Much of the Welsh village of Fairbourne (pictured) lies between just one and three meters above sea level.
It was built on a salt marsh in the 19th century behind two meter-high sea walls to protect the settlement from the waves.
Now climate change seems to threaten the village.
Local-authority planners say it would cost too much to extend the Victorian sea defenses and the village must be abandoned – the homes will be dismantled and the land will be returned to the marsh.
Headlines excitedly proclaim that, in three decades’ time, the inhabitants of Fairbourne will be ‘the UK’s first climate-change refugees.’ Really?
Sea-level rise (SLR) is no doubt a problem. But the connection between sea levels and global warming or CO2 emissions is uncertain.
There is good evidence that SLR is a phenomenon that long predates industrial society, and the notion of anthropogenic ‘acceleration’ is at best controversial.
It is certainly not, as is so often claimed, a subject where there is a definitive scientific ‘consensus.’
There is evidence to support both sides of this argument. And different approaches to measuring SLR, between tide gauges and satellites, produce different results, each confounded by many technical complexities.
Tide-gauge records are sparse and inconsistent. The satellite era began only very recently in geological terms – in 1992. There is no clear picture and global estimates of SLR vary between 1mm and 3mm per year.
Overall, scientists expect sea levels to rise between three and nine centimeters between now and the mid-century.
The consensus view provides a range of SLR between 28 and 82 centimeters by the end of the century, with worst-case scenarios projecting rises of as much as three meters.
Moreover, this range of estimates, clouded by uncertainty, should be seen in the context of the science’s history, which has been drenched in alarmist prognostications.
Far from being a new phenomenon, rising tides, sinking lands, storms, and erosion have claimed many of Britain’s coastal towns and villages through the centuries.
And plenty of settlements along Britain’s coastline still stand at the literal and figurative cliff edge.
The notion that sands don’t shift, that the natural landscape is immutable, and that houses stand forever may reflect the longings of the human psyche, but these are not facts about the natural world.
And while salt marshes at the feet of mountains make for pretty locations, that does not make them safe.
With or without man-made global warming, coastal settlements are at much greater risk than inland towns and villages – they always have been and always will be.
Climate change increases that risk but by how much is hard to detect and to isolate from the risk that has existed throughout history.
One thing that has undoubtedly changed the risks for the inhabitants of Fairbourne is the policy decision to stop building coastal defenses.
This is framed in terms of climate policy – a framing that is totally helpful to the people of Fairbourne.
The 460 homes in the sea’s way have lost half of their value following Gwynedd Council’s decision to ‘decommission’ the village. ‘I’ve lost £100,000 on this house’, said Bev to BBC filmmakers.
Coincidentally, £100,000 is approximately the cost that will fall on the average household as a consequence of the government’s ‘Net-Zero’ agenda.
And like Gwynedd Council’s incautious decision, this will create a constellation of unintended consequences, which rather than serving the public interest or protecting people is likely to do great harm.
For instance, according to the ‘wisdom’ of environmentalists, climate change is the greatest threat humanity has ever faced.
SEE ALSO: BBC’s Election Guide Is More Climate Change Claptrap
One piece of evidence for this seems to be the threat posed by the rising seas for some small coastal communities.
Yet the 460 homes in Fairbourne that lie in the path of the Irish Sea are less than the number of homes that are repossessed each month in England and Wales.
The threats of illness, unemployment or substantial increases in the cost of living – often caused by ideologically blinkered policymakers – are a far more present and manifestly real threat to people living both inland and on the coasts than the angry waves could ever be.
None of which answers the question of what can be done for the people who live in places that are vulnerable to the sea.
First, we cannot let any politicians or officials use climate change as an excuse or as cover for their rank incompetence and indifference to these communities.
Second, given the costs that the government wishes to impose on the entire population in the name of fighting climate change, why can we not find the money to relocate people inland?
If a suitable location were found for new houses, it would even be possible to keep communities intact. This will certainly be a lot cheaper than the trillions currently earmarked for a climate-change agenda that will produce net-zero benefits.
Climate campaigners have long sought climate victims.
But this desire for puppets to act out a green morality play means that problems which require public debate are removed from their wider context, or are framed so as to preclude any solution.
The people of Fairbourne have been swept up in journalists’ and politicians’ green hyperbole, and have been used to further an agenda that has done nothing for them and is indifferent to their plight.
Meanwhile, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change – the scientific consensus – offers a far more sober perspective than the media.
It advises that ‘the use of the term “climate refugee” is scientifically and legally problematic.’
Moreover, it adds that ‘current alarmist predictions of massive flows of so-called “environmental migrants” are not supported by past experiences of responses to droughts and extreme weather events, and predictions for future migration flows are tentative at best.’
It is safe to say that the views of scientists have been a huge disappointment to green campaigners, who have gone in search of stories about ‘climate refugees’ all the same.
Read more at Spiked Online
The seas and oceans to the east of Australia form the largest body of water on Earth. A structure located in the middle of Sydney Harbour (Fort Denison) has been recording mean sea level data since the early 1850s. The Bureau of Meteorology commenced recording Mean Sea Level at Fort Denison in 1914. The mean sea level in 1914 was 1.11 metres. In 2019 it was 1.05 metres … 6 centimetres lower than 1914. These level are related to Chart Datum which is at the lowest spring tide level.
The Ecology Freaks would just like to wipeout small towns and villages force everyone to move to the Big Cities and have them all live in some Beehive Apartment with their lives all controled eating total vegan meals as dictated by the UN and the CFR and the Globalists this whole Global warming/Climate Change Scam is their excuse
The Obama’s wouldn’t shy away from Fairbourne property.
An exaggerated claim of sea level rise is 10 inches by 2100. That is not going to cause a problem. There are many beaches in the world that haven’t changed since 1950. I’m not familiar with the geology of Fairbourne but with such a minor change in sea level other factors have to be the problem. Some areas have the land sinking. The sea gives and it takes away as the coast of Oregon shows. There are areas where hundreds of yards have been lost to the sea and other areas where the sea has made hundreds of yards of new land by depositing sand.
Don’t forget the one of many climate change predictions that didn’t come true that said there would be a 100 million climate refugees by the year 2010.
“Headlines excitedly proclaim that, in three decades’ time, the inhabitants of Fairbourne will be ‘the UK’s first climate-change refugees.’ Really?”
in three decades time… Really???? No!! Just another “climate crisis” agenda LIE.
https://www.return2ferry.co.uk/fairbourne.html
“The land that comprises Fairbourne and lower Friog were formed by glacial deposits and built up sand deposited by tidal action. TIDAL ACTION over thousands of years built up the shingle bank that stretched from the Friog cliffs in the South across the front of Fairbourne, ending in a sand spit opposite Abermaw (Barmouth) on the shores of the Mawddach estuary. These same tidal conditions regularly shift stone and sand around and are responsible in part for the silting up of Abermaw (Barmouth) harbour and the mouth of the Mawddach.”
“The lands that now comprise Fairbourne were made more attractive to McDougal because in March 1868 a contract was let to establish SEA DEFENCES along the north and west edges of the Ynys Faig and Penrhyn farm lands.”
Time for real science not the Junk Science of the Union of Concerned Scientists and the M.S. Media Global Warming/Climate Change is the biggist scam ever