World Heritage At Risk From Global Warming – UCS
By Paul Homewood
The Union of Socialist Concerned Scientists have teamed up with the UN for their latest scare story, how thousands of world heritage sites are at risk from climate change.
Their British offerings include the remarkable neolithic site of Skara Brae in the Orkneys.
There’s only one slight snag – sea levels are not rising in that part of the world, as the tide gauge at Lerwick in the Shetlands shows.
http://tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/sltrends/sltrends_global_station.htm?stnid=170-001
If the UCS can’t get a simple little thing like that right. it does not say much for the rest of their analysis.
As for the claimed increase in storminess and erosion, they clearly have not studied their history. As HH Lamb explained, the LIA was time of great storminess and flooding, and the cause was very clear – the spread of Arctic ice to Iceland and of polar water to the Faroes led to a much greater thermal gradient between latitudes 50 and 61 to 65N.
HH Lamb – Climate, History and the Modern World
The UCS themselves let the cat out of the bag, when they tell us that Skara Brae was originally discovered in 1850 when a storm blew away sand and ripped up turf! No doubt this was the not the first time such a thing had happened, and won’t be the last.
Note they also mention a sea wall being constructed in 1925 to protect the site from erosion.
No doubt this junk science will be good enough for the BBC to regurgitate!
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NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
that’s just the way of nature
it changes
it destroys
it creates
get used to it
Paul said “good enough for the BBC to regurgitate!”
May 27th BBC World Service around 4.45am
..Ended after that heavy statement.
It seems Top DramaGreens say any old crap to push their RELIGION ..and the BBC will make space to air it …then we skeptics are left to pick it apart and see its worthless.
BTW WUWT Brought us news that these type of reports are so based in politics not science that a mere call is enough to get entire sections removed ..Everything to do with Australia was left out after a mere official (not politician) made a comment that they’d rather not have PR saying the Great Barrier is at Risk, cos such negative hyperbole could harm tourism.
The Telegraph also did another Cut-n-Paste junk story :
Why the Statue of Liberty, Stonehenge and Venice are under threat because of climate change (May 26th 10:38pm)
The story is credited to AFP ..but looks like a cut-n-paste job from a leaflet aimed at children :
“This must be achieved through deep cuts in fossil fuel use – coal, oil and gas which releases planet-warming greenhouse gases into the atmosphere when burnt.”
Reblogged this on Climatism and commented:
When all else fails, like empirical (scientific) evidence, not supporting your hypothesis/theory of man-made “global warming”, “climate change”, “global cooling”, or “global whatever it may be”, target human emotions, in this instance – World Heritage sites.
More classic UNEP agitprop to attempt to scare, deceive and convert you.
Remember all these fears and scares are based on failed (overheated) UN/IPCC CMIP5 RCP8.5 climate *models*.
Predictive (UN IPCC) models are not science and do not observe reality. They are predictions based on perceived inputs in and desired results out. Then the CAGW complicit MSM media simply runs with the output because those same modelled outputs suit their agenda nicely too, objectivity denied absolute.
DramaGreens would never make a totally over-dramatic untruthful graphics to accompany the story ..would they ?
The Sea surging way above the Statue of Liberty’s waist
There is also a remarkable museum in Alta, Artic Norway, 400 km north of the Arctic Circle, that would have been roughly contemperaneous with Neolithic Orkney.
It shows the artifacts (mostly rock carvings) of a thriving civilisation 6000 years ago which enjoyed ample time, during what must have been much warmer summers than now, to hunt, fish and generally live it up!
I am guessing that it must have been the the wonderful weather that kept them there, to endure the sunless days from mid November to mid February!
As snow is receding again in the Norwegian mountains, as it must have done regularly, during brief interglacials for the last million years or so, the artifacts of different civilisations demonstrate that it was really much warmer than the present throughout this present (no doubt brief) interglacial!
I wonder if the withdrawl of the Australian section , was a deliberate stunt by the report writers like the stunt the BBC pulled by saying it was going to remove its entire database of loved recipes ..when thet was never actually going to happen.
Orkney is an unusual case due to local conditions, so any attempt to draw any ‘universal’ conclusions from such data (e.g. at Skara Brae) would be a misleading dud.
DTI report: ‘The scope of Strategic Environmental Assessment of Continental Shelf Area SEA 4 in regard to prehistoric archaeological remains’
Executive Summary:
‘Prehistoric submarine archaeological remains back to a date of about 9000 years ago, Mesolithic and Neolithic, could occur in the SEA4 area between the northern mainland coast and out to a depth of the order of 150m on either side of the Orkney-Shetland Ridge. The combination of post-glacial sea level rise which terminated about 5000 years ago, and the continuing subsidence of the shelf, with uplift of the mainland, creates a complex sequence at coastal sites which may have been dry land over 5000 years ago, then covered by the rising sea, and are now uplifted again. Coastal sites in the Hebrides, St Kilda, Orkneys, and Shetland show that human cultures with seafaring and advanced constructional techniques occupied northern Scotland at least 9000 years ago.’
Click to access SEA4_TR_Archaeology_NFC.pdf
When I visited Skara Brae in 1977 the claim was that it was the remnant of a much bigger settlement. That had been about a mile from the foreshore but the ocean had eroded the sandy coast before the remains were buried in sand, followed by exposure by a big storm.
As it has lasted 5,000 years there is a slight possibility that it will survive until the “climate change” nonsense disappears.
Even dumber, I think, is their claim that Stonehenge is “under threat” from climate change.
What’s up Doc?
Thanks Paul.
Skara Brae appears to be about 6+ m. above mean sea level so I don’t expect it to be under water anytime soon.
But Gov. Moonbeam Brown of Calif. mentioned awhile back that the LA Airport (LAX) [~35 m.] would go under.
They just make this $#@& up.
~~ FYI ~~
~~~~~~~~ I just came across:
stopthesethings dot com
and
http://www.wind-watch dot org
To reinforce the point made by Hugh Sharman above, there are a number of old human settlement sites dating from various times over the centuries dotted around exposed parts of the northern British and Irish coasts. When visiting these, you ask yourself “who on earth would build a settlement here and why?” The answer is that many show evidence of farming practices that would simply be untenable under the present, cold, wet and windy climatic conditions that affect these locations. Ergo, the climate must have been far pleasanter for the periods during which many of these settlements thrived.
It is thus somewhat ironic to use ancient, abandoned settlement sites to highlight the potential outcomes of global warming!
Indeed – you could start with the fortifications at the summit of Bennachie near Aberdeen, Scotland, then head south to Hadrian’s Wall, where grapes were rumoured to have grown.
It had to be so much warmer then .. .. ..
When I visited Skara Brae, the tour guide informed us that it was far warmer then than now. I presume he knew what he was talking about.
The AGW industry is a mountain which continues to groan in labour, but only brings forth ridiculous mice – or wabbits.
This makes perfect sense actually.
We have lost countless archaeological sites due to sea level rise from glacial recession. Stupid global warming ruining everything.
“We have lost countless archaeological sites due to sea level rise from glacial recession.”
Equally, there are structures that used to be on the coast but are not now. The Cinque Ports and the jetty at Harlech Castle, for example.