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Because for starters a huge portion of the world's population lives on the coast so rising sea levels will wipe out a lot of cities. Secondly the entire human c
by rtkwe 6y ago
Because for starters a huge portion of the world's population lives on the coast so rising sea levels will wipe out a lot of cities. Secondly the entire human civilization has lived in the warming period coming out of the last ice age, we've never lived in that hot weather. Climate change isn't an end all life on Earth but it will drastically change how humans live on Earth.
- dodobirdlord 6y agoRising sea levels will wipe out a few cities here and there that are exceptionally low-lying and built over permeable rock like limestone that allows the rising sea to infiltrate the water table. By and large cities will build dikes, as the Dutch have been doing for centuries.
- rtkwe 6y agoWhere do you build a dike in NYC where everything is built up to the waterfront?
- dodobirdlord 6y agoWell, first of all, sacrificing the outermost 10-20m of development to build a dike along the shore is a trivial expense compared to abandoning the city or dealing with regular flooding. But more likely the dikes will be built over the first 10-20m of what is currently the sea to avoid demolishing buildings built up against the water. That, or existing barriers will simply be raised. Whenever buildings are built directly against the sea they already require some sort of barrier to cover the difference between high and low tides and to deal with storm surge.
- rufus_foreman 6y agoYou make a new waterfront, the same way NYC has already done. You can look at the map at https://www.thirteen.org/dutchny/interactives/interactive-map-manhattan-in-1609/ https://www.thirteen.org/dutchny/interactives/interactive-ma... to see how much land was added. Most of lower Manhattan is built on what was ocean in 1609. It's an engineering problem, and NYC can afford to solve it.