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from the a-rising-tide-floats-all-boats;-not-so-good-for-property dept.
For more than half a century tide gauges have indicated that the Chesapeake Bay’s sea level has been rising twice as much as the global average and faster than anywhere else on the East Coast. Geologists have hypothesized that the land in this part of the country was once pushed up by a prehistoric ice sheet to the north and is now settling back down since the ice melted.
Now a new study by a group of geologists from the University of Vermont and the U.S. Geological Survey have confirmed that hypothesis through research using extensive drilling in the coastal plain of Maryland. The study concludes that, indeed, the land under the Chesapeake Bay is sinking quickly and the researchers project that Washington, D.C. could drop by six or more inches in the next century.
"This falling land will exacerbate the flooding that the nation's capital faces from rising ocean waters due to a warming climate and melting ice sheets," notes a press statement for the study, "accelerating the threat to the region's monuments, roads, wildlife refuges, and military installations."
The article contains no tips on how we can accelerate the subsidence.
The new research was conducted by a team of geologists from the University of Vermont, the U.S. Geological Survey, and other institutions. The results were presented online July 27 the journal GSA Today.
[Historical background data and information can be found at the U.S. National Geodetic Survey and the U.S. Geological Survey. - Ed.]
Original Submission
(Score: 3, Insightful) by quadrox on Thursday July 30 2015, @06:11AM
I too would be all for this, if I couldn't be so damn certain that everything that is wrong with that place will just move on to another place.
(Score: 2) by mendax on Thursday July 30 2015, @07:02AM
That's the problem. Washington, DC is the third capital city the US has had since independence. For those non-Americans and those Americans who slept through American history classes in school, the first two were New York and Philadelphia. It will move. Of course, that would not necessarily be a bad thing. Washington is where it is because of the conflict between North and South long before the Civil War, having been carved out of bits of Maryland and Virginia (the Virginia piece was later given back). The country is now on both coasts. A more central location might be appropriate. Just don't move it anywhere near California! Sacramento is bad enough!!! We don't need two moral sinkholes so close!
It's really quite a simple choice: Life, Death, or Los Angeles.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Phoenix666 on Thursday July 30 2015, @08:59AM
The capitol of the Second American Republic would work well in Denver, I think. That's pretty centrally located and it has better skiing.
Location, too, carries its own influence on the culture of a place. Washington DC, in the Northeast, is captured in the axis of old-school corruption between Wall Street and the Southern elites who never really went away. As such for them there there is only the Beltway and the rest the provinces that send their excise to the Seigneurs. Denver has a Western character and pioneer past. It looks North, South, West, and East, not only inward. There are real people there that know how to do real things. Those are good foundations on which to build a new nation that has a significantly lower suck-to-ass ratio.
And, conveniently, it will still be above water when the planet destroying policies of the current capitol have melted the polar ice caps completely.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 30 2015, @09:20AM
Not Sacto, Rio Linda.
Disclaimer: I'm from Rancho Cambodia.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Thursday July 30 2015, @01:19PM
Well, your potential central locations, then, based on the current dimensions and population distribution of the US:
- Geographical - near the corner of the borders between Wyoming, Montana, and North Dakota.
- Median population - near Terra Haute, Indiana.
- Mean average of population - near Springfield, Missouri.
So that would suggest that our new capital would probably be Saint Louis, Missouri.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.