Politics & Other Mistakes: Going under

4 mins read
Al Diamon

Everyone wants to live by the water. They look forward to finding a flooded river flowing through their living room. They like the idea that the lake is slowly turning their front yard into a swamp. And they can’t wait for the day when the ocean’s rising tide will officially claim their property as part of the realm of Aquaman.

Businesses have the same blind spots as homeowners. Restaurants are more romantic when the menus are accompanied by maps showing evacuation routes. Hotels get premium rates when they can offer guests views of their vehicles being dragged off by a storm surge. And nothing makes an office building more attractive to tenants than the prospect of being trapped on the roof by swirling currents that were formerly part of the Arctic ice cap.

Nowhere is this unfettered enthusiasm for getting wet more evident than on the Portland waterfront. The city recently had to enact a six-month moratorium on new developments there, because so many entrepreneurs, some of them sporting vestigial gills, were eager to invest millions in building new hotels, eateries and condos in places that, within a few decades, show a high likelihood of becoming barnacle farms.

You may not believe in global warming, but regardless of your propensity for ignoring reality, sea levels along the Maine coast are rising. You could check out Surf Street in Camp Ellis in Saco. Or you could if Surf Street still existed. In the last couple of decades, big storms and the incompetence of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers have caused the road and several cottages along it to be washed into the Atlantic. That debacle ought to serve as a warning for what’s coming.

But – in spite of a way-too-late legislative proposal to borrow $50 million to put fingers in dikes all along the Maine coast – it hasn’t.

An assessment done by the environmental group States at Risk puts it bluntly. “Maine faces considerable and significantly increasing threat levels from extreme heat, drought, inland flooding, and coastal flooding between now and 2050,” the reports states. “However, the state has taken limited action to plan and implement climate change adaptation strategies.”

Are there any hard numbers to back up that fearmongering? Well, yes.

In 2017, the Island Institute cited research done by a team at Rutgers University. “Even under optimistic, low carbon emissions assumptions,” the report says, “they project the likely [sea level] rise for Maine at 4 to 10 inches in the next 12 years, 6 to 16 inches in the next 30 years, and one to 2.5 feet over the next 80 years.”

It gets worse.

“Under more realistic carbon emissions assumptions, projections increase to 8 to 17 inches in the next 30 years, and 1.5 to 4 feet over the next 80 years.”

Let’s put that in simpler terms. If you live in Scarborough, your new town motto will be “Blub, Blub, Blub.” L.L. Bean in Freeport will be offering ferry service to its flagship store. The Bush compound at Walker’s Point in Kennebunkport will be a national marine sanctuary. And Portland’s waterfront will be transformed from overdeveloped to oversaturated.

Also, that waterfront will move a block or two further inland.

On the bright side, the fishing industry, which is currently being squeezed out of space for mooring vessels and processing the catch, will find the competition from developers dissolving in the salt spray. Because:

Boats float.

Hotels not so much.

Rise above the rhetoric and email me at aldiamon@herniahill.net.

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21 Comments

  1. There is one sure thing about apocalyptic predictions, they are sure to be wrong. Maybe Al is still prepping for Y2K or more likely he is watching Pat Robinson shows on youtube and thinks its 1982 again.

  2. “Global warming” he says while typing on a computer made in China sipping his coffee shipped and trucked here from Central America. All while staying warm and cozy in a house built with technology from the great industrial revolution, looking outside at his vehicle that was parts sourced from Mexico. Maybe Al didn’t get the memo but it’s called “climate change “ now. Every prediction that the climate change crowd has made in the last 40 years has been debunked and/or never came true. I’m glad to see Al using the same narrative as Exxon/Mobile, British Petroleum, General Electric, GM, Ford, Chrysler and other massive polluters who are pumping billions into “green” technology. He mentions one singular event of some road on the coast disappearing but fails to mention other places that have gained land were the ocean has receded. These global warming nut jobs have become less believable than flat earthers. Do you believe everything your Marxist professor tells you?

  3. Hutch:

    There’s another thing about apocalyptic predictions, if they start coming true you should do something to stop them. We can and should argue now about what can be done to alleviate the problem, but it exists. These particular predictions are evidenced by rising oceans, increase in global temperature, and resultant climate change.

  4. No worries Al the new guv will be adding taxes to create a committee to look into climate change just as they are going to do in D.C. and still nothing will change because we all know they never get anything done except fight the other side constantly!!!!

  5. No worries Al the new guv will be adding taxes to create a committee to look into climate change just as they are going to do in D.C. and still nothing will change because we all know they never get anything done except fight the other side constantly!!!!

  6. Don’t worry Al the newly elected folks in D.C. will figure it out when they use jets to go to a conference with the rest of the elites and they will fix everything.

  7. The guru of global warming, Al Gore, predicted that the arctic ice cap would be melted by now. Is it????

  8. The climate has always changed. History clearly shows that. Long before SUVs and private jets or even humans. What Al and others can’t show is proof that humans caused it or that any of the billions of dollars they want to spend will stop or even slow it. Wasn’t Obama going to stop the waters from rising? Wasn’t the world going to end when we left the Paris Accord? Funny that all the millionaires with 5 homes and private jets are buying up oceanfront property and telling us the world is ending because we drive pick up trucks and heat with oil. But wait , they also say there are 72 genders. Who’s denying science?

  9. Al Gore made millions off the hearts off chicken littles all over the world. All the while he rides around with the other elitists on his fancy jet that spews more waste into the atmosphere than most of us produce in a year. People scream and yell about climate change ,global warming yet the only thing that gets attacked to try and “fix” it is us the taxpayers that are footing the bill. Look at France right now people there are protesting the taxes (among other things) linked to climate change. They are being ridiculously taxed to fix something that some quack cooked upto get rich on our backs. I would suggest anyone that wants to change this is go to your elected officials and demand planes, ships, and traffic in all the large cities across the globe be shut down indefinitely!!! Otherwise keep the whining to a dull mouse squeak.

  10. Seamus,
    If global warming is in fact a real thing then green house gasses are a real thing and the only way to stop them is to stop breathing or better yet stop breeding. More people need more space, more food , create more waste , more cars…
    Live for today for there’s a lot things that will get us long before global warming.

  11. Hoping Maine will eventually be as warm as Florida is now. I’m sure I won’t be around to see it though.

  12. Question for you naysayer folks and conservative talk show host scientists. According to the NASA website, around 1850, before the industrial revolution kicked in, the atmospheric C02 level was about 280 ppm. Ice core studies show that for the 400,000 years prior to that, the C02 level fluctuated a little but never exceeded 300 ppm. Currently, the atmospheric C02 level is a little over 400 ppm. That is a huge jump in the C02 level, and considering the size of the earth’s atmosphere it would take an incredible amount of C02 to be added to the air to raise the overall level that much. And, all that in only 100 years or so. My question is, if humankind is not responsible for that sudden jump in C02 then what natural phenomena occurred since 1850 to explain the huge C02 increase? The source of such a pronounced outpouring of CO2 would certainly be very noticeable and whatever it is, it would stand out in that it was not going on before 1850 and it is still going on today since C02 levels continue to rise. For comparison purposes, per the EPA CO2 emissions website, US industries have been putting out about 6,500,000,000 metric tons of C02 into the air annually for decades. (And, the US is #2 in the world for C02 emissions.)

  13. The sky is falling! The sky is falling!
    Sighting sources like NASA and the EPA is hardly a good argument when these same government sources directly profit from regulating C02. How many millions of acres do we need to destroy with industrial wind and Chinese solar panels before you realize you have been duped by your Marxsist professor. C02 doesn’t even effect the “Climate” nearly as much as water vapor or solar activity or the Earth’s magnatism. We used to laugh at people who carried a sign stating “the end is near!” But if you put that same bum in a shirt and tie and teach him a bunch of smart sounding stuff, give him a degree and we call him professor! Al does not really “believe” in the “science” of global warming, he believes in global government just like all fake liberals and so called environmentalists do.

  14. Don’t worry, once the Democrats manage to push through the New Green Deal and bring America into a grand new age similar to that of prehistory before man discovered fire, the Earth will be saved!

    There are all kinds of ancient ruins that have been submerged under the ocean’s surface for thousands of years showing sign of a continuous change in the sea level, probably because of the C02 created by all of those flying cars the people of yore were buzzing around in. It’s too bad the poor fools didn’t have the foresight of creating New Green Deals or imposing carbon taxes like we do. They probably didn’t even have flood insurance!

    Cheers,
    Shamus

  15. Every time I read the never ending “Climate Change” Global Warming” preachings instead of presenting an opinion piece or as a hypothesis makes me get my own thermal increase above the the current normal!

    What they do have is consistency in the the rehtoric and always the, “… it’s the “Humans” fault and the end of days are near, unless we submit and pay their god’s of the anti-climate change.

    Also, what is remarkable is the absence of corroborated evidence, just numbers and data interpretation that fits in their narratives. Never is it the elusive goddess, “Mother Nature” given any recognition in her activities and actions. The volcanos, (both above and below water), for one. The trade winds and the movement of heated and cooled waters in the oceans. The friction of the continental plates and subsequent magma below the continental plates. The solar heating, bursts and flares just to name a few…

    Nuff Said…

  16. Come on people, common sense and an understanding of history are all it takes. The earth has had climate change for all of it’s existence. WE can’t stop it. In the overall scheme of things we are insignificant. Nature and natural cycles are beyond our control. Yes, we probably sped things up a little. But it was happening regardless and no matter what it’s still going to happen. That’s not denial, THAT it is acknowledging reality. Understanding the difference is something many, especially Al have a hard time with.

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