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OChatriot

Climate change questions are everywhere and according to the latest numbers, the sea levels are up 14cms in the last 30years. The forecast is between 0.5 and 1.5m by 2100. Obviously much damage can happen before that.

My course Ljunghusen in Sweden is definitely in danger, being low lying marshland/links type. A rise of 1m will wipe it out.  Last winter, the sea broke the small dune on the old course. One tee fell in the sea, a portion of fairway turned into beach. It's been repaired, but for how long?

Plenty of questions to debate (and I do not mean whether there is or not a rise in sea-levels. Let's leave that to other forums and consider it as a fact for golf heritage and architecture discussions sake):

Which water-side courses do you think are most in danger? Which famous ones are safe?
Which are a priority to protect? How and at what cost? What have you seen done? Succeed or fail?
Does that imply a new way to build courses? Using different materials, grasses?
Can the ones in danger be partially rerouted on higher ground? How long could links land survive or how long does it take to see new one created?

Niall C

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Re: Climate change: oceans potential rise and its impact on famous courses
« Reply #1 on: February 26, 2016, 11:57:37 AM »
The real issue of rising water levels or a rising water table, isn't storm damage as storms happen no matter what. the issue is one of drainage. Courses that lie close to the water table will have problems and I don't see how you can get round that, certainly not with flood defences. Partial re-routing of course to use higher ground; maybe a limited amount of sandcapping on lower areas that are in play in order to bring them above the water table perhaps; beyond that I'm struggling to think what you could do.


Niall 

Marty Bonnar

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Re: Climate change: oceans potential rise and its impact on famous courses
« Reply #2 on: February 26, 2016, 12:23:03 PM »
I think I've maybe posted this link before, but open it, accept the terms and zoom into the St Andrews area. Not a pretty sight!

http://map.sepa.org.uk/floodmap/map.htm

Cheers,
F.
The White River runs dark through the heart of the Town,
Washed the people coal-black from the hole in the ground.

David_Tepper

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Re: Climate change: oceans potential rise and its impact on famous courses
« Reply #3 on: February 26, 2016, 12:27:42 PM »
I wonder how many current seaside/links courses will exist 50-75 years from now.

http://www.sfgate.com/news/science/article/Seas-are-rising-way-faster-than-any-time-in-past-6847212.php

Of course saving golf courses will the be least of our problems!

Tim Gallant

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Re: Climate change: oceans potential rise and its impact on famous courses
« Reply #4 on: February 26, 2016, 01:08:46 PM »
I visited Montrose Links last week and they are battling serious coastal erosion issues. Without serious support, it may be a losing battle, and they may lose holes like 2 and 6.


North Berwick is also taking CE very serious and the 11th green is very much under threat (so I am led to believe).


One that sprang to mind from the OP was Portmarnock.


In terms of safety, I would imagine that Muirfield would be safe for a while yet.

Doug Siebert

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Re: Climate change: oceans potential rise and its impact on famous courses
« Reply #5 on: February 26, 2016, 02:42:02 PM »
Don't greens gain elevation in areas with a lot of bunker splash? Can't you do the same thing deliberately?

If you dropped 0.2mm of sand on the entire course every week (or a bit more in climates where you can't do this 52 weeks a year) that would add up to one cm per year or a meter over a century. That would keep pace with that projected rise in sea level / water table.

I figure that's roughly 10 yards of sand per acre per week, so its a lot - 4 million yards in a century to cover 80 acres at that rate! Sand is more easily available near the ocean but there's no way you'd get that much off the property so you'd have to truck it in. Assuming you can get past the logistics, would this have a chance of working? You can apply sand to the fairways/rough as you mow, though you'd probably need to reload several times per hole so it would make that mowing pass take longer and require more fuel.
My hovercraft is full of eels.

Thomas Dai

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Re: Climate change: oceans potential rise and its impact on famous courses
« Reply #6 on: February 26, 2016, 02:58:33 PM »
Looking at this purely from the golf perspective, should available golfing land decline an opportunity arises to use what golfing land is still available more efficiently by say, if folk still want 18-hole courses, routing more holes into the smaller remaining areas and playing with a much shorter distance ball.


Tip of the iceberg aspect of the issue though.


Atb

Jim Nugent

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Re: Climate change: oceans potential rise and its impact on famous courses
« Reply #7 on: February 26, 2016, 10:11:20 PM »
To me, the theme in this thread is as valuable as discussing the next ice age and its impact on famous courses.  A number of ice ages have covered large portions of North America, and not all that long ago.  It's only a matter of time before another strikes: some theory suggests fairly soon.  As per the OP, lets not discuss the merits of this aspect of climate change, but instead take it as given. 

Right off the bat we lose the great Canadian courses.  Banff.  Jasper Park.  The new masterpieces at Cabot, along with Highland and Stanley Thompson's other great layouts. 

But the damage could be far more widespread than that.  In the last ice age much of Michigan was buried under 3-4 km of ice.  That would mean no more Crystal Downs or Kingsley.  The new courses at Sand Valley turn into cross country ski tracks.  The Bandon courses are in danger, and so are NGLA, Shinnie, Fishers, the other Long Island greats and virtually everything in New England.  Several of Doak's best courses, such as Rock Creek and Ballyneal, probably disappear.  We don't have room here to list all the courses this will destroy, but you get the idea. 

Another important aspect to this.  According to Wikipedia, during the last glaciation around 12,000 years ago, sea level lowered by 120 meters.  That would mean many of today's top ocean-side courses will no longer be seaside, but inland, miles from the shore.  TOC, if it's not at the bottom of a 2 mile high glacier, could be radically transformed.  Same with many other GBI greats, plus those in Holland, not to mention Sweden and Germany.   

In short, most of the world's top 100 courses will likely disappear.  Clearly a critical issue golf must address, or face radical change. 


Sean_A

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Re: Climate change: oceans potential rise and its impact on famous courses
« Reply #8 on: February 27, 2016, 01:24:04 AM »
Its been my understanding that as much as the east coast of England has disappeared, the west coast has increased..at least in parts.  It would seem that trend has stopped and it could be that both coasts are under attack.  Even with a sea wall Deal is in trouble.  Brancaster is in serious trouble because the marsh to its rear can expand in conjunction with the water surge over the dunes. 


Ciao
New plays planned for 2024: Nothing

Rich Goodale

  • Karma: +0/-0
Re: Climate change: oceans potential rise and its impact on famous courses
« Reply #9 on: February 27, 2016, 02:38:05 AM »
To me, the theme in this thread is as valuable as discussing the next ice age and its impact on famous courses.  A number of ice ages have covered large portions of North America, and not all that long ago.  It's only a matter of time before another strikes: some theory suggests fairly soon.  As per the OP, lets not discuss the merits of this aspect of climate change, but instead take it as given. 

Right off the bat we lose the great Canadian courses.  Banff.  Jasper Park.  The new masterpieces at Cabot, along with Highland and Stanley Thompson's other great layouts. 

But the damage could be far more widespread than that.  In the last ice age much of Michigan was buried under 3-4 km of ice.  That would mean no more Crystal Downs or Kingsley.  The new courses at Sand Valley turn into cross country ski tracks.  The Bandon courses are in danger, and so are NGLA, Shinnie, Fishers, the other Long Island greats and virtually everything in New England.  Several of Doak's best courses, such as Rock Creek and Ballyneal, probably disappear.  We don't have room here to list all the courses this will destroy, but you get the idea. 

Another important aspect to this.  According to Wikipedia, during the last glaciation around 12,000 years ago, sea level lowered by 120 meters.  That would mean many of today's top ocean-side courses will no longer be seaside, but inland, miles from the shore.  TOC, if it's not at the bottom of a 2 mile high glacier, could be radically transformed.  Same with many other GBI greats, plus those in Holland, not to mention Sweden and Germany.   

In short, most of the world's top 100 courses will likely disappear.  Clearly a critical issue golf must address, or face radical change.

Bingo!
Life is good.

Any afterlife is unlikely and/or dodgy.

Jean-Paul Parodi

Stephen Northrup

  • Karma: +0/-0
Re: Climate change: oceans potential rise and its impact on famous courses
« Reply #10 on: February 27, 2016, 07:03:19 AM »
Brancaster is indeed in serious trouble -- even the clubhouse, which is essentially on the beach. One already has to check the tide tables before playing there since the access road floods at high tide.

Wade Whitehead

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Re: Climate change: oceans potential rise and its impact on famous courses
« Reply #11 on: February 27, 2016, 08:15:34 AM »
Isn't all of the water at Doral at sea level?

There are probably lots of golf courses that aren't actually on the ocean that will be affected.

WW

jeffwarne

  • Karma: +0/-0
Re: Climate change: oceans potential rise and its impact on famous courses
« Reply #12 on: February 27, 2016, 11:21:18 AM »
Sounds like a reason to join Pennard or Southerndown
not that I need another reason ;) ;D
"Let's slow the damned greens down a bit, not take the character out of them." Tom Doak
"Take their focus off the grass and put it squarely on interesting golf." Don Mahaffey

Steve Lang

  • Karma: +0/-0
Re: Climate change: oceans potential rise and its impact on famous courses
« Reply #13 on: February 27, 2016, 01:03:00 PM »
 8)  Whomever built those sea side courses obviously didn't consider sustainable development and they should be allowed to wash away into the surf and allow natural conditions to be re-established.


Colonel Potter would certainly say "Horse hockey!" to the hockey stick forecast of sea rise to the next century...
Series 1 below is the 0.5 m rise over the next 85 years (5.88 mm/yr)
Series 2 below is the 1.5 m rise over the next 85 years (17.65 mm/yr)




let alone the weather forecast for next month...


It probably would be neat to see woolly mammoths walking along the ohio river again...
« Last Edit: March 05, 2016, 05:52:38 PM by Steve Lang »
Inverness (Toledo, OH) cathedral clock inscription: "God measures men by what they are. Not what they in wealth possess.  That vibrant message chimes afar.
The voice of Inverness"

Alan FitzGerald CGCS MG

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Re: Climate change: oceans potential rise and its impact on famous courses
« Reply #14 on: February 29, 2016, 10:31:36 AM »

Here's a neat program that predicts 2 scenarios of coastal flooding anywhere in the world.


Have fun!



http://choices.climatecentral.org/#13/53.4208/-6.1342?compare=temperatures&carbon-end-yr=2100&scenario-a=warming-4&scenario-b=warming-2
Golf construction & maintenance are like creating a masterpiece; Da Vinci didn't paint the Mona Lisa's eyes first..... You start with the backdrop, layer on the detail and fine tune the finished product into a masterpiece

Kalen Braley

  • Karma: +0/-0
Re: Climate change: oceans potential rise and its impact on famous courses
« Reply #15 on: February 29, 2016, 01:13:55 PM »
In an Ice age scenario, many of the best course would be gone.

Entire New England area, all of the UK, the top half of the US....all covered..

This is what the last one looked like

Richard Fisher

  • Karma: +0/-0
Re: Climate change: oceans potential rise and its impact on famous courses
« Reply #16 on: February 29, 2016, 03:19:30 PM »
I have just got back from a weekend in Harlech, where much of the course has been under water throughout the winter. In addition to the impact of the recent floods, the water table has been steadily rising for many years, and this, combined with long-standing irrigation and environmental issues beyond the links (and the RStD club's immediate control), have forced (for example) the club to replace a number of regularly inundated sand bunkers with grass hazards: there are probably no more than half the number of sand bunkers at Harlech now than there were in c1946. Parts of the course lie below sea-level anyway, and celebrated holes like the 15th rely on a complex pumping system to remain playable at certain times of the year. There is a real challenge confronting Harlech into the medium term and beyond, which is going to require imaginative thinking both within the club but also in the environmental agencies that control its destiny (and its greenkeeping, ultimately).

All that said, the course that opened for competitive play on Saturday contained two temporary greens (at the 1st and 17th) but was otherwise the full, proper medal course, and one paradoxical consequence of the lack of recent player activity was that that those parts of the links which had remained dry-ish were in terrific condition, both the fairways and (especially) the greens, which must have been amongst the fastest and truest in the UK on Saturday.

Jeff Taylor

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Re: Climate change: oceans potential rise and its impact on famous courses
« Reply #17 on: February 29, 2016, 09:01:53 PM »
"In short, most of the world's top 100 courses will likely disappear.  Clearly a critical issue golf must address, or face radical change."

Quick, stop breathing.
 

Tony Ristola

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Worth reading the entire article:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/christopherbooker/5067351/Rise-of-sea-levels-is-the-greatest-lie-ever-told.html

Quote
But if there is one scientist who knows more about sea levels than anyone else in the world it is the Swedish geologist and physicist Nils-Axel Mörner, formerly chairman of the INQUA International Commission on Sea Level Change. And the uncompromising verdict of Dr Mörner, who for 35 years has been using every known scientific method to study sea levels all over the globe, is that all this talk about the sea rising is nothing but a colossal scare story.  Despite fluctuations down as well as up, "the sea is not rising," he says. "It hasn't risen in 50 years." If there is any rise this century it will "not be more than 10cm (four inches), with an uncertainty of plus or minus 10cm". And quite apart from examining the hard evidence, he says, the elementary laws of physics (latent heat needed to melt ice) tell us that the apocalypse conjured up by
 
Al Gore and Co could not possibly come about.  The reason why Dr Mörner, formerly a Stockholm professor, is so certain that these claims about sea level rise are 100 per cent wrong is that they are all based on computer model predictions, whereas his findings are based on "going into the field to observe what is actually happening in the real world".   When running the International Commission on Sea Level Change, he launched a special project on the Maldives, whose leaders have for 20 years been calling for vast sums of international aid to stave off disaster. Six times he and his expert team visited the islands, to confirm that the sea has not risen for half a century. Before announcing his findings, he offered to show the inhabitants a film explaining why they had nothing to worry about. The government refused to let it be shown.
 
Similarly in Tuvalu, where local leaders have been calling for the inhabitants to be evacuated for 20 years, the sea has if anything dropped in recent decades. The only evidence the scaremongers can cite is based on the fact that extracting groundwater for pineapple growing has allowed seawater to seep in to replace it. Meanwhile, Venice has been sinking rather than the Adriatic rising, says Dr Mörner.
 
One of his most shocking discoveries was why the IPCC has been able to show sea levels rising by 2.3mm a year. Until 2003, even its own satellite-based evidence showed no upward trend. But suddenly the graph tilted upwards because the IPCC's favoured experts had drawn on the finding of a single tide-gauge in Hong Kong harbour showing a 2.3mm rise. The entire global sea-level projection was then adjusted upwards by a "corrective factor" of 2.3mm, because, as the IPCC scientists admitted, they "needed to show a trend".
« Last Edit: March 01, 2016, 12:33:04 PM by Tony Ristola »

Cliff Hamm

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Narragansett Bay in RI has risen about 10 inches since 1930 and about the same worldwide:


http://www.politifact.com/rhode-island/statements/2013/feb/08/janet-freedman/rhode-island-coastal-resources-geologist-says-sea-/


I might add that Dr. Morner is a huge believer in dowsing.  From Wikpedia:


Mörner has written a number of works claiming to provide theoretical support for [/size]dowsing[/color][/size].[/color][/size][size=0.75em][/size][size=inherit][19][/size][/color][/size][size=0.75em][/font][/color][/size] He was elected "Deceiver of the year" by [/color][/size]Föreningen Vetenskap och Folkbildning[/size][/color][/size] in 1995 for "organizing university courses about dowsing...".[/color][/size][size=0.75em][/size][size=inherit][3][/size][/color][/size][size=0.75em][/font][/color][/size] In 1997 [/color][/size]James Randi[/size][/color][/size] asked him to claim the [/color][/size]One Million Dollar Paranormal Challenge[/size][/color][/size], making a controlled experiment to prove that dowsing works.[/color][/size][size=0.75em][/size][size=inherit][20][/size][/color][/size][size=0.75em][/font][/color][/size] Mörner declined the offer.[/color][/size][size=0.75em][/size][size=inherit][21][/size][/color][/size][size=0.75em][/font]
« Last Edit: March 01, 2016, 12:54:29 PM by Cliff Hamm »

David_Tepper

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Evidence that N-A Morner is a much less than reliable authority. He just might possibly be "a serial promoter of nonsense."

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/georgemonbiot/2011/dec/02/spectator-sea-level-claims
« Last Edit: March 01, 2016, 02:53:28 PM by David_Tepper »

Duncan Cheslett

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Here's a neat program that predicts 2 scenarios of coastal flooding anywhere in the world.


Have fun!


Interestingly, the links courses of Royal Birkdale, Hillside, S&A. and Formby look set to inhabit a new island off the coast of Lancashire...

http://choices.climatecentral.org/#13/53.5877/-3.0149?compare=temperatures&carbon-end-yr=2100&scenario-a=warming-4&scenario-b=warming-2




« Last Edit: March 01, 2016, 03:02:02 PM by Duncan Cheslett »

Cliff Hamm

  • Karma: +0/-0
Evidence that N-A Morner is a much less than reliable authority. He just might possibly be "a serial promoter of nonsense."

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/georgemonbiot/2011/dec/02/spectator-sea-level-claims


Thanks, David...


"The good thing about Science is it's true whether or not you believe it" -  Neil deGrass Tyson

David Davis

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Ice age, global warming etc etc etc....


I guess this means we need to get out there and start playing more golf today. No time to waste, study the classics before nature claims them back and we are mainly left with parkland golf.


The good news for the golf architects of the future is that when the big thaw comes they will have tons of new links land to start over on. At least I would assume so.
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Mark Pearce

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Tony,


I hate to say it but you nearly lost me when I saw Christopher Booker's name in the URL.  Reading your excerpt just confirmed that it was nonsense.  No sea level rise in 50 years?  There won't be any rise. This century but if there is it won't be more than 4 inches (which is huge). Did you actually read and consider it before posting?
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