General aviation pilots who volunteer for LightHawk, a flight-based conservation organization, recently caught a glimpse into the future of rising sea levels and impacts on both coasts from climate change.
The pilots joined forces with the Surfrider Foundation, a non-profit organization dedicated to the protection of clean water and healthy beaches, on Jan. 22, 2019, to capture photos of king tides.
Twice a year, naturally-occurring king tides take place when the gravitational pull of the moon and the sun cause tides to significantly swell, flooding roads, houses, industrial sites, and communities. The nationwide flights were conducted to capture high-level views of rising tides to motivate elected officials and local communities to proactively improve coastal management for the future, according to officials with both organizations.
During the recent king tides event, the nationally-coordinated flight campaign covered key areas along the Atlantic and Pacific coasts. More than 20 flights carried elected officials, photographers, experts, and reporters over coastal areas to witness extreme high tides and collect aerial images.
The collaborative flights provide local communities with information about where and how to implement adaptation strategies, according to conservation officials. These include potentially relocating vulnerable infrastructures, improving building codes, increasing zoning setbacks from the coast, installing green infrastructure, and implementing “living shorelines” to act as a buffer against sea level rise and help prevent coastal erosion, officials explain.
“Better understanding what future sea level rise might look like for coastal communities is imperative,” said Surfrider’s Coastal Preservation Manager Stefanie Sekich-Quinn. “Over the next 30 years, nearly 300,000 homes and commercial properties in the U.S., valued at over $136 billion, will be vulnerable to sea level rise. Unfortunately, more than half of coastal states nationwide have continued to build in risky, flood-prone areas over the past decade. We are hopeful our King Tide flights will inspire decision-makers and local communities to improve coastal management in light of future climate change impacts.”
LightHawk is a non-profit organization dedicated to accelerating conservation success through the powerful perspective of flight. The organization mobilizes nearly 300 volunteer pilots, photographers, environmental experts, and storytellers to make images, collect data, inform the public, and share their experiences about some of our environment’s most critical issues, landscapes, and wildlife.
It looks like someone at generalaviation news with TDS has decided to jump into politics. I would suggest sticking to aviation news we care about and let folks get their political opinion news elsewhere. It also looks like one of the environmentalists have tried to put perfume on a pig. Be careful who you get in bed with. Pretending to be concerned about a bunch of multi million dollar homes that should have never been built so close to the coast in the first place is no reason to bash our president for getting out of a bad agreement. Let’s see what all the general aviation enthusiast say when these same folks demand another airport be closed, or airspace be restricted. As the earth tilts the climate will change.
Two MM a year since coming out of the little ice age. And ground sinking in some places makes it look worse.
Global warming/climate change is BS. Looks like some liberal agenda going on here. Sad.
It actually seems kind of refreshing that LightHawk and Surfrider Foundation were providing first hand data of the effect of the king tides, with the idea that people can use that data to plan mitigation strategies. I fail to see how that promotes some radical agenda.
“Obama’s” NOAA and NASA were around long before he was even born. Facts do not have a political agenda, and they do not depend on whether people believe them or not, or even like them. Want to prove it? Claim you don’t believe in gravity, and step off a cliff. Denial, as in “la la la I can’t hear you” won’t change facts.
The problem is not that all the ice at the lower latitudes and altitudes is long gone, it is the ice at the higher latitudes and altitudes that is now melting. The CO2 we are putting into the air (now at 400 ppm, the highest it has been in human history) acts like a blanket and keeps the sun’s heat in, and yes, the ice is melting because the air and the oceans are getting warmer. You don’t have to like this, but that’s the way it is. We should be glad that our Presidente’ who is, by his own modest admission, smarter than all the Europeans, the Japanese, and all the South Sea islanders (and also everyone in Miami Beach) whose homes are slowly drowning, was smart enough to see that global warning was nothing more than a devious Chinese hoax, and he pulled us out of the Paris Climate Accord. The rest of the world, all those dummies who listen to them egg-headed scientist-type freaks, have stayed in.
The culprits are coal (to which we have much better and cleaner alternatives) and petroleum based fuels (gasoline, diesel, kerosene), some of which we are already replacing. Personally, I’d much prefer to power my home with clean nuclear or free solar electricity. I’ve bought my last gasoline powered car, my next car will be electric (and I can fuel it for free from my solar panels). As yet, there are no alternatives for my tractor or my airplane, but I can be hopeful.
The stone age didn’t end because we ran out of rocks, it ended because we found something better. The oil age will go the same way. Ever hear the expression about not fouling your own nest? That’s exactly what a carbon-energy-based economy does, and we don’t have an alternate nest – we better take care of this one.
How many acre/ miles of soil erosion pour into the oceans every year? The answer is” We don’t Know”, but it is thousands of times greater than all the ice melting. I remember when Venice, La was the mouth of the Mississippi. It’s just so easy to blame “Gullible Warming” on people who don’t want to live like jackals. Start looking at what is real instead of what the lazy quacks want you to believe!
Sounds like a ‘WALL’ would be the PROPER solution.
You see a lot of noise from those who should be more responsible, like Obama’s NOAA and NASA..but alas, to find the truth one must look deeper.
“Professor Niklas Mörner, who has been studying sea level for a third of a century, says it is physically impossible for sea level to rise at much above its present rate, and he expects 4-8 inches of sea level rise this century, if anything rather below the rate of increase in the last century. In the 11,400 years since the end of the last Ice Age, sea level has risen at an average of 4 feet/century, though it is now rising much more slowly because very nearly all of the land-based ice that is at low enough latitudes and altitudes to melt has long since gone.”
That’s some weird data. You cited an average 4ft/century rise in 11,400 years; that’s 114 centuries, thus 456ft sea level rise in the most recent (thus most easily studied) timeframe.
Where is the geological evidence that the rise has been that rapid? Likely, some research of geological analysis will show a consensus sea level change that completely dismisses the report you have cited. We do not need fake science, when we are dealing with a real problem.
The average annual sea level rise is about 2.5 mm. in the US
see; https://tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/sltrends/sltrends.html
Land subsidence and uplift in parts of the US affect the relative sea level.
So, in 100 years, the current rate of rise will be about 10 inches….no problem.!
And NIXON’S EPA?
It would be nice if General Aviation News’ staff would do a little research before they paint the “Surfrider Foundation” as merely “a non-profit organization dedicated to the protection of clean water and healthy beaches”. The truth is far worse than that.
The Surfrider Foundation is a radical, left-wing, anti-development and anti-fossil-fuel organization that would prohibit or severely curtail general aviation in a heartbeat if they had the chance. The Surfrider Foundation has certainly done an excellent job of portraying itself as simply friends of “ocean, waves and beaches”; however, when you dig a little deeper you will find that they actually have the same agendas and are closely allied with the same groups of radical left-wing activists that oppose just about everything.
Finally a common sense response to the previously stated garbage! Great job. PeterH!