6 ms·

Sea level rise is neither the largest nor most immediate threat of climate change. Water happens to have one of the highest, and I would argue, the most import

Sea level rise is neither the largest nor most immediate threat of climate change. Water happens to have one of the highest, and I would argue, the most important thermal capacity of all the compounds we're likely to come into contact with daily. Water has about 5-10x the heat capacity of most common things and so heating up the all the oceans by say 2 degs average is an ENORMOUS amount of energy. Why is this important? The reason we have climate refugees today is not the water level but rather the higher intensity storms that the warmer waters spawn. Far before ppl are forced from the shores by rising waters they will be forced from the shores by massive, frequent, destructive storms that, instead of say destroying 1/1000 homes, will destroy 1/100. Eventually it will be economically non-viable to live in storm-prone zones. And those zones will increase in size over time to go far inland (away from fresh water), causing more migration. This is happening NOW and will be a major factor in the lives of all our children. It's easy for ppl to dismiss rising sea levels because it doesn't seem dangerous and happens over decades. It's far harder for ppl to dismiss weather disasters that they might have some first or second handed experience of or, more likely, a visceral fear of. Maybe we should have a different metric? So instead of sea rise/year we should have expected floridian homes destroyed/year.

abtinf 10y ago
You claim that the scenario you describe is happening "NOW". Could you provide a citation for that claim? Or even better, are people betting money that it is true, as might be represented with a greater-than-inflation rise in premiums for flood insurance, home owners insurance, or umbrella insurance in the affected geographies?
- leeoniya 10y ago
  http://channel.nationalgeographic.com/before-the-flood/videos/feeling-the-effects-of-climate-change/ http://channel.nationalgeographic.com/before-the-flood/video...
- aaron-lebo 10y ago
  Hurricanes? New Orleans will never recover. That same season saw a couple other storms that were just as strong but luckily missed worst case scenarios. I wouldn't be shocked if cat five hurricanes became pretty common in a couple of decades due to warmer waters, and one or two of those a year would devastate coastal economies. But I'm not a weatherman...
  - Udik 10y ago
    And these statements are based on what? There have been some major earthquakes around the world in the last 20 years, are they also caused by global warming? Do you project an increase in them in the next 20 years? Here's a page with good, updated information about global warming and hurricanes: https://www.gfdl.noaa.gov/global-warming-and-hurricanes/ https://www.gfdl.noaa.gov/global-warming-and-hurricanes/
    - adt2bt 10y ago
      Goodness, that was a ridiculously condescending comment considering you could have just provided the NOAA link and had a positive discussion instead.
      - cr1895 10y ago
        >Goodness, that was a ridiculously condescending comment I read no condescension in it.
    - dredmorbius 10y ago
      Melting icecaps over Greenland and Antarctica will almost certainly result in seismic, and potentially volcanic activity, as the continental plate rises, having been relieved of kilometers worth of ice cap. Though the timescale will likely be on the order of decades or centuries, not 20 years. http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2008/03/080314-warming-quakes_2.html http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2008/03/080314-warmi...
    - lithos 10y ago
      Actually Wisconsin isn't by any fault lines and occasionally gets an earth quake (very small). From the glacier recession of the last ice age. Turns out glaciers are heavy and bedrock is still uncompressing. So we do have proof of weather changes causing earthquakes. Though I doubt anyone has data or models that would be useful for this tangent. At least for oceanic fault lines, which could be affected by ocean rise.
- theseadroid 10y ago
  https://climate.nasa.gov/effects/ https://climate.nasa.gov/effects/ >The intensity, frequency and duration of North Atlantic hurricanes, as well as the frequency of the strongest (Category 4 and 5) hurricanes, have all increased since the early 1980s. The relative contributions of human and natural causes to these increases are still uncertain. Hurricane-associated storm intensity and rainfall rates are projected to increase as the climate continues to warm.
  - Udik 10y ago
    Bad information. From the noaa website [0], a more scientific assessment reports: "It is premature to conclude that human activities–and particularly greenhouse gas emissions that cause global warming–have already had a detectable impact on Atlantic hurricane or global tropical cyclone activity." So no detectable increase (even statistically, which I consider to be a much weaker requirement than actual subjective experience). [0] https://www.gfdl.noaa.gov/global-warming-and-hurricanes/ https://www.gfdl.noaa.gov/global-warming-and-hurricanes/
    - pdm55 10y ago
      Scientific article examining the downward trend in Australia's cyclone numbers : http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/asl2.502/full http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/asl2.502/full Long‐term changes in Australian tropical cyclone numbers "Numerous data quality checks were used in this study, as noted above, and there are no known systematic errors in the observations or analyses that would be likely to produce the decreasing trend in TC #s examined here. This suggests the possibility that the downward trend may be associated with changes in environmental conditions. Studies such as Emanuel (2005) indicate that the changes in various different environmental conditions that are occurring due to anthropogenic influences are having an influence on TC activity in some regions of the world. In the Australian region, one possible physical explanation for a decreasing trend in TC #s could be a potential long-term shift in environmental conditions towards a more El Niño-like state, given that fewer TCs tend to occur in the Australian region during El Niño than La Niña conditions. Although the NIN and SOI data used here did not show a significant long-term trend, some studies suggest the possibility of a shift towards more El Niño-like conditions, relating to a possible weakening of the Walker circulation due to increasing atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations (Vecchi et al., 2006; Power and Smith, 2007; Huang et al., 2013; DiNezio et al., 2013). However, it is also noted that considerable uncertainty exists in observed changes to the Walker circulation based on reanalyses (Compo et al., 2011)."
- RandyRanderson 10y ago
  As you likely know, if you have any insurance and have looked into your coverage in any depth, insurance covers a lot less than one expects. Also when an insured event happens typically the insurer will amend the policy (without changing the premiums, of course) to exclude that eventuality (also typically excluding your "neighbours" as well). Further insurers will typically require say homeowners in a flood-prone zone to take additional precautions periodically. So far example maintaining barrier walls, etc. Therefore insurance premiums or losses may be difficult to compare year to year. Certainly insurances companies have factored global warming into their models and are changing their rates accordingly. To not do so would be grounds for shareholder lawsuits I should think. There are as many climate deniers in insurance companies as there are atheists in foxholes. :>
- pg314 10y ago
  Insurance companies are taking climate change seriously, for sure. I found [1] after some quick googling. [1] http://evanmills.lbl.gov/pubs/pdf/climate-action-insurance.pdf http://evanmills.lbl.gov/pubs/pdf/climate-action-insurance.p...
- fjarlq 10y ago
  One indicator is the trend of increased tidal flooding on the US east coast over the past few decades: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/09/04/science/global-warming-increases-nuisance-flooding.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/09/04/science/globa...
averagewall 10y ago
What's wrong with migration? People do that anyway when they move out of their parent's house and into their own, often in another city. You describe storms becoming more frequent, which is something insurance companies will see a mile away and increase premiums or refuse to provide cover for. That will reduce the value of property in those areas and property buyers will go further inland instead. It sounds like some poor property investor might be left holding the bag if he doesn't sell his coastal city building in time. Instead of feeling sad for his loss, perhaps trust that he knows what he's doing and will sell it in time so the migration happens gradually and for incremental economic reasons rather than as a sudden emergency. Your energy argument doesn't add up. Increasing the thermal energy of everything in a system doesn't make it able to do more work (violent storms). Storms are driven by heat flowing from hot to cold. Not from hot to also-hot. If you show that temperature differences between parts of the ocean/atmosphere are going to become more extreme, then more severe storms would make sense. That could be caused by cold things getting colder or hot things getting hotter.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- omginternets 10y ago
  >What's wrong with migration? People do that anyway when they move out of their parent's house and into their own, often in another city This is hardly the kind of migration we're talking about. Come on... a bit of intellectual honesty goes a long way.
  - tim333 10y ago
    There may be a bit of short distance migration if the sea rises. It's projected to rise a meter or two this century so people could build inland a bit, planning permission willing.
    - tripzilch 10y ago
      A 2m rise is going to cause way more than "maybe a bit of short distance migration". It's going going to be a lot worse, by an order of magnitude, than the current war refugee migrant crises currently in Europe, and will be happening globally at that.
tzs 10y ago
> Far before ppl are forced from the shores by rising waters they will be forced from the shores by massive, frequent, destructive storms that, instead of say destroying 1/1000 homes, will destroy 1/100. Eventually it will be economically non-viable to live in storm-prone zones. It's possible to build homes that are much more resistant to storms than current homes [1], although they cost more than the currently most popular designs. Wouldn't a shift to such homes keep it viable to live in those storm-prone zones? [1] http://www.deltechomes.com/learn-more/hurricane-resistance/ http://www.deltechomes.com/learn-more/hurricane-resistance/
- dredmorbius 10y ago
  Damage affects not just houses, but all structures: gardens, landscaping, freshwater and sewage lines, electrical and internet service, roads, etc. With time, you're also looking at massively increased erosion. It's hard to have a house if there's no land under it at all.
- LeifCarrotson 10y ago
  Not likely. Using the parent example that climate change causes the risk of destruction from a hurricane to increase from 0.1% to 1%, consider that 1000 homes of the old type for 100k each would cost $100 million. Replacing 10 of these costs 1 million - but let's be generous and assume that you need to do this every 6 years, and use a 30-year period for our analysis. That brings our total cost to $105 million. If all the new homes survive undamaged, you have to build 1000 hurricane-resistant homes for less than $105 million to make the project viable, an increase of 5%. Looking briefly at that page, none of those features look particularly cheap. You'd probably burn your $5000 on just finishing the underside of the floor joists to elevate the home on those pilings, to say nothing of their fancy shapes or high-spec materials.
FrozenVoid 10y ago
Actually, escalating death of plankton and growth of anoxic zones are more important: it will cause systemic collapse of marine food chain. Storm damage can be mitigated(e.g. netherlands) http://www.sciencealert.com/ocean-oxygen-levels-are-dropping-and-it-s-all-down-to-us http://www.sciencealert.com/ocean-oxygen-levels-are-dropping... https://phys.org/news/2017-02-black-sea-short-term-oxygen-loss.html https://phys.org/news/2017-02-black-sea-short-term-oxygen-lo... https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/jan/31/bay-bengal-depleted-fish-stocks-pollution-climate-change-migration https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/jan/31/bay-beng...
- raverbashing 10y ago
  Well, it's evolutionary pressure in action. Plankton will survive, and the ones who survive will have more food available Algae will probably avail of the increased CO2 concentrations as well.
  - FrozenVoid 10y ago
    Evolution doesn't care if specific X species survives in its niche, but X species could be much more important than Y species. Extinction of keystone species(plankton X) will trigger dieoff down the food chain. Survivor species(plankton Y) which exploits extinction event environment don't have to contribute to the food chain: https://www.ecomagazine.com/news/science/indian-ocean-fish-die-off-linked-to-plankton-species https://www.ecomagazine.com/news/science/indian-ocean-fish-d...
  - CreRecombinase 10y ago
    That's not how that works. CO2 is not a limiting reagent in photosynthesis.

abtinf 10y ago

You claim that the scenario you describe is happening "NOW". Could you provide a citation for that claim? Or even better, are people betting money that it is true, as might be represented with a greater-than-inflation rise in premiums for flood insurance, home owners insurance, or umbrella insurance in the affected geographies?

leeoniya 10y ago
http://channel.nationalgeographic.com/before-the-flood/videos/feeling-the-effects-of-climate-change/ http://channel.nationalgeographic.com/before-the-flood/video...
aaron-lebo 10y ago
Hurricanes? New Orleans will never recover. That same season saw a couple other storms that were just as strong but luckily missed worst case scenarios. I wouldn't be shocked if cat five hurricanes became pretty common in a couple of decades due to warmer waters, and one or two of those a year would devastate coastal economies. But I'm not a weatherman...
- Udik 10y ago
  And these statements are based on what? There have been some major earthquakes around the world in the last 20 years, are they also caused by global warming? Do you project an increase in them in the next 20 years? Here's a page with good, updated information about global warming and hurricanes: https://www.gfdl.noaa.gov/global-warming-and-hurricanes/ https://www.gfdl.noaa.gov/global-warming-and-hurricanes/
  - adt2bt 10y ago
    Goodness, that was a ridiculously condescending comment considering you could have just provided the NOAA link and had a positive discussion instead.
    - cr1895 10y ago
      >Goodness, that was a ridiculously condescending comment I read no condescension in it.
  - dredmorbius 10y ago
    Melting icecaps over Greenland and Antarctica will almost certainly result in seismic, and potentially volcanic activity, as the continental plate rises, having been relieved of kilometers worth of ice cap. Though the timescale will likely be on the order of decades or centuries, not 20 years. http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2008/03/080314-warming-quakes_2.html http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2008/03/080314-warmi...
  - lithos 10y ago
    Actually Wisconsin isn't by any fault lines and occasionally gets an earth quake (very small). From the glacier recession of the last ice age. Turns out glaciers are heavy and bedrock is still uncompressing. So we do have proof of weather changes causing earthquakes. Though I doubt anyone has data or models that would be useful for this tangent. At least for oceanic fault lines, which could be affected by ocean rise.
theseadroid 10y ago
https://climate.nasa.gov/effects/ https://climate.nasa.gov/effects/ >The intensity, frequency and duration of North Atlantic hurricanes, as well as the frequency of the strongest (Category 4 and 5) hurricanes, have all increased since the early 1980s. The relative contributions of human and natural causes to these increases are still uncertain. Hurricane-associated storm intensity and rainfall rates are projected to increase as the climate continues to warm.
- Udik 10y ago
  Bad information. From the noaa website [0], a more scientific assessment reports: "It is premature to conclude that human activities–and particularly greenhouse gas emissions that cause global warming–have already had a detectable impact on Atlantic hurricane or global tropical cyclone activity." So no detectable increase (even statistically, which I consider to be a much weaker requirement than actual subjective experience). [0] https://www.gfdl.noaa.gov/global-warming-and-hurricanes/ https://www.gfdl.noaa.gov/global-warming-and-hurricanes/
  - pdm55 10y ago
    Scientific article examining the downward trend in Australia's cyclone numbers : http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/asl2.502/full http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/asl2.502/full Long‐term changes in Australian tropical cyclone numbers "Numerous data quality checks were used in this study, as noted above, and there are no known systematic errors in the observations or analyses that would be likely to produce the decreasing trend in TC #s examined here. This suggests the possibility that the downward trend may be associated with changes in environmental conditions. Studies such as Emanuel (2005) indicate that the changes in various different environmental conditions that are occurring due to anthropogenic influences are having an influence on TC activity in some regions of the world. In the Australian region, one possible physical explanation for a decreasing trend in TC #s could be a potential long-term shift in environmental conditions towards a more El Niño-like state, given that fewer TCs tend to occur in the Australian region during El Niño than La Niña conditions. Although the NIN and SOI data used here did not show a significant long-term trend, some studies suggest the possibility of a shift towards more El Niño-like conditions, relating to a possible weakening of the Walker circulation due to increasing atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations (Vecchi et al., 2006; Power and Smith, 2007; Huang et al., 2013; DiNezio et al., 2013). However, it is also noted that considerable uncertainty exists in observed changes to the Walker circulation based on reanalyses (Compo et al., 2011)."
RandyRanderson 10y ago
As you likely know, if you have any insurance and have looked into your coverage in any depth, insurance covers a lot less than one expects. Also when an insured event happens typically the insurer will amend the policy (without changing the premiums, of course) to exclude that eventuality (also typically excluding your "neighbours" as well). Further insurers will typically require say homeowners in a flood-prone zone to take additional precautions periodically. So far example maintaining barrier walls, etc. Therefore insurance premiums or losses may be difficult to compare year to year. Certainly insurances companies have factored global warming into their models and are changing their rates accordingly. To not do so would be grounds for shareholder lawsuits I should think. There are as many climate deniers in insurance companies as there are atheists in foxholes. :>
pg314 10y ago
Insurance companies are taking climate change seriously, for sure. I found [1] after some quick googling. [1] http://evanmills.lbl.gov/pubs/pdf/climate-action-insurance.pdf http://evanmills.lbl.gov/pubs/pdf/climate-action-insurance.p...
fjarlq 10y ago
One indicator is the trend of increased tidal flooding on the US east coast over the past few decades: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/09/04/science/global-warming-increases-nuisance-flooding.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/09/04/science/globa...

averagewall 10y ago

What's wrong with migration? People do that anyway when they move out of their parent's house and into their own, often in another city. You describe storms becoming more frequent, which is something insurance companies will see a mile away and increase premiums or refuse to provide cover for. That will reduce the value of property in those areas and property buyers will go further inland instead. It sounds like some poor property investor might be left holding the bag if he doesn't sell his coastal city building in time. Instead of feeling sad for his loss, perhaps trust that he knows what he's doing and will sell it in time so the migration happens gradually and for incremental economic reasons rather than as a sudden emergency. Your energy argument doesn't add up. Increasing the thermal energy of everything in a system doesn't make it able to do more work (violent storms). Storms are driven by heat flowing from hot to cold. Not from hot to also-hot. If you show that temperature differences between parts of the ocean/atmosphere are going to become more extreme, then more severe storms would make sense. That could be caused by cold things getting colder or hot things getting hotter.

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
omginternets 10y ago
>What's wrong with migration? People do that anyway when they move out of their parent's house and into their own, often in another city This is hardly the kind of migration we're talking about. Come on... a bit of intellectual honesty goes a long way.
- tim333 10y ago
  There may be a bit of short distance migration if the sea rises. It's projected to rise a meter or two this century so people could build inland a bit, planning permission willing.
  - tripzilch 10y ago
    A 2m rise is going to cause way more than "maybe a bit of short distance migration". It's going going to be a lot worse, by an order of magnitude, than the current war refugee migrant crises currently in Europe, and will be happening globally at that.

tzs 10y ago

> Far before ppl are forced from the shores by rising waters they will be forced from the shores by massive, frequent, destructive storms that, instead of say destroying 1/1000 homes, will destroy 1/100. Eventually it will be economically non-viable to live in storm-prone zones. It's possible to build homes that are much more resistant to storms than current homes [1], although they cost more than the currently most popular designs. Wouldn't a shift to such homes keep it viable to live in those storm-prone zones? [1] http://www.deltechomes.com/learn-more/hurricane-resistance/ http://www.deltechomes.com/learn-more/hurricane-resistance/

dredmorbius 10y ago
Damage affects not just houses, but all structures: gardens, landscaping, freshwater and sewage lines, electrical and internet service, roads, etc. With time, you're also looking at massively increased erosion. It's hard to have a house if there's no land under it at all.
LeifCarrotson 10y ago
Not likely. Using the parent example that climate change causes the risk of destruction from a hurricane to increase from 0.1% to 1%, consider that 1000 homes of the old type for 100k each would cost $100 million. Replacing 10 of these costs 1 million - but let's be generous and assume that you need to do this every 6 years, and use a 30-year period for our analysis. That brings our total cost to $105 million. If all the new homes survive undamaged, you have to build 1000 hurricane-resistant homes for less than $105 million to make the project viable, an increase of 5%. Looking briefly at that page, none of those features look particularly cheap. You'd probably burn your $5000 on just finishing the underside of the floor joists to elevate the home on those pilings, to say nothing of their fancy shapes or high-spec materials.

FrozenVoid 10y ago

Actually, escalating death of plankton and growth of anoxic zones are more important: it will cause systemic collapse of marine food chain. Storm damage can be mitigated(e.g. netherlands) http://www.sciencealert.com/ocean-oxygen-levels-are-dropping-and-it-s-all-down-to-us http://www.sciencealert.com/ocean-oxygen-levels-are-dropping... https://phys.org/news/2017-02-black-sea-short-term-oxygen-loss.html https://phys.org/news/2017-02-black-sea-short-term-oxygen-lo... https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/jan/31/bay-bengal-depleted-fish-stocks-pollution-climate-change-migration https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/jan/31/bay-beng...

raverbashing 10y ago
Well, it's evolutionary pressure in action. Plankton will survive, and the ones who survive will have more food available Algae will probably avail of the increased CO2 concentrations as well.
- FrozenVoid 10y ago
  Evolution doesn't care if specific X species survives in its niche, but X species could be much more important than Y species. Extinction of keystone species(plankton X) will trigger dieoff down the food chain. Survivor species(plankton Y) which exploits extinction event environment don't have to contribute to the food chain: https://www.ecomagazine.com/news/science/indian-ocean-fish-die-off-linked-to-plankton-species https://www.ecomagazine.com/news/science/indian-ocean-fish-d...
- CreRecombinase 10y ago
  That's not how that works. CO2 is not a limiting reagent in photosynthesis.