4 ms·

The IPCC high estimate of sea level rise by 2100 is about 0.6m over 80 years. It's not good, but it's hardly a catastrophe. I take predictions like this about

The IPCC high estimate of sea level rise by 2100 is about 0.6m over 80 years. It's not good, but it's hardly a catastrophe. I take predictions like this about as seriously as the narrative that global warming is a hoax. https://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/unfccc/cop19/3_gregory13sbsta.pdf https://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/unfccc/cop19/3_gregory13sbsta.pdf

SlowRobotAhead 8y ago
> I take predictions like this about as seriously as the narrative that global warming is a hoax. Totally reasonable, and rare to see people not jumping up and down with literal "The sky is falling! Implement this tax plan now!".
tobltobs 8y ago
> It is virtually certain that global mean sea level rise will continue for many centuries beyond 2100, with the amount of rise dependent on future emission. There is a German saying for your kind of approach: "Nach mir die Sintflut", means "After me the deluge".
- anothergoogler 8y ago
  Louis XV if I recall (French).
- perilunar 8y ago
  "Après moi le déluge" (After me, the flood) is also the motto of 617 Squadron RAF, famous for Operation Chastise (the Dambusters raid) during WWII.
glbrew 8y ago
IPCC estimates are always highly conservative and often do not account for positive feedback mechanisms. I believe the most recent report accounted for 0 feedback. The sea level is not constant around the world. An average increase of .6m would likely be about 1m in the Northeast including Boston, NYC, and DC and only about .3m on the pacific coast. Edit: And the .6m (if that is correct) is just the baseline. Even if that is the level 364 days a year, one storm surge on one day with all that additional volume can put the entire city out of business.
zzzzzzzza 8y ago
sea level is not the only thing to worry about. http://science.sciencemag.org/content/317/5835/233 http://science.sciencemag.org/content/317/5835/233
CapitalistCartr 8y ago
I live in Florida. Sixty cm would be a catastrophe here. A multi-trillion dollar one. Storm surges flood the streets every rainy season now. Raising that by a couple feet would require what we currently think of as impossible measures to fix.
Gravityloss 8y ago
AFAIK the IPCC report doesn't include nonlinear ice dynamics. Can't find a source right now. I recommend Eric Rignot's presentations. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u3ivlofypzE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u3ivlofypzE IPCC is conservative.
olliej 8y ago
I’m not sure you actually understand what a 2ft rise means. Ignore all feedback mechanism (various other commenters have said things about the conservatism of ipcc) let’s look at it basically: 1. Go to a beach at high tide. Look at where the water is and add two feet. For sandy beaches that probably gets you through the dunes. 2. Look at the beaches at low tide. How much further out is it? Measure the distance between low and high tide points and see how far inland you get to see where the ocean gets to. 3. Go to marshlands - add 2ft to low tide and see if they’re still marshlands or if they converted to shallow ocean. Similarly check high tide, what surrounding land would be submerged if you added 2 feet of water. 4. Consider places near the coast that are lower than the high point of the beach. Now “spring tides” could get over that point and essentially turn that land into a swamp. Finally of course, consider what happens if/when the ocean reaches farm land. The reason “salting the earth” is a phrase is because high salt content (as you might get from even short term flooding) kills most plants unless they’ve specifically evolved for high salt concentrations. Most grains for instance have not. This of course ignores special cases like the Netherlands, Venice, etc that are already having to engineer solutions to a few inches of sea level increases.
- burfog 8y ago
  None of this stuff is in permanent locations. 1. There will be new dunes, again above where the water reaches. 2. The beach will be the same size. 3. There will be marshlands. They will be in new locations. We might even get more. 4. Yep, lose some swamp and gain other swamp. It all moves. We can get more than a 2ft rise just from drawing out groundwater, causing the land to sink. We can get way more with an earthquake, going either direction. The land goes up (and the water relatively goes down) if the weight of a glacier is removed.
- travisoneill1 8y ago
  I understand what sea level rise means. Pieces of cities and maybe a few whole cities will need to be torn down and rebuilt elsewhere. Building cities on a century timescale is not difficult. (How many of the vulnerable houses are more than 80 years old now?) Building new farms is trivial. A 2ft rise is catastrophic if it happens in a day but not if it happens over 80 years. The IPCC report shows about a 1ft rise from 1900-2000 which no one seemed to notice (other than the engineers whose job it is to deal with). I would expect a 2ft rise this century to be about twice as bad, so not that bad. The Netherlands is proof that this type of thing can be handled with time and engineering.
arctangos 8y ago
.6 m is quite devastating, but less so for US housing than for food security. Some of the world's producers of food are almost at sea level. If you'd like a hard nosed data and finance driven look at what global warming means, I'd recommend taking a look at this https://fi.intms.nl/fi_43a1c02c/files/downloads/201808-jeremy-grantham---the-race-of-our-lives-revisited.pdf https://fi.intms.nl/fi_43a1c02c/files/downloads/201808-jerem...

SlowRobotAhead 8y ago

> I take predictions like this about as seriously as the narrative that global warming is a hoax. Totally reasonable, and rare to see people not jumping up and down with literal "The sky is falling! Implement this tax plan now!".

tobltobs 8y ago

> It is virtually certain that global mean sea level rise will continue for many centuries beyond 2100, with the amount of rise dependent on future emission. There is a German saying for your kind of approach: "Nach mir die Sintflut", means "After me the deluge".

anothergoogler 8y ago
Louis XV if I recall (French).
perilunar 8y ago
"Après moi le déluge" (After me, the flood) is also the motto of 617 Squadron RAF, famous for Operation Chastise (the Dambusters raid) during WWII.

glbrew 8y ago

IPCC estimates are always highly conservative and often do not account for positive feedback mechanisms. I believe the most recent report accounted for 0 feedback. The sea level is not constant around the world. An average increase of .6m would likely be about 1m in the Northeast including Boston, NYC, and DC and only about .3m on the pacific coast. Edit: And the .6m (if that is correct) is just the baseline. Even if that is the level 364 days a year, one storm surge on one day with all that additional volume can put the entire city out of business.

zzzzzzzza 8y ago

sea level is not the only thing to worry about. http://science.sciencemag.org/content/317/5835/233 http://science.sciencemag.org/content/317/5835/233

CapitalistCartr 8y ago

I live in Florida. Sixty cm would be a catastrophe here. A multi-trillion dollar one. Storm surges flood the streets every rainy season now. Raising that by a couple feet would require what we currently think of as impossible measures to fix.

Gravityloss 8y ago

AFAIK the IPCC report doesn't include nonlinear ice dynamics. Can't find a source right now. I recommend Eric Rignot's presentations. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u3ivlofypzE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u3ivlofypzE IPCC is conservative.

olliej 8y ago

I’m not sure you actually understand what a 2ft rise means. Ignore all feedback mechanism (various other commenters have said things about the conservatism of ipcc) let’s look at it basically: 1. Go to a beach at high tide. Look at where the water is and add two feet. For sandy beaches that probably gets you through the dunes. 2. Look at the beaches at low tide. How much further out is it? Measure the distance between low and high tide points and see how far inland you get to see where the ocean gets to. 3. Go to marshlands - add 2ft to low tide and see if they’re still marshlands or if they converted to shallow ocean. Similarly check high tide, what surrounding land would be submerged if you added 2 feet of water. 4. Consider places near the coast that are lower than the high point of the beach. Now “spring tides” could get over that point and essentially turn that land into a swamp. Finally of course, consider what happens if/when the ocean reaches farm land. The reason “salting the earth” is a phrase is because high salt content (as you might get from even short term flooding) kills most plants unless they’ve specifically evolved for high salt concentrations. Most grains for instance have not. This of course ignores special cases like the Netherlands, Venice, etc that are already having to engineer solutions to a few inches of sea level increases.

burfog 8y ago
None of this stuff is in permanent locations. 1. There will be new dunes, again above where the water reaches. 2. The beach will be the same size. 3. There will be marshlands. They will be in new locations. We might even get more. 4. Yep, lose some swamp and gain other swamp. It all moves. We can get more than a 2ft rise just from drawing out groundwater, causing the land to sink. We can get way more with an earthquake, going either direction. The land goes up (and the water relatively goes down) if the weight of a glacier is removed.
travisoneill1 8y ago
I understand what sea level rise means. Pieces of cities and maybe a few whole cities will need to be torn down and rebuilt elsewhere. Building cities on a century timescale is not difficult. (How many of the vulnerable houses are more than 80 years old now?) Building new farms is trivial. A 2ft rise is catastrophic if it happens in a day but not if it happens over 80 years. The IPCC report shows about a 1ft rise from 1900-2000 which no one seemed to notice (other than the engineers whose job it is to deal with). I would expect a 2ft rise this century to be about twice as bad, so not that bad. The Netherlands is proof that this type of thing can be handled with time and engineering.

arctangos 8y ago

.6 m is quite devastating, but less so for US housing than for food security. Some of the world's producers of food are almost at sea level. If you'd like a hard nosed data and finance driven look at what global warming means, I'd recommend taking a look at this https://fi.intms.nl/fi_43a1c02c/files/downloads/201808-jeremy-grantham---the-race-of-our-lives-revisited.pdf https://fi.intms.nl/fi_43a1c02c/files/downloads/201808-jerem...