Slashdot Mirror
NASA Scientists Paint Stark Picture of Accelerating Sea Level Rise
A NASA panel yesterday announced widely reported finding that global sea levels have risen about three inches since 1992, and that these levels are expected to keep rising as much as several more feet over the next century -- on the upper end of model-based predictions that have been made so far. From the Sydney Morning Herald piece linked above: NASA says Greenland has lost an average of 303 gigatons [of ice] yearly for the past decade. Since it takes 360 gigatons to raise sea level by a millimetre, that would suggest Greenland has done this about eight times over just in the last 10 years or so.
"People need to be prepared for sea level rise," said Joshua Willis, an oceanographer at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in La Cañada Flintridge. "It's not going to stop."
If this is actually a credible report, then the U.S. government needs to stop funding the rebuilding/construction of areas that are CURRENTLY under sea level like New Orleans and the dikes and berms around it. No more federal funds of any kind for regions currently under water!
Until basic common sense measures like these happen, then we can rightly conclude this is just another "climate change hysteria" study. If the government doesn't believe in their own studies, then it is wrong to use them to force actions on others.
Yeah, in about 100 years I *might* have to move my chair and beer cooler another foot up the beach.
*takes out a cup filled with ice* See! The ice melting doesn't raise the water. So obviously global warming is fake. May God smite those heathen nerds!
There are helluva lot of people who live very close to sea level.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
If this is actually a credible report, then the U.S. government needs to stop funding the rebuilding/construction of areas that are CURRENTLY under sea level like New Orleans and the dikes and berms around it. No more federal funds of any kind for regions currently under water!
By that logic we should just write off large swathes of the Netherlands. Dykes and berms work just fine, and we have the engineering means to keep portions of land we consider valuable dry even if the waters rise 10 or 20 feet. New Orleans would fit in this category in my opinion. It is a unique part of American heritage and a cultural gem (one of not-so-many the US possesses), well worth the investment of Federal dollars to keep around.
Not to mention that it is by far less expensive to retain land by shoring up or building new dykes, than it is to reclaim land already submerged. Not as cheap as ditching it of course, but in places where it is worthwhile (New York City, Hoboken, New Orleans, Holland, and various other places) it is much smarter to keep existing places dry than leave them to be inundated and then realize our mistake later and either lose them forever, or pay even more to reclaim them.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
That is just Greenland and does not cover Antarctica.
In fairness, you should mention that the sea level rises about 3mm a year, and has done so since at least 1650, which I think is when they first started measuring it. It hasn't been a major problem for the last 350 years, so I don't expect it will be a problem for the next 350. After all, we are much more advanced now.
Greenland alone is adding 0.8mm / year
If this is actually a credible report, then the U.S. government needs to stop funding the rebuilding/construction of areas that are CURRENTLY under sea level like New Orleans and the dikes and berms around it.
That turns out to be harder than you would think.
http://fivethirtyeight.com/fea...
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
Scientists dumb down data so science magazines can understand. Mainstream media further simplifies for the general population to understand. Even the summary states that this guestimation is based on a different guestimation of how many gigatons of ice have melted. If 360 gigatons of ice on land melt, it is estimated that it will raise the sea level by 1 mm. However, if the ice is already in the sea, it won't raise the sea level. The dumbed down story doesn't say how much of the missing ice was already in the ocean vs on the land, so we can't use numbers to say that sea level has risen 8mm over that decade.
The 303 gigaton number was for Greenland ice. Greenland ice is on land.
Since we are talking about NASA, why don't they measure the actual sea level instead of playing this numbers game?
They do. Read the linked articles. These are satellite measurements of sea level.
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/n...
http://www.nasa.gov/risingseas...
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
I can tell from the comments most of you don't live near the ocean. Down here in South Florida it's already making an impact. There are storm drains that flow water during high tide up and down the coast and boat docks underwater. Miami is worse. Hallendale Beach has five of their seven fresh water pumps closed because of salt water intrusion.
The real problem that no one is talking about is what happens when Miami gets nailed by a Cat 4 or 5 hurricane? We're going to have boats washing up on I-95. Do we spend the money to rebuild Miami just to have it flood 40 years later? Or when it gets nailed by another hurricane?
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
Sure. Or sooner if you are economically tied to businesses or people near the coast; or businesses or people not near the coast; or businesses or people not near the coast but dependant on others that are. That's the downside of living in a modern economy. I didn't hold any toxic mortgage backed financial instruments, but I sure felt the pain when the capital markets went tits up in 08.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
"None of the ice lost from Greenland is sea ice."
But if the sea level rises enough then Greenland will be underwater. Then the ice will have been going to be in the water, so it will be have been sea ice. So the sea level will be not have been going to rise!
.
This Space Intentionally Left Blank
Hi APK, how are you enjoying your 1-person-block-party with all your anonymous friends? Sorry, anonymous hypocritical friends. Man, you have quite the social life!
..Mullah or Pope, Preacher or Poet, who was it wrote: "Give any one species too much rope and they'll fuck it up"?
I think your brain is failing you again old fool - if you look carefully, you'll see it's actually yourself who is posting anonymously.
Now, as to your hypocrisy, I don't need to state anything, your idiot words are there for all to read and your blind stupidity at then denying your hypocrisy provides entertainment for all.
I do so love playing with low-IQ trolls like you because your type always twitches amusingly when poked with a stick.
Best of all, you're outraged that someone distracted you from your own stick-poking behaviour. Hypocrisy upon hypocrisy, you are just such rich comedy gold!
..Mullah or Pope, Preacher or Poet, who was it wrote: "Give any one species too much rope and they'll fuck it up"?
Maximum sea level rise for all ice and precipitation on earth being in liquid form on the ground at once is about 70m.
Because New Orleans and Miami are already mighty close to being drowned at high tide, and doing the logical and cheap thing (moving them to Detroit, which has perfectly fine water resources, is 500-600 feet above sea level, has plenty of space to build new housing, and no hurricane issues) is a political non-starter.
Moreover these estimates aren't really shrinking, so it's entirely possible that in 2115 mSparks43 III will read that comment and say "Geez, grandad sure was wrong about what would happen to Lady Liberty."
If you want to talk about paleo-climate, realise that the industrial revolution looks like an asteroid strike in the fossil record.
I will never understand why some people accept that "sea levels rose 125m in the last 10,000 years", but call BS when the same people tell them "AGW is a serious problem"? It seems to be related to the common religious behaviour where people pick and choose the bits they like, then labels the rest as BS?
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
New Orleans is already hopeless, the land is subsiding much faster than the ocean is rising. Even if the sea level remains unchanged, New Orleans will be as dry as Atlantis in a century.
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
One foot of sea level rise is not a loss of one foot of beach, unless the beach has a 45-degree angle. A few feet of sea level rise is going to displace many millions of people.
What a fool believes, he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.
Please don't engage him. He's not even amusing. I'll take a good tranny furry slashfic troll over host file shilling.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
"bit of land" = the displacement of hundreds of millions of people across the globe.
AKA your kids get to grow up in permanent refugee crisis world.
And you know what ? I am a fool to care about this, because I'll be dead before shit gets really real. Hope you leave your kids some money!
Linux, you magnificent bastard, I read the fucking manual!
There's only one thing to do: buy real estate in Greenland.
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
Oh, it will be noticed.
A one foot rise in sea level is going to create a lot more shallow water basins and tidal flat areas. All that increase in surface area is going to increase evaporation rates. That will result in an increase in atmospheric water vapor, which is one of the more potent greenhouse gases, which introduces a new positive feedback to global warming.
But in turn the increased atmospheric water vapor will, under some conditions, create an increase in clouds, which will lower the insolation of the land and ocean below them and tend to counter global warming. Since evaporation and cloud formation will be regional, there will be a stronger thermal differential between regions, which will make severe weather incidents more frequent and more intense.
People are going to be displaced by storm damage more than by the simple rise in sea level. If every year 3 to 5 port cities on the East Coast of the USA were hit by an incident on the level of Hurricane Katrina, what would that permanent stream of refugees look like? How could even the wealthiest nation keep up the infrastructure repairs needed to keep those cities functional?
No one knows how to model this, so there can be no scientific talk about it yet. All we can know is that somewhere along the way as the seas rise to 21 feet above their current level, these kinds of effects are going to occur. I think the flooding that will happen with a one foot rise will be enough to change the Earth's weather engine. I may be off by a few feet... or by a few inches. We'll have to wait and see.
Will
No, if you live 1,000 ft above current sea level you may need to be concerned when some of those 150 million people who live within 1 metre of current sea level move in next door to you.
Watch this Heartland Institute video
I think his point is that a lot of the alarmism seriously damages the ability for AGW proponents to reach people. Cities are quite fluid creatures, and as long as the seal level rise doesn't make specific sections of land uninhabitable overnight but rather in a 10-20 year period, we can plan for it and react timely. Of course, this doesn't account for problems like the severe weather you mentioned and a Katrina-level event, but we have completely different systems in place to deal with the more severe changes associated with them ("National Emergeny", aid injections, etc).
There's a lot of people who aren't deniers that anything is happening, but just don't see a reasonable solution available that would prevent the problems we anticipate happening. Our global society is simply too fragmented to apply and enforce a stop or reduction in CO2 PPM. So, we focus on damage prevention rather than problem prevention - what technical solutions can we come up with over the next 30 years that might make this problem, not a problem at all. Or, what problems are something we can adapt to on a normal time scale with our current setups. This latter category is one that I and many others think the "sea level rise" problem falls into, and feel that people terrified of New York City magically being underwater in 100 years drastically underestimates human ingenuity.
Since you bring up Katrina level event, I would like to have a list of cities built 5 feet below sea level so we can start talking about evacuating them.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
So, those few cities should be moved, but the vast majority of cities are not below sea level, so there is zero chance of a Katrina level event happening in the wide majority of the US. I have been to New Orleans, I have seen the levies, I have seen the 5 foot or so of water elevation there. I am still dumbfounded that people moved back into New Orleans, it WILL be flooded again, and there is nothing that the Army Core of Engineers can do to stop that. But trying to say that there will be 3-5 port cities that get flooded like that a year, that is not true and you know it. There would have to be 10-20 feet of sea level rise for that to be even possible, and as the increase is on the order of half an inch a year (a foot in 23 years), I don't think that we should have significant concern. It is something that needs to be planned for, but not a OMGOMGOMGOMG you are trying to make it sound like.
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
the problem with sea level rise that deniers miss (willfully ignore) isn't the (roughly) steady state level of the water (a threat, but a much more long term threat for all but the low lying island peoples).
The much more immediate short term problem is surge, both normal and storm. Particularly storm.
Some places have more surge than others and will experience rising sea levels more quickly.
So move everyone inland 20 miles... or 50...
This isn't rocket science...
Let me turn this around... ask yourself why New Orleans was reopened and rebuilt and why not one mile of the city was closed off to homes?