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Galway City and Climate Change: What's to be made of its future?
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20-12-2010 3:51pm#1What's to be said for the future of Galway City. NUIG's Dr Kieran Hickey says that as the century progresses "unchecked the sea will come up Shop Street".
Here's the quote in greater detail:
"
But as we go towards 2100 our biggest threat is the rise and rise of the sea levels. In the last century sea levels have risen 13 to 15 centimetres, and that was with no ice melt. The projection is that by the end of this century sea levels will have risen by 44 centimetres. But in the past three years, the speed with which Greenland’s ice is melting has accelerated significantly. Weather scientists have now been told to revise those figure upwards by one or two metres.
What does that mean for Galway? Dr Hickey says that unchecked the sea will come up Shop Street. There is little to be done for rural areas, he says, which are sinking anyway.“ Coastal erosion is happening all the time. The rise in sea levels is insidious. It’s sneaky. It’s constantly eating away at our coastline. The real scary stuff, however, is that not only is ice-melt in Greenland happening at a faster rate that was predicted, but now there is evidence that the Antarctic is melting at an even more rapid pace. We don’t know yet the impact of that, only it is not looking good.” Dr Hickey believes that, once again, Europe will come to the rescue, and at enormous cost, will devise some form of coastal protection, especially for cities."
And here's the link to the article: http://www.advertiser.ie/galway/article/33353
Here's an idea of perhaps where we've already started to head:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/12744234@N00/2664071749
So what's it to be for the future of Galway? Should we raise Quay Street and Shop Street up on stilts and start a down payment on those gondolas already? Is it time to move the promenade all the way to Eyre Square?
What do you think?0
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The entire global warming hypothesis is based on a grossly flawed temperature model run by the Goddard Institute in NASA named GISTEMP.
It was by trending readings towards sea level ( by discarding higher up stations over time) and by not correcting out the airports (they were covered in grass in 1940 and are now covered in concrete) and other urban effects that the worlds temperature is 'showing' a substantial increase.
There is nothing to worry about...unless you are a weather station that is. Have a look at the Rome Ciampino Airport weather station.
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Sponge Bob wrote: »The entire global warming hypothesis is based on a grossly flawed temperature model run by the Goddard Institute in NASA named GISTEMP.
It was by trending readings towards sea level ( by discarding higher up stations over time) and by not correcting out the airports (they were covered in grass in 1940 and are now covered in concrete) and other urban effects that the worlds temperature is 'showing' a substantial increase.
There is nothing to worry about...unless you are a weather station that is. Have a look at the Rome Ciampino Airport weather station.
I believe they account for such distortions by using degrees of correction.
And as regards your claim that this proves the Global warming hypothesis is redundant , well the NOAA released a report saying global warming was beyond doubt due to - not one ot two but - ten indicators which all point to the trend towards global warming : "the report defines 10 measurable planet-wide features used to gauge global temperature changes. The relative movement of each of these indicators proves consistent with a warming world. Seven indicators are rising: air temperature over land, sea-surface temperature, air temperature over oceans, sea level, ocean heat, humidity and tropospheric temperature in the “active-weather” layer of the atmosphere closest to the Earth’s surface. Three indicators are declining: Arctic sea ice, glaciers and spring snow cover in the Northern hemisphere." http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories2010/20100728_stateoftheclimate.html0 -
PopeBuckfastXVI wrote: »You started the thread, why don't you tell us what *you* think?
Well the news article say if "unchecked" so I suppose there's a need to build water defences of some sort - any civil engineers out there have any ideas? I'm hardly qualified but would be nice to head to the Townhouse in a gondola - they'll make a nice replacement for the rickshaws at any rate although I don't fancy the idea of wobbling home after pub hours
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GetThatDownYa wrote: »IThree indicators are declining: Arctic sea ice, glaciers and spring snow cover in the Northern hemisphere." http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories2010/20100728_stateoftheclimate.html
Which is irrelevant seeing as ice is increasing ON BALANCE across both poles , the Antartic locks up way more water than the Artic. The East Antartic ICE sheet is 75% of all Ice where the glaciers ....all of them on all the continents....account for 1%. The Greenland Ice Cap is 10% of all ice as is the West Antartic Ice mass.
Therefore you are selectively quoting :cool: three essentially irrelevant :cool:indicators on which one should not base any substantive policy.
Next myth please...until the mods get bored with us and feck this green hogwash into the Conspiracy forum where it really belongs that is 0 -
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Sponge Bob wrote: »Which is irrelevant seeing as ice is increasing ON BALANCE across both poles It is? In which recognised peer-reviewed (or article referring to a peer-reviewed)journal did you come across this?
Therefore you are selectively quoting
three essentially irrelevant indicators on which one should not base any substantive policy.
I selectively chose a report from a prestigious institution, also 10 indicators BTW
But Sponge Bob at the end of the day a discussion isn't going to get either of us anywhere -except moved to a different forum (not a conspiracy David Ike, lizards in the royal family one either ). I've seen these debates before, they are never about reciprocal sharing of knowledge or a desire to learn more but always about scoring points, attempting to reinforce ones position and one's ego. Even a so-called sceptic can at least imagine a scenario where there's seawater in Shop Street or the threat of it
and then ask themselves the question "oh well what to do? How does the city adapt?" Floating Rickshaws?
I've heard already that due to the flooding in Ireland last year many homes had there house insurance renewed but without the coverage for flooding. I wonder will Shop Street (or has it already) head in this uninsured direction?0 -
GetThatDownYa wrote: »Even a so-called sceptic can at least imagine a scenario where there's seawater in Shop Street or the threat of it and then ask themselves the question "oh well what to do? How does the city adapt?" Floating Rickshaws?
If you imagined glaciers forming in Donegal you would be a tad nearer reality. The marginally more likely event now facing us is a Mini Ice Age, so go imagine that instead.
Nothing to do with the putative and generally unfounded threat of the seas rising, a lot more to do with gobsh1te greens preventing much needed arterial drainage works on our rivers together with an increased marginal loss of carrying capacity owing to invasive weeds.I've heard already that due to the flooding in Ireland last year many homes had there house insurance renewed but without the coverage for flooding. I wonder will Shop Street (or has it already) head in this uninsured direction?
And a bit of rain on top of all that Rain in Galway has nothing to do with global warming. 0 -
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PopeBuckfastXVI wrote: »paying particular attention to peer reviewed academic journals.
That is what SHOULD happen PB but when answers are not forthcoming people on the Internet have to go back to basics and look at where the data is ACTUALLY coming from. The majority of these investigation projects have met a deliberate brick wall and that has spawned quite a lot of model investigation, not least by statistical modellers in other ( not climatological ) fields who are well able to run a model themselves and to see how it is constructed.
That led ( in the US) to the Surfacestations project which sought to audit the data sources from which the models are derived.
Ireland is not really showing systemically identifiable signs of global warming but our synoptic surface stations are properly located, funny that
In this, the official ( say the models) second warmest ever year globally, we are going to come in under 9c Average for the first time in 25 years and for the 6th time since 1960 ( 2 of those years being 1962 and i963)
This surfacestations project was carried out in their own areas by people on the Internet, not academics and climate scientists. Normal observers with cameras and notebooks.
They found some interesting anomalies
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Beat you too that with the Gondolas reference:Pgalwayrush wrote: »So, Galway becomes the Venice of western Europe.:rolleyes:
All too aware of my position here as a a man flogging a dead horse
I'd like to add another question to the thread - does anyone here worry even in the slightest about any climate change impacts on the low lying parts of our city?
Even at the merest tiniest electron on a single nerve-ending level - at a kind of shadowy below the awareness of a "what was that? Oh nothing" level. Anyone ...
tumbleweed0 -
GetThatDownYa wrote: »Beat you too that with the Gondolas reference:P
All too aware of my position here as a a man flogging a dead horse I'd like to add another question to the thread - does anyone here worry even in the slightest about any climate change impacts on the low lying parts of our city?
Even at the merest tiniest electron on a single nerve-ending level - at a kind of shadowy below the awareness of a "what was that? Oh nothing" level. Anyone ...
tumbleweed
It wouldn't take too much of an effort now to protect the low lying areas for the future, look at what the Dutch managed, and they went a step further and reclaimed land from the sea.0 -
The problem is that western Europe becomes the Venice of western Europe at the same time, so we'd hardly be unique. In terms of global warming, about ten thousand years ago where you're sitting was probably under a kilometer of ice, so on the balance, yes things are warming up.galwayrush wrote: »So, Galway becomes the Venice of western Europe.:rolleyes:
Ireland is slightly unusual in that its a roughly bowl-shaped country, the edges are higher than the middle, so we might get off lighter than a lot of countries with a long coast. If all the ice in the world melted, it would look a bit like this:
An image of western connemara would look like this:
A bit more seriously though, theres a brilliant site here that lets you see how flooded your area might get as sea levels rise. We start losing a moderate lump of the east side of the city at around 2m, easily dealt with via dams, at 4m the front of Salthill and ocean-facing parts of town are gone, including a decent lump of the city centre, I'd assume this can also be protected with dykes, at some cost.
At ten meters forget it, the entire city centre is gone and the Corrib has become an inland sea, while Oranmore gets renamed the Oran Archipelago. However, Knocknacarra, a lot of the west side of the city and the new developments on the east side of the city out in Briarhill, Merlin park etc are pretty much intact. So I'd recommend that any new development if it wants to take that into account should focus on those areas.
I wouldn't get out the life rafts just yet though, at the current rate of sea level rises, we have anywhere between three and five thousand years before it reaches that stage.0 -
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