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Comment by blinkymach12 | Hacker News Reader

I'm very much an environmentalist and am very concerned about climate change, and I feel like this article completely put me at ease about sea level rise. I suspect this was the opposite of the intent.

I feel like in comparison to intensified weather phenomenon and especially heat waves, sea level rise sound very manageable.

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Author here. That was definitely not my intent! How can a sea level rise of potentially 1.6 metres (approx 5 feet) within the next 75 years, possibly put you at ease, or sound "very manageable"?!

While I can’t speak for GP, I had a similar reaction - though admittedly I wouldn’t describe it as “relieved,” more of an “okay, good to know this isn’t anywhere near the top of the priority list” feeling.

Essentially, in comparison to the other potential/likely effects of climate change I’m aware of (mass deaths of pollinators causing a collapse of the global food infrastructure, large percentages of the world’s arable land becoming non-viable leading to mass famine, heat waves bringing lethal wet-bulb temperatures to large populated areas, collapse of the AMOC, increased wars and global conflict due to space pressure, large-scale droughts and water scarcity, etc) it just doesn’t seem that bad. It’s awful and terrifying, to be clear, but it doesn’t really compare to some of the other effects we’re going to be dealing with over the same timeframe.

Fair enough. My point in penning the article was simply: "sea level rise to date has been not much, sea level rise yet to occur is a lot". I don't disagree with your argument, that "a whole lot more sea level rise" may be the least of our problems. Although, sea level rise is interrelated with many of the other effects that you mentioned. It will result in a loss of land (duh). A lot of that lost land will be once-very-fertile land. So it will be a big part of the food insecurity picture. Increased salinity will be another bad one, and most of that extra salt will come from the risen-up sea getting into fresh water tables. And that in turn will be a big cause of fresh water scarcity. So, sea level rise is about much more than just "millions of houses (and some entire countries!) will be under water".

Logically, if sea level rise somewhere of 5-9" has resulted in imperceptible rise anywhere we care enough about to have pictures of (zero sea level rise on landmarks), then extrapolated that out to the next 100 years expected rise of 15" more, i expect there to be again almost imperceptible rise in the sea anywhere we care about.

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