Every month some government agency comes out with a paper breathlessly warning Americans that the ocean levels will rise and countless square miles of land will become submerged in fifty to a hundred years. I began to read the attached article because it was a North Carolina study and its headline was alarming:
30 Year Sea Level rise will vary along NC Coast, Scientists Say
Seems pretty definitive.
North Carolina becomes the first state with a comprehensive forecast that shows the sea rising at different rates along its coast. Scientists have known for years about big differences – shaped by forces in the ocean and deep in the earth – between the northern Outer Banks and North Carolina’s southern shoreline.
Tide gauges show that the ocean has risen faster in recent decades at Duck, north of Nags Head (about 4.5 millimeters per year) than farther south at Wilmington and Southport (about 2 mm per year – close to the average annual global rate of 1.7 mm).
I've spent many summers of my youth north of Duck at a little place called Caffey's Inlet, now named Sanderling. I took notice of the shoreline and listened to the locals talk about a place at the high tide mark south of Corolla called "Wash Woods", where the stumps of hundreds of trees could be seen at low tide. The old timers spoke of their granddaddys who said the ocean was several hundred yards to the East when they were kids. As a result of this experiance, I have always questioned those in authority who blamed everything on sea level "rise." To me, the obvious could be seen: The Outer Banks were migrating to the West. On many blogs, I have questioned the state dogma that sea levels were "rising." Was there another explanation for the erosion of the shoreline? Why assume sea level rise when a competing explanation could be just as valid.
Finally. Sweet vindication. From the same article:
The northern Outer Banks are sinking slowly. This corner of the state lies in a part of the North American continent that is subsiding in response to geological forces dating from the last Ice Age, about 200 centuries ago.
Ah, yes. Makes perfect sense to me. Haven't the continents themselves been migrating westward for the last hundreds of thousands of years?
See:
http://www.ncspin.com/30-year-sea-level-rise-will-vary-along-nc-coast-scientists-say/