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Who's talking about 200 ft rises in sea level? There will be devastating consequences to coastal communities and low lying islands with a sea level rise of less

Who's talking about 200 ft rises in sea level? There will be devastating consequences to coastal communities and low lying islands with a sea level rise of less than two feet http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/03/090315155112.htm http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/03/090315155112.ht...

ChuckMcM 15y ago
If you look at the post in this thread I was responding too it had this text, "He also doesn't note that, if we end up with "sea levels hundreds of feet higher and in general, GREEN from pole to pole" that a significant number of the world's cities would need to be moved or surrounded by monumental dikes because of the ~200' rise in sea level that would accompany the melting of the Antarctic and Greenland ice shelves." I saw the '~200'' to mean 'on the order of 200 feet'. I've also heard the 200' number mentioned elsewhere [1][2] and it is complete fiction, there isn't enough water on the planet locked up in ice to raise the oceans 200', if there was we could see it by the way it protruded out of the atmosphere. And sure if Manhattan flooded and we lost most or all of NY City that would be a huge hit to the country, and if we lost all of Bangledesh (estimates of 3M people living at 3' sea level) that would put a huge crimp on the rest of the India to absorb all those refuges and compensate for the lost arable land. Epic human tragedy. My contribution here is simply a mathematical analysis of the more absurd numbers people use because humans have a hard time internalizing very large numbers (like 200 billion square miles of ocean surface). [1] "What is very clear, however, is the importance of Antarctica's huge ice sheets remaining stable. The West Antarctic ice sheet is thought to be potentially unstable, and if it collapsed sea levels around the world would rise almost 20 feet. The melting of the larger and more stable East Antarctic ice sheet would raise Earth's sea levels another 200 feet." - http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2002/03/020329072043.htm http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2002/03/020329072043.ht... [2] " If all of the Antarctic ice melted, sea levels around the world would rise about 61 meters (200 feet). But the average temperature in Antarctica is -37°C, so the ice there is in no danger of melting. In fact in most parts of the continent it never gets above freezing." - http://science.howstuffworks.com/environmental/earth/geophysics/question473.htm http://science.howstuffworks.com/environmental/earth/geophys...
ChuckMcM 15y ago
The math is taking over, in researching sources for my reply I've come across a number of places where it is asserted that 90% of the ice in the world is either in Antarctica or Greenland, together they represent 6M mi^2 of land mass, the ratio of that land area to the surface of the ocean is: 6000000/200000000000 = .00003 That means that for every foot of ice melted from these two areas combined, you could expect an average sea level rise of .00003 feet (or 360 millionths of an inch). So lets say you melted 10,000' of ice off that combined land mass, that would be, wait for it, an average rise of 3.6". They are just numbers, but they put things in perspective.
SomeCallMeTim 15y ago
In case you miss it, here are the (corrected) numbers that indicate 200ft is reasonable: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3432520 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3432520

ChuckMcM 15y ago

If you look at the post in this thread I was responding too it had this text, "He also doesn't note that, if we end up with "sea levels hundreds of feet higher and in general, GREEN from pole to pole" that a significant number of the world's cities would need to be moved or surrounded by monumental dikes because of the ~200' rise in sea level that would accompany the melting of the Antarctic and Greenland ice shelves." I saw the '~200'' to mean 'on the order of 200 feet'. I've also heard the 200' number mentioned elsewhere [1][2] and it is complete fiction, there isn't enough water on the planet locked up in ice to raise the oceans 200', if there was we could see it by the way it protruded out of the atmosphere. And sure if Manhattan flooded and we lost most or all of NY City that would be a huge hit to the country, and if we lost all of Bangledesh (estimates of 3M people living at 3' sea level) that would put a huge crimp on the rest of the India to absorb all those refuges and compensate for the lost arable land. Epic human tragedy. My contribution here is simply a mathematical analysis of the more absurd numbers people use because humans have a hard time internalizing very large numbers (like 200 billion square miles of ocean surface). [1] "What is very clear, however, is the importance of Antarctica's huge ice sheets remaining stable. The West Antarctic ice sheet is thought to be potentially unstable, and if it collapsed sea levels around the world would rise almost 20 feet. The melting of the larger and more stable East Antarctic ice sheet would raise Earth's sea levels another 200 feet." - http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2002/03/020329072043.htm http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2002/03/020329072043.ht... [2] " If all of the Antarctic ice melted, sea levels around the world would rise about 61 meters (200 feet). But the average temperature in Antarctica is -37°C, so the ice there is in no danger of melting. In fact in most parts of the continent it never gets above freezing." - http://science.howstuffworks.com/environmental/earth/geophysics/question473.htm http://science.howstuffworks.com/environmental/earth/geophys...

ChuckMcM 15y ago

The math is taking over, in researching sources for my reply I've come across a number of places where it is asserted that 90% of the ice in the world is either in Antarctica or Greenland, together they represent 6M mi^2 of land mass, the ratio of that land area to the surface of the ocean is: 6000000/200000000000 = .00003 That means that for every foot of ice melted from these two areas combined, you could expect an average sea level rise of .00003 feet (or 360 millionths of an inch). So lets say you melted 10,000' of ice off that combined land mass, that would be, wait for it, an average rise of 3.6". They are just numbers, but they put things in perspective.

SomeCallMeTim 15y ago

In case you miss it, here are the (corrected) numbers that indicate 200ft is reasonable: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3432520 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3432520