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Rising Seas Set To Double Coastal Flooding By 2050, Says Study (phys.org)
Coastal flooding is about to get dramatically more frequent around the world as sea levels rise from global warming, researchers said Thursday. Phys.Org reports, "A 10-to-20 centimeter (four-to-eight inch) jump in the global ocean watermark by 2050 -- a conservative forecast -- would double flood risk in high-latitude regions, they reports in the journal Scientific Reports." From the report: Major cities along the North American seaboard such as Vancouver, Seattle, San Francisco and Los Angeles, along with the European Atlantic coast, would be highly exposed, they found. But it would only take half as big a jump in ocean levels to double the number of serious flooding incidents in the tropics, including along highly populated river deltas in Asia and Africa. Even at the low end of this sea rise spectrum, Mumbai, Kochi and Abidjan and many other cities would be significantly affected. To make up for the lack of observational data, Vitousek and his colleagues used computer modeling and a statistical method called extreme value theory. "We asked the question: with waves factored in, how much sea level rise will it take to double the frequency of flooding?" Sea levels are currently rising by three to four millimeters (0.10 to 0.15 inches) a year, but the pace has picked up by about 30 percent over the last decade. It could accelerate even more as continent-sized ice blocs near the poles continue to shed mass, especially in Antarctica, which Vitousek described as the sea level "wild card." If oceans go up 25 centimeters by mid-century, "flood levels that occur every 50 years in the tropics would be happening every year or more," he said.
Interesting I was just talking to my wife about how with the rise of the ocean you could/would have to turn Manhattan into a new Venice, and with our apartment being on the 10th floor, we may be sitting on some water-level real estate. The worst part is it's only half a joke and a real future issue to deal with, just look at what happened with the subways during the last major storm, it doesn't take much of a rise to sink the city.
Why not just come straight out and say chinese/hippy conspiracy? Why bother with the pretense?
Your current leader thinks it's fiction (along with most of slashdot of course), so that should be a great comfort to you. Nothing bad will happen.
BTW, what 'crop' of apocalypses?
I do not want your cheap brainburning drugs. They are useless for work. And I am a working man today.
Actually, rising sea levels are no conspiracy but a fact. Given that the current sea levels are quite low over history of earth and that we're still coming out of an ice-age, rising sea levels are to expected. For one if it gets warmer, water expands and then all the ice melting in Antarctica, Greenland, Alaska (but not in the Arctic, because that ice already floats) need to go somewhere.
Can we do anything about it? Not really, except moving further inland or building dykes like the Dutch do.
Is that a reason to create panic just to make money with the fear of yet another apocalypse? I find that disgusting.
Ride a bicycle. Eat less meat. Turn your thermostat up in the summer and down in the winter.
Although climate change (specifically global warming) is happening (unless you deny the laws of chemistry and physics), it's probably too late to realistically do anything about it. The real problem isn't the warming, it's the positive feedback -- warmer air holds more water vapor which is also a greenhouse gas, warmer temperatures melt the polar ice packs exposing darker ground/water, warmer temperatures unfreeze once frozen swampland which releases methane (and more powerful greenhouse gas than CO2), etc. All these effects feed back into the system pushing the equilibrium temperature of our planet that much higher.
Just like starting a boulder rolling down a hill, the longer you wait to try to stop it, the more momentum it will build up, the harder it will be to stop it. Even if we magically eliminated all the CO2 emissions from industry, transportation, and the like tomorrow, we still have to deal with the existing CO2 in the system to have any hope of even slowing down the current warming.
Add to all of the above that the CO2 currently in the system is so diffused (roughly 400 parts per million) that I don't know of any human technology that could possibly make a dent in the CO2 concentrations on a global atmospheric scale. So not only are we unable to retard the flow of CO2 into the system, we are technically unable to do anything significant with the CO2 that is already in the system.
At this point, the boulder has been rolling down the hill long enough that it isn't possible to stop it; so, the only thing to do is give up and console ourselves with the notion that by the time the really catastrophic things come to pass most of us will be dead and buried and unaffected by the results anyway ;)
I'm sure that millenials will be able to work it out -- lol.
That's not actually how the terminology works. The ice-age is the last 2.6 million years, due to the continental topography causing less mixing of tropical and polar waters. Within the Ice Age there are glacial and interglacial periods - relative amounts of freezing and thawing. We're in the middle of an interglacial that began 11000 years ago. but previous patterns covering 10000's of years aren't much good for predicting how climate is going to be impacted in the near future. Our particulated emissions exceed prehistoric incidents such as supervolcanoes that had noticeable climate effects.
Why do you think calling a congressman would change anything in any way?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Why would I? I sit here about 1000m above sea level, all I'm asking for is to be allowed to hunt those for fun that try to escape the flood.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
thats also because of the threat, things were done to mitigate it, i.e. improved techniques, grow more higher yield crops hence GM plus loads of other improvements like greenhousing. Its good that it didn't come to pass but if nothing was done then maybe it would be a lot different result, personally i rather see things done and predictions fail. A bit like dumping fossil fuels and using renewable energy will, at minimum, improve the lives and health of people in cities and towns around the world and those living near fossil fuel generators
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
Why not just come straight out and say chinese/hippy conspiracy? Why bother with the pretense?
I am sorry, he is citing predictions that didn't happen. What do you call a theory that makes wrong predictions ?
What do you call someone who pushes theories that don't make accurate predictions ?
And with regard to your own attitude what do you call someone who is no longer looking at what is actually happening, and just shouting down anyone that disagrees with them ?
I get that it makes sense to be "concerned", but common sense provides that no panicking is required.
I'm glad we agree on this. The panicking so far hasn't been from the scientists, who have simply been pointing out that there are problems coming up and that we'd better look at them, especially since we can address them. Most of the furore has come from sensationalist media and different interest groups on both sides; those that want us to abandon all modern industry in the name of nostalgic (but misguided) environmentalism, and those that only care for their own, short term interests and don't give hoot for what happens to others. Such as the fossil fuel industry - they know perfectly well that it would benefit the world both environmentally and economically, if we seriously developed renewable energy, and it would even benefit the energy producers themselves in the long term; but they don't want that - it would cost investments up front, and they wouldn't see the profits from that for maybe decades. That's where all the panic and yelling comes from, not from the climate scientists.
However, at the end of all this, we DO have a problem, it is likely to become serious, even if to a lay-person a few millimeters or 5 degrees doesn't sound like much. And fortunately we can do something about it - a lot, in fact. But it is like all other 'repairs': at first you notice a mouldy spot on the wall paper in a corner, and you know that there is a small leak in the roof. If you fix it now, it will cost you a bit of sweat, standing on a ladder, maybe you have to spend a bit of money. Or you can wait until the whole roof is sagging, and you have to replace large parts of the structural timber and redecorate most of the house; and you will have call in a team of builders, you may have to move out for a couple of months and it will costs very serious money. I can't see why the choice is hard to make.
You mean like when ABC predicted, in 2008, that New York City would be underwater in 2015 ?? Or that a carton of milk would be US$12.99, and a gallon of gas over US$9.00 ??
"Here's Michael Mann's (The Hockey Stick guy) prediction that the West Side Highway would be under water by now"
The (demented) Hockey Stick is indeed Mann's. The Westside Highway prediction was James Hansen in 1988 and he still has a decade to go before it is shown to be false. I'm guessing that Hansen is probably beginning to think he may have gotten that one more than a bit wrong.
You can't see ANYTHING from a car, You've got to get out of the goddamned contraption and walk...Edward Abbey
Your current leader thinks it's fiction (along with most of slashdot of course), so that should be a great comfort to you. Nothing bad will happen
Not so fast. His Orangeness most certainly does believe in climate change. It's the very reason he cited in his application to build a sea wall for an Irish golf course. Specifically:
"If the predictions of an increase in sea level rise as a result of global warming prove correct, however, it is likely that there will be a corresponding increase in coastal erosion rates not just in Doughmore Bay but around much of the coastline of Ireland. In our view, it could reasonably be expected that the rate of sea level rise might become twice of that presently occurring. ... As a result, we would expect the rate of dune recession to increase."
Even more interesting is they used an Irish government's study about the effects of erosion through 2050, then said that study failed to take into account the effects of climate change. Which is why he petitioned to build the sea wall. Because of the effects of climate change.
a few inches of sea level rise in the next 50 years clearly isn't going to do all that much additional harm.
There are people in Miami (and other Florida coastal cities), who beg to differ. And I'm not talking boo-hoo poor little rich people losing some of their exclusive ocean view. Low-lying lower-class neighborhoods are already suffering and city officials are having to deal with the thorny issue of raising funds to buy them out. Another unexpected consequence is that clearances on bridges are being shortened, and boating brings in a lot of money in Florida.
Jacksonville has an upscale neighborhood that also serves as a major traffic connector to downtown. Several years back they had to put pumps in the streets because when the Autumn deluges begin and the Spring High Tide coincides, the St Johns River flows backwards up the storm drains. It has not only caused considerable distress to local merchants, the streets became impassible (to say nothing of the road damage).
Personally, I'm just waiting for the first incursions on Mar-A-Lago. I expect Trump to change his position on climate really fast once that happens. And I'm sure that more than one of the Trump Towers around the world is fairly close to sea level.
Look at depth charts of the Florida Keys and you'll notice that a 1-foot fluctuation in sea level would greatly increase or decrease the land area down there. Whole islands would appear or disappear.
Also it should not noted that not all consequences of rising seas roll in from the coast lines. Florida is largely porous limestone rock. It gets its water from aquifers in that rock, and sea water can and does intrude into that rock. Orlando, which is one of the most land-locked cities in the entire state has been fighting for decades with Brevard County for water resources and the last thing they want is for any of that water to turn brinier. Tampa Bay has already seen shortages because they pipe in water from inland sources but have seen pipe failures. And the less said about the fragile state of fresh water in the upscale areas of Fort Myers and Venice, the better.
Nah, he'll probably just find someone else to blame.
Or, given his age, undoubtedly high blood pressure, and obesity, he may well be dead before his monuments to opulent gaudiness are flooded.
Why not just come straight out and say chinese/hippy conspiracy? Why bother with the pretense?
I am sorry, he is citing predictions that didn't happen. What do you call a theory that makes wrong predictions ?
I call people who misapply scientific terminology idiots. There were no scientifically valid theories predicting the end of the world. Oh I'm sure you'll find a lot of hyperbolic articles and other nonsense, but there isn't a single peer reviewed paper from the 70's, 80's, or 90's making any claims of an apocalypse (other than the obvious ones, like asteroid impacts, the sun going red giant in a few billion years, etc.).
What do you call someone who pushes theories that don't make accurate predictions ?
Misinformed? Ignorant? Stupid? What do call people who continually use the word "theory" to describe idle speculation and other crap that has not been peer reviewed or otherwise substantiated?
~X~
"There are people in Miami (and other Florida coastal cities), who beg to differ."
They seem to have built parts of Miami Beach below the level reached by the highest high tides. Imprudent of course, But profitable if you can sell the property before the moon and sun next align in an unfortunate configuration. Maybe they should have put a bit more thought into approving building permits.
There are a number of tidal gauges in Florida and several in the Miami area.
Here's what NOAA has to say about Miami Beach
"The mean sea level trend is 2.39 millimeters/year with a 95% confidence
interval of +/- 0.43 mm/yr based on monthly mean sea level data from
1931 to 1981 which is equivalent to a change of 0.78 feet in 100 years. "
https://tidesandcurrents.noaa....
Don't take my word for it, nor your local newspaper's and certainly not the Slashdot editor's. I'd encourage you to check both NOAA.gov and psmsl.org for yourself.
You can't see ANYTHING from a car, You've got to get out of the goddamned contraption and walk...Edward Abbey
The big unknown and one that is still a hot topic of research is how strong the feedbacks become in a warming world.
The "low end" of the range assumes no significant feedback cycle takes hold. It's the "simple" projection and not all the different than the ones Arrhenius did back in the 1890's. However, the paleoclimate research has indicated that historically there appear to be tipping points during climate transitions that cause much more rapid changes to take place once they're crossed.
There are number of potential events that could trigger a tipping point and bring about more rapid changes. But trying to determine when they'll happen, if they trigger additional feedbacks, etc. is not exactly easy. That's why projections of long term climate are given in ranges with details on what went into the projection. Someone stating a number without referencing the projection that generated it (and thus, the conditions) is pretty useless.
~X~
At least not just yet.
Here's Michael Mann's (The Hockey Stick guy) prediction that the West Side Highway would be under water by now
http://www.salon.com/2001/10/2...
What?? I think you're confused. That article refers to a prediction Jim Hansen made in 1988 or 1989, shortly after he testified to Congress about climate change. Nothing to do with Michael Mann.
Hansen made the prediction during a radio interview in 1988. There was some ambiguity whether it was a 20 year or 40 year prediction. When asked about that, Hansen said 40 years. Heck, let's give him that. (I reckon he needs about 2-3 meters sea level rise in the next decade for it to come about. But I don't live in NYC and don't know for sure how much freeboard the lowest stretch of 12th Avenue/Westside Highway has.
You can't see ANYTHING from a car, You've got to get out of the goddamned contraption and walk...Edward Abbey
Since you are cut-and-paste reposting what you already posted, I will cut-and-post what I already replied:
The difficulty here is that you are mixing up stuff that's correct, and stuff that isn't.
For the longest time earth was flooded with CO2 18 times higher than we have today,
That part is true. The Earth has had more carbon dioxide in the past,
and it was colder.
This part is not true. In general, when there's more carbon dioxide it's warmer, and when there's less it's colder.
We had more CO2 in THE FUCKING ICE AGE.
First, to be pedantic, let me remind you that we are in an ice age right now: there are permanent ice caps on the planet that don't disappear in the summers. The detailed place we are in the cycle is that we are in an "interglacial" period, but overall, yes, we're still in an ice age.
It's quite well accepted that the glaciation cycle is driven by Milankovitch variations, the pattern of solar insolation (short for "incident solar radiation," by the way) across the northern and southern hemisphere. Carbon dioxide and water vapor, however-- the greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere-- are the amplifiers that turn the relatively small insolation changes into global temperature changes.
As the cycle of increase of glacial and interglacial periods go, the record is very clear: glacier advance correlate with reduced carbon dioxide, and glacier retreat trends with increased carbon dioxide. So, no, your statement is backwards-- if by "in the fucking ice age" you mean "during the ice covered periods of the current cycle", then, no, we had less CO2 in the atmosphere in the fucking ice age.
The graph you link, with a minimum increment on the time axis of 100 million years, doesn't show the ice age cycle (with time periods three orders of magnitude shorter than that). Here's a graph of temperature and carbon dioxide over the last four glaciation cycles:
http://earthguide.ucsd.edu/virtualmuseum/images/VostokIceCore.html">http://earthguide.ucsd.edu/virtualmuseum/images/VostokIceCore.html
The rest of your post seems to have equivalent random mixing up of facts. You write:
I don't know why you idiots just don't do your own research but keep repeating nonsense just because someone else said so.
But that seems to be exactly what you are doing-- posting a scrapbook of random unrelated stuff without, as far as I can tell, making any attempt to understand it. Here are some links:
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/what-thawed-the-last-ice-age/
http://earthguide.ucsd.edu/virtualmuseum/climatechange2/07_2.shtml
He's making the same logic error as those who claim Y2K was a hoax.
They say "look everybody panicked and spent all that money to prevent a disaster and then almost nothing happened".
But they ignore the fact that the only REASON almost nothing happened is BECAUSE we spent all that money and effort to prevent it.
We had a warning, we had time to implement solutions, we did- and we averted a problem.
The correct response is to be joyful at our success, not to claim that the success proves the problem wasn't real. The few things we couldn't avoid proves it was (even if you weren't there to see the other potential issues yourself). At least one person found herself unable to vote in the 1999 election because computers thought she was 2 years old, she was actually 102 - and had to go to court to get a special clearance to be able to vote. One nuclear plant shut down on new years day 2000 due to a Y2K error that made a monitoring computer think it hadn't had a check response from the safety monitors for over a hundred years and enter an automated safety-shutdown cycle.
Small problems over-all, reasonably easy to manage and work around - but that's because the BIG problems were all fixed in several years of seriously intense and hard work by everybody from sysadmins and helldesk jockies to electronic engineers and chip designers.
You cannot declare a prediction failed when serious action was taken to mitigate the conditions of the prediction - the entire point of the prediction was to encourage those actions and ipso facto their success actually VALIDATES the prediction.
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
Looking at the long-term NOAA data it looks like the earth's crust is still rebounding from the last ice age, as much of the northern extremes are generally rising (sea level "falling") and the middle and southern areas are sinking (sea level "rising"). Not much we can do about that, is there? Other than use a solution the Dutch have implemented for the last several centuries, anyway...
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
There are plenty of actual predictions that are actually published in actual referenceable sources.
I really don't see the point in citing an offhand comment made in a radio interview as a "prediction", when the person quoted has an actual bibliography of hundreds of real publications that can be referenced.
(not to mention the point of misattributing a quote that's citing a guy informally recalling something another guy said in a conversation a decade earlier, and misremembering key details.)
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
Maybe they should have put a bit more thought into approving building permits.
In some states they've legislated ignorance of sea level rise in order to appease developers.
"The mean sea level trend is 2.39 millimeters/year with a 95% confidence interval of +/- 0.43 mm/yr based on monthly mean sea level data from 1931 to 1981 which is equivalent to a change of 0.78 feet in 100 years. "
The half a foot rise over that period can mean the difference between being just above sea level at high tide instead of just below. But the big problem is the acceleration that's taking place.
Since 1993 (the beginning of the satellite record) we've seen global mean sea level increasing by about 3 millimeters per year or about 1 foot in 100 years.
Over the second half of that period, global mean sea level rose by 3.8 mm/year or about 1 1/3 feet over a century. At this rate by 2050 we should expect about 6mm /year or 2 feet per century. And by 2100, 10 mm/year or over 3 feet per century.
Haven't we heard something like this before?
Every time I see alarmist stuff like this, all I can think of is this:
Hypothesis and Disproof
“2006: Expect Another Big Hurricane Year Says NOAA”—headline, MongaBay .com, May 22, 2006 .com, Aug. 7, 2008 .com, June 19, 2015
“NOAA Predicts Above Normal 2007 Atlantic Hurricane Season”—headline, National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration press release, May 23, 2007
“NOAA Increases Expectancy for Above-Normal 2008 Atlantic Hurricane Season”—headline, gCaptain
“Forecasters: 2009 to Bring ‘Above Average’ Hurricane Season”—headline, CNN, Dec. 10, 2008
“NOAA: 2010 Hurricane Season May Set Records”—headline, Herald-Tribune (Sarasota, Fla.), May 28, 2010
“NOAA Predicts Increased Storm Activity in 2011 Hurricane Season”—headline, BDO Consulting press release, Aug. 18, 2011
“2012 Hurricane Forecast Update: More Storms Expected”—headline, LiveScience, Aug. 9, 2012
“NOAA Predicts Active 2013 Atlantic Hurricane Season”—headline, NOAApress release, May 23, 2013
“A Space-Based View of 2015’s ‘Hyperactive’ Hurricane Season”—headline, CityLab
“The 2016 Atlantic Hurricane Season Might Be the Strongest in Years”—headline, CBSNews, Aug. 11, 2016
“NOAA: U.S. Completes Record 11 Straight Years Without Major Hurricane Strike”—headline, CNSNews, Oct. 24, 2016
NOTE: the NOAA is The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, a scientific agency within the Department of Commerce focused on the conditions of the oceans and the atmosphere.
For more “Best of the Web” from The Wall Street Journal’s James Taranto
I'm sure that *EVENTUALLY* they'll get one right...2016 was the "strongest in years" but was still pretty much meh, except for Matthew's impact on Haiti.
Actual activity in 2016: 15 named storms, 7 hurricanes, 4 CAT3+
Average (1981–2010[1]) 12.1, 6.4, 2.7
Record high activity 28, 15, 7