Stark Images of Maryland Towns Sinking as Sea Levels Rise

[gwillybj]

Stark Images of Maryland Towns Sinking as Sea Levels Rise
By Michele Berger
Published Aug 28 2014 03:48 PM EDT
weather.com


Water spills onto Hoopers Island Road, up the coast from Crisfield, Maryland, during high tide. The bay is a foot deeper than it was at the start of the 20th century, meaning that storm surges are higher and land in the region is sinking. (© 2013 Greg Kahn)

Three millimeters, about one-eighth of an inch, may not sound like much. But when it’s the height water is steadily rising outside your doorstep every year, it may as well be three feet if it’s anything at all.

On the eastern shores of Maryland, ocean levels are climbing by at least this much — nearly two times the global historic average, according to the state’s Department of Natural Resources — and those waters are pushing several small fishing communities to the brink of extinction. Photographer Greg Kahn set out to capture what it’s like for these sinking towns in his new series “3 Millimeters.”

“The most I had heard [about sea-level rise] was ice caps and glaciers melting and things that were all happening far away that didn’t really connect with American soil,” he told weather.com. “This was real life being affected by sea-level rise…. It had reached our shores. This was no longer something far off in the distance.”

Two years ago, Kahn went to places like Crisfield, Maryland, once considered the seafood capital of the world, now losing new generations of watermen as crab and oyster populations diminish and as water slowly but steadily creeps closer to their homes. “One gentleman I spoke to this weekend said for his entire family history, all he’s known are watermen. He’s now looking to go into another profession because it’s not worth it for him. And he’s 18 years old,” Kahn said. “There’s this huge historical lineage that goes back as far as any of them know. And now that cycle is starting to break.”

“My concentration,” he continued, “is to show the environmental concerns based on sea-level rise and what could be happening as a result. It’s not to sound alarmist, to send people running for the hills, not to say a hurricane’s approaching. It’s to make people aware that this is a significant issue and this is going to have longer-term effects than [one] storm.”

Some of those who Kahn met along his journey don’t believe climate change is to blame for their current predicament. They understand change is afoot, but give other reasons: maybe it’s sea-level rise, or perhaps it’s erosion or simply the land sinking. Kahn said it’s not his job to try to change people’s minds — he believes sea-level rise is happening — but instead to document the community and how it’s changing.

Those shifts are visible in the impassible, waterlogged road and the altered border of Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge. And they’re visible on the faces of people like Holly Summers (in the slideshow above) whose 130-year-old home still sits atop water that flowed in from Hurricane Sandy nearly two years ago. For reasons unknown to Kahn, the story of these little towns on Maryland’s shoreline haven’t gotten as much attention as, say, Miami. Maybe they’re not as dramatic, he surmises, but they’re still powerful.

He hopes they stir people to action, that his pictures make people think, perhaps act a visual reminder that an abstract concept like sea levels rising actually impacts real people in this lifetime. “Once that land is gone, once that history is gone,” he said, “once you lose that, once it goes underwater, it’s gone.”

20 photos accompany the article at weather.com http://www.weather.com/science/news/sinking-how-climate-change-affects-marylands-shores-20140828


Dying sorghum in a field destroyed by saltwater. High tides are killing thousands of acres of farmland along the eastern shore in Maryland. (© 2013 Greg Kahn)
For more of Kahn’s work, visit his website. http://www.gregkahn.com/#!/index

[Valka]

Some of those who Kahn met along his journey don’t believe climate change is to blame for their current predicament. They understand change is afoot, but give other reasons: maybe it’s sea-level rise, or perhaps it’s erosion or simply the land sinking.

How can they not realize that this is all interconnected?

In northern Canada by the Arctic Ocean, there are small hamlets that sit on permafrost. Those places are in serious danger now, because the permafrost is melting. There are polar bears that swim for days, trying to find an ice floe they can rest on, and where they can hunt seals. These are adult bears and they have a hard enough time. The cubs? Well, some of them just aren't strong enough to make it, and they drown. 

Around here, this has been a summer of forest fires, drought, hail, and grasshoppers. We already import a lot of food from California, which has also been hit with fires and drought. I'm not looking forward to next winter's food prices.

[vonbach]

Ugh no please not global warming. Its Bull. Thirty years ago they were talking about global cooling.

[Valka]

Tell that to the people and animals affected by climate change. I've seen noticeable changes in the Rocky Mountain glaciers in my lifetime.

[vonbach]

Tell that to the people and animals affected by climate change. I've seen noticeable changes in the Rocky Mountain glaciers in my lifetime.

The global warming people have been caught falsifying data.
Its a scam.

http://www.newsmax.com/Newsfront/global-warming-temperature-date-faked/2015/02/08/id/623494/?ns_mail_uid=95725424&ns_mail_job=1607329_02092015&s=al&dkt_nbr=hoedkc9i

Booker cites Paul Homewood's Not a Lot of People Know That blog  where Homewood compares raw data with adjusted temperatures to show the graph trend was reversed from a cooling trend to a warming one.

Homewood checked the data on three weather stations in Paraguay and found that all three had their initial raw readings adjusted to show lower temperatures in the 1950s and higher temperatures today.

Following reporting by Booker two weeks ago, Homewood checked more stations in South America and found the same thing had occurred at them.

Scientists use these records to estimate temperatures in locations that don't have reporting stations, and the data is used to project changes in overall global climate.

Homewood is now looking at stations in the Arctic between Canada and Siberia, Booker reports.

"Again, in nearly every case, the same one-way adjustments have been made, to show warming up to 1 degree C or more higher than was indicated by the data that was actually recorded," Booker writes.

[Eadee]

How can they not realize that this is all interconnected?

Imho: Because it is easier to blame someone for making up a serious problem than dealing with said problem.

[vonbach]

Imho: Because it is easier to blame someone for making up a serious problem than dealing with said problem.

Its also easy to make up a fake problem so you can collect money from trying to solve it.
Or Control over the population if your the government.

[Valka]

Imho: Because it is easier to blame someone for making up a serious problem than dealing with said problem.

Its also easy to make up a fake problem so you can collect money from trying to solve it.
Or Control over the population if your the government.

So let me get this straight. You're saying the government is faking climate change so they can get more money and control the population, right?

Then why is the current Canadian government (okay the most recent one, since we're having an election now and Parliament was dissolved a week ago) insisting that the problem is not as severe as it really is, determined to extract every last millilitre of fossil fuel from wherever they can find it, muzzling the Canadian scientists who are trying to make their findings public about climate change and the destruction of the environment due to the tar sands, oil spills, climate change, fracking, etc., considering people as innocuous as bird watchers to be terrorists if they should happen to take a picture of an oil spill, and so on?

Our Prime Minister would actually have us believe that all the environmental destruction is no big deal, neonicotinoids are not what is killing the honeybees, fracking is benign, drowning polar bears don't matter, but he's put in draconian anti-terrorism legislation that will catch more innocent Canadians than it will real terrorists, is actively attempting to disenfranchise specific groups of Canadian voters, has gutted the CBC funding to the point where they can't afford to hire scientifically-literate people to write science articles, sees ISIS under every bed and around every corner, shrugs off the fact that half the Senate is either in court or under investigation for fraudulent expense claims, and refused to admit that the economy is in a shambles until he got trapped into admitting it in a leaders' debate a few nights ago.

Stephen Harper is trying to control us, all right. But not the way you claim.

[vonbach]

So let me get this straight. You're saying the government is faking climate change so they can get more money and control the population, right?

Governments are always looking for more control.

he's put in draconian anti-terrorism legislation that will catch more innocent Canadians than it will real terrorists

Of course. Thats the point of such legislation. If they wanted to go after terrorists they'd go after the Mossad.

[Valka]

I'm still curious as to your explanation of why Stephen Harper is trying to fearmonger us into believing global warming is real, when it's really the opposite. The majority of his party members would be at home in the Republican party in the U.S., and some would even be right at home in the Tea Party.

[Eadee]

@ vonbach :
You got one point right. There are indeed some people who just make money out of the fear of global warming.
 However, global warming is a real thing, like people starving in 3rd world countries is a thing. There are also projects that claim that they help starving people in the 3rd world and just take your money to buy a new yacht. But the fact that there are people who abuse your good intentions when you donate money to them doesn't mean the problem itself is made up. There are still people starving all around the world.

The same with global warming. It is there, yes some people abuse it to get some money, but giving money to someone who claims he magically "solves" the problem with global warming is just as worthy as buying a letter of indulgence.

If you really want to do something against global warming you don't have to buy a certain product or pay a "global climate tax" because the distribution of money doesn't affect global warming at all. What you really CAN do is to save energy, try to avoid taking the car whenever you could walk or you could take the bike, don't use the air conditioning if it isn't necessary... and so on. These are all means that cost you not a penny, and you might even save money with them BUT it is not the easy way... you would have to do something on your own and therefore the mayority of the people won't do those things. They WANT to buy a "letter of indulgence", it helps their conscience and they do not have to do anything at all.

And guess what, we have a free market and there is a demand. There WILL be a supply for this demand, its just how the system works.

[BU Admin]

I haven't had enough sleep and don't feel like dealing with this first thing in the morning - but Climate Politics yanks my chain, and is not an area where people have a long leash.  It's got a long and ugly history on the nets, but neither long nor ugly is going to happen here.

Dial your rhetoric way down, please, von.