Sea Level Rise Can't Be Stopped 521
riverat1 writes "Sea level rise won't stop for several hundred years even if we reverse global warming, according to a study published in the journal Nature Climate Change. As warmer water is mixed down into the oceans, it causes thermal expansion of the water. Under the best emissions scenario, the expected rise is 14.2 cm by 2100; under the worst, 32.2 cm from thermal expansion alone. Any water pumped from aquifers or glacial/ice sheet melt is added to that."
Nothing to worry about (Score:1, Insightful)
Jesus will come back and save us
Jesus is my lifeboat. This is all part of the plan. Relax.
Re:The sky is falling... (Score:5, Insightful)
Because, of course, the laws of nature obey your political ideology.
Here's news, moron, the Universe doesn't give a fuck about Liberal vs. Conservative, Socialist vs. Capitalist. It does not fucking care. If pumping millions of years of sequestered CO2 into the atmosphere in the space of two centuries is going to cause serious climactic changes, it is absolutely fucking irrelevant who you fucking vote for, or whether you masturbate to Vladimir Lenin or Ayn Rand.
Fucking hell, you ideological fanatics are a tiresome, mentally handicapped lot. Don't like evolution because you think it falsifies your religion. Don't like acid rain or climate change because it means there are consequences to wide-scale and uncontrolled industrial activity. Don't like regulations because it kills your particular get-rich-quick-while-fucking-the-economy scheme.
Is there any part of you at all that isn't a selfish, greedy piece of stupidity? Is there any part of you that gives the least little fuck for anyone other than yourself? Or are you really the vile repugnant sociopathic troll you appear?
Good news... (Score:5, Insightful)
Now that there is nothing we can do about it, the shills can stop pretending it isnâ(TM)t happening.
Already, Exxon has stated the obvious - burning fossil fuels is warming the planet by increasing the co2 level; however had to mute it with a statement that we can handle the change.
I suppose a whiff of honesty is better than before.
Not the worse (Score:3, Insightful)
But when I think of climate change, I think of longer periods of temperatures that are outside what a human can really aclimate to, and food can really be produced in. For instance, daytime temperatures that approach or go over 100F during the day and don't get under 80F at night. In Europe we are seeing another winter with temperatures staying at freezing for a continuous period. This is a concern because if we can't produce food, we can't survive. Look at the desertification of Africa. Look at the fight over water going on now in Texas and California. There are going to be some things that are just going to involving restructuring, insurance, and large writeoffs. This will be over and forgotten each generation, like the recurring banking crisis that hits us every 20-30 years. The other, like weather and temperature changes, are not going to be so easily fixed.
Re:Not too bad? (Score:4, Insightful)
Maybe I am being overly optimistic, but 14.2cm in 80 years doesn't exactly seem so bad (or even 32.2cm for that matter). Surely cities that are going to be effected will have ample time to relocate those in "danger".
Too right. Let's move them into the last Indian reservations.
Exactly where would you propose we move tens of millions of people? Not only Florida and low areas of the Eastern Seaboard, but gulf coast and low lands of Texas, right up to Houston are at risk.
Walt Kelly's Pogo -- We have met the enemy and he is us.
Re:The sky is falling... (Score:0, Insightful)
GIven that all the states at the top of the productivity and standard-of-living rankings are blue states, and all the ones at the bottom of the lists are red-states... I dont' think it's the "LIBRULS" that are messing things up.
Duh.
(the annoying mix of ignorance and arrogance that defines today's conservatives would make the conservatives of a generation ago cry)
Re:Not too bad? (Score:4, Insightful)
The Netherlands seem to be doing just fine below sea level. It might cause some economic harm, but it's not going to be a tragedy. Also, most low-lying islands are coral islands that follow sea level.
Re:The sky is falling... (Score:2, Insightful)
All I can say to that is ... Amen.
And I wish more people would take your rant to heart. Thank you for venting.
Re:remove excessive CO2? (Score:5, Insightful)
Removing the CO2 is damn near impractical. However, even if we did it, it wouldn't be enough.
Any warming (should it exist) eventually is likely to cause two other effects...
1. an increase in the amount of water vapor in the atmosphere (which is currently responsible for about 50% of the greenhouse effect compared to 20% for CO2).
2. an increase in methane clathrate [wikipedia.org] melting in the permafrost and ocean releasing large quantities of methane into our atmosphere. Methane is ~70x a potent a greenhouse gas as CO2 (but currently only accounts for about 7% of greenhouse effect)
Many speculate that if warming actually happens, these two effects could effectively cause run-away global warming. That's why people are thinking about how to block the heating from the sun (e.g., spraying particles in the air), not just sequestering carbon or just living with the consequences of warming. It's probably too late to just think about CO2. That ship has probably sailed...
Re:remove excessive CO2? (Score:4, Insightful)
I have actually thought about this.
Take something like kudzu. Evil vine that ate the south. It grows over a foot PER DAY.
Ok, plant it on an enclosed, circular growing area, with a slow moving, automated cutting system that continually dead-heads the vines, and keeps them inside. The cut off cruft is put into a hermitically sealed solar sintering system with sand, and heated to vitrefaction.
Carbon rich black glass is produced. The stuff would be more geologically stable than coal.
Slow, but could be nearly completely automated. Done on a large scale, you could remove tons of carbon from the atmosphere daily in rainy tropical areas.
Time to stop focusing on cutting emissions (Score:2, Insightful)
The simple fact is that cutting emissions is stupid. Most of the science suggests that we are already on a path that is sure to exceed the point where the oceans will become loaded with enough hydrogen sulfide to completely destroy our ecosystem. Possibly within a few hundred years and that IF we cut emissions beyond anyone's realistic expectations. Essentially if the only measures we take are passive, reducing emissions, and the science is right we are already dead. That's if
In either case cutting emissions is economically harmful in developed nations and likely impossible in the developing world. Either the science is right and its already to late, or the science is wrong and elevated CO2 won't do these terrible things to our planet. The focus needs to move toward active controls on the temperature and chemical make up of the oceans. Its the only way.
Re:Not too bad? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:It's briefly touched upon in TFA (Score:4, Insightful)
I never get this kind of map. If you take their logic, Netherlands should already be flooded. As far as I can see from my window, it isn't.
Higher sealevel just means building some infrastructure against flooding.
You need a decent government for that. In the U.S., we knew for decades that much of New Orleans was going to be underwater if a decent hurricane hit it (I first learned about it in college in 1992). Nothing of substance was done.
Re:Bye Florida! (Score:5, Insightful)
32.2cm is the mean sea level rise. If you picture the ocean as one gigantic seesaw, it's how much the midpoint rises by, not the endpoints. The lever on either side of this midpoint is around 3200 km long. I will leave you to figure out the total area of any given slice your side of the midpoint - and what will happen to that during spring tide. Sure, low tide might actually be lower as a result, but I'm thinking that any land much below 32m below current sea levels will be in real trouble.
That's ignoring the ocean currents. Those help take hot water away from the Gulf of Mexico, so lose/weaken them and you get longer, more severe hurricanes.
And this is still ignoring the fact that much of the SE is reclaimed swamp. Water table shoots up, even if only 32cm, and you WILL lose houses nominally on dry land because they're not designed for that. You'll also lose your storm drains and sewage systems, so the survivors can expect massive outbreaks of cholera. If there are any survivors - the road system there basically uses sand as a foundation, so you WILL lose most of your road network and that means no possibility of evacuation when the hurricanes arrive. New Orleans had substantially evacuated before Katrina, you won't be able to. With South Carolina in the same boat - literally, there also will be far fewer places to evacuate to.
By 2112, everything from Florida to the middle of North Carolina will be an uninhabited, uninhabitable lost land, barren of all life. Nothing will survive there.
Re:Bye Florida! (Score:2, Insightful)
I live 2000 feet from Lake Ontario, seven feet above it.
I'd feel more confident about these predictions when at least two of them are the same.
So the "twenty feet by 2100" thing is gone now then is it Mr. Gore, cause, gosh, that sure sold a lot of movies books and carbon taxes.
And what would the sea rise be without man? Of are we supposed to believe the sea stays exactly the same forever?
Well, we only have 88 years to deal with a foot rise in water. Damn, that's devastating, we'd better get right to work.
Somebody ought to put this in perspective and figure out the human cost of this then compare it to the human cost in natural disasters by the end of the century.
It also should, you'd think, occur to somebody in a position of authority in the US that fighting natural disasters in the homeland is perhaps money better spent that having those boys occupy 153 countries with 186 bases with various occupying forces around the world.
Just a thought.
Re:pshaw! (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:pshaw! (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:RTFS - 14-32cm only for thermal expansion (Score:4, Insightful)
Water has no thermal expansion? Really? Basic physics huh?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Properties_of_water#Density_of_water_and_ice [wikipedia.org]
http://hypertextbook.com/facts/2007/AllenMa.shtml [hypertextbook.com]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Ww6BIy3nc0 [youtube.com]
And water is actually slightly compressible:
http://ga.water.usgs.gov/edu/compressibility.html [usgs.gov]
Re:Not too bad? (Score:5, Insightful)
The Netherlands seem to be doing just fine below sea level. It might cause some economic harm, but it's not going to be a tragedy. Also, most low-lying islands are coral islands that follow sea level.
Do you have a clue how expensive the water management system in the Netherlands has been? Do you realize that the Netherlands is tiny compared with the areas under threat from sea level rise in the US alone? Hell, it's tiny even compared with Florida. Do you realize that duplicating the Dutch diking system for American coastal areas would likely bankrupt the country? Not to mention how future sea level rise will make it even more difficult for even the Netherlands to maintain the integrity of their diking system.
Re:remove excessive CO2? (Score:4, Insightful)
At 468 passenger-mpg [wikipedia.org], people would take trains more often if the market failure were fixed by adding the external cost of carbon to the price of fuel. A demand curve [wikipedia.org] shows how price affects demand.
Re:Bye Florida! (Score:3, Insightful)
Why say it in the context of a film about the need for immediate action then? I hate semantic pedantry like this - It's applying a fact to some completely irrelevant. If the ice on Greenland were to melt over a million years, he could use the exact same argument. This is a problem, since it diminishes research into what is actually happening _now_. It's a fuck up, IMO - it makes statements of no relevance to the current situation, and tries to make them relevant.
I believe in anthropomorphic climate change, btw.
Re:Bye Florida! (Score:1, Insightful)
The above statement is basically true. If you broke up the entire Greenland ice sheet, the rise in sea level would be catastrophic. Mr. Gore does not say this will happen in the next 100 years. It is a conditional statement. If something happens, then something else will happen. The time scale is not certain, though given recent trends in melting, three feet by 2100 is not unlikely. A basic search of recent literature will support this.
A perfect example of how to be misleading without actually lying.
Re:Bye Florida! (Score:5, Insightful)
The above statement is basically true. If you broke up the entire Greenland ice sheet, the rise in sea level would be catastrophic. Mr. Gore does not say this will happen in the next 100 years. It is a conditional statement. If something happens, then something else will happen. The time scale is not certain, though given recent trends in melting, three feet by 2100 is not unlikely. A basic search of recent literature will support this.
A perfect example of how to be misleading without actually lying.
As opposed to the original parent post I responded to:
So the "twenty feet by 2100" thing is gone now then is it Mr. Gore, cause, gosh, that sure sold a lot of movies books and carbon taxes.
Which is an example of being misleading while actually lying