environmental Observer (LEO) network. There are a few hundred observers across the rural parts of the state observing the same types of issues: Salt water encroachment within the Yukon-Kuskokwim River Delta, tundra subsidence, increasing drought conditions in temperate coastal rain-forests, wildfire increases, and odd animal migrations.
It's about time that someone starts to get the various environmental observer groups together so that we can draw a more complete picture of what's happening. The sooner that we understand the changes that have set in across North America, the sooner voters and policymakers can start to comprehend the gravity of the situation.
42
Each day, Trump and his Republicans act to make our planet less & less inhabitable for our children and grandchildren.
The window of opportunity to effectively mitigate Climate Change is rapidly disappearing.
The remaining 2020 Democratic Candidates will try to cut & paste portions of Governor Jay Inslee’s comprehensive & actionable Climate Change Mitigation Plan.
We must go with the Real Deal.
The winning Democratic Party 2020 Ticket: President Warren (build a green economy) + Vice President Inslee (save a blue planet)! W+IN 2020!
40
@Phillip Stephen Pino Actually, climate advocates say Bernie’s green new deal is the “leader of the pack”
They like that Bernie's climate plan would:
• Invest $16.3 trillion over 15 years, “the sort of investment that needs to be made if you’re going to make the rapid transition off of fossil fuels that’s necessary.” (Food& Water Watch.)
• "Immediately end federal subsidies and leases for fossil fuel production, halt new oil, gas, and coal projects, and ban harmful fracking and mountain-top removal practices.” (Greenpeace)
• Raise taxes on corporate polluters, taking on fossil fuel wealth, and building renewable energy. (350 Action)
• Give the federal government a robust role to drive the transition “on a scale that far surpasses what the other candidates have got so far.” (Sunrise Movement.)
He is the only one who understands and has plan for engaging the global community on climate. Here's more reading: https://www.jacobinmag.com/2019/10/climate-change-policy-elizabeth-warren-bernie-sanders?fbclid=IwAR1CElKniV6LBXPVJvDbVl8tglEOvbW64OSO-QqMgKgGOgMssGVuaXU83HQ
6
@Phillip Stephen Pino
There is no more 'window'. This is a game over. Climate change is a perfect example of a problem that humans are incapable of solving - its dynamics during the 'window of opportunity' were too slow compared to a human life span and too fast for our children. Say bye to your Mar-e-Lagos and welcome your new neighbors from Bangladesh.
10
This article is a real eyeopener. I didn't realize this was happening along the Mid Atlantic coast of the US. I agree with those who ask what they can do to slow down or stop global warming. With all the evidence of global warming. Why is the Trump administration denying this is happening?
35
@John Because he doesn't care. People like him are set in their ways. They stick to old, out-of-date ways of making money because they are unwilling or incapable of thinking of new ways. Look how hostile Trump is toward wind power, even saying it causes cancer. He is stuck in the past with no vision for the future.
24
Perhaps we have to take the long view.
After our species goes extinct, the planet will, over time, heal itself.
17
@Robbiesimon - Of course it won't just be us that goes extinct... besides some will probably survive do it again. According to mitochondrial DNA studies, all living humans are descended from about 40 mothers, so that's all it takes to repopulate.
1
@Tim
I believe that the conclusion should be that what survives is from 40 mothers, but that does not mean that there were not many others who did not survive, but whose contributions were crucial in allowing the survival of the remainder.
So 40 mothers surrounded by billions of predators would be bad odds.
4
@Robbiesimon The planet will recover, in perhaps 10 million years. That's how long it takes to recover from mass extinctions. The real crime is, it was (and is) preventable. But we have to go all out in every way to do decarbonize and do a Green New Deal to transform our economy. We did it in mere months in WWII. We can do it now -- the technology is here. What isn't here is true democracy to allow it. The Carbon Criminals rule -- and their propaganda and misinformation are everywhere.
12
People should visit such places to fully appreciate climate change, accompanied by informed and knowledgeable guides. "Collapse tourism" must be a facet of "eco-tourism."
10
@Anony
Still better, they should read articles like this, use their imaginations, and stay home, thus lowering their carbon footprints. Eco-tourism is an oxymoron.
6
@Barbara
Reading about our world is indeed important, but, if possible, we need to experience it in order to fully appreciate it. Seeing the evidence of climate change is believing.
"in 2010, she learned about global warming"
People think that global warming is something new and recently discovered by scientist. But back in 1970 scientist were warning about global warming, then it was called "the green house effect".
Yet today, in 2019, we still have some that don't believe that it exist. For over 50 years some people have refused to believe that it exist. The problem is people refuse to learn history and science.
The next specie to become extinct may be the human race.
15
@TM
In 1995 Al Gore said by 2005 Miami will be under water "due to Global warming".
Do you believe Miami is under water?
@George Orwell - ah, the ghost of Orwell, again failing at topical comedy.
Hint to you in the land of the spirits - Al Gore is not a climate scientist.
By the way, the Republican mayor down in there in Southern Florida raised a half a billion in taxes to raise some roads, install pumps to put the ocean back in the ocean - and that's just to deal with the early touches of tidal flooding. It does nothing about septic systems dropping below the water table, raised roads flooding businesses and homes along them, and the problem of getting drinking water as that limestone they sit on is infiltrated with more and more of the rising seas.
1
Yeah, but this is America, so "developers" will drain the marshes, replace them with asphalt and concrete, sell subdivisions and stripmalls, and move on.
10
@emanuel - Another common step is the “developers” go bankrupt. Their contractors sue, and are counter-sued. When will they learn? When will we stop calling their destruction “development”, and start living more sustainably?
2
Heartbrakingly beautiful, tragic, graphics.
7
Interestingly, the number of comments on this article is somewhat indicative of the support and interest for slowing climate change. Humans tend to act when it is in their best interests to do so. Unfortunately, many humans have not yet become educated in the destructive outcomes of climate change. Will that lack of interest and ignorance change before it is too late? Only time will tell.
16
"Gabriella Demczuk collected salt water at each of the ghost forest locations. She used the water to make salt prints, a technique that combines saltwater and silver nitrate to make photo paper sensitive to light."
Although fascinating and artistic, just because you can doesn't mean you should. My family kept trying to examine the actual photos of the devestation, but as we scrolled down to see the bottom of the photo, it turned into a darker, harder to read salt print. I'm not against the artform, but it might have worked better to show the salt print after the actual photo. The process here was frustrating to those of us really interested in the photos, as a visual aid to the scientific report.
READ 67
51
@David Lindsay Jr.
I had a similar reaction but by the end of the article I thought is was a clever, effective, and haunting way to portray loss. We no longer will be able to see what we once could; there is no back-button in nature.
36
@David Lindsay Jr.
If possible, view the article in portrait mode, as opposed to landscape mode. While each photo then appears smaller, the entire unedited pic can be viewed at the bottom of the screen and enlarged by zooming.
1
@David Lindsay Jr.
It's not like she destroyed the negatives, both photos exist. See:
https://static01.nyt.com/newsgraphics/2019/10/02/ghost-forests-redux/assets/images/end1-2000.jpg
and
https://static01.nyt.com/newsgraphics/2019/10/02/ghost-forests-redux/assets/images/end2-2000.jpg
Doesn't sound like any of these folks will be getting compensation for what climate change has done to their land and livelihood. So arbitrary how we decide who gets compensation for injury in this country and who doesn't.
Since they serve as a buffer to further incursions of salt water, should we be intervening to actively build up the new salt marshes instead of leaving it to climate change to build them?
9
How about organized field trips for DC legislators. They are practically right next door to Chesapeake Bay. Perhaps the authors could help arrange such visits with explanations of what is happening, what the consequences are going to be and how it is affecting people, animals and vegetation.
They need to get out of DC and see what is happening to the world. They won't go very far to look, so it is important to make the field trip close by and easy for them to see and understand, if they will. I hope some will and explain it to the rest of them.
They have the power to make legislation that can have effects. We, the people can work to get them to make those changes, but they are the ones who right the laws of the land.
21
Excellent article, but I wish it included a map showing the extent or the increase of salt-water encroachment. The pictures were lovely, but only anecdotal. Maps convey quantifiable information.
126
@stephen beck I don't think that the University of Maryland or George Washington University have constructed geological maps yet showing the salt water encroachment.
6
@stephen beck Here in NC it's against state law to do any kind of planning that factors any effects of climate change into the models.
19
@Shawn Serious?
4
Scientists have been sounding the alarm about climate change and global warming since the 1970s - I clearly remember reading some truly alarming reports of possible scenarios if things unfolded to the "worst case" of Arctic ice melting, with a potential of rising sea levels to 50 feet in some areas! But people just shrugged, oh, that's just more science nut cases. Now thousands are stuck in dead and dying ecosystems. Do they think the government is going to help NOW? Oh brother!
28
Sad and immensely frustrating that no amount of photographic documentation demonstrating the earth to be slowly dying can break through the denial of those determined to extract the last bit of profit from humanities' ending days.
90
The world needs to plant 2.4Trillion trees in the next 10 years to have any hope of stopping devastation from climate change. The world is not reducing CO2 emissions; they are in fact still rising!
Not a million trees, not a Billion trees, but 2.4 trillion trees of the right species in the right location. The result will be a cooler, cleaner environment.
46
@Louis J It is always someone else who needs to plant them - on their land. And unless you can grow/raise /develop some food in the same area, you'll never get the land for trees without harvesting.
3
@Louis J There is unfortunately the problem that native species are dying in many places and it isn't yet clear what to plant to replace them. Replanting the indigenous tree species simply means that those young trees are doomed. So yes, planting trees is important but there is more to it than meets the eye...
11
@Paul I agree, the person with enough land in the right place with the right conditions should plant the trees. The viability of planting trees to alleviate rising levels of Co2 is there and the land has been identified and rather than impinge on crop land it would enhance arability. If I had room to plant more trees I would, However what I can do is maintain the land that I do have so that the trees remain healthy and vigorous. 2.3 trillion is only 330 each, over 20 years that is 16.5. simplistic but true. Desire to change is what stands in the way.
7
So when are we going to do something other than our small changes. I am ready for sacrifice why is there not leadership.
27
@Colleen
I respect your willingness to sacrifice. Leaders are more interested in profit than sacrifice. Greed is a powerful force.
11
@Colleen, profits over people. That's what it comes down to. Profits over principles. Look who's in office - look at what the NBA just did because China was "displeased" with what one NBA player said about the crackdown on freedoms in Hong Kong. There's not going to be any leadership, not as long as Fascist forces rule the day.
5
@Colleen Climate change has one primary engine: population growth. Not much sacrifice going on there.
9
We have to start to do more than get angry and protest, we have to start planting trees everywhere and then watering all of them. If the 4M people who joined the protest on Fridays had also planted 2 trees each on Saturday AND kept doing it every week, we could begin to address Climate Change.
I live in a gated high security community of thousands and I am the only non-worker concerned that many trees are not only dying from lack of water, many are being cut down so people can see big multiplex structures with too many units to sell.
If someone would get it to Greta Thunberg to start her next protest with a tree planting initiative afterwards, they would relly be doing some good as well as alerting the world.
Please, don't just complain & wait until it is too late, do something today; water a tree, plant a few trees. An African country recently boasted of having planted over 300M new trees in a short period. If they don't water them, they will all die in 2 weeks. The African nation had gone from 35% forests to less than 5% before they took action. That new planting may be too late to save the country.
We don't want to be next. Please help, you have just read of all the damage being done, try to help stop it.
21
@WorldPeace24/7 -- Those who live on a 77th floor, and others who for other reasons don't have a front or back yard, please consider sponsoring a tree (or trees!) in the Cary Tree Archive [www.CaryTreeArchive.org]. We can put a tree in the ground, properly, and periodically send you photos of it. Volunteers will water it. This is an entirely private venture. If we wait for governments to act, we'll choke.
2
"Just having to move" spells fiancial disaster for most people. Imagine being forced to move to another town, but doing so with little or none of your net worth. Property drowned by rising seas is simply gone, and the value it represented to its owners has likewise vanished.
When it happens to millions, as it will in places like Bangladesh, we'll be facing a humanitarian disaster unprecedented in history.
35
@Jim Demers
And this is the challenge that will effectively destroy every government on earth -- tens of millions of climate refugees, formerly arable land destroyed, fresh water sources limited. We cannot solve that problem with the belief in "my" space. We must accept that we are a species and think at that level, with every individual accounted for and the entire globe our environment.
6
@Jim Demers
This is a question that keeps me up at night. Eventually, climate catastrophe will overwhelm our financial systems for dealing with it. When we have several major disasters a year, as we have been between the hurricanes, wildfires, and floods, eventually insurance companies either go bankrupt or raise their rates to unaffordable levels. Property that can no longer be insured is virtually worthless. Many families, like mine, have nearly their entire net worth tied up in their homes. Cuomo was on the right track with the government buyouts he did following Sandy, which enabled people whose homes were in unsustainable locations to move without being entirely wiped out. The government must start thinking about this on a much larger scale. How do we compensate people like the ones this essay mentions, whose land is being destroyed by saline encroachment? And I do think they should be compensated, because we all benefited from the carbon use that caused this problem so we should all bear the costs of it.
5
I joined a family charter fishing trip last week on the waterways southwest of New Orleans leading to the Gulf. I'm no fisherman and had never been to the area before. The pictures in this article look eerily similar to the waterways down here. It's happening all over.
17
The salt prints would be better with an on/off switch rather than appearing before the photo is fully displayed.
The other dim photos are not easy to see.
39
Although I attempt to keep informed about the environment...this completely surprised me and it's stunning how in our face it is but yet we blink, blink too long. Incredible, complex informative article but yet simple in the fact it puts in the simplest form...we need to wake the heck up! Thank you for such important information we all need to absorb and start taking this more seriously.
21
As long as 35% of the population is living in the conservative media bubble, where global warming is a "hoax," don't expect any major effort to curtail greenhouse emissions. Corporate-funded pseudoscience and effective public relations by a plethora of front groups has successfully brainwashed enough of the population to prevent any significant change to our environmental policies.
25
@Joe Bastrimovich Even people who claim who believe, don't seem to want to change their lifestyle - it is all 'do as I say not as I do.' There are plenty of people demanding solar and wind projects, just not in their backyard. There are projects increasing carbon output in the name of other environmental goals.
A chunk of those 35% just don't believe anything can be done about it - so why bother - spend to live in the next world not try to change the progress of the current.
8
How many people receiving the Times or navigating to the Times site will actually read this and read it from beginning to end? This should be required reading . . . globally. These Ghost Forests aren't coming back to green in our lifetime. Nor are the lands that once grew sustaining crops. If we continue to ignore science and put our faith in corrupted politicians, then we deserve the doom that is coming.
10
Captions with photos would help. And comparisons with past scenes. I am not sure in some cases whether I am seeing a real image or art.
15
We need to assume that every tipping point for environmental disaster has been crossed. America could have chosen to be a leader 50 years ago in the 1970's, when we had the warnings. But we didn't. And we have doubled down on American ignorance and irresponsibility by electing Donald Trump as President. Every policy of his administration worsens every failing ecosystem. "America the beautiful" should be ashamed of itself.
26
More evidence the world may be in the midst of the Sixth Extinction. God, I hope not, but the signs in the natural world do not look good at all.
9
Carthage was forever ruined by salinization. We don't need Punic wars to learn a lesson as clear as the salt shaker on the dinner table. We do need to have leaders and profiteers who will take their heads out of the gold mines and put them where many people are, in salt marshes where clean pure rivers once flowed. Everything in nature is connected; warming seas rise as artic ice melts. It is that simple. But the deniers in the White House count their golden eggs and leave the drowning goose to others to worry about.
13
Even the dysfunctional politicians we have in Texas know that global warming is real. They just don't want to cut into the profits of their benefactors. They don't feel global warming will impact them personally and they could care less about what happens to the rest of the world.
23
A journalistic/esthetic criticism: In this story, and in many others, photographs seem to be used more as decoration than as specific examples. There are no informative captions, so we are left to glean what we can from the surrounding copy, with uneven success.
The photos here, by the way, are lovely. And informative, specific captions would not have diminished their beauty while increasing their information value.
22
@JRS I completely agree - well said.
3
The Gulf Stream slowing down! That sounds scariest of all.
25
Some maps would have been helpful. It sounds like what's really happening is a historic pattern of salt water migration that has been sped up in recent years, but the article rambles rather than really says that.
7
Very well done; however, I would like to have seen a "before and after" for some of the photos. If it were possible, it would have been great to see, say, 1950 vs. today. I think that would have made the impact even more palpable. I am lucky to be living in the one part of the East Coast - New England - that is less subject to the environmental change we're seeing "down south." Most of the land in N.E., excluding parts of the Cape and some parts of CT and RI, is significantly elevated above the Carolinas, Maryland, et. al.
9
I found the images fading to sepia frustrating. It hindered my view of what was being explained.
This is a distressing phenomena. I've seen it all of my life but to read it is accelerating...
I don't think people realize yet what climate refugees are going to look like. Millions are already being affected by climate change and because they can no longer feed themselves are on the move.
It's horrible for the environment but it also takes a human toll in agricultural areas that are only beginning to be felt.
28
@mj I agree about the sepia, I found it distracting as I was reading what was otherwise a very informative article; is this a factual piece or an arts and crafts project? As Stephen Beck mentioned in his comment, maps would have been very helpful.
6
It might not just be rising sea levels, but subsidence of the continent causing the intrusion of seawater.
3
@Raz The article mentions that as an exacerbating factor.
8
In the past three years I have seen more and more dead trees, less insects, fewer birds in the reservations of South Orange and West Orange.
8
Wonderful article! Thank you for helping me understand the the processes affecting our coasts. I've often wondered as I have traveled north-south along the shore, what produced the stands of dying trees and stretches of salt marshes, and variations within them.
8
I have seen this myself, while travelling up and down the Mid-Atlantic. I didn't know exactly what I was seeing until recently when it was put in context of salt-water intrusion. I moved here in 1979 and have seen this in action, even miles inland from the ocean:
-while bird watching out on the Eastern Shore
-while biking through the Great Dismal Swamp in Virginia
-while touring the great old mansions of the James River in Virginia
-while driving to the Outer Banks of North Carolina where you pass farm acreage out of commission
- while having foodie adventures in South Carolina's Low Country.
14
I assumed that climate change was something my children would experience. But it is speeding up, a lot. I am already seeming more than I ever expected to.
Alas, the rich simply assume that they can buy a mountain in the north and comfortably live above it all.
17
@JS Colonies on other planets, since this one is dying? Perhaps....
1
@JS
And they will live comfortably.
For awhile.
2
@JS
it seems inappropriate and misplaced to blame “the rich”.
I’m rich and I give to organizations fighting climate change I drive an electric car and am restoring a natural landscape on my property.try blaming the current administration and the inactivity’s of govt and corporate greed instead.
4
Great article and beautiful photographs! Articles like this are so important because they show us directly how climate change is affecting our local environment.
18
The article state's climate change or global warming is part of the problem. How much is not explained. These dying forest can been seen all over the coast. The photos shown have what look like trees that aren't very old and nearly the same age. Are these die offs common for marshlands from storm surges or to much rain. Trees grow in places that aren't exactly the best location for it's species. A seed catches and it grows and ten years or a hundred it's gone.
How long has this process been going on? Most of us are not familiar with coastal ecology. The article says marshland are surrendering to the sea and growing elsewhere. Another article might have shown coastal maps from different era's and what they'll look like in the future. The sea has always reworked the coasts of the world. A closer look needs to be taken than just blaming man for everything.
9
@JoeG In march the Washington Post ran a very interesting article about farm land in North Carolina. Farmland owned and farmed for generations is lost to salt-water intrusion each year - a real problem for real people. They've teemed up with researchers to get a better handle on what is happening. As the article noted it wasn't just sea-level rise, though it is rising.
-Two major hurricanes in 4 years flooded the area with salt water
-Stronger on shore winds are forcing saltwater up drainage ditches and canals and into the farm land.
These are also signs of climate change.
17
@Miss Informed
So we agree?
Except with paragraphs like this keep turning up punctuating the article:
"The pace of sea level rise first quickened in the late 19th century after the Industrial Revolution, Dr. Walker said, and then sped up again in recent decades. It’s now rising faster than at any point in the past several thousand years."
We tend to filter out natural forces when we read this kind of rhetoric. It's as if we can't handle science and draw our own conclusions.
1
@JoeG We seem to agree that coast lines are ever-changing.
And that is noted in this very article in the context of saltwater marshes. Did you see that paragraph as well as the one you picked out...or did you filter it out?
" At first, this trend depressed Matt Whitbeck, a biologist with the Fish and Wildlife Service who works at the refuge. Saltwater marshes are important nurseries for the fish and crabs people like to eat.
But in 2012, he realized the marsh wasn’t entirely disappearing; it was migrating. Some of the 3,000 acres of forest that the refuge had lost had transformed into saltwater marsh.
His outlook changed. “We need to think about where the marsh is moving, not where it is,” he said."
I have no doubt that these coastal changes are greatly accelerated by humans and pollution. It appears you doubt that. So we agree and we disagree.
3
Brilliant. Well done. More like this. That the marshes are migrating is pretty profound, and hopeful.
5
Thanks to the Times for supporting and featuring pieces like this.
Climate change is not something that is far-off in the future. It is here, now, it is real, it is affecting all forms of life all over the planet right now, and it needs to be front page news every day if we are to have any chance of raising enough consciousness to alter our societies to have any chance at all of mitigating it.
24
In some far-off future time, our planet will be an archaeological dig site. Those who find us will marvel, "They saw the end coming, and they did nothing."
130
@Erin It's not the end. We'll survive what comes next. We won't get through it unscathed, but humans are an adaptable and curious lot. The world won't look the same as it does now, but hopefully we will learn through the next few centuries how to live in some form of balance with the natural world. The more we learn about the delicate balance between different ecosystems, the better for our descendants to adapt and build a new economic system around sustainable growth.
3
@Erin Upon translating documents left by the ancient earth species, they will observe that the leaders understood the situation well, and utilized it to accumulate some earthling substance that they called "money."
4
@Erin Who is going to do the digging?
Interesting article. Illustrates the effects of sea level increases that are not frequently discussed. It is important that governments and communities in coastal countries know more about the effects of sea level rise. Additional I find it curious to know what alternatives exist to make these sites more resilient.
8
@Ricardo In the US, vulnerable coastal states like FL and LA are chock-full of denialists who don't even allow the term "climate change" to be used by public officials.
8
Here in the upper Mississippi River valley between Minnesota and Wisconsin we are witnessing thousands of trees dying in the river bottoms. Large swaths of the river bottom are covered with dead standing trees. The record breaking and ongoing participation has resulted in spring like river levels for extended periods of times.
However, while the river bottom ghost forests are highly visible and distressing they are likely insignificant next to the 1.7 billion Ash trees in just these two states being killed by the Emerald Ash Borer. And if you haven’t seen the western forests....
39
@SiouxLand Here in Maryland too. Our park district has been cutting down and removing diseased Ash for a few years now.
4
@SiouxLand Yes, invasive species are also killing many trees. The earth needs more trees, not less.
3
@SiouxLand Stories like this are why it is hard to be optimistic about large-scale tree planting projects as part of a CO2 mitigation solution.
2
Beautifully told through words and photographs. And, yet, so depressing. Humans can make changes to slow climate change, but it will take a different mindset than those who ignore nature's signals and the science behind it. It will take a different set of politicians who think and act to protect future generations. We have one earth for all. It will take a different generation to see that nationalism is not in our best interest when it comes to saving mother earth.
69
Another cause for salinization is the profligate use of fresh water for agriculture, industry, and domestic wants. Draining our aquifers in near-coastal areas encourages the ingress of seawater and changes the salt content of the land, rendering it less able to sustain crops and changing the ecology by favoring more salt-tolerant invaders and killing the indigenous flora. One example is the spread of mangrove forests into areas far from their traditional boundaries.
101
@spike Interesting timing as I just read an article last night about my hometown of West Point, VA and the Chesapeake bay area sinking along with sea rise and they believed it was partially due to overuse of aquifers...actually contributing to the land sinking.
WP/Virginia Beach area is one of fastest sinking/sea rise areas. Growing up on the Rappahanock....I can see the sea rise for myself over the past 50 years. We are responsible for all of it.
14
@spike
The same thing has been happening in CA for decades as well.
4
@spike
Good point and what needs to be mentioned there is bottled water. Nestle in particular drains enormous amounts of spring water (there was an NYT article recently about exactly that in Florida) to bottle and sell. The price of bottled water needs to rise greatly in order to account for its true costs and encourage people to use refillable containers filled from their own taps.
5
This is thoughtful work, but we need an administration and a public that believes in science and is asking the right questions about the world and its climate for this kind of a report to have the impact that it should. There can be no impact on those who refuse to see what might otherwise be critical warning signs. In order to fundamentally come to grips with climate, we need to change the current national leadership who are happy to spread their deceit and retrograde cluelessness about everything that they touch.
39
@J Pace
Once again, an easy target is blamed. "They" should do something....
Well, "they" is us. Everyday each person should look to find something 'they' can do to offset their personal contribution.
I kayak with friends who moan when they see a dead sea turtle. "Stomach probably full of plastic", they say as they paddle along with a disposable plastic water bottle under their deck bungee.
I see people sitting in cars, engine running, as they talk on their darn phones. 'They' also likely buy new electronics every two years, sending the trash out of sight to another country.
Even with all the publicity about cities banning plastic bags, people still fill six or eight bags at the grocery, even though reusable ones hang available right at the check out. Why spend 99¢ on a durable bag when the single use plastic ones are free!
And don't get me started about the mail-order addiction we have in this country. We are drowning in packaging that can be directly traced to Amazon, et. al. purchases. That's not the 'national leadership' doing that. It's the individual who is as skilled at justification for their habits as the Oval Office is at lying.
There are things our leaders should be doing to assist but it is the seemingly tiny individual contributions that add up. Let's spread the responsibility around a little bit.
10
@B Dawson You are absolutely right. And an intelligent leader can set a good example to inspire people to follow behaviors that reduce their carbon footprint.
3
The sea is barely rising and the rate of rise has been constant for long before CO2 levels rose. But land is sinking in some places in the east giving the appearance of rising in some places.
3
@ehillesum Define "long before". The correlation of sea level rise to CO2 is robustly predicted through geologiucal periods. Currently, CO2 is rising as a result of people, and therefore it stands to reason that sea level rise will worsen. Yes, this is cyclical throughout geological history, but for the fist time in geological history, the CO2 is rising at a rate that defies geological history. Given the correlation, we may expect that the sea level rise will be coreespondingly worse than previously observed throughout geological history. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3557064/
54
@Rex Denton. “We may expect” lots of things and make what appear to be reasonable assumptions. But when the data continually fails to provide evidence that the assumptions were correct, it’s time to consider alternatives. Go back 50 years and you will read in this paper and others predictions of a global cooling catastrophe. Go back 30 years and you will see predictions of a global warming catastrophe. And they were predicting a flooded NYC, ice free arctic and no snow in the west—and predicting that it would happen by the 1990s or early 2000s. But it did not happen, not even close. And the seas have risen at about the same rate for the past 150 years and more. So to many, it begins to look like a lot of fear mongering for a political and/or financial purpose. Trust the science, not the few climate change elites.
1
@ehillesum
Your initial statement is false. Why are islands that have existed for tens of thousands of years, suddenly disappearing? Why are storm surges getting stronger and moving farther inland?
NOAA has an extensive network of sea level measuring devices that span the globe. There has been a documented and verified rise of sea levels all over the world. As the oceans warm, water expands and the seas rise. As the glaciers and polar ice melts, sea levels rise. The ice melt has to go somewhere. It goes into the seas.
Sea levels don't just rise on their own. Something is putting more water into the oceans and that water comes from a heating planet.
18
5mm yearly rise, or a bit more than the thickness of 2 half dollars! Isn’t that it pretty much the same as 3 stacked After Eight mints without the wrappers? How about using units most people understand in an otherwise interesting article?
16
Saltmarshes can migrate inland where the rise in land is gradual, but in places where the rise is steep, like midcoast Maine, sealevel rise will just wipe out the saltmarshes, which are a crucial piece in the whole interconnnected system of animals, plants and, of course, people.
@Sam I thought that was odd also. Two stacked half dollars are pretty close to three pennies in height. One does wonder why the choice of half dollars.
8
@Sam
5mm = .2” (approx. 3/16”)
1
@Sam - i think they did -- 5mm
1
We are in an interglacial period of a 120,000 to 150,000 year cycle. This cycle will happen with or without human activity. Human activity which dumps CO2 into the atmosphere will predictably lengthen and strenghten this interglacial period. Sea level rise will be higher because of this human activity but it was going to happen anyways. To combat this human activity we need to turn to cleaner, more renewable energy sources and we need to minimize or stop population growth. Both are critical.
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@Quinn
The main signal is human induced climate change resulting from greenhouse gases. The interglacial cycle is just noise, , a ripple in a tidal wave.
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@Sherry Dudas
Natural or human-caused, the remedies are the same.
1) Negative population growth
2) Clean energy sources. A wager: eventually, this will be nuclear.
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@Quinn yes the change is inevitable, what is new is the rate of change which is ever increasing. If you look at the data the rate of change quickened shortly after the industrial revolution took hold and continues to accelerate.
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