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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."
"Subsidence is a great driver of our economy." - SF Bay Gondoliers Association
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.
And we will get the Water to Pay for it!
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
And we will get the Water to Pay for it!
Don't be silly... the Kaiju will pay for it.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
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
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.
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.
AEnema, more precisely. I have a suggestion to keep you all occupied: learn to swim
Are house prices declining as a result of this?
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.
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.
[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
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.
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.
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?
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.
SF is about dressing in layers. At night it's cold and windy, in the morning it is cool and foggy, and in the afternoon it can be mild and pleasant.
I prefer the weather in San Jose-Santa Clara, and the massively lower crime rate. (well, I suppose the white collar crime rate is high in Silicon Valley)
P.S. SFO isn't even in SF. It's like 3 cities away.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
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.
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
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
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.
Well if you make $150k/yr you can afford to live in a mere 45 minute commute.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
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.
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.
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.]