Althouse: "This is a naturally eroding coastline. There’s really no rhyme or reason, but that’s what it does naturally."

August 3, 2019

"This is a naturally eroding coastline. There’s really no rhyme or reason, but that’s what it does naturally."

"This is what it does, and this is how [our] beaches are actually partially made. It actually has these failures."

Said Encinitas Lifeguard Capt. Larry Giles, quoted in "Collapsing California cliff claims 3 lives along beach" (WaPo)("A 30-foot-long slab of the cliff plunged onto the sand near Grandview Beach north of San Diego... Long stretches of beach in Encinitas are narrow strips of sand between stiff waves and towering rock walls").

47 comments:

Leland said...: 3 people died... Let's take a quote about "rhyme and reason" and flip it with a headline using alliteration! Aren't we clever. Oh yeah, 3 people died. - Journalism; 8/3/19, 7:23 AM
gilbar said...: but that’s what it does naturally."
"This is what it does,

Yes, THIS is What nature does; It Tries To KILL US!
Only man and man made technologies can protect us from Nature!!; 8/3/19, 7:24 AM
Anne in Rockwall, TX said...: From the Marianne post. J. Farmer said it. Nature kills.

J. Farmer said...
One of Maher's New Agey beliefs is a kind of naturophilia where GMOs and Big Pharma are the culprits of society's ills and the answer is to eat well and stop taking medicine. Maher is a long-time vaccine skeptic, as well. He's for "nature" and against "chemicals," even though nature kills us and chemicals save our lives.; 8/3/19, 7:28 AM
Ralph L said...: Just a few miles north of Black's Beach. I suppose the regulars there wouldn't be embareassed to be caught naked and dead.; 8/3/19, 7:37 AM
ndspinelli said...: A nice beach, similar to most all beaches in SoCal. I walk those beaches daily in the winter and always steer clear of the visibly, unstable, cliffs. Darwin.; 8/3/19, 7:48 AM
Fernandinande said...: "Claim a life" is a strange expression; for one thing, it implies the life is owed or due to end, and for another, the life is gone as soon as it's claimed.; 8/3/19, 7:56 AM
AllenS said...: Imagine how much more worser the situation would have been if Obama hadn't stopped the oceans from rising.; 8/3/19, 8:02 AM
WWIII Joe Biden, Husk-Puppet + America's Putin said...: The earth never changed until climate change religion snuck in.; 8/3/19, 8:15 AM
Dust Bunny Queen said...: They were sitting/laying at the base of a cliff that is made of sandy and chalky fragile earth with big stones on top of it. The ocean is constantly eroding the cliff base. How do you think it became a cliff???

Life Pro Tip. Don't sit at the base of a cliff.; 8/3/19, 8:32 AM
BtC said...: The Beaches are Moving - not the globalclimatewarmingcoolingchange, but how beaches work. On the east coast we have barrier islands where no one should build houses (but they do, then demand taxpayer funding to 'save' them), and apparently on the west coast there are cliffs where no one should build houses - or apparently, hang around. It's a dangerous world for stupid people.

There's a good book (dozens, really) on this by the expert of the universe, Orrin Pilkey, and you can explore his whole body of work:
https://sites.nicholas.duke.edu/orrinpilkey/
I saw him speak at UNC-Wilmington in the 1970s and it changed my life. People still ignore the facts of nature, alas, which remains a constant.; 8/3/19, 8:45 AM
Fritz said...: The beach we walk every day (almost) has cliffs, in fact, the area is named for them, Calvert Cliffs. Chunks of them fall off all the time, but the big slides happen mostly in winter.

Calvert Cliffs

Every few years, somebody gets smushed, but it's never made national news.

Calvert Cliffs; 8/3/19, 8:46 AM
Mary Beth said...: Life Pro Tip. Don't sit at the base of a cliff.

What? And have boring instagram photos?; 8/3/19, 9:02 AM
Michael K said...: Suburbs north of San Diego have contended with rising water levels in the Pacific Ocean, pressuring bluffs along the coast. Some bluffs are fortified with concrete walls to prevent multimillion-dollar homes from falling into the sea.

Somebody should notify Obama.

In 1980, the bluff under my house in Capistrano Beach collapsed so that the house, instead of 25 feet from the edge, was 7 feet from the edge. I had to rebuild the whole bluff with concrete caissons 40 feet into the bluff, It took a year. The house had been there 50 years. The bluff was 200 feet high.; 8/3/19, 9:10 AM
BUMBLE BEE said...: Nature can chlorinate the gene pool, and sometimes does.; 8/3/19, 9:14 AM
BUMBLE BEE said...: A storm chasing friend once explained that the Mississippi flood plain was easily discerned at it's edges. He further noted that trees in Florida all grow very short, does one need to question why?; 8/3/19, 9:18 AM
Leland said...: Life Pro Tip. Don't sit at the base of a cliff.

Over a decade ago, wife and I went on a Colorado excursion snowmobiling on the backside of Copper Mtn. The group stopped in a valley and someone asked the tour guide how high one could go up this rather steep slope. The guide takes off climbing to the top in his snowmobile.

Someone: "What's the worse that could happen?"
Another: "He could fall and get hurt and we might have to go up there and get him."
Me: "He could cause an avalanche and here we are standing at the bottom."; 8/3/19, 9:20 AM
BUMBLE BEE said...: How many people fall to their death in the Grand Canyon? The imagery of the cliff collapse reminds me of the giant foot from Monty Python's Flying Circus.; 8/3/19, 9:21 AM
Narr said...: Of course there's rhyme and reason, it just ain't human rhyme and reason. Somebody mentioned the barrier-island dwellers, and their repeated bale-outs (hasn't Stossel railed about them for decades now?), and we're seeing "historic flooding" all over the place--especially in the "1000- and 500-year" flood plains.

Way back in the 70's my geography prof would go on and on about how we were overbuilding in very low areas, and it has only gotten worse.

Narr
Nature is great, until somebody gets hurt; 8/3/19, 9:24 AM
Narr said...: Florida trees are short . . . I can guess why!

Dutch men are the tallest . . .

Narr
The why seems obvious to me; 8/3/19, 9:27 AM
Rusty said...: The metal detectorists are gonna be all over that place.; 8/3/19, 9:35 AM
SGT Ted said...: 'Maher is a long-time vaccine skeptic, as well. He's for "nature" and against "chemicals," even though nature kills us and chemicals save our lives.'

Everything is literally made up of chemicals. Attitudes of people like Maher just show that urbanites can be just as ignorant and provincial as any of the hayseeds they like to mock.; 8/3/19, 9:55 AM
Tom T. said...: Have to wonder if the reporter just made up the part about sea levels pressuring the bluffs. No expert is cited, and it's not at all clear how that action at a distance would even work.; 8/3/19, 9:58 AM
JAORE said...: Weak and shifting sands... not a new problem.; 8/3/19, 10:02 AM
Dust Bunny Queen said...: Have to wonder if the reporter just made up the part about sea levels pressuring the bluffs.

No need to wonder about it. He made it up. The sea levels haven't been rising anymore than they normally do with tide, wind, and the lunar gravitational pull. Rain (water coming from the sky for the reporter) falls and additionally erodes the cliff faces.

Storms and storm surges push the sea further inland and wave action erodes the base of the cliffs. Has been doing this for millions of years.

None of this is surprising to anyone with half a brain.; 8/3/19, 11:01 AM
J. Farmer said...: @SGT Ted:

Everything is literally made up of chemicals. Attitudes of people like Maher just show that urbanites can be just as ignorant and provincial as any of the hayseeds they like to mock.

Precisely. Tell someone a cake is made with sodium hydrogencarbonate, and they'll think, "Eww, chemicals." Tell them it has baking powder, and they shrug.; 8/3/19, 11:08 AM
jaydub said...: "Suburbs north of San Diego have contended with rising water levels in the Pacific Ocean, pressuring bluffs along the coast."

What Bull shit! I suppose other places along the California coast have not had to contend with rising water levels because the water level has not risen as much there as it has in North San Diego County? How does that work? Does the water surface sort of step up as one passes La Jolla? Here's the real deal: storms and waves erode the base of the cliffs almost everywhere until the cliff faces cannot support their own weight and crumble. This has been going on for millennia. It has nothing to do with "rising water levels" but this idiot reporter just had to work in climate change reference and show his ignorance.; 8/3/19, 11:11 AM
Tyrone Slothrop said...: Hey Michael K

I grew up on Beach Road. Small world.; 8/3/19, 11:26 AM
Michael K said...: Blogger Tyrone Slothrop said...
Hey Michael K

I grew up on Beach Road. Small world.

Our house was above Olamendi's restaurant and about six houses south. Wish I still had it. I was always nervous about the bluff but it is still there 40 years later. We fixed it right.; 8/3/19, 11:48 AM
LakeLevel said...: Tyrone and Michael K,

small world indeed. I lived on top of one of those beach bluffs in 1975, in Luecadia a mile away. 45 years ago I thought that those sand cliffs would not last long.; 8/3/19, 12:06 PM
Bruce Hayden said...: “Maher is a long-time vaccine skeptic, as well. He's for "nature" and against "chemicals," even though nature kills us and chemicals save our lives.”

Read an article yesterday, I think, about mosquitoes, and the diseases they have born. They have apparently killed a lot more people, over the ages, than have all the wars in history. In 1492, there were supposedly 100 million people in the Americas. 95% or so were wiped out by disease that they got from European explorers. But it wasn’t just the Native Americans. Apparently there was a Scottish expedition to Panama that failed miserably, beggering their country, making it vulnerable to forced union with England, forming the UK.

We so quickly forget how disease ravaged humanity maybe a century ago. We have a four sided family grave stone from a bit after the Civil War, where a boy would be born every other year or so, and within two years he would be dead from the diseases that went around every August. My great grandfather was the fifth one, the only boy to survive. This was northern MI, not Panama. This was the human lot of existence until a century ago. It is a big part of why you needed 8-10 kids, in order to have maybe 3 grow to maturity. And the biggest reason that ZPG is now just over 2 kids these days, instead of the 8-10 a century or so ago, is the use of vaccines.

Sure, the Bill Mahers of the world can often raise kids who have not been vaccinated, but that is only because of herd immunity. They depend on everyone else vaccinating. Until they don’t. A decade or so ago, Whooping Cough raged through Boulder, CO, one of the most highly educated cities in the country, killing several small kids, due to the loss of herd immunity, thanks to all of the highly educated parents there opting out of vaccinating their kids. And we are seeing the reemergence of killers like Typhus and Bubonic Plague, with the unvaccinated hoards of illegal peasants streaming into this country from Central America. Yes - that is part of what you get with legal immigration - vaccinated immigrants. Thanks Democrats for importing all these unvaccinated disease carriers in your attempt to create a permanent welfare majority, guaranteeing you a permanent ruling majority.; 8/3/19, 12:07 PM
Tyrone Slothrop said...: @Michael K

My parents built on Beach Road when Capo Beach was still a sleepy little beach town. When Mom died a few years ago, we heirs were forced to sell. Property taxes would have been more than most of our annual salaries.

On the beach, we had similar to concerns to you cliff dwellers. Erosion by storms was always threatening to wash the house away. Dad had nightmares about tsunamis for years.; 8/3/19, 12:08 PM
D 2 said...: Nature will win many battles, (both major and minor) no matter where people choose to go visit / dwell. Doesn't matter if it is seaside California or downtown Tokyo or driving one random day through tornado alley. Sooner or later nature is going to say something round your way. And even if you want to avoid well identified hot spots, places like Inland Labrador may not have the major hurricane season or tornados but the average blizzards there ain't so great in Feb.

That's not to excuse very poor policy with regard to building on floodplain btw. I'm just saying as the world population has gone from 1B to 7B in a very quick time versus it going from 500M to 1B, it is a wonder there isn't more stories of nature taking us out every day. Or there is, and we just have grown used to them.

when St. Helens erupted - being young & impressionable at the time - I recall saying to my buddy: you couldn't pay me to go live in its shadow (if active). Now you see tourists going to possibly dangerous spots all over the world to get the photo. I am not surprised the three people who died weren't aware of a possible danger. It's not like they thought they were going to Everest. I put this to Fate, not anything else.; 8/3/19, 12:12 PM
Michael K said...: Bruce, I was in Istanbul ten years ago and we went to a British graveyard (It was a medical history trip) and saw a tombstone there with the names and dates of five children from one family.

The reason the Mayo Clinic is in Minnesota is the malaria distribution. Even Missouri had endemic malaria in 1860.

Rachel Carson has killed more people than Mao Tse Tung,; 8/3/19, 12:13 PM
Michael K said...: Erosion by storms was always threatening to wash the house away.

I don't know if you still had the house then but a severe winter erosion hit that beach about 20 years ago. Two friends of mine had houses on Beach Road that ended up 15 feet in the air on pilings that formed their foundation, By summer, the beach was back.

The same has happened to Malibu.; 8/3/19, 12:17 PM
D 2 said...: Dylan volcano song (Black Diamond Bay) gets very little air time.; 8/3/19, 12:22 PM
Howard said...: Blogger Michael K said... In 1980, the bluff under my house in Capistrano Beach collapsed so that the house, instead of 25 feet from the edge, was 7 feet from the edge. I had to rebuild the whole bluff with concrete caissons 40 feet into the bluff, It took a year. The house had been there 50 years. The bluff was 200 feet high.

The Capistrano Formation is famous for it's propensity for landslides. It's a highly fractured soft siltstone. The fractures are filled with water soluble gypsum, which greases the skids after rainfall and groundwater levels increase.; 8/3/19, 12:35 PM
Michael K said...: The Capistrano Formation is famous for it's propensity for landslides.

I had a geologist friend look at it before I bought the home. He OK'd it and, after the slide, I called him up ands asked him to design the fix. He and a soil engineer did just that and it is still still solid. The Capistrano Formation was 30 feet down. We drilled 40 foot caissons and sank them 10 feet into the formation. They were 3 feet in diameter with 3 feet between them, so the water could weep. Took a year and I had to tear off one side of the house. Lowered the bluff about 7 feet and got a playroom below the 1700 square foot deck.; 8/3/19, 12:46 PM
Hammond X. Gritzkofe said...: There is a westward component to the movement of the Pacific Plate. Perhaps the fault, so to speak, lies with plate tectonics rather than global warming.; 8/3/19, 1:47 PM
Megaera said...: Fernandistein -- not exactly a new concept. "We owe God a death ... and he that dies in one year is quits in the next." Henry IV p. 2. (from memory, and mine is increasingly faulty, so apologies for rendition errors); 8/3/19, 1:49 PM
hstad said...: Oh no! "Globing Warming" is at fault! Could be, but at the same time oceans also erode land in the extreme Northern and Southern regions of our planet. Yeah, I know "Global Warming" there too!; 8/3/19, 2:23 PM
hstad said...: Dust Bunny Queen said...They were sitting/laying at the base of a cliff that is made of sandy and chalky fragile earth with big stones on top of it. The ocean is constantly eroding the cliff base. How do you think it became a cliff??? 8/3/19, 8:32 AM

Well, I must chime in here and borrow a phrase and change a few words:

".....It seems that that never have so many known so little about so much......"; 8/3/19, 2:35 PM
Howard said...: Blogger Michael K said... I had a geologist friend look at it before I bought the home. He OK'd it and, after the slide, I called him up ands asked him to design the fix. He and a soil engineer did just that and it is still still solid.

Thanks Mike, interesting story.; 8/3/19, 2:42 PM
Michael K said...: Thanks Mike, interesting story.

Actually, I was not that polite. It was more along the lines of, "Hey, you said this was OK ! Come over here and fix it !"

I had also had a contractor friend look at it first. He had built many houses in Laguna and I figured he would be a good judge. He wound up doing the reconstruction. Did a good job,.; 8/3/19, 3:47 PM
Anonymous said...: Swine earth worshipers - "meh.... three people died but that's nature..." In a sane world, civil engineers would survey unstable shoreline and construct retaining features. But you made your clown world so have fun living in it; 8/3/19, 9:19 PM
JamesB.BKK said...: The large beaches were created by processes whereby sand deposited and carried by waves and currents was received following the scraping and scouring by continent-sized ice sheets and huge alpine glaciers acting upon rocks and soil for thousands of years, carried to the shore for thousands of years by sediment laden rivers powerful enough to suspend sand in their currents reaching the sea. Those processes significantly reduced in intensity a long time ago. Without more sand load to feed the process, the existing beaches are scraped by waves, removed, and carried down current. It used to be that humans intervened in this scraping and removal by building groins (or groynes), moles, jetties, and seawalls, but these practices were banned by bossy nags and self-appointed helpers. This is the reason and the rhyme.; 8/4/19, 2:28 AM
JamesB.BKK said...: Much of California is famously geologically unstable.; 8/4/19, 2:29 AM
JamesB.BKK said...: Bruce, Bubonic Plague is bacterial and therefore largely treatable with antibiotics. It is true that it is sad that the US is reverting to conditions of decades ago still common in the third (er, apparently permanently developing) world, but this does not seem to stem from issues about the helpfulness or harmfulness of the standard heavy and intensive regime of vaccination of infants recommended by government and government-licensed and compliance-dependent doctors in what remains of the Western world.; 8/4/19, 2:36 AM