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New Science Suggests the Ocean Could Rise More -- and Faster -- Than We Thought (washingtonpost.com)
Chris Mooney, writing for the Washington Post: Climate change could lead to sea level rises that are larger, and happen more rapidly, than previously thought, according to a trio of new studies that reflect mounting concerns about the stability of polar ice. In one case, the research suggests that previous high end projections (PDF) for sea level rise by the year 2100 -- a little over three feet -- could be too low, substituting numbers as high as six feet at the extreme if the world continues to burn large volumes of fossil fuels throughout the century (Editor's note: the link could be paywalled). "We have the potential to have much more sea level rise under high emissions scenarios," said Alexander Nauels, a researcher at the University of Melbourne in Australia who led one of the three studies. His work, co-authored with researchers at institutions in Austria, Switzerland, and Germany, was published Thursday in Environmental Research Letters. The results comprise both novel scientific observations -- based on high resolution seafloor imaging techniques that give a new window on past sea level events -- and new modeling techniques based on a better understanding of Antarctic ice. Further reading: Sea levels to rise 1.3m unless coal power ends by 2050, report says (The Guardian).
...it's overpriced, it's over-hyped. Beach property, near the sea, near the beach, near a pond - and cost 3-10 times as much as a normal property. You're investing badly, and you're gonna find out the hard way.
I already knew this when I moved from Denmark to another country (several Danish cities is suffering from the ocean eating up the ground, and houses are constantly falling into the sea when the ground gets eaten up by the sea). I now live 80m above sea level - and 10 times cheaper, with the same solid building.
To quote Nelson from the Simpsons -> "Ha haa!".
What this world is coming to - is for you and me to decide.
Pretty much this.
It's not just wealthy western nations. We're actually making renewable energy sources cheaper than coal and gas--unsubsidized--by sheer technical progress. That's always been the problem: burning fossile fuel might or might not be causing something called "Climate Change"--a point of contention in political discussions--but you can't really do anything about it because making your $THING more-expensive means people get $THING from dirty-coal high-emissions import instead. US becomes poorer by going to Solar 30 years ago, China ramps up production and turns the Asian continent into one giant black cloud.
We took a third option and just tightened up emissions standards as technology became available to do so without compromising our economy. The Republicans complained, the Democrats took a careful hand, and the really left-wing liberals with no concept of anything just screamed that it wasn't enough. That's the best you can do.
Well, it was.
Like you noticed: the really low-emissions energy tech is just plain taking over. It's more viable economically now, and so will come into play without compromising our economy. Leading up to this, we had an offset program where solar generation produced credits which you could sell on the open market in a cap-and-trade scheme; and suddenly solar is so cheap that SRECs trade for $20 instead of $200. A massive amount of capacity sprung up in two years, and more is coming.
I want to preserve our agricultural land by moving off traditional farm subsidies and onto a scheme where we subsidize farmers to lay non-permanent Solar installation, and reduce the subsidy as the solar installation starts generating a profit. Need the ag land again? Get a crew to unbolt the panels, stack them in a nearby shed, pull up the racks, dismantle, store, and you have ag land. Actually tearing down a city costs more than our GDP; removing a non-fixed solar installation is a cheap job.
That will save the taxpayer the cost of farm subsidies; protect our agricultural reserve land from permanent destruction by urban development; and derive useful economic productivity from that land area--you know, land area in a place with lots of sun, because a farm is basically a solar food generation operation--instead of just waste expense trying to prevent its development. Because that economic productivity is electricity, it offsets our need for mercury-belching coal plants.
Leading-edge recouperating CAES--the kind that stores heat and uses it to expand the tanks, not the natural gas booster kind--will become common tech soon enough. It's cheaper than batteries, and hasn't taken off because we keep trying to use natural caves as compression tanks--folks keep selecting sandstone caverns, then finding out that won't work. Going to have to build an actual sealed storage tank underground. Batteries will still be more-expensive, but not 300x more-expensive; even so, hundred-million-dollar-scale R&D tech doesn't just happen at a fast pace, even with those kinds of potential profits, and with the technology pretty much ready-to-go. It's weird to see something that's current-generation technology held back by... well, technology. Paradox.
Put the two together and you get a bona fide solar grid for basically nothing. I'm so glad there are only 50,000 coal workers in the US, because they're right in the path of progress and a bigger industry would be a recession waiting to happen. We'll bleed the coal mining industry slowly, not overnight; and my Universal Dividend should help hold these people up and rebuild their local economies as we pick them apart. One can only hope--we are definitely going to profit from their loss, and we owe them for that.
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An additional 3 feet means most of Florida won't have drinkable water and will increase storm surge damage from every 2-3 year "500 year" storms.
If you can build to that standard: bottom level not for living, more resistant buildings, power systems that can operate offline for 1-2 weeks (e.g. high grade roof solar like Tesla, mobile solar, mobile wind turbines), than you're good.
The main problem is people want to be bailed out when these events happen, but we will have to stop providing insurance guarantees in Florida on the whole, with zero exceptions, not just home and boat but auto.
That's what this means.
Me, I'll have waterfront property in Seattle with a great view.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --