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Is there any reason why, if we had a decade of warning, we wouldn't be able to protect much of this area?

by wrsh07 11y ago

hackuser 11y ago
We've had several decades of warnings about global warming, yet we've barely done anything about it. Why?
- TheOtherHobbes 11y ago
  Some people stood to lose money. This was unacceptable to them. So they got to keep their money, and sacrificed the future of the planet instead.
  - ryanobjc 11y ago
    This is a good 'eli5' answer to the question posed. What is an alternative hypothesis? The energy companies worked against renewable because it was Good For The Country? Because nothing expensive or hard is worth getting? Because economic ruin was definitely going to happen?
pilsetnieks 11y ago
> "I am not a great believer in man-made climate change. I’m not a great believer. There is certainly a change in weather that goes – if you look, they had global cooling in the 1920s and now they have global warming, although now they don’t know if they have global warming. They call it all sorts of different things; now they’re using “extreme weather” I guess more than any other phrase." > -- Donald Trump, https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-partisan/wp/2016/03/21/a-transcript-of-donald-trumps-meeting-with-the-washington-post-editorial-board/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-partisan/wp/2016/0... There's a considerable chance that this man will be your next president.
- wrsh07 11y ago
  I thought he was great at building walls ;)
Jedd 11y ago
Not just any, but many. This story is about ~1 metre sea level rise. Greenland's glaciers (if they were to entirely melt) provide ~8 metres, and Antarctica's would provide ~60 metres - so even if you built a wall to protect some / much of this area, you'd have to be planning either subsequent abandonment or a lot more construction work. But this presupposes that it's feasible from an engineering or financial perspective -- I suspect that in any but a tiny number of cases that it would not be. In turn it assumes that people would want to live behind a wall that is protecting them from probable death if it collapses, or is intentionally destroyed by the kinds of people who like to kill other people. And these walls would be quite an attractive target. Would you want to live beneath sea-level if you had the option to live above sea-level? Then there's groundwater issues (salinity is going to render such earth less habitable).
mdorazio 11y ago
The other answers don't actually address your question. To some extent, yes, because adequately protecting large areas of exposed coast requires building and maintaining many miles of seawalls. This isn't impossible by any means, but economically it's not very feasible to protect, say, Miami from both rising sea levels and the intense hurricanes that are likely to result. It would be much cheaper to just relocate people inland as needed.

Is there any reason why, if we had a decade of warning, we wouldn't be able to protect much of this area?

by wrsh07 11y ago

Is there any reason why, if we had a decade of warning, we wouldn't be able to protect much of this area?

hackuser 11y ago

We've had several decades of warnings about global warming, yet we've barely done anything about it. Why?

TheOtherHobbes 11y ago
Some people stood to lose money. This was unacceptable to them. So they got to keep their money, and sacrificed the future of the planet instead.
- ryanobjc 11y ago
  This is a good 'eli5' answer to the question posed. What is an alternative hypothesis? The energy companies worked against renewable because it was Good For The Country? Because nothing expensive or hard is worth getting? Because economic ruin was definitely going to happen?

pilsetnieks 11y ago

> "I am not a great believer in man-made climate change. I’m not a great believer. There is certainly a change in weather that goes – if you look, they had global cooling in the 1920s and now they have global warming, although now they don’t know if they have global warming. They call it all sorts of different things; now they’re using “extreme weather” I guess more than any other phrase." > -- Donald Trump, https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-partisan/wp/2016/03/21/a-transcript-of-donald-trumps-meeting-with-the-washington-post-editorial-board/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-partisan/wp/2016/0... There's a considerable chance that this man will be your next president.

wrsh07 11y ago
I thought he was great at building walls ;)

Jedd 11y ago

Not just any, but many. This story is about ~1 metre sea level rise. Greenland's glaciers (if they were to entirely melt) provide ~8 metres, and Antarctica's would provide ~60 metres - so even if you built a wall to protect some / much of this area, you'd have to be planning either subsequent abandonment or a lot more construction work. But this presupposes that it's feasible from an engineering or financial perspective -- I suspect that in any but a tiny number of cases that it would not be. In turn it assumes that people would want to live behind a wall that is protecting them from probable death if it collapses, or is intentionally destroyed by the kinds of people who like to kill other people. And these walls would be quite an attractive target. Would you want to live beneath sea-level if you had the option to live above sea-level? Then there's groundwater issues (salinity is going to render such earth less habitable).

mdorazio 11y ago

The other answers don't actually address your question. To some extent, yes, because adequately protecting large areas of exposed coast requires building and maintaining many miles of seawalls. This isn't impossible by any means, but economically it's not very feasible to protect, say, Miami from both rising sea levels and the intense hurricanes that are likely to result. It would be much cheaper to just relocate people inland as needed.