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The Chinook River is less than 6 miles from the mouth of the Columbia River; hence the reach of the
Chinook River located downstream from the Highway 101 Bridge experiences a tidal range that is
virtually identical to the tides on the Pacific Ocean at the mouth of the Columbia River. If the global sea
level is rising, the water levels at the mouth of the Columbia River and the Chinook River are also rising.
The Chinook River and Highway 101
Highway 1011 crosses over the Chinook River on a concrete structure which was constructed prior to
1930. The river’s flow passes beneath the roadway in three concrete box culverts. Each box culvert is
8’-3” wide by 8’-0” high. There are 6.5 feet of earth fill above the box culverts and beneath the roadway.
1 Per the as-built drawings, the roadway was originally called “State Road No. 12”. For those born after 1990: “Climate Change” was originally called “Global Warming and Sea Level Rise”.
The Indisputable Truth About Global Warming and Sea Level Rise
I have followed the stories about Global Warming and Sea Level Rise very closely for over 25 years. From
1989 thru June of 19958 I worked on (and eventually became the lead designer for) the largest flood
control project constructed by the Seattle District US Army Corps of Engineers in the past 50 years: The
Chehalis River at South Aberdeen and Cosmopolis.9
The General Design Memorandum and the Plans and Specs for this project were developed just a few
years after the point in time when stories about Global Warming and Sea Level Rise first began to
appear in the main-stream media.10
Stories suggesting global sea level rise of ten feet or more within the next century were fairly common.
Former Senator/VP Al Gore, Jr.’s widely-distributed Oscar-winning video: An Inconvenient Truth,11 shows
maps of Florida, New York City and San Francisco with 20 feet of sea level rise.
When designing a levee, global warming-induced sea level rise complicates things – to say the least.
Determining how high the levee for the Aberdeen flood control project should be was already a very
interesting engineering problem. The peak elevation of a design flood with a specific return period for
the Chehalis River at Aberdeen is a combination of an extreme astronomic high tide concurrent with a
storm surge. Storm surge is caused by a low barometric pressure and high wind. Then there’s wave set
7 I am being facetious. I do not actually believe this. (I have been a staunch Global Warming and Sea Level Rise heretic for about 25 years.) 8 Construction began in June of 1995. I was the project engineer overseeing construction of the flood control project from June 1995 through October 1996. 9 I have a plaque with my name on it that says: “Seattle District USACE Engineer of the Year” because of this project. 10 NASA scientist James E. Hansen had testified to Congress about climate - specifically referring to “global warming” in June of 1988. 11 An Inconvenient Truth was released in 2006. I strongly recommend: The definitive response to the errors and omissions of An Inconvenient Truth by a mechanical engineer - Charles S. Opalek, PE
up. Add a few tenths of a foot due to the backwater curve caused by concurrent high flow of the
Chehalis River and you have a design flood profile for a flood having a given return period.12
The Project Manager and designers considered the prognostications for Global Warming and Sea Level
Rise, consulted with the Corps’ best and brightest, and they determined (correctly) that it was unlikely
that the actual sea level rise would be more than a few inches over the next century.
The subgrade in South Aberdeen consists of a very thick layer of soft silty soil. This soil was expected to
consolidate over time, so the levee was constructed with an additional foot of height, or “over-build”.
The levee could settle a bit and still protect property from the design flood. The levee crest would be
monitored over time and raised as needed to address settlement. It could also be raised a few inches in
the unlikely event that the sea level became higher. As it turned out, we wisely ignored the over-blown
predictions of sea level rise due to Global Warming.
In the following years, I distinctly remember hearing and reading dire predictions of the coastal flooding
that would result from 20 feet of sea level rise due to melting of the ice on Greenland and/or Antarctica.
I smiled and imagined what would happen to these charlatans when time ultimately exposed them as
frauds – or at least as fourth-rate scientists.
I distinctly remember seeing an insane number of copies of An Inconvenient Truth on the shelves of the
local Blockbuster Video Store. It made me furious!13 What will people think when the predicted sea level
rise fails to materialize?14
That day has come … and gone. Global Warming became the more nebulous “Climate Change”. The
latest IPCC predictions for sea level rise (published in 2007) are nowhere near the 20 feet that Al Gore
suggested was possible:
Sea Level Rise (m at 2090-2099 relative to 1980-1999)
Case Model-based range excluding future rapid dynamical changes in ice flow
B1 scenario 0.18 – 0.38
A1T scenario 0.20 – 0.45
B2 scenario 0.20 – 0.43
A1B scenario 0.21 – 0.48
A2 scenario 0.23 – 0.51
A1FI scenario 0.26 – 0.59
(from the IPCC Summary for Policy Makers, February 2007)
12 It is actually a bit more complicated than this. What return periods for the tide, wave height, river flow, and barometric pressure should be combined to produce a flood with a 100-year return period? (Deep Thought, where are you?) 13 I think of this and smile every time I drive past another boarded-up Blockbuster Video Store. (Karma!) 14 Schadenfreude - Pleasure derived from the misfortunes of others.
Two tenths of a meter is about 8 inches. 0.59 meters is less than two feet. Given the rate that the
predicted sea level rise has been decreasing since Al Gore released his movie (in 2006), by 2020 the IPCC
will be predicting no sea level rise at all.
In my humble opinion, sea level rise due to Global Warming will continue to be a major
disappointment… for some – BUT NOT ME!!! We could wait centuries before the existing bridge at the
Chinook River is washed-out due to sea level rise. Or maybe the IPCC’s models circa 2007 are wrong and
Al Gore is right! The threat of sea level rise could be real. (And maybe, just maybe, Big Oil has infiltrated
the IPCC!)15
I have actually worked with a few computer models. For my Master’s Degree in Civil Engineering, I wrote
dozens and dozens of pages of FORTRAN code to solve two-dimensional groundwater flow problems.
People who work with computer models will tell you that a person can make a complicated computer
model tell you whatever you want to hear. This is a bit of an exaggeration, but I’m sure that it applies to
complicated climate models.
Climate models are not definitive proof of anything, so I thought of an acid test for this quandary: In
March of 2013, I found the Washington State Department of Ecology’s “find ecology staff by subject”
web page. I searched for “Global Warming/Climate Change”, and sent the following e-mail to the
appropriate person at the DOE:
15
This confusing conundrum is what happens when the scientific method is perverted by politicians and journalists; when Big Oil and capitalism are fighting for their survival against non-profit NGO’s, Neo-Communists, and government bureaucrats; and when untold billions of dollars are at stake. Who cares about the truth?
Many of Al Gore’s “facts” contained within the questions and answers are easily discredited:
from answer 1: “carbon dioxide and temperature have gone up and down in lockstep
for as far back as scientists can measure.”
The above is a fact; however this statement is very misleading. A close examination of the data sets
shows that the temperature has always gone up before the atmospheric CO2 levels increased.
“Our analyses of ice cores from the ice sheet in Antarctica shows that
the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere follows the rise in Antarctic
temperatures very closely and is staggered by a few hundred years at
most,”16
In real science, cause always precedes effect. If there is a cause and effect relationship between
atmospheric CO2 levels and warming, then warming caused the increased CO2 - not the other way
around!
How a scientist can accurately date the bubbles of gas trapped in the layers of ancient ice is intriguing.
For Al’s sake (and for the sake of the argument), I’ll assume that the dating of ice layers is an inexact
science and The Centre for Ice and Climate at the Niels Bohr Institute at the University of Copenhagen is
no match for the IPCC.
What Came First: The Warming or the CO2?
Science is never 100% settled. (Sorry Al.) It’s possible that we’ll never know with 100 percent certainty
what came first: The Warming or the CO2. But which is more plausible? A or B:
A: For any number of reasons17, the earth has experienced periods of warming and cooling
over the past tens of millions of years. During warmer periods, biological activity increased.
Using photosynthesis, plants take in CO2 and release O2. With respiration, animals do the
opposite. Decaying matter releases C02. This is what is known as the Carbon Cycle.
Some biological processes are capable of using carbon that is not already in the active
atmospheric carbon cycle. For example, limestone is used by gardeners as a soil supplement. It
breaks down and is taken up by plants. Nature undoubtedly does this as well when limestone
weathers.
16
Sune Olander Rasmussen, Associate Professor and centre coordinator at the Centre for Ice and Climate at the Niels Bohr Institute at the University of Copenhagen. 17 That had nothing to do with human activities.
During periods of increased biological activity, the total amount of carbon in the active
atmospheric carbon cycle increases and thus atmospheric CO2 levels increase. When the climate
is cooler, biological activity decreases considerably - especially when much of the earth is
covered in ice sheets. The suppressed carbon cycle during cold periods results in less carbon in
the form of atmospheric CO2.18
B: CO2 in the atmosphere causes the earth to reflect less energy from the sun back into space.
Nothing else that could affect earth’s climate matters very much: increases or decrease in the
output of the sun, ice sheets, water vapor, volcanic activity, meteor impacts, etc. Over the past
millions of years, with uncanny reliability, whenever the CO2 level increased, the Earth’s climate
always warmed; and when the CO2 level fell, the planet always cooled.
CO2 is an amazing substance. At a concentration of only 600 parts per million it will change life
as we know it!
I personally think that A makes much more sense than B… but I am not a climatologist - and neither is Al
Gore.
Unlike Al, I do not accept the contention that the science of Global Warming Climate Change is settled.19
And unlike Al, I believe in science and the proper application of the scientific method. I also believe that
the proper application of the scientific method should be free from political manipulation and coercion.
Getting back to Al’s letter…..
from question 2: “Do we know enough to act?”
and from answer 2: “… A draft of the scientists' long-awaited report, leaked to the press
this week, concludes that we must act now. The scientists say there's still a chance
that the problem won't be as bad as they fear, but there's an equal chance that it will
be much worse than predicted.20
If “we must act now” (in 1990), Global Warming and Sea Level Rise must be well under way by “now” in
2013. Why are we not raising our existing levees and building new ones to protect America’s coastal
communities from flooding?
Maybe I missed it and we really did act! We markedly reduced the global CO2 emissions and we saved
the planet! (I’m joking.)
18 There is also a marine carbon cycle. During warmer periods, the net effect may be that oceans give up dissolved CO2 - which would increase the concentration in the atmosphere. 19
They can’t even decide what to call it. (Global Warming? Or Climate Change?) 20 “The Scientists”?!! Not “my favorite scientists” or “some scientists”. A few scientists leaking a report to the press is not how science is settled. There’s this thing called “peer review”…
from answer 1: “Even the skeptics agree that concentrations of carbon dioxide will be
pushed to levels of 600 parts per million within the next 35 to 45 years.”
The graph below was taken from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) website for
their Fourth Assessment Report (2007). The different colored lines are for the various models and
different assumptions. “… the next 35 to 45 years” that Al Gore referred to (in 1990) would be 2025 to
2035.
It is obvious that Al Gore and his supposedly agreeing skeptics were mistaken about the projected CO2
level reaching 600 ppm in 35 to 45 years. The current atmospheric CO2 concentration is only 396.80.21
Per the above plot from the 2007 IPCC report, it won’t even break 500 ppm by 2035.
None of the latest models22 used by the IPCC predict a level of CO2 approaching 600 ppm before 2035. Is
it possible that the climate models that were used by the IPCC in 2007 are wrong?
Answer #3 is particularly disconcerting:
from answer 3: “While the Earth is indeed vast in size, the atmosphere surrounding it
is less than one one-thousandth the thickness of the Earth's diameter.”
Everything is relative; the earth is tiny compared to the Sun, Jupiter and Saturn. On the other hand, “the
Earth is indeed vast in size” compared to Al Gore’s intellect - but it is not vast in size compared to his ego
or his carbon foot-print.
The earth’s diameter is 7,918 miles. Divide 7,918 miles by 1,000 and you get 7.9 miles. Here’s the
problem: The earth’s atmosphere does not suddenly end at some specific elevation. The gasses that 21 http://co2now.org/ on 3/29/2013 22
Maybe Al is right about Global Warming and the skeptics are right about the computer models. The computer models are unreliable after all! (We’ll find out in another 12 to 22 years.) I believe that that Al Gore will continue to be dead wrong.
Either Carl Sagan wasn’t as brilliant as people thought, or he was misquoted.
Below is a more credible quote that has been attributed to Carl Sagan:
We've arranged a civilization in which most crucial
elements profoundly depend on science and technology.
We have also arranged things so that almost no one
understands science and technology. This is a
prescription for disaster. We might get away with it for a
while, but sooner or later this combustible mixture of
ignorance and power is going to blow up in our faces.24
Al Gore clearly contributed to Sagan’s belief that “almost no one understands science”. The last
sentence in the above quote may be the most prescient thing ever uttered!
And then there’s this irrelevant point:
from answer 3: “… air now contains 600 percent more chlorine atoms than it did 40
years ago.”
Considering the source, this factoid is probably incorrect – but I cannot prove it. Chlorine (Cl) is an
element - an atom with 17 protons - and it makes up a very minor fraction of the atoms composing the
molecules of the earth’s atmosphere. The concentration of chlorine 40 years ago was effectively zero. A
6-fold increase is still… effectively zero.
No scientist has ever postulated that any of the molecules in the atmosphere that contains chlorine are
significant Greenhouse Gases. This alleged factoid is immaterial to the subject of Al Gore’s opinion piece.
On the other hand… it is interesting to note that just a few years after this was published, some of Al’s
followers and like-minded useful idiots pushed for a ban on Chlorine.25
Chlorine is used in the manufacture of chlorofluorocarbons (CFC’s) and plastics – among other unsavory
things. Bleach and many detergents contain chlorine. Chlorine is also used to disinfect drinking water
and kill infectious organisms in swimming pools. Your stomach acids include chlorine. Table salt is NaCl –
sodium chloride.
24 It would be a delicious irony if Mr. Sagan was speaking directly to Mr. Gore when he made this observation/prediction. 25
“The International Joint Commission says chlorine should be banned because a majority of the problem pollutants in the Great Lakes are chlorine-based. Industry says the ban would hurt the economy.” USA TODAY, Rae Tyson, Oct 21, 1993. (Beware of international commissions!)
Regulate the use and manufacturing of some chlorine-containing substances… but ban Chlorine???!!!
Every penny of George Soros’ vast fortune, every environmentalist in the world, and a 100-percent
obedient and insane media would not be enough to pull-off a drive to ban chlorine. How do you ban an
element? A better question is: Who in their right mind would even publish this story?
And why stop with science when you can butcher your history too?:
from answer 4: “Five hundred years ago, most scientists said the world was flat.”
Five hundred years prior to 1990 was 1490. This was just two years before Columbus sailed the ocean
blue looking for China and discovered the new world. The controversy that Columbus sailed into was not
whether the earth was flat, but how large of a sphere it was; How far would a person have to sail to
reach the orient by sailing west?
Clausius Ptolemy (90 A.D until 168 A.D.) was a mathematician, astrologer (mixed astronomy with
astrology), and a geographer. He believed that the earth was a sphere. His theories dominated the
world’s understanding of astronomy for over a thousand years. (There was never a period in the past
2,000 years when most scientists believed that the earth was flat.)
Al Gore does not know history and he is not even a fourth-rate scientist (but he is an idiot of the first
order). How he came to within a hair’s breadth26 of being our president is amazing… and disturbing. The
fact that he submitted his letter to the New York Times without having a real scientist27 fact-check it is
troubling. This Senator’s son was born with a silver spoon in his mouth.28 He could have easily paid an
actual scientist to write this for him – or at least to read it and correct the most blatant errors before he
sealed the envelope and sent his pathetic letter off to the NY Times.
Time was of the essence! Al’s letter had to go out ASAP:
from answer 7: The changes could occur so swiftly that effective adaptation might
become virtually impossible. The longer we wait, the more unpleasant our choices
become.
So… if the changes could occur so swiftly, how can it be that in the past 23 years we haven’t raised the
existing levees somewhere – anywhere - in the hopelessly blue and very green State of Washington?29
Adding a half a foot of height to any levee would be fairly easy.
But we can’t wait! … or can we?
26 17 more votes for Clinton’s impeachment in the US senate in 1999, or a few hundred more votes from people in the state of Florida in 2000, and Al Gore would have been sworn in as president of the United States of America. 27 Or a person with a 5th grade education level. 28
Courtesy of a close family friend named Armand Hammer, also known as “Comrade Armand Hammer” as inscribed on a photo given to him by Vladimir Ilyich Lenin - but that’s no cause for concern. 29 Washington State’s nickname is: “The Evergreen State”.
If Al Gore imagined that he was speaking for all Americans when he wrote the above sentiment, this is
absolute rubbish! Ronald Reagan was not dead yet. Does anyone think the collapse of the Soviet Empire
caught Regan by surprise?
Given Al’s position as the US Senator representing the State of Tennessee, “We all”32 could theoretically
be interpreted to mean all of the people of Tennessee. When Regan was re-elected in 1984 he carried
the state of Tennessee. This was only one year after Regan’s famous Evil Empire speech. Regan was well-
known for his contempt for Communism.33 I doubt that by 1990 a majority of Tennesseans believed that
the collapse of the Soviet Empire was unlikely - or unnecessary.
Granted, the implosion did happen remarkably quickly - and prophetically. After the door was finally
kicked in, the whole rotten structure came crashing down. Ever since the Soviet Union was dissolved on
the day after Christmas in 1991, I’ve been trying to figure out how communism survived as long as it did.
A key factor in the Soviet Union’s much delayed demise was Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s decision to
align America with Stalin in the contest34 for world domination under way between Stalin’s International
Socialism and Hitler’s German National Socialism. The Gore family’s cozy relationship35 with Soviet Agent
Armand Hammer before and after WWII undoubtedly delayed the demise of the Soviet Empire and
prolonged the dictatorships of Eastern Europe.
Note that I included Armand Hammer dying of bone cancer in my timeline. Hammer kept Gore, as he
liked to say, ‘in my back pocket.’ When he said this, Hammer would touch his wallet and chuckle. He was
referring to Senator Al Gore Sr., but it’s likely that he also had considerable influence on his son as well.
People could speculate that in April of 1990, while they were witnessing the collapse of Communism, Al
Gore, Jr. and Armand Hammer jointly concocted a scheme to sabotage American hegemony by
bankrupting capitalism and vilifying Big Business with a contrived theory of an imminent ecological
catastrophe. I do not subscribe to this conspiracy theory. Al Gore’s letter is so incredibly flawed that it
could not have been part of a conspiracy. This letter is a simple case of a useful idiot writing a letter and
failing to have his handlers review it before he sent it to the NY Times.
It’s unfortunate that Armand Hammer died just 381 days before his beloved Soviet Union formally
dissolved on December 26, 1991. I would have liked for him to see it. It would have been a wonderful
parting gift for Armand and a joyful Christmas present for the world!
32 “We all” is the plural form of “You all” - which in Tennessee either means “you” (singular), or “you and the people around you”. 33 Communists typically refer to this as “Fascism”. 34 Both Stalin and Hitler invaded Poland in September of 1941, marking the beginning of WWII. 35 Al Gore, Jr. rarely uses his middle name - or even middle initial. On his Nobel Peace Prize, his name is “Albert Arnold (Al) Gore, Jr”. “Arnold” is suspiciously close to “Armand”. I’d love to see definitive proof of what Al’s middle name actually is. When Al was born in the spring of 1948, naming him after a Soviet agent would not have been unthinkable. The Soviets were our allies when Germany was defeated less than three years before Al was born.
“Global Warming and Sea Level Rise” will go down as one of the greatest hoaxes the greatest hoax of all
time.36 This swindle is actually much more complicated than a simple hoax. It is/was a hysteria fed by a
biased and unaccountable media; climate researchers competing for attention and government funds;
the subversion of the scientific method; useful idiots; subversives; and a gaggle of political hacks.
Global Warming and/or Climate Change are politicized science. Many if not most of the conclusions
reached are fatally flawed. “Garbage In - Garbage Out.”
But I digress…
It’s fortuitous that the people responsible for flood protection in the state of Washington had the good
sense to wait and see rather than waste money raising existing levees and constructing new levees
along our developed shorelines in response to Al Gore’s Global Warming and Sea Level Rise propaganda.
It would be great for my business if more levees were constructed since I could potentially sell more
environmentally-friendly tide gates. Unfortunately for me, I have standards and I refuse to look the
other way and allow bad science and bad engineering to happen in the interest of me Harvesting Gold.
Back to the Chinook River…
It would seem that in 2006, the Department of Fish and Wildlife, the Department of Ecology, EcoTrust,
Sea Resources (and others?) agreed with me. They determined that Al Gore, Jr. was nothing more than a
conniving politician and a fourth-rate scientist. Waiting for Al’s rising sea level to effortlessly restore the
Chinook River was not a viable strategy.37
Since Sea Level Rise due to man-caused Global Warming was no longer a dire threat; something had to
be done with those darn tide gates on the Chinook River Bridge. EcoTrust et al stepped up to the plate
and contributed money and manpower for a plan to Restore the River.38
It makes no sense, but just one year later, in 2007, Al Gore won the Nobel Peace Prize!!!
The Nobel Peace Prize 2007 was awarded jointly to Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and Albert Arnold (Al) Gore, Jr. "for their
efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made
climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures that are
needed to counteract such change"
36 The Great Global Warming Swindle, Martin Durkin (2007) 37
I am being facetious... 38 Again - I am being facetious. I suspect that EcoTrust and Sea Resources received a good-sized grant from the state for their efforts to Restore the River.
A photograph of the hapless SRT at Edison Slough (manufactured by Waterman Industries of Exeter CA)
was shown on page three of an earlier version of Golden Harvest’s on-line tide gate catalog. I cut and
pasted the model number and photo from their catalog:
This is comical since Golden Harvest had nothing to do with this particular tide gate.44
Golden Harvest did, however,
manufacture the top-hinged flap gate
that replaced the Waterman SRT at a
culvert at Edison Slough. The
photograph to the right shows me
standing on the culvert in 2012. Note
that the flap gate is half-buried in
sediment. It serves no purpose.
Golden Harvest is responsible for not
one but two failed tide gates at Edison
Slough.
Why would they want to take credit
for the disastrous Waterman SRT that
was installed there as well?45
44 They have no ethical standards. Only after I publicized this fraud did Golden Harvest replace the photo shown here with a photograph showing three carbon-copies of Waterman’s SRT (that they may have actually manufactured). 45 The truth doesn’t matter. The ends justify the means.
Their knock-off (they call it a GH-850) was installed in 2006 and it closed on the first flood tide and then
never opened again. Skagit County wasted $191,000 on this project.
On January 14, 2009, I retrofitted the “stuck shut” GH-850 tide gate at Edison Slough with my VBFG
control mechanism. After a few months of operation, the upstream property owner – Mr. Duane
Eitreim47 - conceded that the retrofitted tide gate worked flawlessly. He sat down and happily let me
film him giving an enthusiastic endorsement / testimonial about the retrofitted tide gate at Edison
Slough.
46 His first attempted tide gate project eventually failed catastrophically in the Spring of 2011. 47 Mr. Eitreim is the fellow who instigated HB 1418,