New Scientist just posted this. Some scientists are now suggesting a long term sea level rise of 20 metres could be on the cards. Link to Nature paper in the article.

I've been a long time layperson reader on climate change and have read all of the IPCC reports. Every time that we postulate a "worst case" scenario, the very next report comes and we find out it's much more dire than we previously imagined.

But, hey, it snowed somewhere so that means global warming is a Chinese hoax or something.

You can check the likely impact where you live, of a given sea rise level, by going here and setting the sea level rise to the requisite level.

Apparently, if long term sea level rise reaches 20 metres, I'm fucked. Most of my home town is under water.

Other places that are fucked if sea level rises by 20 metres ...

[1] Almost all Caribbean islands - Barbados basically vanishes off the map;

[2] Most of Florida - Miami becomes a playground for tuna fish;

[3] Mobile, Alabama;

[4] Everything along the Gulf of Mexico coast from New Orleans, through Houston, Corpus Christi and Brownsville;

[5] Sacramento (completely underwater);

[6] Seattle and Vancouver;

[7] Quebec City and Montreal;

[8] Boston and New York City;

[9] Virtually the entire state of Delaware;

[10] Newport News, Norfolk and Wilmington;

[11] Charleston and Savannah.

The map doesn't show what would happen to the Great Lakes, but I'm guessing that Green Bay, Milwaukee, Chicago, Detroit, Missisauga, Toronto, Rochester, Syracuse, Buffalo and Cleveland are all similarly turned into fish farms. Go to Alaska and Anchorage is fucked.

The only possible plus could be delaying the acidicifcation of the oceans with such a large influx of sequestered fresh water, but this would obviously disrupt other facets of marine dynamics. In other words there might be an up side, but that “might” isn’t going to help when untold millions are displaced.

RS

Calilasseia wrote:You can check the likely impact where you live, of a given sea rise level, by going here and setting the sea level rise to the requisite level.

Apparently, if long term sea level rise reaches 20 metres, I'm fucked. Most of my home town is under water.

I just checked my old city of Saigon, and just 5 metres puts most of south-west Vietnam underwater. It also sinks Bangkok. 10 metres sinks Hanoi, Tokyo and Shanghai.

Calilasseia wrote:

The map doesn't show what would happen to the Great Lakes, but I'm guessing that Green Bay, Milwaukee, Chicago, Detroit, Missisauga, Toronto, Rochester, Syracuse, Buffalo and Cleveland are all similarly turned into fish farms.

Great Lake Levels are controlled by international agreement. This created an issue last year where the control level had to be higher than usual as Quebec downstream was being inundated by floods from the north. The Toronto Islands were flooded through July and sustained millions in damage. And that is just the start of all this.

Thanks, I had no idea that Sacramento was so low in altitude.

Unfortunately, one day there might be a year associated with the measurement of elevation. Kind of like the (1950 or 2000) coordinates of celestial objects.

At about 8 meters my house is oceanfront.

At 20 metres my hometown of Rush in North County Dublin is gone.

Just A Theory wrote:I've been a long time layperson reader on climate change and have read all of the IPCC reports. Every time that we postulate a "worst case" scenario, the very next report comes and we find out it's much more dire than we previously imagined.

But, hey, it snowed somewhere so that means global warming is a Chinese hoax or something.

The irony is while overall the IPCC continuously go for more conservative and optimistic scenarios, the deniers comb though the report looking for some cases where the IPCC got it wrong and then try claim that they are overestimating the damage (of a phenomenon they waver between denying happens and saying it happens but it won't be as bad) as a whole and call them alarmists. That's when they aren't outright saying obvious strawman lies like "They told up the Arctic ice would be gone by the turn of the (21st) century."

All this is attributed to human activity and a rising population. At the moment it's about 7.5 billion. It will level off at about 11 billion towards the end of the century... So that's OK, then.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2LyzBoHo5EI

Alan B wrote:All this is attributed to human activity and a rising population. At the moment it's about 7.5 billion. It will level off at about 11 billion towards the end of the century... So that's OK, then.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2LyzBoHo5EI

That's not an encouraging thought. We're unsustainable at 7.5b let alone 50% more than that.

Not entirely true ...we do have the technology to be sustainable even at much higher numbers.

If you took all the world's population and dumped them into the Grand Canyon they wouldn't fill a fraction of it. In fact the 7.2 billion people would only form a comparatively tiny pile - as shown in this fascinating mock-up image

The planet is big.

That said, actually getting to a sustainable industrial civilization is no easy task.....but it can be done without going back to the neo-lithic.

https://www.brookings.edu/blog/future-d ... lanet-yes/

There is low hanging fruit even now in food waste as just one aspect

FUTURE DEVELOPMENT
Can 10 billion people live and eat well on the planet? Yes.
Heinz-Wilhelm StrubenhoffTuesday, April 28, 2015

This means that we could quite easily provide food for 10 billion people on the planet. There is considerable potential on both the food supply and demand side to provide more food for all. Annual growth of demand can be met by helping farmers to intensify production where the yield gap is high. Conscious consumption and less waste in rich countries would already be a safe strategy to provide affordable food for all.

https://www.brookings.edu/blog/future-d ... lanet-yes/

Calilasseia wrote:The map doesn't show what would happen to the Great Lakes, but I'm guessing that Green Bay, Milwaukee, Chicago, Detroit, Missisauga, Toronto, Rochester, Syracuse, Buffalo and Cleveland are all similarly turned into fish farms. Go to Alaska and Anchorage is fucked.

What the map really shows is that Buffalo (for one example) is 183 m above current MSL, like Cleveland, on Lake Erie. If you've ever heard of Niagara Falls, and you know any geography, you'll note that the Niagara Escarpment is something like 30 m high all on its lonesome. The city of Rochester (imagine what sorts of folks named it!) is on Lake Ontario, at 154 m. Detroit, Chicago and Milwaukee are all upstream of these places, if you know where the Great Lakes drainage leads. By comparison, the elevation of London is 35 m relative to current MSL, and NYC is about the same. Given the properties of liquid water, I'd imagine that the entire shoreline of Lake Ontario is at an elevation of about 150 m above MSL.

Memphis TN is 100 m above current MSL, so Graceland is saved! Continuing in the musical vein, Houston's too close to New Orleans.

You can easily look this kind of stuff up. Get your facts straight, as the saying goes, and then distort them at your leisure. Stevie says God is going to show us Higher Ground, but he was sellin' wolf tickets and being well-paid for it. From 1973 (7M views):

i have no avatar wrote:Thanks, I had no idea that Sacramento was so low in altitude.

Unfortunately, one day there might be a year associated with the measurement of elevation. Kind of like the (1950 or 2000) coordinates of celestial objects.

Just stick with measuring relative to the geoid, and you'll be fine. Isostatic rebound is not something Lebron James does. Back in the Cretaceous:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_Interior_Seaway



When high water hits the exchanges on Wall Street and in London, it will give new meaning to the investment slang "under water". I look forward to negotiations with our new lizard overlords. What a croc that will be!

With 20 m rise in water level, we can kiss Cancun, Cabo, Kona, and Cozumel goodbye, except maybe for the divers and surfers. El Hurghada, Seychelles, and the rest, too.

People are so important!
To themselves, maybe.
Almost any other species (except cats, and maybe dogs, for example) wishes they'd go get fucked. It's a tossup for beef cattle, pigs, and chickens.

I've got a nice boat for sale, perfect size for a single live-aboard or a very friendly couple. You'll need to add solar panels and maybe a flush toilet, but it's priced to sell. You can fish while Rome sinks.

Waterworld....it's been done

Macdoc wrote:Not entirely true ...we do have the technology to be sustainable even at much higher numbers.

(snip)

You are missing the point. It isn't about whether or not '10 billion' can be fed. It's about the effect the '10 billion' will have on the ecosystem as a whole which includes loss of species as well as ice at the poles leading to sea level rise.
It has been pointed out that sea level rise will reduce the land area - that is, the 'land area' that these '10 billion' will need to feed themselves...

Don't we also lose a lot of arable land around coasts?
I don't know if it's universal, but my seaside hometown is said to have some of the best land in Ireland due to its sandy soil.

...which farmers are selling for development as the city expands.