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The Dutch have been living below sea level for centuries. It’s not the end of the world and ultimately dikes cost a lot less than losing significant land area a
by dodobirdlord 6y ago
The Dutch have been living below sea level for centuries. It’s not the end of the world and ultimately dikes cost a lot less than losing significant land area and moving massive population centers. A few places like Florida that are awkwardly situated above porous rock like limestone and have little elevation above sea level even well inland are kinda screwed, but for the most part sea level rise is an expensive but entirely solvable problem.
- polytely 6y agoIt took a huge flood to mobilize the political will to spend a fuckton of money on flood prevention.* I feel like the problem with climate change is that by the time the effects get so bad that everyone will be on board to actually put a significant amount of resources into prevention and mitigation, it will be too late to do anything, because there is a time lag between ceasing emissions and the climate stabilizing. Additionally, all the greenhouse gasses you have already emitted are still in the atmosphere so just stopping emissions will only stop the heating up (if we are lucky) and not automatically result in the climate returning to "normal". *: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Sea_flood_of_1953 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Sea_flood_of_1953
- dodobirdlord 6y agoBuilding flood barriers is a lot cheaper and a lot easier to throw money at than reducing emissions. Barriers can also be constructed on a local or regional level, whereas emission reduction requires achieving an intractable global consensus. It doesn’t follow that the same dysfunctions that have prevented emission reduction will prevent the construction of flood barriers.
- peterashford 6y agoPutting up barriers won't stop the water rising. And the vast majority of small island nations won't be able to afford to wall off their entire landmass
- dodobirdlord 6y agoAs mentioned above, places with porous geology that have low elevation even well inland are not salvageable. And the vast majority of small island nations don’t contain very many people. It seems like the goalposts are being moved here from “sea level rise is an existential threat to human civilization” to “sea level rise will disrupt the way of life of some people”.
- rocgf 6y agoI see this argument all the time and it feels like I must be missing something. There is no way people actually believe the whole world can go Dutch, right? I hope this doesn't come across as overly-aggressive, but it seems to me like you don't really understand much about how the Dutch lived below sea levels for centuries. Yes, over many centuries, they have built all sorts of contraptions in order to gain more land from the sea or lakes. But this is expensive, takes up a vast amount of skill and planning and is only feasible in certain terrain. The Netherlands is also a small and very rich country. To believe that the whole world can do this is complete insanity.
- dodobirdlord 6y agoThe whole world doesn’t need to. A sea level rise of 2m doesn’t matter for most of the world, or even for most coastal regions. And of the coastal regions that will be impacted most can be sacrificed with limited disruption. For the much more limited areas of the world that are coastal, have low elevation even well inland, and are densely populated or otherwise economically valuable, flood control is totally realistic (with the exception of some places like Florida that are screwed by the underlying geology).
- peterashford 6y agoA massive amount of humanity lives on or near the coast. In the US, 40% of the population is coastal. The cost of walling off the entire coast would be astronomical.
- dodobirdlord 6y agoI think you didn’t read the comment you responded to.