A more detailed map:
(Click the 'choose map' option at the top and you will be able to change water level, year etc)
Also this article below explains what the sea level rise will do just in the UK alone, which is pretty damaging, but elsewhere it will probably be much worse:
https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/parts-uk-could-completely-submerged-24370412
@luminous Thank you for that map. It is safe to assume that the options to click are "most pessimistic" and "bad luck". I say this not because I am pessimistic and think we are in for bad luck. But because the climate projections have been magical thinking so far. They are unrealistic and I can feel how clueless people are. We continue to burn more and every bit of fossil fuel that is spewed into the atmosphere will take 500 or more years to dissipate. So it's additive.
But I am optimistic. I think our species will survive. We will learn to adapt and we will change our way of life and we will make it. But everything we do now to cut back and adapt will make it easier on our progeny.
I love @polarberry's post about desalination. Technologically it is one of the most important things we can do now to make it through.
Hi there, I had emailed Jeanne about some concerns I have that go beyond the typical thinking on climate change and she suggested I post something, so here goes.
Rising sea levels are important, but there are other earth science factors, especially geology, that we don't often think about how warmer temperatures will impact things. It's not as simple as sea levels and land elevations.
Think of what Edgar Cayce said about land rising and sinking in unexpected places. A lot of that is geology. You have to consider how the tectonic plates move, changes in pressure on the underlying rock formations, the weight of water shifting from the poles when ice melts, the loss of rock structure from fracking, underground salt formations that can dissolve when exposed to water. There's a ton of geology that could impact the outcome.
When the earth's crust warms because of climate, everything expands, putting extra forces on faults and volcanoes. It's like cooking an egg, apply heat to the outside, the inside heats up too. Rocks push against each other with more force, lava may start to move, etc.
Same with water, as no one talks about the weight of water and how it impacts the tectonic plates. The weight of extra water on the coastal areas will likely cause areas to sink and rise in unexpected ways. I think we'd need some sort of AI prediction method that factors in the atmosphere, the extra water, the geology, etc in addition to droughts, quakes, etc.
Two examples I can think of is a big quake in 1700 off the coast of Washington that caused a five foot drop in land and drowned part of a forest (and caused a tsunami in Japan) and a sinkhole in Louisiana that basically ate an entire town because an oil operator drilled in the wrong place, punched a hole in a salt dome, the dome collapsed due to water infiltration and collapsed the surface lands in the area. You can Google the Bayou Corne sinkhole if you want to see it in action.
I'm not trying to scare anyone, only point out it's likely more than just coastal land, droughts, fire and quakes that can happen from climate change.
Jeanne, please add anything I mentioned but left out here that might be helpful to consider.
@mb Thank you for the alternate geological perspective. I look at the oil being pumped off the Southern California coast and keep wondering if there will be a price to pay for it. Took your suggestion and googled The Bayou Corne sinkhole. The pollution and human toll is horrifying.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w-oykLjCcpc
@mb Thank you for sharing about how global warming affects the earth's crust. Seismic shifts and the impact of warming on the earth's crust are a much neglected area of global warming. When the Haiti earthquake happened, no one even ventured to explain whether the weight of expanding seas may have put pressure on the tectonic plates. One group of scientists did promulgate the theory that global warming was a cause in that the weight of mud slides from strong global warming-related rain storms had caused the quake. They surmised that all that mud sliding from Haiti into the sea put pressure on the earth's crust.
In the 1970's psychics were seeing earth changes up ahead that involved seas rising 20 miles inland on the Eastern Seaboard, a shift in the magnetic polls, and volcanic eruptions. I was skeptical about the psychic predictions of earthquakes and volcanos, but I now can see how warming can do that.
Then there is the impact of warming on continental tables. Back in 2014 I read that the Eastern Seaboard is actually sinking because it is one end of a great continental table of North America. On another end is Northern Canada's coastline which is rising up as the permafrost there melts. So as the continental table rises up in Northern Canada, it tilts down on the eastern seaboard. I read about this in 2014 but here is a more recent description of it in the Harvard Gazette.
The speed of the Gulf Stream is another factor. It's been slowing down since 2004, after alternating decades of speeding up and slowing down. Warming seas and all that fresh water melt off of Greenland cause it to slow down, and when it slows down two things happen:(1) more water that had been pulled into the Gulf Stream by its fast-moving current then sloughs back onto the eastern seaboard causing more sea level rise there, and (2) the world gets even warmer because when the Gulf Stream is moving quickly, it takes the warm water of the Caribbean up to the North Atlantic where it sinks it down into the cooler deep ocean. So the Gulf Stream has helped to temper the heat of global warming, but when it slows down, it doesn't temper that heat any more. Instead that heat gets released to the surface where we live. https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-44875508
I've got some new visions of global warming up ahead that I will be posting soon.
@coyote, I was wondering if you had any thoughts about the eastern seaboard sea level rise I mentioned? I remember you had looked into it.
@jeanne-mayell That seaboard rise is exactly what I meant. I think about it like a floatie in a pool where you try to get on, and as you push down on one side the other side flies up. Another thing to Google is the North American craton which is the more stable part of the continent.
You're totally right about the changing ocean currents. I look forward to hearing your new predictions. There are so many factors that I wouldn't begin to grasp how to factor them all in.
@TheUngamer that's a great version of the sinkhole story, thanks for the link. I hope the drilling off the California coast doesn't have those impacts since the Pacific side is squishing together. I would think the Atlantic side might suffer more from drilling since that side is spreading via the Atlantic ridge. It's so complicated.
Interesting comments and thread. I humbly add my reflections:
The climate is not in crisis. Humans and other earth ecosystems are. Solution is a matter of perspective, holistic or immediate. Look at the chain of events that has gotten us here. Look way past the discovery of black gold. Look at the quest for empire domination and riches that mowed everything and everyone down that got in its way to establish today. That same energy is raging today, strong stronger! And now the snake is eating its tail because it has met its cosmic/karmic past, present and future. In all of human panic, few speak of changing the paradigm that has driven this era. Once a holistic hard and honest look is taken that includes a spiritual evolution and karmic reckoning, then perhaps the physical "solutions" along with the spiritual soul evolution will take mother earth down another trajectory (not the Venus or Mars scenario). She has said enough, the ancestors have said enough. This is the ride we are on now. Hold on!
Look way past the discovery of black gold. Look at the quest for empire domination and riches that mowed everything and everyone down that got in its way to establish today. That same energy is raging today, strong stronger!
Thanks for weighing in and welcome to our community! I can happily say that nearly everyone here agrees with these sentiments and has been expressing them in one way or another for the past six years that we've have this forum. We are looking for a paradigm change, a sea change, not just a reduction in parts per million carbon. And to save ourselves in any meaningful way, we will have to make that sea change. I could say much more, but I wanted to assure you that you are among people who feel exactly the way you feel.
Back in 1989, Michael Crighton's mathematician character in Jurassic Park famously expressed a sentiment that is similar to your first point that the climate is not in crisis. It is humans who are in crisis, which was the most important point I got out of the whole book. The characters were talking about how we have to take care of the planet, and not destroy it. Ian Malcom, the mathematician character, said, "Let's be clear. The planet is not in jeopardy. We are in jeopardy. We haven't got the power to destroy the planet or save it. We only have the power to save ourselves." In other words, the planet will go on for billions of years the way it has always gone on. The question is whether humans, who have only appeared in the last blink of an eye, will be able to survive.