[Christopher]

http://www.livescien...ea_history.html

Quote

Ultimately, rising seas will likely swamp the first American settlement in Jamestown, Va., as well as the Florida launch pad that sent the first American into orbit, many climate scientists are predicting.

In about a century, some of the places that make America what it is may be slowly erased.

Global warming -- through a combination of melting glaciers, disappearing ice sheets and warmer waters expanding -- is expected to cause oceans to rise by one meter, or about 39 inches. It will happen regardless of any future actions to curb greenhouse gases, several leading scientists say. And it will reshape the nation.

Rising waters will lap at the foundations of old money Wall Street and the new money towers of Silicon Valley. They will swamp the locations of big city airports and major interstate highways.

Storm surges worsened by sea level rise will flood the waterfront getaways of rich politicians -- the Bushes' Kennebunkport and John Edwards' place on the Outer Banks. And gone will be many of the beaches in Texas and Florida favored by budget-conscious students on Spring Break.

That's the troubling outlook projected by coastal maps reviewed by The Associated Press. The maps, created by scientists at the University of Arizona, are based on data from the U.S. Geological Survey.

Few of the more than two dozen climate experts interviewed disagree with the one-meter projection. Some believe it could happen in 50 years, others say 100, and still others say 150.

In other words, it's already too late to prevent, it's now a question of how to cope with it.

So let's stipulate that this is independent of the debate over whether humans are causing it -- it's now believed it'll happen regardless of our actions one way or the other. So instead of debating that question or the politics behind the issue (which is a matter for OT), I'm more interested in the question of how the nation -- and the rest of the world -- will adapt to a 1-meter rise in sea level.

What this means, basically, is that much of Florida, Louisiana, and the like may simply cease to exist. It would be too expensive and impractical to build dikes and levees around the entire Gulf and Atlantic coasts of the US. I wonder, will New Orleans finally be abandoned after all? Especially given that more intense storms and hurricanes go along with the sea level rise? This could result in a major population relocation over the next century or two. (And it means that Star Trek: Enterprise's depiction of a Florida whose coastline looked the same as it does today was pretty much on a par with TOS having Chekov mention Leningrad.)

And is Futurama right that one day, there will be legends about the sunken city of Atlanta?

What about New York City? It isn't very far above sea level. As it is, the subways would flood in a couple of days if there weren't a set of pumps constantly running to drain them. A century from now, NYC will probably have all sorts of levees around it -- or else it will have become another Venice.

And what about Venice? What about the rest of the world? This report is regrettably US-centric. From what I vaguely recall about geography, I expect Southeast Asia would be very hard-hit by a 1-meter rise in sea levels, as would southern India. That's a huge portion of the human population that would be affected.

This is a reminder that geography is constantly changing. Many cities in history have been abandoned due to shifting rivers or changing sea levels or subsidences or desertification. Eventually, many of the cities we know today will simply be gone, lost until future archaeologists dig them up.

[Hambil]

Since it will happen (relatively) slowly, I imagine cities will build dykes and pump systems, or even 'raise' their city up in some way. Also, channels to route the water were they want. We might even be able to use it to our advantage in some case, to create a new waterway system that can carry a lot of goods.

It will be expensive, but I can't imagine we'll just abandon our cities. Some cities may literally move, taking the entire city piece by piece, brick by brick, and relocating it.

I think we need a plan to raise the continents by 1 meter. Sort of a angioplasty for the earth's crust. Insert a big balloon, inflate...

[Christopher]

Hambil, on Sep 23 2007, 02:39 PM, said:

Since it will happen (relatively) slowly, I imagine cities will build dykes and pump systems, or even 'raise' their city up in some way. Also, channels to route the water were they want. We might even be able to use it to our advantage in some case, to create a new waterway system that can carry a lot of goods.

That presupposes that people would actually plan ahead for something that would happen decades in the future, even after their own lifetimes. Have you met the human race? We're far more prone to put things off until they get desperate and then scramble to find a solution. And sometimes we're inept even at dealing with the aftermath of a disaster. Look at New Orleans -- most of the city is still in virtually as bad a state as it was two years ago, because there just hasn't been enough attention paid to rebuilding it. Now multiply that problem by fifty, a hundred.

Also, as the article points out, it would be hugely expensive to do this in every single endangered city or populated area. Unless the American people overcome their resistance to heavy taxation, there will simply be no way to pay for it all.

Quote

It will be expensive, but I can't imagine we'll just abandon our cities. Some cities may literally move, taking the entire city piece by piece, brick by brick, and relocating it.

It's always hard to imagine the familiar ceasing to exist. But history makes it clear that cities do get abandoned. And many people living in New Orleans today would argue that much of the city has already been abandoned, at least by the government.

[Hambil]

Christopher, on Sep 23 2007, 12:19 PM, said:

Hambil, on Sep 23 2007, 02:39 PM, said:

Since it will happen (relatively) slowly, I imagine cities will build dykes and pump systems, or even 'raise' their city up in some way. Also, channels to route the water were they want. We might even be able to use it to our advantage in some case, to create a new waterway system that can carry a lot of goods.

That presupposes that people would actually plan ahead for something that would happen decades in the future, even after their own lifetimes. Have you met the human race?

Yes, but that's my point about it happening slowly. cities won't just flood. The water will rise inch by inch. The instinct to put it off will actually aid us, because rather than think ahead to keeping out a meter of sea-water, we'll just be worried about keeping out the first inch, then the second, then the third.

[MuseZack]

Wow. Kiss Bangladesh goodboye.

[DWF]

New Orleans has been sinking for pretty close to 300 years now and much of it is man's fault.

http://www.livescien...ns_sinking.html

Quote

For years, scientists figured New Orleans on average was sinking about one-fifth of an inch a year based on 100 measurements of the region, Dixon said. The new data from 150,000 measurements taken from space finds that about 10 percent to 20 percent of the region had yearly subsidence in the inch-a-year range, he said.

As the grounds in those rapidly sinking areas shift downward, the protection from levees also falls, scientists and engineers said.

For example, the Mississippi River Gulf Outlet, built more than three decades ago, has sunk by more than 3 feet since its construction, Dixon said. That, he added, explained why water poured over the levee and part of it failed.

"The people in St. Bernard got wiped out because the levee was too low,'' said co-author Roy Dokka, director of the Louisiana Spatial Center at Louisiana State University. "It's as simple as that.''

The subsidence "is making the land more vulnerable; it's also screwed up our ability to figure out where the land is,'' Dokka said. And it means some evacuation roads, hospitals and shelters are further below sea level than emergency planners thought, he said.

So when government officials talk of rebuilding levees to pre-Katrina levels, it may really still be several feet below what's needed, Dokka and others say.

"Levees that are subsiding at a high rate are prone to failure,'' Dixon said.

The federal government, especially the Army Corps of Engineers, hasn't taken the dramatic sinking into account in rebuilding plans, said University of Berkeley engineering professor Bob Bea, part of an independent National Academy of Sciences-Berkeley team that analyzed the levee failures during Katrina.

"You have to change how you provide short- and long-term protection,'' said Bea, a former engineer in New Orleans. He said plans for concrete walls don't make sense because they sink and can't be easily added onto. In California, engineers are experimenting with lighter weight reinforced foam-middle levee walls, he said.

Dixon and his co-author Dokka disagree on the major causes of New Orleans not-so-slow falling into the Gulf of Mexico.

Dixon blames overdevelopment and drainage of marshlands, saying "all the problems are man-made; before people settled there in the 1700s, this area was at sea level.''

But Dokka said much of the sinking is because of natural seismic shifts that have little to do with construction.

All is not completely lost, Dokka said. Smarter construction can buy New Orleans some time.

"We've made the pact with the devil by moving down here,'' he said. "If we do things right, we probably can get another 100-200-300 years out of this area.''

Sadly I have to question the wisdom of trying to rebuild the entire low lands of the city since the flooding can happen again, trying to build up the low lands might produce sink holes later on and IMO that could be worse than the flooding there's no easy answers there but after Katrina people be more open to change.

[Orpheus]

Hambil, on Sep 23 2007, 03:30 PM, said:

Yes, but that's my point about it happening slowly. Cities won't just flood. The water will rise inch by inch. The instinct to put it off will actually aid us, because rather than think ahead to keeping out a meter of sea-water, we'll just be worried about keeping out the first inch, then the second, then the third.

Have you ever *been* to Venice? Or for that matter, Bangladesh, or New Orleans or the Back Bay of Boston? Flooding is a normal reality in all those places. Expecting people to bother keeping the next inch out is optimistic. They just whine, get used to it and/or die. Despite Boston's flooding problems getting worse during planning and construction, they just finished the largest, most expensive public works project in American history --"The Big Dig"-- with no real adjustment for flooding beyond the level seen in the late 1980s. New Orleans is being rebuilt despite the *dead certainly* that it will flood out again. In fact, when FEMA was founded around 30 years ago, they ranked the top three calamities on their list to prepare for: urban earthquakes in California, a terrorist attack on Manhattan. specifically the area near the WTC, and New Orleans flooding. That was 30 years ago,a nd we knew them all. We've had the first wave of Cali earthquakes (in SF, with bigger ones expected) , but we ignore and rebuild. We've had the WTC bombings and a decade later 9/11 (on roughly the 30th anniversary of a successful 4-plane hijacking and a threat to crash into a public building). We rebuild -- because having happened in the 70s, 90's and 2001, it could never happen now) We've had the NOLA flood, and we're setting up for another, because we don't want to face the facts.

Actually, I've been saying for a long time that the basic science makes human intervention in climate change seem unlikely (consider: we haven't seen the full effect of the temperature changes *to date* -- that will take 150-300 years, as the currently warmed waters convect through the depth of the ocean "releasing" more carbon dioxide/methne ... which will cause more warming, etc. In short, it everyhuman were wiped out tomorrow, the Earth would be likely to keep warning

That is the *real* inconvenient truth -- too inconvenient for Gore, who, as much as I like him -- is leading us down a primrose path, pursuing a political and economic plan that it is already doomed. NOBODY is seriously talking about moving cities, but the world is *full* of abandoned flooded cities. The water will come, whether we plan or not, and most of the world's great urban centers are on the water. Ever wonder what happens to the Three River's Gorge Dam when the water level rises a meter or two, changing the balance of forces on it's already iffy foundations? If that dam fails, t'll be the single worst calamity in human history. Worse than Hitler's Holocaust? probably not, but worse than Hitler's worst month compressed into a single day and it's aftermath? Yup. It could conceivably be worse than his worst year: China has ~20x the population of WWII Germany

[Godeskian]

One measly meter? Meh, most of Holland is already so far beneath sea-level that adding one little meter to most of our dikes and dams shouldn't be too onerous.

(by the by, I'm kidding, much like parts of Florida, any non-dealt with increase of a meter will turn the netherlands into a swamp the size of a country)

[Kosh]

As Christopher said, New York is as doomed as the other cities. I don't see this as taking a century to happen. At the rate the ice on Greenland is melting, combined with Artic ice melt, this will probably happen in 50 years or less. If the ice in Greenland alone makes it into the Ocean, levels rise to flood stages in all the places mentioned here, and there are countless Islands that will be under water. Astrailia is the only country currently taking in refugies from Global Warming, and some of those islanders are already having to move.

Must work now. More later.

[Christopher]

Although I think it's likely that cities will be abandoned, I don't see it happening with New York. I mean, that's pretty much the city, the ultimate in urbanization in the Western world, and a vital national and global center of commerce and culture. (Plus it's where all the book publishers are! That's the most important thing!) Maybe they'll turn it into another Venice, maybe they'll raise the ground level by a couple of meters, but they won't abandon it.

[Hambil]

Christopher, on Sep 24 2007, 10:08 AM, said:

Although I think it's likely that cities will be abandoned, I don't see it happening with New York. I mean, that's pretty much the city, the ultimate in urbanization in the Western world, and a vital national and global center of commerce and culture. (Plus it's where all the book publishers are! That's the most important thing!) Maybe they'll turn it into another Venice, maybe they'll raise the ground level by a couple of meters, but they won't abandon it.

I think a lot of people will feel the same about their cities. Other cities may be abandon, but not MY city. Now, I'll admit, NY is old (by our standards) and symbolic, and will likely be saved in some way or another, but cities like Miami and San Francisco have their own pride and heritage. Miami Vice, Miami Sound Machine, The San Francisco treat, I Left My Heart in San Francisco... etc...

[QueenTiye]

I was watching a really neat program on the Weather Channel - Forecast Earth - in which an architect was building and selling sustainable houses. It was really neat.

I mention it because it seems the most appropriate thing to do is to build differently. A city like NY is highly vulnerable, not just because of sea level change, but because of population and infrastructure density making change hard. And for all of that - building differently could help, I would think...

So - let me throw out some ideas to save my home town. All of these are fanciful, because I'm no engineer, but have at it:

1. Require buildings to build on stilts and rollers.
2. Requre tenants in high-rises to move to higher floors.
3. Build waterproof tunnel infrastructure around existing subway tunnels.
4. Build water reservoir around Manhattan that can be driven on, and that generates electricity. (May as well!)
5. Build encasements around historical areas in preparation for submersion.
6. Widen Broadway, Flatbush Avenue, Jamaica Blvd, Grand Concourse, and other major thoroughfares into waterways to let ferries (and water!) through the Island.
7. Raise Coney Island, Ellis Island, and Liberty Island.

More?

QT

[QueenTiye]

Orpheus, on Sep 24 2007, 03:44 AM, said:

Actually, I've been saying for a long time that the basic science makes human intervention in climate change seem unlikely (consider: we haven't seen the full effect of the temperature changes *to date* -- that will take 150-300 years, as the currently warmed waters convect through the depth of the ocean "releasing" more carbon dioxide/methne ... which will cause more warming, etc. In short, it everyhuman were wiped out tomorrow, the Earth would be likely to keep warning

That is the *real* inconvenient truth -- too inconvenient for Gore, who, as much as I like him -- is leading us down a primrose path, pursuing a political and economic plan that it is already doomed. NOBODY is seriously talking about moving cities, but the world is *full* of abandoned flooded cities.

Orpheus - I wouldn't mind a real exposition of what's really "to come" with the whole global warming stuff, and some suggestions of what can be done to help or at least plan for the crisis?

QT

[Kosh]

Christopher, on Sep 24 2007, 01:08 PM, said:

Although I think it's likely that cities will be abandoned, I don't see it happening with New York. I mean, that's pretty much the city, the ultimate in urbanization in the Western world, and a vital national and global center of commerce and culture. (Plus it's where all the book publishers are! That's the most important thing!) Maybe they'll turn it into another Venice, maybe they'll raise the ground level by a couple of meters, but they won't abandon it.

Abandon, no, I agree.

A lot of the area right around the ocean wont be usable. Manhattan has a problem. The WTC memorial, if it's ever build, will be in water. They might be able to hold some of it back, and main NY will still be OK.

[Orpheus]

QueenTiye, on Sep 24 2007, 01:47 PM, said:

Orpheus - I wouldn't mind a real exposition of what's really "to come" with the whole global warming stuff, and some suggestions of what can be done to help or at least plan for the crisis?

It's really not that complicated. However, I'm going to do this based on 10m+ over the next century, because I see that as a plausible figure if the process accelerates in a giant feedback loop (and I find it equally plausible that it won't)

IMHO, no matter what we do, up to and including stopping *all* carbon dioxide and methane emissions. The water will rise several meters in our lifetime, possibly tens of meters, because the cycle is a self-sustaining feedback loop -- more warming means more oceanic release of dissolved oceanic CO₂, methane from methane clathrates (Methane is 300x as potent a greenhouse gas as CO₂) and other processes. You don't need to do a lot of fancy calculations to see this. You only need to know the rate of turnover of the oceans (up to 300 years). The warming that took place last Wednesday will not have its peak effect on out climate any sooner than 2150-2300 AD, even if we could backpedal like crazy, sucking greenhouse gases out of the air and polymerizing them to build idols to weather gods. And if we could do that, we'd only throw ourselves into potentially more devastating glacial phase a century ca 2200-2350 AD. Bad planning if you ask me.

The really tricky part is the artificial time scale. A century has no meaning in this discussion. If we were to discuss this in time units of "one global ocean turnover", we could predict better, but right now we're guesing an arbitrary time point on a process which operates on a much longer time scale, and we don't even know what century it started! It's like trying to guess what point in your sleep wake cycle you'll be in exactly a million seconds from now. I could actually give you a much better projection for million days, weeks or months (assuming you live that long in good health in your present location) because a "day' is a very relevant unit to the sleep cycle, but a second isn't.

Earth has only had polar ice caps for brief periods in its existence. We just happened to arise as a independent species during one of them. Our whole existence as a species has been during one small interglaciation. 27-29kyr ago (1/200,000th of Earth's history), the glaciers extended down to Bermuda -- heck, that's what *formed* Bermuda: it's the terminal moraines (debris left by) retreating glaciers. (As you know, many scientists believe that this was when H. sapiens sapiens arose, and that the retreat of the glaciers removed an ice "bottleneck" that allowed us to migrate out of Africa) That state of affairs is no less normal than the landmasses as we know them, and a lot LESS normal than the 160 million years of the age of the dinosaurs (to cite an example that most of us are familiar with) When almost all the world's landmass was at the South Pole, and was completely "tropical (paradoxically, the one exception was today's West Antarctica, which was up near the equator -- and even more tropical)

Having said that, I am NOT predicting that this is the end of our current Ice Age. That would be overbloown. I'm saying that we are *near* the end of an Ice Age (in geological terms) and that towards the end of that kind of shift, we see wilder swings. The last glaciation, which took glaciers to Bermuda and the Mediterranean, by contrast, was just a minor sawtooth, very much typical of many before it. It's the *warmings* that will get bigger

Coastal cities will flood in out lifetimes, as will Federally protected wetlands (I do not recommend establishing new ones, because they will not last even a few decades). Goodbye Disney world and Chesapeake blue crabs. Earth's land area will shrink -- not by a numerically large factor in our lifetimes, but with very visible impact. Tens, probably hundreds of millions of people will relocate, not just from coastal cities, but ports far inland, agricultural regions, etc. It won't stop at national boundaries. The Economic balance of power could shift dramatically (Actually, WILL shift, I'm jut not sure of the timing)

In our children's lifetimes -- or their children's, North America could retreat to the Appalachians and Rockies, but well see big effects long before then. For example: I don't necessarily expect to see North and South America becomes separate at the Isthmus of Panama in our lifetime, but that's a distinct possibility: I think the high point along the Canal is ~85ft (26m) at the Miraflores Locks, but I also know that there are lower marshy regions to the west (the canal runs NW-SE) and Lake Gatun already floods half the width of the Isthmus. I just don't have a good topographical map of the area to see if the low points might connect by some circuitous path (Canal builders want to dig as straight as possible; oceans don't care). Once the Atlantic and Pacific meet the force of the tides and the difference in sea level will cause a powerful continuous flow that will erode the isthmus permanently even if the waters don't continue to rise -- as they will. I don't know the biological or climate effects, but they'll be big.

The US could feasibly construct a massive earthenwork to keep the oceans separate in Panama, but I think it will have far more pressing concerns. cities on all three of America's coasts and many inland cities, such as those along the southern Mississippi River, whose elevation doesn't reach 100m until just a few miles short of the intersection of Illinois, Indiana and Kentucky, and which is held in place by levees raising it above the surrounding lowlands. Look at it on a map, and you'll see how deep inland the effects on that one river could reach in our lifetime. basicaly, it recheas to withing one state of the Great Lakes! (And don't laugh Canadians -- at 17m elevation, the inland city of Montreal will be *long* gone)

The US would likely be finished as the world's breadbasket. We already knew that agriculture on the High Plains (from North Dakota to Texas) would have to change because the Ogallala Aquifer is being depleted. We've been hoping that science would save us, and keep that formerly unproductive drought-plagued grassland (think "Great Dustbowl of the 1930s") one of the most productive agricultural regions on Earth, but all projections I've seen make that somewhat iffy for even the 21st century, even if the climate stays the same. Global warming, however, is currently projected to make central North America, including Canada's breadbasket drier, and central China wetter and more productive. I've forgotten what is slated for the Sahara, but I seem to recall a shining future for parts of the Gobi.

Of course, China will have problems along its own inland waterways, housing tens or hundreds of millions, and I've never been crazy about the survival of the Three Gorges Dam, even without global change, based on geological reports I've seen. To be brutally frank, a dam break could solve a lot of their Global warning relocation woes for them. Chinese leaders have been philosophical about massive calamities and fatalities for thousands of years. the current regime seems little different.

Is this the kind of thing you were asking for, QT? I've got lots more. I find this sort of thing fascinating (but what don't I find fascinating? I'm "fascinating"-ly promiscuous), but I can see where it could be dismal for others.

Personally, I'd like to hear what effects others here can foresee. If we can't change it personally, we can at least get a big Giant "I Told You So" out of this. Anyone want to predict that this will trigger the Yosemite SuperVolcano?

This post has been edited by Orpheus: 24 September 2007 - 11:47 PM

[Hambil]

Orpheus, on Sep 24 2007, 09:46 PM, said:

Personally, I'd like to hear what effects others here can foresee. If we can't change it personally, we can at least get a big Giant "I Told You So" out of this. Anyone want to predict that this will trigger the Yosemite SuperVolcano?

I foresee disease as a huge problem. More dead people, plants and animals, combined with a lot more 'standing water' equals a breeding ground for disease.

[FlatlandDan]

The part of me that realises I live in a place that would be flooded goes "Oh noes!!!"

The part of me that thinks of the diving goes "Oh yes!!!"

[Christopher]

Aside from the massive relocation and economic woes, would it really be that bad if the isthmus of Panama ceased to exist and the continents were separated? I mean, we wanted a waterway there so bad we dug it ourselves.

Anyway, this is just one more reason why we really need to start establishing a permanent, self-sustaining human presence in space. The more space habitats we can build, the better. When all those people have to start migrating, it would be good if they had somewhere new to go. Also, agricultural space colonies could help feed the planet when climate shifts screw up agriculture down here.

Quote

The really tricky part is the artificial time scale. A century has no meaning in this discussion. If we were to discuss this in time units of "one global ocean turnover", we could predict better, but right now we're guesing an arbitrary time point on a process which operates on a much longer time scale, and we don't even know what century it started! It's like trying to guess what point in your sleep wake cycle you'll be in exactly a million seconds from now. I could actually give you a much better projection for million days, weeks or months (assuming you live that long in good health in your present location) because a "day' is a very relevant unit to the sleep cycle, but a second isn't.

Umm, have you tried dividing by 86,400? Since they're both measuring the same thing and are in direct linear relation to one another, I don't see it being that great an impediment.

[Chakoteya]

Hambil, on Sep 23 2007, 08:30 PM, said:

Yes, but that's my point about it happening slowly. Cities won't just flood.

Oh yes they will, with more and more frequency, as the tides come in on the springs (full and new moon), getting bigger and bigger year on year.
At first people will just moan about damage to property, and get it fixed. Then soon it's happening again, and the insurance companies refuse cover, no one will buy you out when you try to move.
Meanwhile, poor countries have their people trying to migrate away inland, putting pressure on available farming and resources until they cross borders and then whole nations complain about 'them' coming 'here'.
The bird lovers moan about loss of marginal habitat for their feathered friends, the rich put up walls around their land to keep the rest out but eventually there will be fighting over somewhere to live.
And all this time, the UK and other governments will be busy trying to build homes for the people just being born in the country, let alone immigrants, taking up farm land and river flood plains and anywhere they can get a builder to put in foundations...

What a mess.

[Kosh]

Quote

Personally, I'd like to hear what effects others here can foresee. If we can't change it personally, we can at least get a big Giant "I Told You So" out of this. Anyone want to predict that this will trigger the Yosemite SuperVolcano?

Changing water location, stressing the fault lines in different places.
Sure, Why not!!