Sea Levels Are Rising Faster Than Most Pessimistic Forecasts
bloomberg.com
bloomberg.com
"Taken together this suggests that the projected global sea level rise by the end of this century in various IPCC reports is at best conservative and consequently underestimates the upper bound of what is referred to as the likely sea level rise by the end of this century."
(a) Who can tell what can happen "by the end of this century"? That's too far in the future.
(b) We have time, we can sort it out till then.
(c) I'll be dead, and more likely than not my kids will be too, 80 years from now.
This argument sounds sort of frivolous, but it is actually quite strong.
If the climate was radically different 100 years ago, how many people would care, or even know?
We in Canada or the United Kingdom might not notice, but I'm pretty sure those in Texas or Nigeria will.
Is Texas or Nigeria the warmest places people live atm though?
The wet bulb temperature is the thing to watch:
> A sustained wet-bulb temperature exceeding 35 °C (95 °F) is likely to be fatal even to fit and healthy people, unclothed in the shade next to a fan; at this temperature our bodies switch from shedding heat to the environment, to gaining heat from it.[9] Thus 35 °C (95 °F) is the threshold beyond which the body is no longer able to adequately cool itself. A study by NOAA from 2013 concluded that heat stress will reduce labor capacity considerably under current emissions scenarios.[10] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wet-bulb_temperature
Far north places like Scandinavia and Canada might actually benefit a little bit by being able to grow crops that they currently can't due to their harsh winters and cold nights all over the year! But their southern neighbours will surely suffer a lot, and that's where most of the population currently is.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/heat-and-humidity...
What might happen is portrayed pretty vividly at the start of Kim Stanley Robinson's Ministry for the Future:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ministry_for_the_Future
[And yes I know this is a novel].
https://www.eea.europa.eu/data-and-maps/indicators/heat-and-...
> The PESETA study estimates that, without adaptation and physiological acclimatisation, heat-related mortality in Europe would increase by between 60 000 and 165 000 deaths per year by the 2080s compared with the present baseline, with the highest impacts in southern Europe. [...]
> Another study estimates that climate change will lead to an increase in hospital admissions owing to heat-related respiratory diseases from 11 000 admissions (0.18 %) in the period 1981–2010 to 26 000 (0.4 %) in 2021–2050. The total number of hospital admissions and the increase as a result of climate change are largest in southern Europe, with the proportion of heat-related admissions for respiratory conditions expected to approximately triple in this region over this time period [...]
On the other hand...
> The PESETA study estimated that cold-related mortality would decrease by between 60 000 and 250 000 deaths per year by the 2080s, which is about the same magnitude as the projected increase in heat-related mortality [xx]. The PESETA II study no longer considers a potential reduction in cold-related mortality in its climate impact estimates [xxi]. The choice not to include cold spells reflects recent evidence that does not suggest a significant shift in the balance of deaths between winters and summers because of lower cold-related mortality [xxii]. However, the risk from (moderate) cold is expected to continue to account for most of the temperature-related risk throughout this century [xxiii].
It's not getting cold enough, long enough, to kill the Pine Beetle or ticks. The result is huge forest fires (e.g. Ft. McMurry) caused by dead trees -- killed by said beetles -- or explosions of ticks and increases in Lyme in Eastern Canada.
if you have kids they will probably be dead
if you don't have kids but are planning on having kids within <9 years your kids will probably be dead.
If you don't have kids but are planning on having kids within 10-12 years your kids will probably not be dead (at current average life expectancy) but will probably be so old they are almost dead and their best years will have been behind them anyway. Perversely as climate change is supposed to decrease average life expectancy your kids will probably be dead anyway.
If you are planning on having kids in 12-20+ years they will probably not be dead then.
If you have kids within 1-20 years and they have kids your grandkids are going to be dealing this somewhere between their teens to their middle age, depending on how soon you have your kids and how soon they have their kids but going by current demographics, probably middle age if you have a kid now and probably teens or younger if you have one in 20 years.
on edit: I do not find the argument particularly strong unless one is not good at simple math, or one does not care about grandkids.
* Food insecurities will be the first challenge, as it will come first probably and will have impact on democracy and will transform food import-dependant countries in powderkegs. US and Europe will be spared by this (southern Spain and Italy not so much, but still). Syria and Liban will be crushed.
* Wet-bulb temperature will become the second challenge by 2080, and 2060 if nothing is done by 2040. When Florida, South carolina and south cali will be hit by this, people might start consider moving, or living underground more than half the year. Europe will be spared by this as most projection say the Gulf stream will likely still work until the north pole ice melt, so 2150-2200.
* As the troposphere warms up and the stratosphere cool down, we will witness harsh meteorological events that will strain infrastructure all around the world.
* Ectothermics species will work at an higher level, their metabolism will be boosted and we will see pests working harder (and at higher latitudes). While endothermic species will disappear quietly. Same thing with mushrooms (that will worsen the 1st issue)
* Yes, sea levels will rise. It proably wont have any impact until 2080 for island nations (unless is contaminate their fresh water reserves).
This one won't spare some big regions of USA.
well if you want people to change their behavior and some people seem focused on sea levels you might want to address their worry instead of telling them, don't worry about that. That's like a marketing thing though - there are other issues.
I for example believe it is possible to note issues regarding rising sea levels without throwing all other issues out or refusing to focus on them as well, that is to say the focus of human conversation and mind is not the same as the focus of a camera.
finally
> Food insecurities...US and Europe will be spared by this
>Wet-bulb temperature...Europe will be spared by this
>It probably wont have any impact until 2080 for island nations
I'm in Denmark, which is primarily a coastal and island nation without any notable high ground. So obviously anyone who was in my position might consider the sea-level a more personally problematic focus area than #5, even though the other events are more problematic for the world as a whole. I also think the Ectothermics species issue might not be as big a problem in Denmark.
>Following this, we therefore propose to linearize the relationship between average rate of sea level rise and temperature increase representing the entire preceding century. The slope of this relationship then expresses how sensitive sea level is to century-timescale warming, and we will refer to it as the transient sea level sensitivity (TSLS). The intercept – where the sea level rate of change is zero – we interpret as a balance temperature.
I'm not an expert on climate and am therefore not qualified to opine on the suitability of a simple linear model for this sort of system.
This is so beautiful, it can only be improved as a haiku:
One cannot opine
On such suitability
Oversimplified
Indeed, this should come as no surprise, nor make any eyebrows rise: Excessive industrial enterprise cannot but give rise to this outcome. Any hope of averting elevated sea levels has all but vaporised.
>This comparison suggests that the likely upper level of sea level projections in recent IPCC reports would be too low.
The onclusion:
>We compare the model projections over the 21st century assessed by the IPCC with historical records from 1850–2017. We find that the model projections assessed in both AR5 and SROCC fall substantially below an extrapolation of historical records (Fig. 2). ....
>Taken together this suggests that the projected global sea level rise by the end of this century in various IPCC reports is at best conservative and consequently underestimates the upper bound of what is referred to as the likely sea level rise by the end of this century.
If you are asking for empirical data from the future, you are asking for time travel.
For what they worry about, property value, could be at risk even if you are away from sea. Or in a few decades property value (and more things) may have no meaning at all.
The later in the game we are before playing, the more it'll cost in damages and mitigation. This is on an exponential trajectory, so people won't truly notice until the last moment, ie. doubling from 50% to 100% in one "last" step.
This is not to say another Ice Age is preferable, so the science will be of vital importance. This for dealing with uncertainty of which might even defer some decisions too.
And, again, as the message is mostly "water will eventually rise" is not an urgent enough message, nor as scary as it should really be.
Wonder when banks will stop granting mortgages for coastal properties.
I said dollars, not people.
- contaminate fresh water aquifers (see Florida now).
- flood wetlands (again, see Florida now).
- contaminate agricultural soil with salt water (see Maryland now; https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-water-farming-feature...).
- increase erosion, especially during storm surges (see NC now; https://climate.nasa.gov/blog/2974/cant-see-sea-level-rise-y...).
- flood low-lying areas during storms (see New Orleans, parts of the Netherlands, and Maldives now).
- due to the above, lost habits for various flora and fauna.
I am certain that seeing former beach resorts permanently underwater would probably be one of the most tangible ways to get people to believe in global warming, but Mother Nature is a bit more subtle than that while still being incredibly destructive.
I fully agree with your concerns regarding climate but specifically in the Netherlands the flooding of designated flood areas is actually by design, with well in advance warnings, these areas are pretty much designed to be escape valves.
The Rijkswaterstaat even goes as far as monitoring upstream river flows from neighbouring countries to predict increased downstream river flow due to storms or alpine glaciar melts.
the Netherlands are already below sea level today - they had to think about building defenses since at least the Iron age[1]. So I guess they have somewhat a head-start. It should be in their "DNA" by now, some kind of "collective cognitive muscle memory" (still for such a tiny country and floods being a real threat already since always even they have many climate change deniers). For small countries zoning solutions can be applied everywhere equally (from both an engineering and administrative view).
But Dutch dikes lend themselves poorly for comparisons against places that occupy the land of half a continent ranging from the arctic to the tropics and 6 time zones.
I'm not saying it isn't a useful model in select regions/countries. but considering how poorly managed public safety is in the US today[2] it sadly takes more than ideas to prevent major loss of life. From [2]:
"> You may wish to pretend that rising seas are a hoax perpetrated by scientists and a gullible news media. Or you can build barriers galore. But in the end, neither will provide adequate defense, the Dutch say."
"> And what holds true for managing climate change applies to the social fabric, too. Environmental and social resilience should go hand in hand, officials here believe, improving neighborhoods, spreading equity and taming water during catastrophes."
Millions will either be displaced or dead until the threat might be acknowledged. Even them I'm pessimistic considering folk on the ICU literally die of covid and still clam it is a hoax. I think the way people cope will be simply by tuning out the horror reports the same way we do today simply because the effects/damage will be distributed unevenly.
[0] https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/06/15/world/europe/...
[1] http://dutchdikes.net/history/
[2] https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/07/20/the-really-big...
Can I trust climate change models more and why should I?
the reason is that epidemics grow and shrink more or less exponentially - if you mispredict a particular point in time, the error from that point onwards also grows exponentially. temperature relationship between CO2 and other GHGs are approximately linear. global warming predictions made 40 years ago about average temperature rise are basically spot on.
This is over-extraction.
No one will stop the over-extraction because they get to pass the buck to the biblically unstoppable Global Warming.
Personally I trend towards let the world burn, there's no way to stop this. The Global Warming believers cannot be pulled back, there's too many and they are to indoctrinated, they want Armageddon, it's an important part of their belief system.
They won't end the world. And it's sad what they will destroy, but concentrate on oneself over the damage Global Warming followers will cause and personally you will be better off. I unfortunately don't think there is a societal solution.
Here are the Dutch ones:
https://www.gemalen.nl/gemaal_detail.asp?gem_id=264
260 cubic meters per second.
We may have fucked up our COVID-19 response but I sure hope that we have at least some level of preparation for the rising sea level. Though that likely is more of a stay of execution than a permanent solution.
Florida: 1249
New York: 2265 New Jersey: 2430 California: 1058
USA: 1378
UK: 1549 Italy: 1479 Spain: 1279 France: 1182 Sweden: 1166 Netherlands: 822 Germany: 707 Denmark: 372 Norway: 104 Japan: 46 Singapore: 5
Florida could have done worse, but really has not done particular well WRT deaths per capita. In the US, Florida is ranked #26 worst (so somewhere in the middle, I guess).
Madonna - Holiday (Live from Solid Gold 1984)
We'd be better off if we immediately started working on mitigating this disaster (resettlement plans, replacing lost agricultural output, etc.) than pretending like we're going to make a dent in the severity of the changes.
Hahaha...
I take it you haven't spent much time in the MidWestern US
We're still very much in the "I still see snow, stop talking about your hoaxes all the time" stage here.
They don't climb through the denialism steps like a ladder, they run through them like a mouse wheel. The people saying 1, 2 and 3 will be back to denying it's happening sooner or later. Some can run through all steps in the span of a single conversation.
I don't think it's fair to say we have no intention of stoping it. We were never going to prevent every consequence of climate change. It looks like we are not going to meet our targets, and even if we do the consequences are probably going to be worse than projected, but I think it's vitally important to stress that the steps we have taken so far were worthwhile and do matter.
There's a real risk of complacency leading to resistance to further action, because it doesn't matter anymore because we've already lost. I see this on the denier side already, a lot of skeptics are switching from "it's a hoax" to, "well we can't stop it anyway so why bother trying?". That attitude can be given no quarter, comfort or succour. The positive steps we have taken have had a real, valuable positive effect, and we need to do more.
I'm no fundamentalist on this, I'm a pragmatist. We do need to balance mitigation with prevention, and we're not going to be able to do as much prevention in practice than we'd like. This is the art of the possible, but there is a lot that we have done and a lot more that we can practically do, and it's all worthwhile. We need to convert those former skeptics into allies.
[0] https://slate.com/technology/2014/08/beach-house-reality-tv-...
[1] https://edition.cnn.com/2020/07/21/australia/australia-coast...
I wonder how these people figure how the icecaps can melt without raising the sea level. It's become very fashionable to be 'skeptic' these days.
[1] which is actually sediment and reef growth, rising sea levels are still a large threat to the island https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-12-19/fact-check-is-the-isl...
Why are some people so resistant to one set of idea and so open to other ideas?
A prime example is Covid-19 and hydroxychloroquine, on the one hand the virus is 'just a flu' because scientists and politicians say it's dangerous, on the other hand hydroxychloroquine is highly effective because scientists say it's either useless or dangerous. It reminds me of Orwell's idea of doublethink, holding two thoughts contradictory to each other but still accepting it as the truth.
No.
There was no such news, unless your only source of information were tabloid headlines.
It's a favorite strawman tactic of the deniers to say "20 years ago they told us the world would end before today and it didn't", when in truth nobody credible ever said that.
The truth is that since the near-term impacts of global warming became mainstream science and an international political issue in the late 1980s, the overwhelming majority of actual forecasts have steadily been getting worse, i.e. they were way too conservative at the beginning. Also the discourse has almost always used the "by the end of 21st century" time-frame; nobody credible ever said anything at all about (for example) sea-level rise over a couple of decades. Science is by its nature conservative, at least in official forecasts and predictions, and the political pressure was always greatest on the side of avoiding "alarmism". The result is that we're now already beginning to see real impacts (especially in the arctic) that only a decade ago were still being talked about as "by the end of the 21st century".
Sea-level rise isn't going to be fast... even in the worst case scenarios, it's still one of the global warming impacts that over the short and intermediate term we can most easily "adapt" to, by building dykes, moving people and cities, etc. Even if you turn up the heat, trillions of tons of ice just take a while to melt, and no sane scientist ever said it would happen in decades. Other global warming impacts are likely to cause global civilization bigger headaches in the next couple of decades. But over the longer term, sea-level rise is important because it is relentless, and if the last 15 years show us a trend, then it is only likely that we'll continue to see the scientific consensus lean further and further to, and beyond, the current "worst case" scenarios.
Nonetheless I'll tell you that my sources of information as kid were the 3 private TV news of my country and later some "science" shows from cable TV.
We can discuss if that was true science or not, but it was what lots of people were exposed to, and those "predictions" didn't happened. If your sources of information are peer reviewed scientific papers, good for you, but that is not what happens to the 99% of the population.
Many people seem to mentally filter all these qualifying statements entirely.
I think that you're misremembering, and I'm calling you on it. If you want to insist, then show some evidence. Give us one link to a mainstream news source (from any country) which actually said during the last couple of decades that global sea-levels would rise by "a life-changing amount" by 2021. The Internet archive may help.
Taken this new more realistic data into account, what levels of sea rising are we looking at in 5 years? Or 10? Or 20? Or 50?
Say you are pondering buying a beach estate but are not on the idea of sinking underwater. What would you pick?
Reads like X is higher than most minima
Of course, it's not an easy transformation from car-oriented urban planning.
The following site shows a graph over the last 3000 years or so that puts current temperatures at a high point, but it is within the range of recent fluctuations in global temps. I have seen graphs that go much further back in history that demonstrate current temperatures are lower than average. Should we take drastic measures to fight natural fluctuations in temps? How much influence is due to nature vs human? Has anyone addressed this properly?
https://phys.org/news/2020-09-high-fidelity-earth-climate-hi...