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Antarctic sea ice hits lowest minimum on record

nature.com

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Re: Antarctic sea ice hits lowest minimum on record

#81

Post by gus_massa »

scruple wrote: post #58
rich_sasha wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well if California goes, we might as well all pack up, civilisation is over.

Okay. So what do you think will happen when a significant chunk of the United States economic power is under water?

From https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/148494/anticipating...

> In its 2019 report, the IPCC projected (chart above) 0.6 to 1.1 meters (1 to 3 feet) of global sea level rise by 2100 (or about 15 millimeters per year) if greenhouse gas emissions remain at high rates (RCP8.5). By 2300, seas could stand as much as 5 meters higher under the worst-case scenario.

I guess thy will migrate the datacenters before 2300.

Re: Antarctic sea ice hits lowest minimum on record

#82

Post by oceanplexian »

jl6 wrote: post #70
gnatman wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just went looking for a map to see how different coastlines would look with a 200m sea level rise. It's, unsurprisingly, significant!! https://www.floodmap.net/

Interesting that even at a ridiculous, unprecedented 500m sea level rise, there are still substantial areas of dry land. It would be a radically different world, and a smaller one for us land based animals, but it doesn’t seem outlandish that civilization could persist.

Not to mention 500 meters will likely take a thousand years or more. Where will society be a thousand years from now? Changing the climate might be as easy as using the terrain editor in Sim City.

Re: Antarctic sea ice hits lowest minimum on record

#83

Post by Maursault »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #59
jazzyjackson wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess you mean the shape of the countries doesn't change much? iirc the majority of Earth's population lives on coastlines, most major cities will be inundated

Yeah, I was looking at this and thinking "At 20m, basically the entire Eastern and Southern Seaboard of the US is gone."

Not at all. Those living along the shore have flood insurance which will continue to pay for restoration of the coastline.

Re: Antarctic sea ice hits lowest minimum on record

#84

Post by jazzyjackson »

lijogdfljk wrote: post #56
jazzyjackson wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess you mean the shape of the countries doesn't change much? iirc the majority of Earth's population lives on coastlines, most major cities will be inundated

They'll have a _long_ time to migrate though, no?

The rise in sea level is something of a misnomer, because the real damage comes in storm surges. Even a 1cm rise increases the amount of water that can pushed inland by *checks notes* a whole helluva lot. So while manhattan isn't going to be put underwater even after a whole foot of sea level rise (predicted by 2100), the storms it has to survive will be much worse.

People won't move just from a little water in the roads (just look at Miami), I think even in the year 2099 you'll have a hard time getting new yorkers to move to ohio, but once a storm comes through and destroys their housing they will have to find somewhere else to live.

Re: Antarctic sea ice hits lowest minimum on record

#85

Post by gmuslera »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #3

I am not a "denier", I can recognize that anthropomorphic activities are changing the climate over time and we're not prepared to deal with that. But this sort of article annoys me because "on record" represents a nanosecond of geologic time. There are mountains, and plant fossils [1] under the ice at Antartica, so at some point in the geologic record there was little to no ice at all! And no humans likely either, wh…

Speed of change matters. Walking downstairs is not the same as falling thru a window. You can't adapt to very fast change.

https://xkcd.com/1732/

Re: Antarctic sea ice hits lowest minimum on record

#86

Post by r00fus »

arno_v wrote: post #25
gnatman wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just went looking for a map to see how different coastlines would look with a 200m sea level rise. It's, unsurprisingly, significant!! https://www.floodmap.net/

Surprisingly if you put it to 20 meters the effect globally seem insignificant. Although 80% of my own country would be flooded, so that's not great.

And as Lex Luthor pointed out in Superman1, there may be profit to be had. So honestly, two sides to that coin, amirite?

Re: Antarctic sea ice hits lowest minimum on record

#87

Post by robocat »

anonporridge wrote: post #29
systemvoltage wrote: post #5

Pardon my crudity, but is there a reason to not build a bunch of nuclear power plants + carbon suckers powered by electricity?

Ok, you spend your time and resources doing that, and I'll spend mine increasing my military and economic might. Now replace 'you' and 'me' with competing nation states and super powers. It's a kind of geopolitical prisoner's dilemma. We're all screwed to different degrees if we do nothing, but everyone has an incentive to be a parasite, letting 90% of the world use their energy working on this problem that distribut…

If the benefits to an individual country are high enough compared against the costs, then that country could decide to do it even if everyone else is freeloading.

Also the problem should be solved depending on wealth: the richest countries cause/caused the majority of the problem, and they have the most incentive to fix the problem (e.g. NY, California, London), and they have the best resources to try and solve the problem.

The EU shows that countries can work together, rather than your simplistic dystopian view. Let’s presume the EU and the US pull finger, then they alone could make a difference. Rope in other rich countries, and use trade restrictions to penalise or equivalently tax non-participants.

Disclaimer: I live in a coastal city in a wealthy country: I very definitely have some skin in this game. However I expect to die ~2050, so perhaps I don’t care as much as someone who expects to die closer to 2100.

Re: Antarctic sea ice hits lowest minimum on record

#88

Post by r00fus »

jjcon wrote: post #45
stevenwoo wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

something like only 10 meters is necessary to depopulate large part of Florida (due to loss land and freshwater aquifers) and turn part of central California into a salt marsh and start reducing the USA's most productive farmland.

Good to keep in mind that best estimates right now have sea level rising by less than 0.7 meters through 2100. 10 meters may happen some day but it will be a very slow process. https://www.noaa.gov/news-release/us-coastline-to-see-up-to-...

Ecological estimates have been shown to wildly conservative.

Who ten years ago had in their ecologic prediction bingo card that we'd have rampant wildfires globally and 118 degree ground temps in the Arctic Circle by 2020?

Re: Antarctic sea ice hits lowest minimum on record

#89

Post by ej_mage »

Gravityloss wrote: post #65
ChuckMcM wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Okay, I'd like to respond to this, " ... you should be more scared, " Can you reason to that position? Here is how I see it, and perhaps that will make my position more clear. I'm going to die (so are you). Every year, the probability that I'm going to die in the next year goes up bit by bit. I don't expect to read articles that continually harp on "look how close to death you are, are you sure you don't want to eat…

Quoted post unavailable.

Yes most people do :)

Re: Antarctic sea ice hits lowest minimum on record

#90

Post by Maursault »

AutumnCurtain wrote: post #51
jtsiskin wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah yes, the “Tens of millions of years ago, the climate was also different!” silly excuse. Modern humans have been around a minuscule fraction of that time. If we are affecting the climate in ways that normally take millions of years, “there’s some plants under the ice” is the non-helpful remark

My family member worked as a petroleum geologist for Exxon-Mobil for many years, and he is fond of talking about how the climate has changed dramatically throughout the earth's history as a sort of defense against any discussion of climate change. That those changes historically went very poorly for the organisms living in affected areas doesn't seem to faze him, as though we should be desirous of a new Permian extin…

> it's a defense mechanism for him psychologically

Maybe, but it's also a straw man.

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