4 ms·

Why would civilization be over? The sea rise wouldn't happen over night and people would move or build walls.

by hueving 10y ago

mgbmtl 10y ago
That's a lot of people to move and things to rebuild. Op did say "the current round of civilization". I also agree that lots of things changing at once are likely to create instability, with negative economic and social impacts (unless governments massively intervene, which I suspect many in the US would not appreciate). I'm sure walls are an option, but they will be expensive to maintain and it doesn't take much to have big consequences. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drainage_in_New_Orleans https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drainage_in_New_Orleans
- jacquesm 10y ago
  And that was just on a city scale. Doing this country or continent wide is engineering on an entirely different level. NL has something like this but it's only 30 feet high and extrapolating from that experience to something able to withstand 60 meters of ocean (which is dynamic, an an average of 60 meters does not include storm surges and tides) is making me think this is infeasible.
- hueving 10y ago
  >That's a lot of people to move and things to rebuild. Op did say "the current round of civilization". If that's the bar for civilization ending, then civilization ended when people came to the US, ended again when they expanded out to the West, etc. Just because people on the US coasts move means little to the 60 percent of citizens that don't live near the ocean. And again, it's not going to happen overnight. A wall of water isn't coming in that will force everyone to put their things in a car and go. It will be slow build-up that slowly forces people out as they decide it's to expensive to mitigate.
  - ZeroGravitas 10y ago
    "If that's the bar for civilization ending, then civilization ended when people came to the US, ended again when they expanded out to the West, etc." Interesting that your example is literally true both times for the people who where there earlier.
drdrey 10y ago
We already have tremendous political instability in the US and Europe right now caused in part by a not-so-great-but-not-devastating economy and the Syrian refugee crisis. Imagine a worldwide crisis with tens or hundreds of millions of people losing their homes and livelihood, how is that going to play out?
- taneliv 10y ago
  40% of global population lives in coastal areas of lesser elevation than 50m.[1] That is more like 3 billion people. Syrian refugee crisis seems quite insignificant in comparison. Of course, only one of those is currently underway, and we don't really know how fast sea levels will rise. [1] http://www.un.org/esa/sustdev/natlinfo/indicators/methodology_sheets/oceans_seas_coasts/pop_coastal_areas.pdf http://www.un.org/esa/sustdev/natlinfo/indicators/methodolog...
- hueving 10y ago
  >We already have tremendous political instability in the US and Europe right now This is definitely not true for the US. At least not by any global notion of political instability. The US government isn't near collapse, there is a very limited likelihood of any kind of coup, the economy is doing very well, and riots have been very rare. There is a lot of political bickering, but it doesn't seem to be any more-so than during the last party-in-the-office changes (Clinton to Bush, Bush to Obama).
kurthr 10y ago
Florida is porous. You can build walls but they don't do much. The water will rise to cover the entire peninsula. Long before that tides and storm surge will destroy all of the surface roads to coastal cities. I wouldn't lend money there for longer than 30years. http://geology.com/sea-level-rise/florida.shtml http://geology.com/sea-level-rise/florida.shtml
jacquesm 10y ago
Because a 60 meter high seawall around pretty much all of the country would be a bit problematic material wise alone (you'd have to chop down a couple of major mountains, assuming you have those), coupled with the slight problem of then having to get rid of all the water landing in your nice new bathtub by precipitation. A seawall isn't just a wall, it's more like a dike if it is to survive and that means it has a width many times larger than it's height. And then there is seepage to contend with. This is anything but a trivial problem and we have never done engineering on that scale before. The easiest solution would be to move to higher ground.
- idlewords 10y ago
  BUILD THE WALL
  - Karunamon 10y ago
    Please don't do this here.
    - idlewords 10y ago
      I've been banned from everywhere else

Why would civilization be over? The sea rise wouldn't happen over night and people would move or build walls.

by hueving 10y ago

Why would civilization be over? The sea rise wouldn't happen over night and people would move or build walls.

That's a lot of people to move and things to rebuild. Op did say "the current round of civilization". I also agree that lots of things changing at once are likely to create instability, with negative economic and social impacts (unless governments massively intervene, which I suspect many in the US would not appreciate). I'm sure walls are an option, but they will be expensive to maintain and it doesn't take much to have big consequences. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drainage_in_New_Orleans https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drainage_in_New_Orleans

jacquesm 10y ago
And that was just on a city scale. Doing this country or continent wide is engineering on an entirely different level. NL has something like this but it's only 30 feet high and extrapolating from that experience to something able to withstand 60 meters of ocean (which is dynamic, an an average of 60 meters does not include storm surges and tides) is making me think this is infeasible.
hueving 10y ago
>That's a lot of people to move and things to rebuild. Op did say "the current round of civilization". If that's the bar for civilization ending, then civilization ended when people came to the US, ended again when they expanded out to the West, etc. Just because people on the US coasts move means little to the 60 percent of citizens that don't live near the ocean. And again, it's not going to happen overnight. A wall of water isn't coming in that will force everyone to put their things in a car and go. It will be slow build-up that slowly forces people out as they decide it's to expensive to mitigate.
- ZeroGravitas 10y ago
  "If that's the bar for civilization ending, then civilization ended when people came to the US, ended again when they expanded out to the West, etc." Interesting that your example is literally true both times for the people who where there earlier.

drdrey 10y ago

We already have tremendous political instability in the US and Europe right now caused in part by a not-so-great-but-not-devastating economy and the Syrian refugee crisis. Imagine a worldwide crisis with tens or hundreds of millions of people losing their homes and livelihood, how is that going to play out?

taneliv 10y ago
40% of global population lives in coastal areas of lesser elevation than 50m.[1] That is more like 3 billion people. Syrian refugee crisis seems quite insignificant in comparison. Of course, only one of those is currently underway, and we don't really know how fast sea levels will rise. [1] http://www.un.org/esa/sustdev/natlinfo/indicators/methodology_sheets/oceans_seas_coasts/pop_coastal_areas.pdf http://www.un.org/esa/sustdev/natlinfo/indicators/methodolog...
hueving 10y ago
>We already have tremendous political instability in the US and Europe right now This is definitely not true for the US. At least not by any global notion of political instability. The US government isn't near collapse, there is a very limited likelihood of any kind of coup, the economy is doing very well, and riots have been very rare. There is a lot of political bickering, but it doesn't seem to be any more-so than during the last party-in-the-office changes (Clinton to Bush, Bush to Obama).

kurthr 10y ago

Florida is porous. You can build walls but they don't do much. The water will rise to cover the entire peninsula. Long before that tides and storm surge will destroy all of the surface roads to coastal cities. I wouldn't lend money there for longer than 30years. http://geology.com/sea-level-rise/florida.shtml http://geology.com/sea-level-rise/florida.shtml

jacquesm 10y ago

Because a 60 meter high seawall around pretty much all of the country would be a bit problematic material wise alone (you'd have to chop down a couple of major mountains, assuming you have those), coupled with the slight problem of then having to get rid of all the water landing in your nice new bathtub by precipitation. A seawall isn't just a wall, it's more like a dike if it is to survive and that means it has a width many times larger than it's height. And then there is seepage to contend with. This is anything but a trivial problem and we have never done engineering on that scale before. The easiest solution would be to move to higher ground.

idlewords 10y ago
BUILD THE WALL
- Karunamon 10y ago
  Please don't do this here.
  - idlewords 10y ago
    I've been banned from everywhere else