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Comment by makerofspoons | Hacker News Reader

Previous modeling predicted this glacier would collapse in the next 200-1000 years, producing a 3M rise in sea level: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4655561/

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Here's what a ~3 meter rise in the ocean would look like for the Miami-area of Florida.

https://ss2.climatecentral.org/#8/25.738/-80.398?show=satell...

Welp my place in the west coast of Scotland will be gone in 2 metres :(

Unless your place is also slowly moving upwards. :)

Most of Scotland is still slowly moving upwards due to the post-glacial rebound from the last ice age. It's a centimeter a year at the fastest in Europe, I think, and technically is slowing down over time, but over 200-1000 years it still might be significant.

... I mean, in either case, neither you not your children are likely to see it ...

More info: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-glacial_rebound

Yikes, not to mention the storm surge during a hurricane, which is predicted to be a much larger hurricane and much more frequent in future.

People are just not mentally prepared for this. In the late 21st century, we are going to start seeing massive refugee crises all over the world every year. We are in this "golden age" of wealth and prosperity now, even if it isn't equitably distributed, however that whole system may come crashing down if 15% or 25% of the world's vulnerable to massive ocean flooding and storms.

I feel like people aren't able to get mentally prepared while we have to deal with denialist propaganda on a daily basis.

Am I right in thinking coastal property ownership skews towards the wealthy? I’m not sure what this means for inequality long term.

I have this strange feeling that some cities will continue to "oporate" after a rise in the ocean like this... Or maybe I'm just thinking of Waterworld.

The Netherlands have been demonstrating for a long time it can be done.

Miami was incorporated as a city in 1896 [0]. Over a 200-1000 year timeframe, it probably makes more sense to just move the city. The infrastructure probably only has a shelf life of 50-100 years.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Miami

It's important to note that even before rising sea level makes the land uninhabitable, it's already causing the loss of drinking water aquifers and septic systems to become unusable.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-08-29/miami-s-o... (Miami Will Be Underwater Soon. Its Drinking Water Could Go First)

https://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/environment/article22... (A $3 billion problem: Miami-Dade’s septic tanks are already failing due to sea rise)

Miami Beach is already spending $500 million dollars to mitigate the impact of climate change today.

http://time.com/4932565/hurricane-irma-miami-beach/

Is there anyone here who has moved to South Florida recently? Did you take the potential ocean rise into consideration when relocating down there?

If the Thwaites Glacier melts fully, it would produce a 2ft rise or about 0.6M. If all of the adjacent glaciers it currently prevents the sea from reaching were to then also melt, then you would get an estimated sea level rise of 2.4 additional meters according to NASA.

So it's 200-1000 years for the Thwaites Glacier, and probably several thousand more for the rest of them assuming some other warming effect doesn't dramatically result in the speed up of glacial melt.

"About the size of Florida, Thwaites Glacier is currently responsible for approximately 4 percent of global sea level rise. It holds enough ice to raise the world ocean a little over 2 feet (65 centimeters) and backstops neighboring glaciers that would raise sea levels an additional 8 feet (2.4 meters) if all the ice were lost"

It's worth bearing in ind that other things are going to be melting at the same time.

Agreed, but I think it's worth keeping some perspective when people are calling this things like, "The Doomsday Glacier" and discussing whether or not this will make it safe to move to South Florida presumably in response to the projected 3M rise.

I think the idea here is that it doesn't even have to melt. If water gets underneath it so it floats, it will have the same effect.

Sure. I shouldn't have termed it as all of the ice melting. I believe the term the paper uses is actually ice-shelf destabilization which is a combination of wash out, melting, calving, etc. leading to all of the ice winding up in the ocean or floating due to retreat of the ground line by melt underneath the glacier. It's happening much faster than previously thought because we didn't have a good way of measuring or modelling it until recently. One of the major concerns is that we don't have a way of preventing melt of the under ice that is causing this because it is caused by oceanic effects. Warming oceans will exacerbate this.

However, Here is the main take away from the abstract. "Antarctica will irrevocably contribute at least 3 m to global sea-level rise during the coming centuries to millennia." That's very fast on a geological timeline but not on a human timeline and it assumes a total loss of the West Antarctica Ice shelf. There are plenty of problems we should be worrying about, many of which are climate related, but there is no use in people here worrying themselves about this specific problem unless they have an interest in glacier science and certainly it shouldn't be impacting their assessment of whether they want to move to Miami in the next 10 years.

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