Cities in danger as scientists predict rapid sea level rise

[barb162]

(why does everyone want to live on coasts?)

Cities in danger as scientists predict rapid sea level rise
By Roger Highfield, Science Editor
(Filed: 24/03/2006)

Sea levels will rise much faster than previously thought leading to the flooding of many cities unless major steps are taken to curb carbon dioxide emissions this century, scientists warn today.

They say that the planet will see a huge retreat of ice sheets once a threshold of warming is crossed. That would produce a catastrophic sea level rise of at least 20ft, drowning the centre of London and displacing millions in Britain alone.

Temperatures are rising on track to melt the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets sooner than thought, triggering the 20ft sea rise by 2600 and inundating heavily-populated coastal areas, including much of the Netherlands.

Two international teams report today in the journal Science that Arctic summers by 2100 may be as warm or warmer than they were nearly 130,000 years ago, when sea levels eventually rose up to 20ft higher than today. Such a rise had been thought to be at least 1,000 years away.
snip
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml;jsessionid=C0UI3FTSJLJDPQFIQMGCFFOAVCBQUIV0?xml=/news/2006/03/24/wflood24.xml

[barb162]

1. Sinking islanders are facing mass evacuation

Sinking islanders are facing mass evacuation
By Nick Squires in Funafuti
(Filed: 18/03/2006)

snip
Flooding suggests the islanders' days on Tuvalu may be numbered
"We face the real prospect of losing three nations: Tuvalu, neighbouring Kiribati and the Maldives in the Indian Ocean," said Dr Clive Hamilton, the executive director of the Australia Institute think-tank.
snip

Environmental groups say that Australia has a responsibility to the countries in its South Pacific backyard. It generates more greenhouse gases per capita than any other industrialised country and, like the United States, has refused to sign the Kyoto protocol on global warming.

"We are facing the consequences of something which is not our fault," said Sumeo Silu, the disaster co-ordinator in Tuvalu.

"We want donors to give us the money to build sea walls to protect the islands."

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/03/18/wtuvalu18.xml

[RedEarth]

2. One more article dealing with global warming... I doubt if bush even cares

[BillZBubb]

3. Maybe now is a great time to buy land 30 ft. above sea level!

It will be coastal property soon and the value will skyrocket!

[Dead_Parrot]

6. Memphis looks good....

[barb162]

8. It looks like Loisiana is gone totally

[Dead_Parrot]

10. Hey, not all bad, then...

:evilgrin:

[barb162]

12. you bad

[Odin2005]

13. Hmmm. No more election problems in florida...

No more Florida. Or NO for that matter :cry:

[Dead_Parrot]

14. Yeah, makes you wonder about NOLA rebuilding.

Who'd have thought building a city beneath sea-level, on the coast, in the hurricane belt was a bad idea? :shrug:

[NNadir]

15. The article has a nice map of the UK.

[Nihil]

18. Yeah.

The 20' rise wouldn't affect me directly but the path to the "big one"
(as shown in the above image) would be pretty interesting ... our house
is about 250' above current sea level ...

On the plus side, maybe this will persuade Mrs.Nihil that moving to
Scotland would be an even better move?

[kitkatrose]

16. Just remember to have your house earthquake proof. n/t

[XemaSab]

17. Where's Atlanta on that map?

:shrug:

[Dead_Parrot]

19. On a green bit :)

I didn't bother to mark un-sunk cities (except Memphis, for the hell of it.)

[barb162]

7. Just like Lex Luthor in the first Superman movie

with the CA quake! Can you imagine where all those people will move. WHere? Bangladeshis move to India which already has a billion people?

[RC]

4. The Hawaian Islands are going to be getting a lot smaller.

[barb162]

9. They all seem have a fairly steep rise though

They will be way better off than the entire state of Florida or the city of NY

[RC]

21. Not really. They will lose their beaches and

beach front housing. The North shore on Oahu will be a pleasant memory for the most part. With most of the beaches gone and a steep rise from the ocean with not much to no room for a beach, that will hurt tourism, which in turn will destroy the economy.
When I was there a year ago the surf would sweep in past the beach front housing and fill Kam highway with sand.

[BREMPRO]

5. I wouldn't buy property in FL..20 feet and it's mostly underwater

not to mention the increasing strength of future hurricanes from warming...
Wake up people!!

What is contributing to the warming?..all the cheap stuff we buy from china and other global outsourcing of manufacturing creates unregulated pollution.. we ship it off shore and benifit today...while asia chokes in pollution.. but we will all pay in the future. live simple.. and get the word out..

[barb162]

11. Asians basically use no pollution control and Australia doesn't

seem to care too much about it either according to the article. When you look at Manhattan or any of the Florida cities on this totally flat land I can't agree with you more about: Wake up people

[Dogmudgeon]

20. Time to rent Waterworld again

At the beginning of the movie, there's a dramatic animation showing the Earth and its land masses as the water rises by some 2000 feet.

I'm not sure that there's enough water locked up as ice to raise ocean levels more than about 500 feet, but the animation was startling, to say the least. (And for those who didn't see the movie, it's a lot better than the critics said it was.)

On the other hand, unless we cause a climate change that exceeds the level of cooling that loss of a world-wide equatorial ocean produced 3 million years ago, we'll probably kick ourselves back into an ice age. At that point, the ocean level could decline by as much as 300 feet. However, since it will probably take close to 5000 years before we can say whether we're in a Little Ice Age or one of the primary "stadial epochs", that may be a quibbling point.

I don't put it past our ability to initiate a runaway greenhouse effect in the atmosphere, but that would require uncontrolled energy demand growth through the next two centuries -- and plenty of burnable carbon-based fuel.

Like coal, or biofuels.

--p!

[Odin2005]

22. Yeah, 2000 feet would probably be immposible.

Sea levels reach thier highest in situations like the Cretaceous, when a super-continent is desintergrating and so you have a lot of highly active mid-ocean ridges that displace a lot of water onto the continents; older mid-ocean ridges tend to become less active with age, and so displace less water. Lowest sea levels occur in situations like the Early Permian; A young supercontinents usually means weak mid-ocean ridge activilty, and an ice age lowered sea levels even further.

Oh, and biofuels don't cause GW, the fuel you burn was from CO2 extracted by the antmosphere by plants, so there is 0 net carbon added to the atmosphere.