The Sea Has Already Claimed 2/3 Of Tangier Island; Study Projects 10 Years Left For Most Residents

[hatrack]

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Tangier Island, in Virginia's portion of the Chesapeake Bay, once had eight ridges, with distinct towns on each. But with every heavy storm, the once-sturdy island lost more ground. By the 1930s, only three communities remained, all on ridges separated by bridges over a marsh.

Rising seas are engulfing Tangier Island so quickly that most of its remaining residents may be forced to flee the low-lying Chesapeake Bay community during the next decade, according to a bleak new assessment published Nov. 8 in Frontiers of Climate. The rest won’t be too far behind — staying until 2053, it predicts. “The town of Tangier's citizens will join the growing numbers of humanity forced to relocate due to climate change, becoming climate change refugees,” wrote the authors of the peer-reviewed study. “That this is happening such a short distance away” — 93 miles — “from the capital of the USA in Washington, DC, and proceeding apace with little aid, despite all the media attention Tangier Island and the town have had, should alarm us all.”

Tangier’s options are few and hugely expensive, the report suggests. A large-scale effort to save the island, the paper estimates, would cost $250–$350 million. Fighting sea level rise would entail wrapping jetties around erosion-prone shorelines, raising the town’s elevation by 9 feet with sand dredged from the bottom of the Bay and upgrading the community’s plumbing and electricity networks, the report asserts. The only other alternative — abandoning the island and relocating the town’s 400 residents to the mainland — would come with a $100–$200 million price tag.

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Rising seas, land subsidence and erosion have claimed approximately two-thirds of the Tangier Island system’s land mass since 1850.

The study adds new urgency to the debate over the fate of the tiny island, which has shrunk to little more than a few brushstrokes of sand and marsh in Virginia’s portion of the Bay. Its primary author is David Schulte, the veteran U.S. Army Corps of Engineers marine biologist whose 2015 study helped put Tangier at the center of a political fight over the reality of climate change. Many Tangier residents doubt that the climate is changing despite strong evidence that rising seas and stronger storms are scouring the island away at an alarming rate, or they point to erosion as a much greater concern. Many agree with former President Trump’s assertion during a famous 2017 phone call with the town’s mayor that they have nothing to worry about from sea level rise.

Schulte’s 2015 study had suggested otherwise — in stark terms that captured headlines across the country and resounded all the way to the White House. Using historic maps and aerial photos, Schulte and his team found that two-thirds of the island had disappeared since 1850, leaving just more than 700 acres of total land. Depending on how much and how quickly seas rise, they calculated, residents would likely have to abandon the town within 25-50 years.

EDIT

https://www.bayjournal.com/news/climate_change/study-tangier-s-imminent-climate-change-demise-should-alarm-us-all/article_0fb8fabc-4183-11ec-87e1-8fb4d07f507d.html

[Blues Heron]

1. "or they point to erosion as a much greater concern."

erosion - technically, yes it will be eroded away very soon. that's what happens when the water rises up.

[SeeingEyeRefugee]

2. No! No! No!

The residents sound like petulant children. Do they season their food with Veruca brand salt?

[Botany]

3. The mayor of T.I. is a right wing nutball who doesn't believe in sea level rise (it is just erosion)

... or climate change, a big ass Trumper who TFG said he was going to help the community (but didn't),
and is on record as saying Jesus will not let his island go underwater.

[hatrack]

4. Jesus better bring a couple of metric fucktons of sand, if that's the case . . .

[Botany]

5. You can pile sand on top of the island but it will just be washed away. The ocean is much larger ..

... than the island.

https://www.cnn.com/videos/politics/2017/08/01/al-gore-climate-crisis-town-hall-tangier-island-trump-sot.cnn

[Srkdqltr]

6. If the people who live there don't want to do anything, I don't know why the rest of us should worry

about them.

[hunter]

7. We've got to figure out how to relocate entire communities soon or there will be chaos.

It's not a technical challenge, it's a political challenge.

Preferably we remove and relocate the buildings and infrastructure *before* the oceans grind them up, turning them into trash and pollution.

In the long term it's an impossible task to protect communities like this.