In the late 70's, I can remember a rash of stories on the nightly news, telling us that scientists were predicting that half of Florida was going to be underwater by the 2000's. Perhaps, even as a kid, I was sensitized to reporting on science, since my 4th-grade science text book was also predicting we'd be in a mini ice age in the 80's, and completely out of oil by 2000. And, dang it, I was looking forward to driving.<p>It's forty years later, and the only land that I've read about that we've lost to global ocean level rise is some "islands" in the South Pacific that were only a couple millimeters above sea level anyway. Can someone here point me to actual, significant, usable land loss due to rising sea level? I'm not saying it hasn't happened, but I figure, if it had, it would be something that gets trotted out at every one of these discussions.<p>Now we're getting a beautifully-rendered Times article where some NASA climatologist says that, in another 10 years, we could have some "significant retreat." After half a lifetime of hearing this, and not seeing anything like the kind of change that would threaten man's survival, I'm sorry, but I'm skeptical.
> Extensive satellite monitoring began in the 1990s and, within a decade, evidence emerged that the ice sheet was already starting to speed up, retreat and destabilize. Since then, the rate at which some of the glaciers are dumping ice into the ocean has tripled. More than 100 billion tons are lost every year.<p>I have a pet peeve about large numbers being thrown about without context. 100 billion tons of ice lost every year is a large number. How many tons of ice are in the whole of the ice sheet? 30M km^3 * 0.239913 mi^3/km^3 * 3.82 Gt/mi^3 = ~27.5 million gigatons. So that gives us about 275,000 years at current rates before the ice sheet is gone.<p>I got the 30M km^3 from here: <a href="https://www.sciencedaily.com/terms/antarctic_ice_sheet.htm" rel="nofollow">https://www.sciencedaily.com/terms/antarctic_ice_sheet.htm</a> and other conversions from here: <a href="http://www.sealevel.info/conversion_factors.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.sealevel.info/conversion_factors.html</a>
Here is Brisbane, Australia, the property market for low-lying areas is still running hot. This is despite the flood of 2011 (which was so great it caused sea levels to drop by as much as 7mm) which destroyed many of them, and the insurance companies have either refused to insure them or at very high premiums with low coverage. No one cares, they still vote for politicians who promise the coal jobs will come back and still burn coal for most of the electricity.
Take notice that this is Part 2, here is the Part 1 (there's also Part 3):<p><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/05/18/climate/antarctica-ice-melt-climate-change.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/05/18/climate/antar...</a>
There's a very good Omega Tau episode on this.<p><a href="http://omegataupodcast.net/229-ant-arctic-sea-ice/" rel="nofollow">http://omegataupodcast.net/229-ant-arctic-sea-ice/</a>
> If that ice sheet were to disintegrate, it could raise the level of the sea by more than 160 feet<p>I was wondering how they got 160ft, it looks like it's from this paper <a href="http://www.the-cryosphere.net/7/375/2013/tc-7-375-2013.pdf" rel="nofollow">http://www.the-cryosphere.net/7/375/2013/tc-7-375-2013.pdf</a>.
6ft eh? I'm sure there's a technological solution to that <a href="https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raising_of_Chicago" rel="nofollow">https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raising_of_Chicago</a>
I think we should fight greenhouse emissions as much as possible, but at the same time we should be realistic and plan accordingly. We should have a disaster plan (how to we move everybody to cities that won't be flooded, any nuclear plants on the coast to take care of? etc.) and a geo-engineering plan (can we capture this CO2 in some way?) and... a space exploration plan.<p>who knows? maybe defeating aging will push us to think longer term
Off-topic: I'm surely not alone in utterly despising this kind of website design?<p>On-topic: If we think the immigration crisis is 'bad' now... It's like comparing a dispute over garden fences to WWII.
The good news is that wealth inequality will go down: Rich people all own expensive property near the coast, so it'll get flooded and they'll have to pay the poor to move them closer inward.
This stuff would probably go over better with the red state crowd if the same outlets hadn't chicken littled us in the 70s with global cooling.<p>Also, I don't know how much of a difference we can make in the west when China and India are polluting so hard that it blots out the daylight.
> Dr. DeConto and Dr. Pollard do not claim that this is a certainty<p>Boil 'em in oil, the stinkin' deniers.<p>Oh, wait, that's the scientists that this did this study about a time a century in the future.<p>More sensationalist journalism just stirring up emotions.