Seattle Mental Alarm

The alarm:

https://crosscut.com/environment/2022/06/climate-change-takes-toll-seattleites-mental-health

From the above article:

(the neighborhood referred to above is South Park, Seattle [not the TV show, but Cartman would be howling])

“The city of Seattle projects 2 to 4 feet of sea level rise by 2100 in South Park between Marginal Way and the river.”

Like most climate alarm articles, they conflate different items together to try to blame “climate change”.

The South Park area has flooding problems, not due to climate change, but because they “are hooked in to the county’s combined sewer system, which floods during the Duwamish River’s high tides and heavy rain.” The sewer system is ancient, combining storm and waste water in the same lines [no longer done in modern cities] and due to be replaced in 2025.

Puget Sound “Sea Level”

Puget Sound is not part of the open ocean and its surface level is not correlated with “sea level”, since it is an estuary that is blocked by sills.

The closest (to Seattle) ocean-based sea level station in Washington State is Neah Bay:

https://tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/sltrends/sltrends_station.shtml?id=9443090

The northwest part of the continent is still rising due to isostatic rebound since the last ice age, resulting in declining sea levels along Alaska, British Columbia and Washington. Locales within those areas may have increasing water levels due to other localized factors. Puget Sound has very shallow connections to the ocean, thus allowing it to have separate sea level trends:

https://tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/sltrends/sltrends_station.shtml?id=9447130

Note from the Seattle graph above, that the trend of 2.07 mm/yr is essentially unchanged for over 120 years. The IPCC says climate change started in the1970s. But the trend never changed. No evidence of climate change.

But the City of Seattle “projects 2 to 4 feet of sea level rise by 2100”. That is less than 80 years from now.

But 2.07 x 80 / 25.4 equals 6.5 inches. Two feet would be 8 mm/yr – four times the rate ever observed!

Recent sea level trends are the same as in the 1930s, as shown in the following graph:

The following image shows the Puget Sound depths (darker blue = deeper, lighter blue = shallower).

http://rocky.ess.washington.edu/grg/oldcourses/courses07_08/ess230/lectures/Puget-Sound-lecture-2007.pdf

Virtually all of the Puget Sound tidal water flows through the shallow Admiralty Inlet:

The following information is from the PDF cited above.

Key points from above:

1. Various sills block the easy flow of water between basins within Puget Sound.

2. Rivers provide sediment that fills the Sound, thus raising the “sea” level.

The following image from the same source shows sediment discharges from the various Puget sound rivers:

The Seattle sea level station provides the following graph of seasonal sea level change. Seattle has a distinct rainy season with November through March being very rainy compared to the spring and summer months. As a result of the combination of rain, river silt and the sills in the sound, the sea level rate is positive in the rainy season and negative in the dry season.

https://tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/sltrends/sltrends_station.shtml?id=9447130

The previous reference provides the following info on the South Park (Duwamish) area, showing the original and present-day shoreline. Duwamish / South Park is fill.

There is no statistically significant trend in the rainy season rainfall to contribute to sea level rise:

https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/cag/divisional/time-series

Conclusion

From the article at the top of this page:

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Several names have emerged to describe the mental health implications that come with a changing planet: climate anxiety, solastalgia, eco-anger.

Climate stress affects everyone’s nervous system differently, according to Emily Wright, founder of We Become, an environmental justice organization. In their work, Wright, who’s also an adjunct professor in Seattle University’s environmental science and psychology departments, explores how climate change affects emotional health, especially among people who disproportionately experience flooding, extreme heat and pollution.

[Environmental science and Psychology – what a nut job combination]

…

January and February 2021 hit a high of 46% reporting anxiety or depression. While seasonal affective disorder is relatively common in winters, that season was exceptionally chilly and wet, hitting the coldest week on record at the time.

[If climate stress is worse in the winter, especially when it is coldest, why would global warming supposedly make it worse?]

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As always, the alarmists are simple propagandists, making statements that are not supported by data.