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Where America's climate migrants will go as sea level rises

citylab.com

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Re: Where America's climate migrants will go as sea level rises

#21

Post by tomatotomato37 »

nfg wrote: post #16
ash wrote: post #12

> In the worst-case scenario, in which sea levels rise by six feet by 2100, ... Where does six feet come from? It seems very suspicious. It contradicts NOAA Sea Level Trends data of tide gauge measurements, going back to 1930 and sometimes earlier. According to the map, in almost all places in US the projected sea level trend is no more than 1-1.5 feet by 2100: https://tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/sltrends/sltrends.html…

You can’t just eyeball these graphs and assume the trend is linear: https://tamino.wordpress.com/2019/10/09/sea-level-accelerati... See also https://tamino.wordpress.com/2019/10/14/sea-level-accelerati...

Mate, you're trying to contradict NOAA government data with someone's blog.

Re: Where America's climate migrants will go as sea level rises

#22

Post by klipt »

scrumbledober wrote: post #6

I find it hard to imagine 200k people leaving San Mateo County. most of the county is above 6ft elevation, and there's just so much money I would think dikes could be built to keep the flats dry. At the worst I would expect more housing to be built in the hills.

Optimistic of you to expect the Bay Area to build more housing anywhere.

Look at the people displaced by fires in the North Bay who now can't afford to live anywhere nearby.

Re: Where America's climate migrants will go as sea level rises

#23

Post by sp332 »

ash wrote: post #12

> In the worst-case scenario, in which sea levels rise by six feet by 2100, ... Where does six feet come from? It seems very suspicious. It contradicts NOAA Sea Level Trends data of tide gauge measurements, going back to 1930 and sometimes earlier. According to the map, in almost all places in US the projected sea level trend is no more than 1-1.5 feet by 2100: https://tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/sltrends/sltrends.html…

As a general observation, it's not that useful to look at single gauges. As glaciers melt, the land nearby rises because of the lower weight on it, which shows up as the sea level going down. This is besides all other kinds of geological activity that might be going on in a particular location.

[edit] Anyway to be more specific, there's a single Antarctic glacier with enough water to cause 0.5 meters of sea level rise, and a recent measurement shows it will melt in "decades, possibly more than a century." https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-51097309

Re: Where America's climate migrants will go as sea level rises

#24

Post by frockington1 »

rilindo wrote: post #3

I find it hilarious that even in a worse scenario with the climate crisis, Chicago somehow did not get any migrants .

According to the map, Midwestern cities are immune. Only random rural areas will experience an influx of people. In Ohio for example Columbus, Cincinnati, Cleveland all are white while middle of nowhere is red

Re: Where America's climate migrants will go as sea level rises

#25

Post by emiliobumachar »

papreclip wrote: post #14

It seems really unintuitive to me that there is enough ice on the globe to raise the sea level by 6 feet (let alone 230). But then if I had to guess the land area of Antarctica, I would have estimated something the size of Oklahoma or Texas (when Antarctica is 40% larger than the USA)

I've heard most of the rising sea levels will come from thermal expansion of water, not melting ice.

Liquid water is notorious for having almost no thermal expansion, but the little bit it does have will be multiplied by the volume of the ocean, then divided by the surface area of the ocean, yielding the rough vertical rise.

Re: Where America's climate migrants will go as sea level rises

#26

Post by tomatotomato37 »

beefalo wrote: post #4
rilindo wrote: post #3

I find it hilarious that even in a worse scenario with the climate crisis, Chicago somehow did not get any migrants .

Their map doesn't make any sense to me. They show no expected migration to really any of the cities in the midwest but somehow they expect a mass migration of people from Miami to rural western Kentucky?

The whole concept doesn't make sense; 80 years in the future we won't even know if the US exists as a singular entity anymore let alone where its centers of population will end up. Imagine if 1920 Russia tried to predict where its population would end up in 2000; nothing would match up.

Re: Where America's climate migrants will go as sea level rises

#27

Post by hfdh434535 »

IanDrake wrote: post #15

In the free market of ideas, no one actually believes this will happen. Just look at coastal real estate. Buyers and lenders would have to be colossal fools to pay such premiums to be waterfront. Even Obama just plunked down 12M on a waterfront mansion on the low lying island of MV.

Buyers and Lenders are in fact, colossal fools. People build in floodplains all the time.

Re: Where America's climate migrants will go as sea level rises

#28

Post by lxcfan »

IanDrake wrote: post #15

In the free market of ideas, no one actually believes this will happen. Just look at coastal real estate. Buyers and lenders would have to be colossal fools to pay such premiums to be waterfront. Even Obama just plunked down 12M on a waterfront mansion on the low lying island of MV.

Real estate prices are priced by mostly by current demand, not future oncoming disasters.

Much waterfront property is _already_ vulnerable (and expensive to insure) today, regardless of whether you believe in consensus climate science, due to storms and flooding in current climatic conditions. That house by the ocean is going to destroyed at some point, the only question is when and how.

Re: Where America's climate migrants will go as sea level rises

#29

Post by nfg »

tomatotomato37 wrote: post #21
nfg wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can’t just eyeball these graphs and assume the trend is linear: https://tamino.wordpress.com/2019/10/09/sea-level-accelerati... See also https://tamino.wordpress.com/2019/10/14/sea-level-accelerati...

Mate, you're trying to contradict NOAA government data with someone's blog.

No, I’m not. The NOAA site does not posit that the underlying trend is linear over the period - it simply displays a linear fit on the graphs. See here for more details https://tamino.wordpress.com/2018/04/16/recent-sea-level-cha...

Re: Where America's climate migrants will go as sea level rises

#30

Post by vkou »

Sea level rise will not be the problem. It is going to happen on multi-generational timescales.

Food insecurity, resource conflicts, extreme weather events, and a global migrant crisis (caused by the first two issues) will be. Unlike sea level rise, all it takes is one bad year to spark these.

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