5 ms·

What's wrong with losing coastline? There's no shortage of land in America or the world in general.

ehnto 10y ago
Entire cities will have to be moved as even a few meters of rise can flood an entire region. It is not as if we just lose a bit of beach, if sea levels rise then everything at the new level that can be sought by water through rivers or otherwise will be under water. Not Atlantis style, but no longer habitable by cities as we currently build them. What's more, the coastline going missing is but one symptom. Weather patterns are set to get more erratic and extreme which will cause significant damage and loss of life continuously for the forseeable future. As we are being reactive rather than proactive in this matter, it will likely take significant disasters before anyone begins to make the changes even once weather begins to worsen and cities begin to sink.
- richardwhiuk 10y ago
  More so, cities are disproportionately built near the coast line as water access is very valuable for trade and commerce, so relatively little land needs to be lost for a large amount of city real estate to be lost.
- kgwgk 10y ago
  A few meters of rise will take a few centuries to materialise.
  - ehnto 10y ago
    It is still our problem to solve, a few centuries is just a handful of generations.
- averagewall 10y ago
  That's a very vague prediction. It might not be worth doing anything at all, other than planning where to move cities to gradually as the need requires. If we pull out all the stops to prevent it now, we might have wasted our resources - spending more than we saved by preventing it. Almost every building that exists today was build in the past 100 years. We can surely keep up some of that work in the next 100 years. Are there any more concrete numbers about how much destruction is expected from global warming? It's not infinite and it must be less than some amount of money.
- nickik 10y ago
  Climate change takes quite a long time. In that time there is tons of time to react to changing coastline. Normal market and political effect will move people or build defences again nature. Its not like the people in the netherlands are poor because the land is below sea level. The argument about eratic weather is not very good. I have heard multible storm experts say that they can really not model the overall changes. There might be more and bigger storms in one area but less in another. I really think that if anybody is pretending he can predict storm frequence in 50 years is just confirming their bias.
  - jellicle 10y ago
    > Climate change takes quite a long time It really doesn't, when you have 7 billion people working hard to make the climate change as quickly as they can, and unfortunately we've already spent half a century knowing about the problem and doing nothing. The whole point is that we've changed major climatic change from a geological time frame to a human-scale time frame. You'll see major upheaval as a result of climate change in your lifetime, and your children will see much worse. The storm predictions, incidentally, are quite safe - no chance of them being wrong. Higher sea surface temperatures will absolutely lead to more frequent and violent storms; there's no chance at all of that not happening.
    - nickik 10y ago
      Its strange to say that we 'did nothing'. We did a hole lot, the replacement of coal in many places in favor of nuclear, gas, solar wind is decently something. It was mostly not done because of global warming, but it still happened. One to two generations is a long time. I have listen to interviews with storm experts and it seems that they are not quite so sure about is then you. That said, it seems that compared to the world economy and what some people suggest, the damage from storms seems quite low.
_jal 10y ago
What's wrong with smashing up other people's cars? We've got those all over!
- averagewall 10y ago
  People who buy low-lying land on the coast already know the risk and price that into their purchase. We don't need to protect them - they've already done it themselves.
exclusiv 10y ago
Because everyone is entitled when it comes to housing. When people become obese we say that's not healthy, we should change that. When people knowingly live in disaster zones we say "but they grew up there".

ehnto 10y ago

Entire cities will have to be moved as even a few meters of rise can flood an entire region. It is not as if we just lose a bit of beach, if sea levels rise then everything at the new level that can be sought by water through rivers or otherwise will be under water. Not Atlantis style, but no longer habitable by cities as we currently build them. What's more, the coastline going missing is but one symptom. Weather patterns are set to get more erratic and extreme which will cause significant damage and loss of life continuously for the forseeable future. As we are being reactive rather than proactive in this matter, it will likely take significant disasters before anyone begins to make the changes even once weather begins to worsen and cities begin to sink.

richardwhiuk 10y ago
More so, cities are disproportionately built near the coast line as water access is very valuable for trade and commerce, so relatively little land needs to be lost for a large amount of city real estate to be lost.
kgwgk 10y ago
A few meters of rise will take a few centuries to materialise.
- ehnto 10y ago
  It is still our problem to solve, a few centuries is just a handful of generations.
averagewall 10y ago
That's a very vague prediction. It might not be worth doing anything at all, other than planning where to move cities to gradually as the need requires. If we pull out all the stops to prevent it now, we might have wasted our resources - spending more than we saved by preventing it. Almost every building that exists today was build in the past 100 years. We can surely keep up some of that work in the next 100 years. Are there any more concrete numbers about how much destruction is expected from global warming? It's not infinite and it must be less than some amount of money.
nickik 10y ago
Climate change takes quite a long time. In that time there is tons of time to react to changing coastline. Normal market and political effect will move people or build defences again nature. Its not like the people in the netherlands are poor because the land is below sea level. The argument about eratic weather is not very good. I have heard multible storm experts say that they can really not model the overall changes. There might be more and bigger storms in one area but less in another. I really think that if anybody is pretending he can predict storm frequence in 50 years is just confirming their bias.
- jellicle 10y ago
  > Climate change takes quite a long time It really doesn't, when you have 7 billion people working hard to make the climate change as quickly as they can, and unfortunately we've already spent half a century knowing about the problem and doing nothing. The whole point is that we've changed major climatic change from a geological time frame to a human-scale time frame. You'll see major upheaval as a result of climate change in your lifetime, and your children will see much worse. The storm predictions, incidentally, are quite safe - no chance of them being wrong. Higher sea surface temperatures will absolutely lead to more frequent and violent storms; there's no chance at all of that not happening.
  - nickik 10y ago
    Its strange to say that we 'did nothing'. We did a hole lot, the replacement of coal in many places in favor of nuclear, gas, solar wind is decently something. It was mostly not done because of global warming, but it still happened. One to two generations is a long time. I have listen to interviews with storm experts and it seems that they are not quite so sure about is then you. That said, it seems that compared to the world economy and what some people suggest, the damage from storms seems quite low.

_jal 10y ago

What's wrong with smashing up other people's cars? We've got those all over!

averagewall 10y ago
People who buy low-lying land on the coast already know the risk and price that into their purchase. We don't need to protect them - they've already done it themselves.

exclusiv 10y ago

Because everyone is entitled when it comes to housing. When people become obese we say that's not healthy, we should change that. When people knowingly live in disaster zones we say "but they grew up there".