Levees Are Drowning New Orleans

Is it your train that is moving, or the one next to you? Tide gauges show the Louisiana coast to have the fastest “sea level rise” on the planet. But it doesn’t have much or anything to do with changes in sea level. The land is sinking.

The crust floats on a highly viscous mantle. When floods spread an inch of silt across the flood plain, the land later sinks nearly 2/3 of an inch to compensate (continental crust is less dense than the mantle, which is why it floats.)

By putting levees up along the river, they have stopped the flooding and deposition of silt. The land is sinking because of the weight of sediment from past floods, as well as pumping of oil and groundwater – which causes subsidence. But no new land is forming because of the levees.

About Tony Heller

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6 Responses to Levees Are Drowning New Orleans

  1. Andy Weiss says:

    I know a structural engineer who was recently sent to New Orleans because the levees and pumping stations rebuilt in the aftermath of Katrina are failing. It is fortunate that New Orleans has not had another major hurricane.

  2. Latitude says:

    “The data suggest that some levees could be 3 feet (0.9 meter) lower than when they were built some 40 years ago.”

  3. Jimbo says:

    To a Warmist subsidance means the rate sea level rise is accelerating. They do this to bolster their failing theory in face of the facts.

    http://www.jcronline.org/doi/pdf/10.2112/JCOASTRES-D-10-00157.1

    • Jim Cole says:

      Interesting that the paper title is “Sea-level accelerations …” but the abstract clearly summarizes:

      “In both cases we obtain small average sea-level decelerations.”

      Yeah, a DEceleration is just a negative ACceleration, but we shouldn’t confuse the likes of Naomi Oreskes with such nuanced titles.

      heh

  4. Laurie Bowen says:

    “continental crust is less dense than the mantle, which is why it floats”
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crust_(geology)

    Thank you, Steven Goddard . . .

    We live in a world where ton’s & ton’s of mass float around all the time (clouds) . . . so we tend to take stuff like like this for granted . . . .

    Reminds me of the same concept when someone asks me if I believe in alien life forms . . . . I can only say . . . . take a good look at a dog, cat, cow, buffalo.

  5. Bruce says:

    In Alexandria the archaeologists are digging up statuary from the bottom of the harbour, 5 m below sea level. So the sea has risen 5m since Roman times.

    In Turkey, the old Roman port of Ephesus is now 5 km inland. So sea level has fallen 5m since Roman times.

    As you can see climate change since Roman times has tilted the sea, if you sail from Turkey to Egypt you now have to sail uphill.

    Or there may be another explanation. Could it (gasp) not be caused by climate change?

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