The Headquarters move: Is it sane? (1)
Are Climate Change worries in vain? (2)
But Jeff Bezos got cash (3)
to amass to his stash (4)
and move it to Queens’ worst floodplain. (5)
(1) Amazon is moving its headquarters from Seattle to Crystal City, Virginia, next to the Reagan airport, and to Long Island City, Queens, New York. This makes eminent sense from a business standpoint, Washington D.C. to maximize its influence on lawmakers, and New York City to maximize its influence on world business. The cost of living is comparable, all 3 cities are among the most expensive in the world. Here is where it makes no sense:
(2) In a letter to Washington Post employees, Jeff Bezos promised to “follow the truth” wherever it leads. If he is serious about that commitment, his first order of business should be to ensure that climate denial no longer has a place at the paper, including the editorial pages. Join us to make sure Jeff Bezos makes strong climate coverage a top priority at TheWashington Post. (From “forecast the facts.”) (Jeff Bezos owns the Washington Post through Nash Holdings).
(3) The cost to Virginia taxpayers 1 Billion, to New York City taxpayers 1.2 Billion.
(4) Jeff Bezos’ net worth today: around 90 Billion Dollars.
(5) This is probably the most puzzling aspect of the move. The proposed property sits next to the East River in the floodplain. It and all joining streets were flooded in Hurricane Sandy. According to U.N. it is sure to be flooded occasionally in 2020, frequently in 2030, and constantly in 2080.
Where the trees are, there is where the new headquarters are to be built. Flooding risk, anyone?
Len Bilén's blog, a blog about faith, politics and the environment. 
NYC’s Battery Park tide gauge has one of the longest measurement records in the new world. Like many other sites, it measured a very slight sea-level rise acceleration in the mid to late 19th century, but none since the 1920s, and there’s no sign of any effect at all on sea-level from rising atmospheric CO2 levels.
Here’s a graph of sea-level there since 1925 (when atmospheric CO2 level was about 305 ppmv), through March of this year (with CO2 level now about 408 ppmv):
Interactive version:
https://www.sealevel.info/MSL_graph.php?id=battery&c_date=1925/1-2019/12&boxcar=1&boxwidth=3&thick
As you can see raising atmospheric CO2 level by more than 100 ppmv has had no detectable effect on the rate of sea-level rise. (That’s the same story as every other long, high-quality, sea-level measurement record, BTW.)
Linear regression: slope = 3.184 ±0.180 mm/yr
Quadratic regression: acceleration = -0.00671 ±0.01492 mm/yr²
(i.e., no sign of acceleration since the 1920s)
3.184 mm/yr × 12 years / 25.4 mm/inch = 1.5 inches of sea-level rise by 2030.
3.184 mm/yr × 32 years / 25.4 mm/inch = 4.0 inches of sea-level rise by 2050.
3.184 mm/yr × 62 years / 25.4 mm/inch = 7.8 inches of sea-level rise by 2080.
3.184 mm/yr × 82 years / 25.4 mm/inch = 10.3 inches of sea-level rise by 2100.
From eyeballing the map, Amazon’s site appears to be about 1/3 of the way from Battery Park to King’s Point, where there’s another tide gauge, graphed here:
https://www.sealevel.info/MSL_graph.php?id=Kings+Point&boxcar=1&boxwidth=3&thick&g_date=1930/1-2019/12&c_date=1930/1-2019/12&s_date=1930/1-2019/12
Just like Battery Park, the trend there is almost perfectly linear. There’s no sign of any effect from rising CO2 levels and manmade global warming. But King’s Point experiences a bit less subsidence, so it shows a slightly lower linear trend:
Linear regression: slope = M = 2.504 ±0.207 mm/yr
Quadratic regression: acceleration = 0.000715 ±0.018797 mm/yr² (no sign of acceleration)
2.504 mm/yr × 12 years / 25.4 mm/inch = 1.2 inches of sea-level rise by 2030.
2.504 mm/yr × 32 years / 25.4 mm/inch = 3.2 inches of sea-level rise by 2050.
2.504 mm/yr × 62 years / 25.4 mm/inch = 6.1 inches of sea-level rise by 2080.
2.504 mm/yr × 82 years / 25.4 mm/inch = 8.1 inches of sea-level rise by 2100.
If I had to predict the sea-level trend for Amazon’s site, from those two gauges, I’d use a weighted average: ⅔ × (3.184 mm/yr) + ⅓ × (2.504 mm/yr) = 2.957 mm/yr
2.957 mm/yr × 12 years / 25.4 mm/inch = 1.4 inches of sea-level rise by 2030.
2.957 mm/yr × 32 years / 25.4 mm/inch = 3.7 inches of sea-level rise by 2050.
2.957 mm/yr × 62 years / 25.4 mm/inch = 7.2 inches of sea-level rise by 2080.
2.957 mm/yr × 82 years / 25.4 mm/inch = 9.6 inches of sea-level rise by 2100.
Terrifying, eh? {/sarc}
All Amazon needs to do, to more than fully compensate for sea-level rise for the next century, is elevate their new building one foot higher than it otherwise would need to be.
Thanks. The linear rise of water with time fits very well with the theory that it is not the oceans rising, but the land is sinking due to Teutonic plates movements, and that the earth is still recovering from the last ice age, going back to a less deformed shape. The land rising in Northern Sweden is as much as 3 feet per century, and in the Hudson Bay it is over four feet per century in parts. The land is sinking in the rest of the world. In addition the Mid-Atlantic Ridge is rising from the sea floor, especially between Iceland-Jan Mayen and Svalbard, where a good portion of the Earth’ s underwater volcanoes rise from the sea floor and helps warm the water.
In the case of NYC, it’s probably about half & half. About 1½ mm/yr of the approx. 3 mm/year sea-level rise is global sea-level trend, and another about 1½ mm/yr is local subsidence, totaling about 3 mm/year local (“relative”) sea-level rise.
(Prof. Peltier estimates 1.33 mm/yr subsidence at King’s Point / Willet’s Point, and 1.38 mm/yr at The Battery, based on computer models. His figure for The Battery is probably low, and his figure for King’s Point / Willet’s Point is probably high.)
Both components (global trend and local subsidence) are pretty close to linear, on timescales of a century or less. So there’s no reason to expect a large acceleration or deceleration in rate of sea-level rise at Amazon’s site.