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Sea Level Rise in the SF Bay Area Just Got a Lot More Dire (wired.com)
An anonymous reader writes: San Francisco Bay Area residents have long been aware of the threat that sea level rise poses to their coastal existence -- but things suddenly look a lot more serious. A new study examines the simultaneous phenomena of rising sea levels and subsiding coastal land, and as Wired reports, the situation is pretty dire. Models that factor in just sea level rise predict that at least 20 square miles could be underwater by 2100. Once you add in subsiding land, that jumps to nearly 50 square miles, and could get as bad as 165 square miles. Or, put another way, by the end of the century, half of the runways and taxiways at San Francisco Airport could be submerged.
The study found that most of the Bay's coastline is sinking at a rate of less than 2 millimeters a year -- and while that may not sound like a lot, the millimeters can add up fast. "You talk to someone about, 'Oh the land is going down a millimeter a year,' and that can be kind of unimpressive," says William Hammond, a researcher at the University of Nevada Reno who studies subsidence (but was not involved in this particular project). "But we know as scientists that these motions, especially if they come from plate tectonics, that they are relentless and they will never stop, at least as long as we're alive on this planet."
The study found that most of the Bay's coastline is sinking at a rate of less than 2 millimeters a year -- and while that may not sound like a lot, the millimeters can add up fast. "You talk to someone about, 'Oh the land is going down a millimeter a year,' and that can be kind of unimpressive," says William Hammond, a researcher at the University of Nevada Reno who studies subsidence (but was not involved in this particular project). "But we know as scientists that these motions, especially if they come from plate tectonics, that they are relentless and they will never stop, at least as long as we're alive on this planet."
sigh.
Just need to put a wall and lock system across the span where the Golden Gate bridge is. Problem solved!
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
Asking for a friend.
"Subsidence is a great driver of our economy." - SF Bay Gondoliers Association
Ahh sea level apocalypse! Not!
I love watching this guy make scientists look silly.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=phkjtNcrjdU
I'm just not sure that this is really news. I guess it's mildly interesting to combine both tectonic subsidence and sea level rise, but, frankly, most of San Francisco is hilly. There won't be much impact. A small amount of the waterfront may get more wet, but most of SF will remain high and dry.
SFO airport is indeed at sea level-- it's right on the bay. But you can build runways up if you need to; it's not hard.
No big deal.. Create a breath using a straw app
If you look at the deaths per terawatt of nuclear energy, you will realize why it isn't even something to think of.
Given the work on self-driving cars (think fleet of electric cars where you work en route), Hyperloop, and other automation taking out the need for dense centralised cities, it will not be a catastrophic problem.
There will be huge changes in real estate price distribution, remote work, and in general overall world of work. Think back to 1998 and how little of the internet and mobile devices were used.
That is the difference 20 years can make.
The real catastrophic problem will be what Syria and Lousiana - erratic rainfall, storms and unpredictable weather patterns. Sea level rise is huge, but those things will become more troublesome much sooner.
If you look at the base data from the study, you can find the images for projected innovation at 2100 - it's not that much, mostly down at the end of the bay. Considering we are talking about nearly a hundred years for this change to occur there is a LOT of time to adapt - either by raising the land at risk (we are talking about just a meter of sea level change at worst in the most likely scenario), or building seawalls at the end of the bay the way the Netherlands has done.
San Francisco itself, is of course quite hilly as anyone who has ever visited knows, and is hardly impacted at all.
One final flaw in this study is the reoccurring flaw, they present a doomsday scenario that is "if nothing is done". But they totally do not account for the inevitable shift to solar/electric for power and transportation that will increase dramatically in the coming decades. This shifts all of the predictions to the low end in reality as the most likely scenario, by quite a lot in fact.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Given that climate change is real, first make a sensible scientific and economic case that "solving" it is the best option.
Prove anything by multiplying Huge Number times Tiny Number
i know it's you, Roger Corman
Terawatt is a unit of power, not energy.
Perhaps now the tides will act to flush all of the feces off the streets.
lmao. Sea level rise is so slow you can't even see it. Humans have *legs* and can simply walk away from it. It'll slowly creep into some housing, and kill some trees in a few centuries though. woo.
"kill millions"
Sure, right, maybe in Bangladesh. Doubtful in SF or Miami.
How will rising sea levels kill millions? These changes don't happen overnight and can be countered with dykes and pumps. However, increased temperatures increase storm frequency and intensity and these may lead to much larger storm surges. This is what may kill millions. Rising sea level change is just a drop in the bucket in comparison.
Also, how will you 'solve' climate change? Do you really think reducing CO2 output will be enough? I live in the Netherlands, we have been building massive fortifications against storm surges for the past 50 years. I suggest other countries that are at risk will do the same. Betting on magically solving climate change (which may or may not be possible) might work, but increased water barriers will definitely work.
Chris has his life jacket built in! Fucker's gonna float all the way to Japan, only to be harpooned for "research"!
If one person, say, a PC magazine columnist of yore, sees NOTHING today outside of his window..then nothing will happen ever, in the future.
'Oh the land is going down a millimetre a year,' and that can be kind of unimpressive," says William Hammond, a researcher at the University of Nevada Reno who studies subsidence (but was not involved in this particular project). "But we know as scientists that these motions, especially if they come from plate tectonics, that they are relentless and they will never stop, at least as long as we're alive on this planet."
Actually as scientists we know that's not true provided we hang around for long enough (several hundred million years) as some other species have managed to. Plate tectonics can also uplift land and is responsible for mountain building. As new plates form and others merge the effects in one location can change....but you will need to hold your breath, literally, for a few million years or more (or, on that timescale, evolve gills) so it's not particularly helpful!
"The study found that most of the Bay's coastline is sinking at a rate of less than 2 millimeters a year -- and while that may not sound like a lot, the millimeters can add up fast."
So, in 100 years the coastline will have sunk less than 8 inches. Not quite the runaway train they make it out to be.
No worries - just turn in your SUV and pay higher taxes (oh - and I'm sure giving up your guns will help too somehow) and all these problems are as good as solved.
I assume his unit is per year of production. Doesn't invalidate his point. Nuclear power is still surely just about THE SAFEST form of power, statistically
If the sea rises the tide will clean the pee and poo from the streets.
How will rising sea levels kill millions? ... However, increased temperatures increase storm frequency and intensity and these may lead to much larger storm surges. This is what may kill millions.
I think you answered your own question.
Do you really think reducing CO2 output will be enough?
No I do not. 30 year ago it could have been enough, but there is too much CO2/Methane/etc in the atmosphere already. We are going to have to cut greenhouse gasses significantly, and we will have to build fortifications at every costal city. Even that will not be enough.
The areas right along the bay that are at risk of flooding are at far greater risk of earthquakes. The article says that subsidence is happening faster than water level rise, and the subsidence is happening due to the fact that these areas are largely built of filled in soils.
Filled in soil that is saturated with water due to being right along the edge of the bay is a nightmare for liquifaction during a quake. Your toes may get wet 50 years from now due to encroaching water, but many of the buildings around these areas are likely be demolished after a large quake before then.
AEnema, more precisely. I have a suggestion to keep you all occupied: learn to swim
Are house prices declining as a result of this?
I assume his unit is per year of production. Doesn't invalidate his point. Nuclear power is still surely just about THE SAFEST form of power, statistically
And you don't think that solar power will eventually eclipse that safety margin?
When solar goes "bad", it doesn't turn an area into an uninhabitable nuclear wasteland for the next century. And that's IF things go fairly well when nuclear decides to shit itself.
Hyperbole doesn't help inspire change.
Rising sea levels will not kill millions of people. It may displace Millions of people but not kill them.
Climate change isn't the fault of any one group, but a collective issue of the world. Nuclear isn't without its trade offs as well. And requires a long term commitment in managing Radioactive waste. Such as commitment that we as a society may not be able to keep, a few generations of politicians looking the other way. War, Natural disaster. Can easily cause the population to forget about the problem beneath their feet. As it will take thousands of years for it to go away. It would be like us treating pollution that cavemen started just so they could cook meat the way they liked it.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Just sell the properties to Trump voters, they'll just ignore it until they'll hopefully drown.
It is really a two fold problem.
You need to protect your cities for the short term (a few hundred years) while working to slowdown to stop the real problem asap.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
John C. Dvorak (yes, *that* curmudgeonly fellow of PC Mag fame) can see the SF bay literally outside his home office window, and regularly reports the live situation as some meme on his No Agenda podcast (http://www.noagendashow.com/) with Adam Curry. Last update on this topic, in fact, was on the last show, I think (https://noagendaplayer.com/listen/1014). Unfortunately it hasn't been tagged yet, or I would've provided a link directly to the segment where they start taking about this. Pretty sure it was within the first hour. It might be tagged by the time others will read this.
Every report is the same--and the same, as he always says, as it's been since at least the 1880s. After living there for decades, he never reports any change whatsoever, even though there's a highway nearby that's barely 3 feet above the ocean level.
Do you really think reducing CO2 output will be enough?
Well considering it isn't mathematically possible for CO2 to be the cause of the temperature increase, reducing it won't make any difference at all. For CO2 to be responsible for even a 1c temperature increase would require that 1 molecule of CO2 out of 2500 molecules of air (400ppm), that only absorbs about 8% of the reflected infrared energy, is somehow generating 2500c of heat needed to raise the temperature of those 2500 molecules by 1c.
OK, so where are all the people posting that they should have known better and not built so close to the water levels...?
I sure heard a lot about that from folks after Katrina....and New Orleans predates SF about a 100 years.
Where's the complaints about SF and other coastal cities that will surely suck federal tax dollars from you????
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
"Rising sea levels will submerge cities and kill millions."
Millions of people are just going to stand still long enough to be drowned by a few millimeters of water per year? Has it occurred to you yet that such retarded hyperbole is hurting your cause more than it's helping it? Skeptics need only refer to your stupidity to discredit the entire movement?
The batteries needed to store energy from solar are a real environmental nightmare. Far more so than today's conventional power generation.
We are all doomed!
So may as well enjoy Sicilicon Valley Comic Con 2018 in the mean time :)
--
New Video: "Outlining Batman, Robin & Riddler in Photoshop (Time Lapse)"
Is this the same kind of dire Obama promised Syria if they used chemical weapons on their own people?
... we're all fine.
Because if it is
The "solutions" you are advocating will cause far more deaths than sea levels rising a few millimeters per year.
The American way of life is doomed. It cannot continue as it is. We've passed the tipping point of recovery.
One side here wants to do everything we can to mitigate the problems associated with the change and make as painless as possible.
The other side just ignores it, calls it a Liberal Hoax or Chinese Hoax, thinks if there is a problem but so what it's natural and Jesus will save us. In the meantime life and business as usual. The shock they will experience will devastate them.
Plan for the worst; hope for the best - Winston Churchill.
I wonder how many people have to die before left wingers in SF allow us to solve climate change?
This is quite possibly the stupidest thing ever uttered.
Your IQ has dropped 30 points as a result, and you should feel bad
It will all be OK! Don't overreact, just move all the conservatards there! Since they live in a subjective-reality of "truthiness" instead of, you know, actual reality, they can just use that unwavering belief to live in the alternative-reality in which their unable-to-change "minds" believe! It's a win-win for everyone involved.
First of all â" bullshit.
Second of all â" Iâ(TM)ll be dead 50 years before 2100, so what the fuck do I care?
Its your cause too you cunty bitchface
How will rising sea levels kill millions?
Displacement of people, mostly. Refugees tend to die at a much higher rate than the overall population.
Also, how will you 'solve' climate change? Do you really think reducing CO2 output will be enough?
It will reduce the total sea rise, thus making the problem smaller.
Betting on magically solving climate change (which may or may not be possible) might work, but increased water barriers will definitely work.
I don't think you quite grasp the scale of this issue for larger countries, and the inability to buy dykes and pumps for poor countries. The US would need more concrete than has ever been produced. Making concrete produces a lot of CO2, so producing the unprecedented quantities of concrete will help ensure those structures are ineffective.
So in recent memory, we've seen 'natural disasters' that were exacerbated by man-made choices:
New Orleans/Hurricane Katrina - what made Hurricane Katrina so bad was the decision to build a major coastal city on land below sea level.
Fukushima Reactor disaster - as bad as the event was, it was amplified by the decision to locate a nuclear reactor with an ocean front view and beach side parking.
San Francisco Airport (future problem) - the brilliance of locating an airport with easy access to the bay will be questioned when the impact of the decision to locate their runways at approximately sea level is made clear.
Ken
Actually Solar is relatively dangerous compared to nuclear power. More deaths (usually from falls), and in the logistics of shipping and manufacturing and tying in so many small power producers. Yes, nuclear is by far the safest, BY FAR
We're here.Watching instead of complaining. The water will flush out a lot of riff-raff unless too much noise warns them.
We don't want to repeat the NOLA disaster where all that human debris swarmed into the midwest and screwed things up.
Not to worry. Billions in tax dollars will be used to prop up the houses of the wealthy.
California's red tape high taxes will hold it back,it has held back the people and their businesses for years.
People are leaving Cali in droves why would anyone want to move there regardless of who they vote for?
"Models that factor in just sea level rise predict that at least 20 square miles could be underwater by 2100. Once you add in subsiding land, that jumps to nearly 50 square miles, and could get as bad as 165 square miles. Or, put another way, by the end of the century, half of the runways and taxiways at San Francisco Airport could be submerged. "
...BILLION square miles.... prove me wrong!
So.. you know, it could be 20 square miles... it could be 50 square miles... or it could be 165 square miles.... according to you know, models.... in 80 years when we'll all be dead...
My prediction: In 80 years it will be one... *pinky in corner of mouth*
Yeah sorry, I liked your contrarian point so I thought It'd be a good thread to post another contrarian comment. It wasn't really targeted at your comment in particular even though it hooks into the things you mention. I was rather just trying to target conventional wisdom.
Every acre of solar is one less acre of greenhouse gas-consuming plant life.
Ken
Nobody bitches that the Netherlands is at sea level. Because the swamp Germans pay their own costs.
But we're not building people a brand new slum, right where the last one 'fell over and sank into the swamp'. Slums are the leftover housing.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Climate Change is a theory. That land isn't subsiding. Sea levels aren't rising. The Arctic ice cap isn't melting. Antarctic ice sheets aren't collapsing. Glaciers aren't retreating.
And 60% of Americans now alive will be dead by the turn of the century. If we were wrong, your grandchildren will deal with it, not you. There, don't you feel better now?
Go back to watching the news about Twitler and Stormy Daniels while we gut bank regulations. The bank regulations that were put in place to protect you from our co-conspirators in the banking industry.
"...a lot more dire..." is that even English?
What's on from there, "totally humongously dire, dude!" ?
Is Trump editing /. now?
My lawn - you know what to do.
[Scientific illiteracy] 1 molecule of CO2 [...] is somehow generating 2500c of heat [More scientific illiteracy]
Well, the CO2 is generating, to a very good approximation, no heat at all. The heat is coming from the sun (that hot ball of hydrogen doing nuclear fusion 150 million kilometres away). The CO2 is just slowing down the re-radiation of heat from the Earth surface into space.
What is "c"? Probably not the speed of light in this context?
Stephan
I see what you did there. :-) Fight fire with fire!
Smart guy. Walk away. Sure.
Except if you own the low-lying property, you cannot simply pull your property with you to higher ground.
No, what happens is that people cannot sell and they frequently cannot leave and take the loss either. There are even people who "love the lifestyle" and just can't accept that their little plot of heaven isn't safe. So they stay. Then there is a big storm at high tide and that is when they die, or lose everything, or become IDP.
The article could have just as easily said "Coastal developments, including San Francisco Airport, that were build on landfill are sinking and may need remediation to prevent flooding in the future".
The study says "However, rates exceed 10 mm/year in some areas underlain by compacting artificial landfill and Holocene mud deposits.", which means it is sinking a lot faster than the water is rising.
My solution is nuclear energy which is the safest form of power.
You are missing the whole point of my post. Sea level rise is maybe 40cm by 2100. A strong storm can have a 400cm surge. A strong storm can easily cause an extra meter or two of storm surge over that which makes the sea level rise irrelevant. The storms will kill people well before the sea level rise will if better barriers aren't built or people don't leave the area. I also mentioned sea level rise doesn't happen overnight. You have plenty of time (think decades) to evacuate a couple of miles down the road on a bit higher ground - people don't tend to die moving a couple of miles. Storms do happen overnight.
Also, you don't need concrete to build dykes and if the Netherlands could do it with 17th century tech I'm sure most countries can manage either that or relocating people to slightly higher ground. It doesn't matter though because if you cannot handle a meter of sea level rise you could get wiped out tomorrow by a mid size storm.
Wait, why will rising sea levels kill millions? Its not like the levels are rising all at once like a Tsunami. It will be a more gradual thing that will allow people to move to higher ground.
What we're seeing is that folks who overpaid for property are willing to leave half the planet in unimaginable poverty lest their property values decrease.
The next big earthquake will hit SF long before it's consumed by the ocean from global warming.
LOLOL!!!!! A lot more Californians are moving to those places than people displaced by Katrina . Blame them for taking their California Values with them to screw those new places up.
Many parts of the city are built on alluvial silt dredged up from the bay (e.g. the Marina District), so yeah... it's going to sink. But that's only the areas that are a few feet above sea level to begin with.
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
I wonder how many people have to die before left wingers in SF allow us to solve climate change?
This is quite possibly the stupidest thing ever uttered.
Like it or not California's hyper NIMBYism is in fact fueled primarily by leftists. There is no side stepping this inconvenient truth.
Very same bleeding hearts who pretend to care so much about the poor and equality for all are responsible for policies having lead to average home prices pushing 7 figures in SF. They are quite vocal in their disdain for nuclear power.
Your IQ has dropped 30 points as a result, and you should feel bad
My IQ is an imaginary number.
The globe is getting warmer and climates are changing and it's real.
But this level of fear-mongering is not helpful and diminishes our side of the argument. At this point anyone who argues that the world isn't getting warmer is seen as an idiot. Anyone who argues that it's not humanities fault is a blowhard. The current debates are how bad it's going to be and what we can do about it.
at a rate of less than 2 millimeters a year -- and while that may not sound like a lot, the millimeters can add up fast.
No. It doesn't. It adds up at a rate of 2mm/year. That is not fast. It's not compound. There is no interest.
San Fran has 100 years to deal with 20cm, or 8 inches. Parts of New Orleans are currently several feet underwater. They got flooded once during a hurricane. It sucked, but it's not the end of the world. If sea-levels rise 2 meters in 100 years, yeah, we've got a lot of trouble and expensive relocation. Or expensive and questionable dikes. But 2mm a year sound manageable.
And this motherfucker is trying to get us worried about PLATE TECTONICS. Not earthquakes, the SPEED at which they MOVE. Dude.
People would have to be complete morons to not understand that it's nothing but a tidal surge. If it was sea level rise, it would happen all over the planet with minor changes for the tides.
There ius a difference in attitude between the US an The Netherlands. NL has taken it serious since 1953 and keep investing in it. In the US after Katrina not much has been done. Even 50 days is far away when it wil cost money in the short term. A 50 year plan? No way ever.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
OMG! I didn't realize the big mistake I made.
I need to take those solar panels off my roof and plant corn there!
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
It's the mid sized storms on top of the sea level rise that is the danger. If you're 420cm above sea level, well, now that 400cm class storm is a real problem.
It isn't that sea levels are rising, but rather why sea levels are rising. CO2 dissolved in the water is dissolving the shells of shellfish. The warm water is also driving schools of fish north and south where it is cooler. Once you whack the bottom of the food chain, you are next.
Put a dam across the mouth of the San Francisco Bay, the further West the better. Drain most of the Bay (leaving a few canals for the rivers to flow into) and reclaim the land.
This would solve SF's housing problem by providing lots of new land to build on, and it'll shorten the coastline, making it much easier to fortify against the rising sea level.
YEP!
I have a power plant the size of a microwave oven that can power the entire planet for centuries and it will only cost $20. If something goes wrong it will destroy the entire solar system, but it has a perfect operation record with nobody ever getting injured by it. isn't that nice?
>half of the runways and taxiways at San Francisco Airport could be submerged.
In other words, the land will return to its natural state, which infill tends to do.
It's a drop in the bucket. Yeah that drop might cause your bucket to overflow a little bit earlier, but the main problem is something else, and it's a drop you can see coming miles down the road.
haven't you noticed these housing developments where none of the homes have any trees?
haven't you noticed the brand new mall going in next to the old abandoned mall? That is land that could have been used for trees.
You should but that's not the point. The solar on your roof costs a few lives per sq km of it. So many roof installations will kill so many people.
Dont look at me, I live on a large hill 300+ miles inland.
If you are stupid enough to build that close to the water even when there have been tidal surges for centuries, then you deserve it. But, you have several decades as it is. Sell your property and turn it into a high rise condo or something like that.
3,796,577 square miles to go.
Move somewhere else. The population density of the US is low, low, low. You don't all need to live within 100 miles of one another.
Money, good wine, and nice weather is for CRAZY people.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
SF Chron in its piece on this noted that some areas are sinking at a rate of about 3/4 inch per year (about 20mm/year). That compares to actual sea level rise of about 2mm/year, or predicted at something like 4-5mm/year. This is not a climate problem.
For decades, the left has fought against additional landfill in SF Bay. That is why there is an organization called "Save SF Bay." In the 70s, there was success in halting additional landfill. The bay is already something like 50% filled from its original size.
"Important" parts of SF and elsewhere lie on bay landfill. That includes the SF financial district, some SF residential areas, and fancy silicon valley places like Facebook.
The landfill is where the subsidence is happening. This is a 100% manmade problem; nothing to do with climate change. In addition to being subject to subsidence, bay landfill is also subject to liquefaction in the event of an earthquake. These are exactly the same places, and for a long time the left has wanted to return them to wetlands.
In many ways, this seems to be a way to leverage climate panic to pay for bulwarks against landfill problems being suffered by companies who want the taxpayer to foot their bills.
I'm not sure how many people it's actually going to "kill" in the SF area. If it's really only going up 2 millimeters a year on average, I'm sure that San Francisco can build flood walls fast enough to mitigate that for decades if not centuries. Sure, you'll need a scuba license to visit Alcatraz and the city is eventually going to look like a walled fortress a few centuries from now, but they'll likely be OK.
Considering the property taxes they must be raking in from their 2 million dollar 3 bedroom houses and $4,000 a month studio apartment buildings, I'm sure that they can afford those flood walls as well. I'd be more worried about our Mexican neighbors to the south of us.
It will start washing away all the syringes littering the streets.
And being up the hill in Fremont means if I just wait, I'll have waterfront property, instead of having to walk down 3 block to the canal.
Same with San Francisco: they can either do what the Dutch and Vietnamese have done - dikes, floating houses that rise when the floods come with garage patios below (sometimes with showers), or they can learn to swim.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
This isn't news, this is just silliness.The idea that someone is complaining because they were stupid enough to buy or build a house at or near sea level at the edge of an ocean makes me think that we have even more stupid people living on this rock than I thought .....
When solar goes "bad", it doesn't turn an area into an uninhabitable nuclear wasteland for the next century. And that's IF things go fairly well when nuclear decides to shit itself.
Even so, California also shut down a baseline power solar thermal plant over environmental concerns some years back. So the OP's point is still valid. The Hoover Dam can only make so much power California - whatcha gonna do for the rest if you won't build nukes or solar? Heck, PG&E even studied orbital power stations to get around the NIMBYism, but even that was shut down due to the need for some small plot of land to receive the power, and thus back to NIMBY.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
My solution is simple.
LAW:
No structure may be built any lower than (insert amount here) feet above sea level.
Problem solved. No CARBON TAX required.
If you believe sea levels will rise, sell now. Problem solved. But I expect you want someone else to solve the problem for you by imposing tyrannical restrictions on those people.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
It will at least wash away all of the human piss and feces.
Plans tend not to last longer than terms... so what can we accomplish in 8 years? (Ok, lets try to start those 8 years in another 6).
What about Houston?
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
How much of that is due to the Pacific Plate and North American Plate contact line? And is it actual sea level rise earth core relative or is some other mechanism at play. This could be an everything looks like a nail scenario.
Once you whack the bottom of the food chain, you are next.
I don't think phytoplankton are affected by minor changes in ocean CO2 levels. There's real debate about whether they're affected significantly by the warming oceans. They, like land plant life, will benefit from rising atmospheric CO2 levels.
Or were you imagining a "bottom" of the food chain several levels up from that?
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
j/k
His question is legitimate. CO2 absorption of IR comes no where close to explaining global warming, as is well known. Perhaps you don't know enough to answer his questions, and would be better keeping quiet? Otherwise, you don't persuade people by calling them idiots for asking questions, you persuade them by answering those questions intelligently. But then, I expect you just enjoy feeling smugly superior while in fact being an idiot.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Yeah, but think about the Slugs, you insensitive clod!
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
As a full-service Sanctuary City, they're simply adding an Aquatic Sanctuary.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
The Netherlands build dikes and other water works since a few centuries, probably more than 500 years (to lazy to google).
The investments since the 1950s (Germany does the same btw) are mainly a response to some massive winter storms (storm floods).
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Global warming. Rising sea levels. Plate techtonics. Salad bowl techtonics. Russian interference. Vaccinations. Sub-atomic particles. Extinct passenger pigeons. False prophets I say. It's all fake science; fake news. The only True News is the Galactic Confederacy Network Xenus. Film at eleven.
Because the people on the higher ground will defend their turf with guns ... perhaps?
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Claiming that land plant life will benefit from rising CO2 levels isn't exactly substantiated by experiments. It's also not exactly refuted.
The plants grow more vigorously, but have a harder time producing proteins, and experience some additional trouble reproducing. This, of course, varies by species, but it's "generally true" among the particular species tested (generally important agricultural plants). And this is when other conditions (temperature, humidity, etc.) are held constant...which, of course won't happen. So the results don't exactly reflect what should be expected, because they only investigated variation in one variable.
Now among sea life there will be problems among those with enzymes that depend on, e.g., calcium ions reacting in a particular way. In general, any enzyme that is sensitive to a change in pH will experience a change in activity, and this is almost always to the detriment of the organism that has evolved to use it. So far it looks like jellyfish will do well, and some fish will do well, but others will experience problems. And, of course, any animal that depends on precipitating Calcium will experience problems, including all shell-fish. I haven't heard of many detailed studies, but the basis of the problem generally is at the molecular level, so expect generalized difficulties in survival, with occasional species benefiting. (All animals evolved to fit the circumstances experienced by their ancestors...plants too.) The basic problem can be expressed as "it's going to take more energy to drive the reactions in the way the bodies expect them to go...or, occasionally, the current reaction will overdrive in the changed environment.)
P.S.: About plants on land: The grow faster, but they are weaker, and more likely to break under environmental stresses, say rain or a heavy wind. And, as I said, they are lower in protein. So every herbivore is going to be switching to a diet high in carbohydrates. So they'll need to eat more to get sufficient protein. People have already demonstrated that this is survivable is you can get enough food, but they've also demonstrated that it's rather unhealthy.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Plankton is not terribly affected. It might lead to a few blooms and anoxic zones, but overall it'll be doing fine.
What's going to be affected are corals and species that use calcium exoskeletons, like shrimp. Corals are also badly affected by rising sea water temperature, causing coral reef collapses and the associated loss of habitat. This will propagate up the food chain, so there's going to be less fish and sea mammals.
My "base data" is from the study the article is based upon, brainiac.
Maybe you should try following the links and reading the actual study/data instead of thinking with your fingers?
Subsidence is a comparatively minor factor and in no way warrants the screaming doom headlines. The study is saying because of subsidence, somewhat more land may be at risk than previously thought, and tries to lay out what that might be... the data I point to and the points I make refer to the areas affected AFTER subsidence is factored in by the study. It still affects almost none of SF, South Bay mostly.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
That will come down to what works cheapest in the shockingly poor rural areas of India and China.
I've been to really poor rural villages (like village uses a single well for water poor) in China and already see a lot of solar panels, also electric scooters. Because what ends up being really cheap is something you never have to travel to fuel.. a poor village is willing to wait a long time for chargers to charge up whatever.
In the end solar is by far the cheapest path for rural areas and electric motors are way easier to manufacture than combustion engines.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Be scared. Of anything really. Or everything.
The only news today is what you should be afraid of. Which is everything.
Yes go on. Be scared.
It's what being an American is all about anymore . . .
First Airport was in 1910 (approx) It's been 110 years. Will the SF Airport be relevant in 100 years?
Airports are already overcrowded, bottlenecked, and supposedly terrorist targets. The current model has a LOT of problems. Would you really expect the current model to still be relevant in 100 years?
As with all climate change discussions, I wonder why we're so interested in maintaining the status quo. Let's try something different. ;)
--Welcome to the Realm of the Hawke--
Luckily we now have about 4 billion excess people on the planet
Sure, but the guy I was responding too was talking about "the bottom of the food chain". The bottom 4 layers of the aquatic food chain are
* plankton
* plankton that eats plankton
* plankton that eats plankton that eats plankton
* Things other than plankton that eat plankton
So, copepods and krill might be interesting here, if they're seriously affected (they compete for the title of largest animal biomass on Earth), though they seem to just trade off as dominant phytoplankton consumers in a given area as the environment changes.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Yeah, I'm going to have to side with the GP here, on a number of points:
Netherlands
Length of Coastline - 1,914 km
GDP - $770 billion
GDP / km of Coastline - $402 million / km
USA
Length of Coastline - 133,312 km
GDP - $18.57 trillion
GDP / km of Coastline - $139 million / km
So, firstly, the cost to build dykes around the coast of the US would be, proportionally, about 3 times as expensive for them as it is for the Netherlands. Secondly, close to 2 orders of magnitude (well 70 times) more dykes would be required. Thirdly, you keep going on about storm surge being more pertinent than sea level rise, and while technically you're correct here the effects happen to be cumulative.
In fact, in addition to being cumulative, since storm surge is driven by storms (duh) and storms derive their strength from sea temperatures as sea level rises due to warming so to does the size of the storm surge.
I can't really be bothered to go deeply into the topic of materials, as I'm hungry, but again, unless you want to incur unsustainable upkeep costs for those dykes concrete is pretty much the only long term option available - and even then the upkeep will be merely astronomical. And, like the GP says, producing that quantity of concrete, if there's even enough of the right type of sand to make it all, would only exacerbate the problem.
His question is legitimate.
I don't see any question in the AC's comment, just a lot of statements that make no scientific sense at all.
CO2 absorption of IR comes no where close to explaining global warming, as is well known.
Your statement is unspecific enough to have no clear semantics. No, the direct effect off the CO2 increase does not fully explain the observed global warming. But then nobody except maybe some builders of straw men claims that. Arrhenius had identified the major feedbacks more than a century ago. We do have good explanations for the temperature increase, and anthropogenic influences, primary CO2 emissions, are indeed the root cause of the observed warming, and our best estimate is that they explain all the warming.
Perhaps you don't know enough to answer his questions
Maybe I don't know enough. We can all fall prey to the Dunning–Kruger effect. But in this case, again, there were no questions.
Stephan
Really? Every time someone tweaks the model and generates a new data set we get a news story? Because predicting the future is a thing?
CO2 Absorption Spectrum
Why on earth would you build dykes across the entire shoreline in the US? I'm certainly not suggesting it. Perhaps do the areas that are actually vulnerable and have (non-trivial amounts of) people living there - like you know, the bay area. For less populated areas with risk, in many cases relocating a couple miles down the road should be fairly feasible. The US has a lot of elevation, the areas where you cannot do that (along the coast) are pretty limited.
As for you believing that an extra 10% water differential for the base level during storms being an insurmountable issue, it just tells me you know nothing about the issue. Yes it's cumulative, so what? You can easily predict it, just factor it in. Netherlands factored in 70cm sea rise level per century... they factored it in in 1953.
Either way, the point is you will need a lot more margin than 10% for predicting what kind of storms to protect for. If the area you live cannot handle a severe storm surge realistic for your area plus another meter and has no plans to improve water barriers, I would suggest moving out before you get unlucky with a storm, which could happen this year. Sea level rise or not.
No, the question show absolutely no literacy of even the most basic of science. The "question" shows that the querent didn't even bother to look up how greenhouse gasses even work on a basic level, ala Wikipedia, and was just spouting off some pseudo science crap they read somewhere once.
And Stephan answered the question. It is not his fault that you appear to be too illiterate to even read the post. The only thing he posted that was questionable was deliberately confusing the "c" used here to denote Centigrade for the "c" used for the speed of light.
The only one "calling people idiots" here is you. Perhaps you should take your own advice and not say anything. You can take the time you save by not posting to educate yourself in the areas of reading comprehension and basic sciences since you seem to be having a hard time with both.
To err is human; effective mayhem requires the root password!
Solving it is probably the worst option as it may be unsolvable in a reasonable time frame.
Better question is mitigating it, how much effort to put into, eg keeping the sea level raise to a minimum and what would be the drawbacks/benefits to the economy and how much the government should be involved.
Think of the last time transportation was creating huge pollution problems. At the turn of the 20th century, it looked like we'd soon be buried in horse shit. The number of horses needed by the economy was fast increasing and each horse produced a bunch of shit.
Industry created the automobile (including trucks) and government subsidized a huge amount of road building to make the automobile practical. How much did the automobile help the economy? What about if the buggy whip manufacturers had stopped road construction? I'd argue that the combination of the automobile and good roads ended up being a huge benefit.
The economics are complicated, but often the right combination of government help and private industry can be a huge economic stimulus and it is quite possible that switching away from carbon producing fuels could be a net benefit. New industries, more employment and such.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
"Ahhh, it's gone, it's gone, it's gone...All the shitty shows are gone, all the idiots screaming in the fucking wind are dead, I love it...leaving nothing but a cool, beautiful serenity called Arizona Bay. That's right, when L.A. falls in the fucking ocean and is flushed away, all it will leave is Arizona Bay." - Bill Hicks.
Clean coal won't help one bit with man made global climate change, we need dirty coal to blot out the sun.
Knowledge = Power
P= W/t
t=Money
Money = Work/Knowledge so the less you know the more you make
Don't click on his homepage link! creimer is trying to get you to subscribe automatically to his youtube channel, force you to watch his digi-feces videos and make money off you!
CREIMER' SUBMISSIONS UPDATE: /. so make sure to go to:
Note also that creimer is trying to regain karma by getting his submissions published as articles on
https://slashdot.org/~crreimer
https://slashdot.org/~cdreimer
https://slashdot.org/~criss69
https://slashdot.org/~Anonymou...
https://slashdot.org/~FatCashe...
https://slashdot.org/~ILoveFat...
https://slashdot.org/~IHateFat...
https://slashdot.org/~IAteFatC...
https://slashdot.org/~ITapeFat...
https://slashdot.org/~IApeFatC...
https://slashdot.org/~IPrayFat...
https://slashdot.org/~FatCashe...
and mod down his submissions as well. The great thing is that you don't even need mod points to mod down a submission, just click on the "minus" icon!
Yes, believe it or not, creimer owns all the above sock puppet accounts. It is a mystery why Slashdot management tolerates it!
creimer wrote:
I don't bother with mod points. I'm doing something much more sinister. It took ten story submissions ? I'll have to double check the number ? to move cdreimer's karma from neutral to excellent without ever being exposed to the capricious mods. Mmmmmwwwwahahahahahahaha!
https://slashdot.org/comments....
Danger, Will Robinson, Danger! Creimy is posting more than 2 posts a day. Hurry! mod down otherwise /. will go to hell again!
Note: you can mod down even if already at -1 to lower karma and to prevent lost /. users to accidentally mod up.
creimer wrote:
All you need to do is find a website with a permissive TOS, say, Slashdot, create a Python script to scrape your own comments, sprinkle Amazon affiliate links in various posts, and then re-post past links whenever possible. Won't be long before you start making "coffee money" each month.
https://slashdot.org/comments....
C.D. Reimer is a renowned Slashdot collaborator, as he puts it himself; "Because of the quality of my posts and my article submissions, I'm a highly rated commentator and moderator."
But does anybody ever wondered what "C.D." stands for? Well, it stands for Creimy Dumpty of course!
Creimy Dumpty sat on the wall,
Creimy Dumpty had a great fall.
All the king's horses
And all the king's men
Couldn't put Creimy Dumpty
Together again.
Creimy's siblings video and theme song, very realistic, especially the pants, just like Creimy's:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
With "Vice President Pence Vowing US Astronauts Will Return To the Moon", we are sure they will need miracle workers up there, here is what it would look like. Note that Creimy takes care of bringing a lot of food to the moon as depicted below:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Creimy's real pictures:
Before the sex change:
https://ibb.co/cc7Ddw
After the sex change:
https://ibb.co/gVad65
Who says that "switching away from carbon producing fuels" is the only or best option, assuming that "solving" is pursued?
http://nov79.com/gbwm/ntyg.html
Everybody can buy a domain and publish whatever he or she wants there. In this case, the author seems to be one "Gary Novak, Independent Scientist". Google Scholar finds nothing relevant someone with that name has published in the scientific literature, and it is extremely inclusive. So why would you believe a random guy off the internet, but not well-known experts who have published books and peer-reviewed papers on this for more than 100 years?
Stephan
Modern nuclear plant designs (not 1950's era soviet death traps) are walk-away safe, meaning if everyone just walked out of the building with no safety precautions, the reactor would shut itself down through unescapable physical processes, not through computer controls. The best of these are the molten salt reactors that do not run in a pressurized container, and even if some terrorist got in with high explosives and they were they blown to bits in an explosion, would result in largely inert and only moderately radioactive debris in the area of the explosion. If allowed to run to "runaway" conditions, they will self-regulate to a cooler state as the fuel expands under heating, and were they super-seeded with highly enriched feedstock, would melt through the "freeze-plugs" that require active maintenance to maintain as cold solids, resulting in the fuel dumping into individual containers too small to maintain a reaction.
In other words, totally walk-away safe. When compared to the chemicals and energy used to manufacture solar energy, or the limited resources of rare-earth materials used in wind generators, not to mention the limited, highly reactive lithium used for batteries to level either solar or wind energy, modern nuclear plants are so safe and productive, they almost appear utopian when described.
Life, the Universe, and Everything... in my image.
why do I not have points!?!?! +eleventybillion
This is nonsense. it says that because CO2 density in the atmosphere is 1/2500, to raise the average temperature of the atmosphere by 1 degree due to C02, the C02 molecules need to be heated by 2500 degrees. This would be logical, if C02 molecules NEVER transferred heat to other molecules. Or global warming happened over a period of a microsecond. Or some other thing that stops that page being obvious rubbish from the outset.
Most if not all wastewater treatment facilities are located in low-lying coastal areas. Such facilities already frequently fail whenever there is excessive storm water drainage (from heavy storms), releasing untreated sewage into the bay.
Imagine the cost of having to completely replace all these treatment facilities at a time when all these other things are already going critical.
Another sad thing will be the loss of a lot of the protected wildlife habitat zones which exist around the bay. That they were even created after a more ruinous, environmentally catastrophic earlier period was a big thing. But now that they're established they will soon disappear.
One other thing - they're planning to build the new high-speed rail along the same corridor that is used by Caltrain - a corridor which almost hugs the coastline. When everything goes critical from rising water levels, sections of this line will either be submerged or extremely close to being submerged. It was probably a major mistake to build the high speed rail corridor along that route instead of further inland.
[citation needed]
The only solar thermal power plant in CA is struggling because it's badly designed and is not cost-competitive. It also for quite some time was failing to deliver the required contracted amount of power. Fortunately, they fixed some stuff and it finally is in compliance as of this week: https://www.the-american-inter...
Well, the problem is, Texas (and Florida, and LA) is not going to move. So people will be bailing out Houston and Miami after "1000 year storms" until one day it becomes impossible financially.
This is misleading. CO2 IR absorption _alone_ does not explain global warming. But it doesn't need to.
CO2 forcing the water vapor concentration increase most certainly does explain the current warming with statistically significant precision. Here's a nice summary: https://www.skepticalscience.c...
AFAIK, most of the route between SF and SJ will be aerial by then, anyway.
Apparently Palo Alto was throwing tantrums & demanding a tunnel, then Caltrans basically said, "You'll approve aerial tracks, or we'll do nothing at all & you can endure 110mph grade crossings and trains every 3-10 minutes in perpetuity once HSR launches".
You fuckers can mod me down, but you know it's the truth. There is actually a map so people know where to avoid human shit and there are syringes everywhere because there are homeless and druggies everywhere. Democrats have driven that beautiful city into the shit covered ground.
Did I read that right? 2 mm * 82 years = 6.5 inches or so. Is that amount really going to cause runways to be flooded?
I really thought that the effect on water vapor being the really dangerous aspect of rising CO2 was well known.
CO2 effects warming of the atmosphere by slowing down radiative flux out to space. A warmer atmosphere can hold more water without precipitating it. Water vapor is a very potent greenhouse gas. This ignores negative forces, but really everyone should have that basic knowledge, and should be able to understand that CO2 levels will be the straw that breaks the camel's back, and really basic processes cause its effect to be amplified greatly.
I wonder if the topic is just too damn complicated for the public to grasp, and we're just fucked.
Correct. Water vapor acts as an amplifier - it's far less potent than CO2 by weight, but there's a lot of water in the atmosphere. Increasing CO2 will increase the water concentration even more. But this is not a runaway process, water also is more likely to precipitate as its concentration grows.
Please explain how gravity works.
http://mochimachine.org/wastel...
That might be a separate issue about overpasses. Unlike for instance Germany where there are virtually no road/rail crossings, the corridor along the peninsula has many road/rail crossings (and consequent traffic snarls, pedestrian deaths, vehicles being hit).
Part of the money for the high-speed rail project will be to eliminate road/rail crossings along the corridor and have only overpasses similar to places like Germany.
I live at an altitude where, in a practical sense, no water could ever reach my home. Not trolling, these are all real game-enders. For the record I consider all of these important issues. If you reduce emissions enough to repair the climate you doom the economy - and therefore humanity which depends on it. If you build sea-walls to deal with sea-level rise you likely save some humanity - but you doom every swamp/lowland/river delta and it's ecosystem worldwide. Biodiversity isn't optional, destroying the global floodplains will be as damning as reducing the emissions. What to do?
How do we deal with the emissions, economy, and biology? We seem to have arguments for 2 of 3.
And yet California has a bigger economy than all but 5 nations in the world. Doesn't seem like enough people are leaving to having an effect on that.
Actually global sea level doesn't act like a bathtub. There are all sorts of effects that cause variations in sea level, currents, gravity among others.
Do you really think reducing CO2 output will be enough?
Well considering it isn't mathematically possible for CO2 to be the cause of the temperature increase, reducing it won't make any difference at all. For CO2 to be responsible for even a 1c temperature increase would require that 1 molecule of CO2 out of 2500 molecules of air (400ppm), that only absorbs about 8% of the reflected infrared energy, is somehow generating 2500c of heat needed to raise the temperature of those 2500 molecules by 1c.
Not this nonsense again! You ignore the fact that the CO2 rather quickly transfers the energy it traps, mostly by collisions with other molecules in the atmosphere. You also ignore the fact that water vapor causes around twice as much of the greenhouse effect as CO2.
Doom, doom, doom and people accept it without critical thinking. Global warming fanatics are always predicting doom just like all end of the world cults. Of course, like all cults it's always doom in the future. How much has sea level rise over the last 10,000 years affected people who fall for this future doom prophecy? Not at all. How much will sea level rise affect future people? Not at all unless we start living 1000 or more years. People and civilization adjusts. It's not like God created the Earth at the perfect temperature and perfect sea level although honestly I don't think most people in the Global Warming Cult realize that deep down that's what they seem to believe.
Alexa, I'll be underwater in 100 years, what am I going to do?
Alexa: Take corpse swimming lessons!
While I agree with you on the minimal effect of emigration, that doesn't refute GP's point that red tape is holding California back. Without red tape, perhaps California could have a bigger economy than all but one nation in the world.
You should but that's not the point. The solar on your roof costs a few lives per sq km of it. So many roof installations will kill so many people.
Gee, maybe they should invest in a safety harness like the roofers use.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
New evidence that may support what you say.
The cost of mitigating climate change is insignificant next to the costs of not addressing it, plus mitigation will create many jobs in the process.
False on its face, given that the number of deaths from solar or wind technology is zero, as opposed to Chernobyl or Fukushima. If someone falls off a wind tower and dies that's an industrial accident, same as if Homer Simpson accidentally runs over Lenny with a forklift at the local nuclear power plant. When a wind farm starts a deadly tornado, or a solar farm accidentally forms an Archimedes mirror, then we can talk about which form is safest.
But not before then. And putting the issue of safety aside completely, nuclear power is completely unjustifiable based on cost alone.
It's not runaway, no, but there is a real scary element in that the new equilibrium can take an unknown amount of time to be reached.
We make lots of models to try to figure out what that equilibrium is and when we'll reach it, but it's a hard target to hit due to the constant increasing amounts of CO2.
What I mean, is we could pass the point of no return for us (or more specifically, the ecosystem we rely on to feed our civilization) and not realize it until far later.
Precipitation is more likely with overall increases in humidity- however, precipitation is also *less* likely as temperatures raise because for any absolute humidity level, the relative humidity is less as temperature rises. Which wins in the end? Does anyone really know yet?
All I ask is that you to verify your claim with the same diligence and rigor that was taken in verifying the existence of climate change.
Also with the method you propose to do the mitigating.
Prove anything by multiplying Huge Number times Tiny Number
But not faster than less than 2mm per year...
Maybe that'll help flights get into and out of SFO on time. Can't make it worse. Good riddance, shitty airport.
Not just a hand waiver but a pretentious hand waiver. The cost of floods, fires, hurricanes, tornadoes (all worsened by climate change) are already measured in hundreds of billions per year. Wind and solar are cost-competitive with coal, and that's allowing coal to externalize most of its costs.
The only losers in climate change mitigation are shareholders in fossil fuel companies.
Niagara Falls is only a shadow of it's former self of 150 years ago. And the Mississippi river is 120 miles shorter than it was in 1850. The earth collects 2 feet of water from outer space each million years, so in another 4.5 billion years, all animal life will need to migrate to mountainous areas at altitudes greater than 8900 feet above current sea level. All of it caused by natural events, no global warming, climate change or any other man-caused calamities required.
Control the flow from the ocean at a single location...
If California is concerned, how do you think the residents of Atlantis felt when the Northern Polar ice cap was melted by a meteor and flooded their city as well as several others, including one in Japan?
No, the direct effect off the CO2 increase does not fully explain the observed global warming. But then nobody except maybe some builders of straw men claims that
No. Wrong. It's the most commonly given explanation by dismissive asshole on the internet. And since it's the wrong answer, skeptics go away satisfied that global warming is a myth. So, what's your goal? Do you want to persuade, or be a smug asshole? If the former, don't be dismissive, explain a bit more than "CO2 causes global warming you stupid denier".
Note, not so much talking about your response, but the normal response seen on Slashdot.
CO2 emissions, are indeed the root cause of the observed warming, and our best estimate is that they explain all the warming.
No. Wrong. Wrong order of magnitude. CO2 drives complex feedback mechanisms, positive and negative. It's the result of all the complex systems of atmosphere and ocean and (mostly marine) life that explains all the warming. CO2 by itself does not. I mean, come on, WTF do you think the climate model scientists do all day? You can model CO2 IR absorption in 1 day of coding. Obviously that's just the trivial starting point. Obviously the trivial starting point doesn't explain the observed results.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
SO, then it should be really easy to educate him, of he knows nothing. Is your goal to persuade, or to be a smug asshole? Is global warming important to you because of
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Wow, /. moderation has become fully scientifically illiterate. Not much value left in this place.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
You say all of this also assuming that organism's reactions to the environment stays constant. That is exactly what evolution is, and the change is happening slowly enough (you have to remember for many plants, each year is an entire generation so evolution can happen very quickly) plants can easily adapt. History has shown plant life adapts to those types of conditions easier than the ones we have now.
When nuclear power goes bad it doesn't do that either. Perhaps you should look at actual stats for nuclear accidents.
Furthermore, if we'd actually moved to next-gen molten salt designs 50 years ago when they were proven workable and safe instead of killing them for political reasons, we wouldn't have giant steam bombs surrounding our nuclear piles, but a non-pressurised, non-reactive liquid that freezes solid when it goes below 300C and doesn't start boiling until well _ABOVE_ the inherent limiting temperatures of nuclear reactions.
The thing about high level radioactive products is that they're both easily detectable AND shortlived. All you have to do is wait them out and that's measured in human scales.
Three Mile Island's infamous reactor is in the process of being dismantled and cleaned up. Chernobyl will be able to be done in another 20-30 years and Fukushima in 30-40 - and bear in mind that nowhere in Fukushima is more radioactive than Denver Colorado or Downtown Helsinki (both due to natural sources) unless you're silly enough to want to climb inside the nuclear reactors.
Even that "heavily contaminated water" is _less_ radioactive than most BEER
Forget the batteries and look at the environmental disasters unfolding in the areas around PV panel manufacturing plants.
Just because it's not in your backyard doesn't mean it's not a problem.
Will they?
The history of the world shows that cities get abandoned by their populations long before the leadership gives up. There are thousands of ghost towns around the planet which were once thriving cities and some of them only date back a few hundred years (gold, oil and mineral rushes, old coal towns, etc etc)
New Orleans is on track to become the first modern climatic ghost town but there will be plenty of others.
The article glosses other another point to bear in mind - given the nature of the subduction fault offshore, in a good sized earthquake there's a good chance that large portions of the land between the fault and the San Andreas fault will sink rapidly as compression stresses are released and this may be accompanied by sections further inland rising a bit (think of a squashed sponge uncrumpling.)
Saying "it's complex" doesn't even come close to explaining the various interactions occuring. Are there any ancient raised beaches along the californian coastline? if so, they're evidence of that area of land being systematically jacked up by sucessive quakes, etc.
"I don't think phytoplankton are affected by minor changes in ocean CO2 levels."
Except it's not minor.
The CO2 concentration in the oceans has changed so much that actual acidity levels have changed 30% in the last 200 years. (pH is a logarithmic scale)
Bear in mind also that in geological history, oceanic CO2 spikes go hand in hand with anoxic events (most of our oil comes from the last couple of these) and half our breathable oxygen comes from the seas.
Can you cope with a drop of oxygen from 19% to 15% at sea level? Hint: 90% of the human population cannot and will die of cardiac congestion caused by physiological changes as their bodies attempt to deal with such a long-term change.
That's quite apart from losing a large chunk of the food chain in an anoxic event. In general very few species averaging larger than about 40kg bodymass appear to have survived on land when this kind of thing has happened in the last and it's likely to stay the same rule of thumb in future.
Increased CO2 gives increased plant activity, but is also stresses the respiration part of their cycles and seems to result in less effective mineral fixation along with greater water uptake, do you might get more greenery, but it looks like it will be much lower quality.
I like the idea overall; I presume you'd be okay with existing structures but if they get wiped out then that's it, no more?
I presume there will be compensation for the "takings" since the land can't be used anymore?
Ferret
Sic gorgiamus allos subjectatos nunc
I have absolutely 0 sympathy for people who build RIGHT on the shore line. I lived in the arrea, saw people building right on the coast line, if this is such a big concern perhaps they shouldn't be handing out building permits for building on the coastline.
There is a quite big lot of people on the flood plains in the south-east of the country. Carolinas, shores of Missouri and so on. They'll have to move eventually, but you can bet it's not going to be easy.
California and all of the west coast, actually, is in a pretty good spot (if you don't consider droughts). Some amount of coastal land will be lost, but with steep shores megafloods are not a problem.
False on its face, given that the number of deaths from solar or wind technology is zero, as opposed to Chernobyl or Fukushima.
No it is not. Wikipedia agrees with me!!! So my statement was True on its face .
as opposed to Chernobyl or Fukushima.
First Fukushima killed 0 people, and Chernobyl was less then 60 according the World Health Organization.
nuclear power is completely unjustifiable based on cost alone.
You should research 4th generation reactors especially Small Modular Reactors. NuScale reactors are being built in Idaho right now for a Utah power company. These can be factory built and shipped by truck anywhere. The economics of scale will reduce the costs just like they did for solar and wind.
FTFY. Again, industrial accidents are NOT a failure of the energy technology itself. Otherwise, every dead or injured uranium miner, every person who trips on the steps going to work at the nuclear power plant, every single butterfingers who drops a canister of nuclear waste can be counted as a failure of nuclear energy.
Try 34 to 50 people during the immediate evacuation. And have none of you nuclear fanbois heard of mesothelioma? It can take decades for exposure from a substance to form terminal cancer, but that does nothing to change what gave you a disease in the first place.
Hand waiving and vaporware. Nuclear power will never be cost competitive with wind or solar, as the latter have none of refinement/construction/security/waste/decommission issues the safest nuke plant in your wettest dream will have to deal with.
A quick look at a map confirmed my suspicion that the airport was just built on landfill. It looks like there is also a significant risk of liquefaction when the next earthquake strikes. https://priceonomics.com/what-...
Rising sea levels will not kill millions of people. It may displace Millions of people but not kill them.
People displaced off no-longer viable agricultural land would have greatly increased mortality from starvation at least.
But the reality of the displacement is that it would be with storm surge or flood, that itself would be a disaster with many deaths in parts of the world.
I think it's fair to say that rising seas will kill them.
Nuclear was a much more viable solution when we had decades to act.
Because it takes three or four decades to get a nuclear power plant up and running, wind, hydro and solar must make up the bulk of the new power in order to be online before the 2C goal is lost.
every single butterfingers who drops a canister of nuclear waste can be counted as a failure of nuclear energy.
I do not think you know what nuclear waste is. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=EUvvIzH2W6g Waste is a red herring. It has harmed 0 people worldwide.
have none of you nuclear fanbois heard of mesothelioma?
Of course I have, but what does that have to due with nuclear energy? And do not say Fukushima caused mesothelioma because it did not. 0 people died from the plant.
Nuclear power will never be cost competitive with wind or solar
Stop me when solar and wind can work 24/7, or when storage is cheaper then Nuclear. Luckily for humanity NuScale is more then vapor ware.
Your projection is noted.
It's hard to get a fan of nuclear power to understand something when his fanboyism is dependent on his not understanding it. That was an example of a industrial accident. Nuke fans want to count every windmill worker who falls off a tower as a casualty of wind power. But you don't count workers who die in uranium mining accidents as a casualty of nuclear power - another kind of industrial accident. Or if Homer runs over Lenny with a forklift - an industrial accident.
That terminal cancer can take years or decades to manifest - like I said the first time. To waive your hands after a meltdown and say "hey, nobody died this morning so it's no big whoop" is nonsense. The uranium miners that die from exposure to dust or TB - many times what the CDC expected - didn't keel over their first day on the job, either.
Wrong.
You think wind stops at night? Nuke fan elevators really don't go to the top floor, do they? All you do with wind and solar is space generating capacity across the grid, same as with coal or nuclear power. As for storage, there's no need for hand wringing when '70's technology will suffice - 1870's. There are water reservoirs and hydroelectric dam's still functioning today that are more than a century old. If pumped storage is good enough for nuclear power - the Ludington facility backs up nuclear power plants in Michigan - it's good enough for wind and solar.
Cost is the Achilles heel of nuclear power. When you can build more power generation in less time for less money with none of the safety or long term costs - nuclear power is unjustifiable.
Millions of people will move to places that aren't underwater. It's the people already there that will kill them, because, dirty foreigners get out! They will probably kill each other a fair bit.
You have plenty of time (think decades) to evacuate a couple of miles down the road on a bit higher ground
We're talking about a scenario where almost the entire state of Florida is no longer inhabitable. The state of Florida has approximately the same population and GDP as your entire country.
How easy do you think it would be to move your entire country to Germany?
New York City is going to have issues. The literal flooding is going to be limited, but huge swaths of infrastructure were built with the assumption that sea level was close to constant. And that is no longer true. Tunnels don't work well when they fill with water.
Again, you do not grasp the level of effort required on a global scale.
Also, you don't need concrete to build dykes and if the Netherlands could do it with 17th century tech
To do it at a reasonable overall cost, including maintenance, you're going to need concrete. That 17th century tech required continuous maintenance that is not at all tenable when you're talking about the coastline of the US.
Please point to scientific experiments that show that collisions and heat transfer from 1 molecule of CO2 out of 2500 molecules of air are sufficient to raise the temperature of those other 2499 molecules by 1 degree Celsius. Should be a simple enough test to duplicate in a lab so I'd love to read the results of those experiments.
Much longer than 500 years. 2500 years ago it started. 1500 years ago they started with dykes instead of "terpen"
The investment is after the 1953 flooding was the cause of the current investment. The 1916 one was the reason of turning a sea into a lake. The first time they thought about it was in 1667.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
That's nonsense. Almost all plants benefit dramatically from higher CO2 levels. That's why commercial greenhouse operators commonly use CO2 generators to increase CO2 levels to 800-1200 ppmv above average outdoor levels: because it makes the plants much healthier, faster-growing, and more productive. Plants do not "have a harder time producing proteins" (unless underfertilized), they do not have "trouble reproducing," and they are not "weaker" with higher CO2 levels. Crops grown in greenhouses with CO2 levels 3x outdoor levels are just as nutritious as when grown outdoors, and plants are just as hardy, but at 3x higher CO2 levels they are much more productive.
Nor is there any evidence of harm to marine life from CO2. The most significant change seen is the increase in calcifying coccolithophores, which remove CO2 from the water.
Higher CO2 levels are dramatically beneficial for both agriculture and natural ecosystems. That fact has been known to science for about a century! In fact, way back in 1920 Scientific American called anthropogenic CO2 "the precious air fertilizer," because it is so highly beneficial for plants.
The claim that higher CO2 levels cause significantly accelerated coastal sea-level rise is falsified by the measurement data. As it happens, one of the USA's best long sea-level measurement records is from San Francisco. Since the 1906 Earthquake, sea-level at San Francisco has risen at just 2.0 ±0.2 mm/year (7.1 to 8.7 inches per century), and there's been no "acceleration" in rate, at all.
Here's a graph showing sea-level measured at San Francisco juxtaposed with CO2 level:
http://sealevel.info/9414290_SanFrancisco_2016-12_since_1906-05.png
That includes both global sea-level rise (about 1.5 mm/yr) and local subsidence (my guess is about 0.5 mm/yr, though Prof. Richard Peltier estimates 0.32 mm/yr [ICE6G/VM5a] or 0.42 mm/yr [ICE5Gv1.3/VM2]).
As you can see from the graph, CO2 level has no perceptible effect on the (minuscule) rate of sea-level rise.
The rate of sea-level rise at San Francisco is slightly higher than average (because of subsidence), but the lack of acceleration is typical. Most sites have seen little or no sea-level rise acceleration since the 1920s or earlier. Coastal sea-level is rising no faster now, with CO2 level at 407 ppmv, than it was nine decades ago, with CO2 level 100 ppmv lower.
Although the Earth's climate has warmed modestly, the increase in CO2 level and the resultant warming have had no detectable effect on the rate of sea-level rise.
BTW, if you aren't sure what "acceleration" looks like in a graph, here's a little primer that should help:
http://sealevel.info/acceleration_primer.html
From the combined effects of global sea-level rise and local land subsidence, San Francisco is on track to experience only 6 to 7 inches of sea-level rise by 2100.
The temperature of a gas is a measure of the average kinetic energy of the molecules in the gas. Kinetic theory of gases. This is old school stuff that I shouldn't need to cite for you. The rate of collisions is a function of the density of the gas. So we know that the CO2 in the atmosphere is colliding with other molecules. In fact the collisions are far more common than the CO2 molecule emitting a photon.
I found this response in a post at Real Climate that explains what is going on with greenhouse gases and other gases in the atmosphere fairly well. It is response #9 by Paul Schopf:
It is first necessary to understand that molecules are made up of atoms (with mass) are held together by bonds, much like two balls linked by springs, and therefore have ways of vibrating at specific frequencies.
The bonds between two atoms in a molecule are particularly strong, and can only vibrate at very high frequencies (emphasize frequencies over energies) well above the frequency of infrared or the solar radiation spectrum.
However, molecules with 3 or more atoms can vibrate by changing the angles between the three atoms, and they can vibrate at additional (lower) frequencies. Molecules like CO2 and H2O have vibrational frequencies within the infrared range. In these vibrations, the strong bonds between Carbon and Oxygen may still have very high vibrational frequencies, but the two Oxygen atoms can vibrate toward or away from each other at this lower frequency.
Molecules with more than 3 atoms can vibrate in even more ways (which means more and more frequencies). Examples are CH4, CFCs, etc.
When upward radiation close to the right frequency hits a CO2 molecule, it can excite the vibrational mode at that frequency. The outward radiation is reduced by the amount of energy that goes into the vibration. We see the reduced amount of outward radiation in the spectra observed by downward looking satellites.
[The observant student then might ask why the energy that goes into the vibration does not just get sent back out to space by emitting a photon – after all, if the same molecule gets hit over and over with photons won’t the vibrational energy increase and increase? There are two answers: the simple part is that yes, the energy can be re-emitted, but the direction of the emitted photons does not have to have the same upward angle. In fact, the extra energy will as likely go down as up. On average, only half of the incoming energy continues on an upward path, half heads back toward Earth to participate in the answer to question 3.
The second answer comes from equipartion of energy. Temperature is a measure of the kinetic energy of the molecules. This kinetic energy is made up of not only the vibrational energy, but also the rotational energy and the classical kinetic energy of moving molecules.
When one molecule with high vibrational energy bumps into another molecule (even one without a vibrational mode) some of that vibration can go into kicking the other molecule into faster motion or higher rotation. So energy gets lost from the vibrational mode and transferred into the general temperature of the surrounding gas. The CO2 molecule has a unique way to absorb energy at a particular frequency, but that energy gets transferred very quickly to its neighboring molecules, most of which have no way to emit radiation at that frequency.]
Probably means calories.
"..One hosts to look them up, one DNS to find them, and in the darkness BIND them."