5.3 metres – the degree of sea level rise now unavoidable from West Antarctic Ice Sheet melting ALONE – is sufficient to entirely submerge most of urban Abu Dhabi, Bahrain, Dubai, and an enormous area of southern Iraq (Qatar gets off surprisingly lightly).
Think of Bangladesh with a population of almost 170 million. The Coastal South is generally at sea level. That being the agricultural breadbasket of the country.
@simon_brooke@mmalc because they will be unaffected by it. They will use their billions to go wherever they need to as the climate changes. They don’t care about their descendants.
In the North Sea basin, about half the land area of the Netherlands, including all major cities except Eindoven, is lost. In England, most of Leicestershire and Cambridgeshire are toast (without sausages); the Norfolk Broads are, uhhmmm, broader, and Lowestoft surprisingly survives as an island...
The whole Baltic basin gets off lightly, with the only significant inundations being aruond Kurisches Haff in Lithuania and the Vistula delta in Poland...
But the situation in south east Asia is devastating with the deltas of the Ganges, Brahmaputra, Irrawaddy, Chao Phraya and Mekong rivers being inundated (Bangkok, Kolkata and Ho Chih Minh City are entirely lost; Dhaka and Hanoi are reduced to a few small islands). This means at minimum hundreds of millions of refugees displaced.
Meantime, in North America, Florida south of Fort Myers/West Palm Beach essentially doesn't exist any more; New Orleans and the Mississippi delta are gone, the Gulf Coast, the Atlantic Coast from Virginia southwards has significant losses, and there are losses around Vancouver.
@simon_brooke This is what I'd always feared, even as a teenager back in the 90s, ......and now it's actually happening. Don't have kids folks, don't bring them into the nightmare that is to follow 😞
@ThirstyGayGeek@Mair_ The #Netherlands – as I say, west of Eindhoven – is essentially gone. Not even Dutch engineering will save it. Remember, this 5.3 metres is the West Antarctic Ice Sheet ALONE, and that won't be the only ice that melts.
Fortunately, the EU should be able to relocate that many people without too much difficulty, but it's nevertheless a catastrophe.
@simon_brooke@ThirstyGayGeek@Mair_ theoretically yes, in reality we’re already fighting amongst ourselves over a couple of 100k refugees, so I can only imagine the fights and discussions when we need to relocate 18 Million people (by that time) that off course will demand way better arrangements than we now offer the current refugees
@Dave_von_S@ThirstyGayGeek@Mair_ it's hundreds of millions of people we need to relocate. So we need to begin preparing – including educating people for it – now. This is hard, but it's only impossible if we choose to make it impossible.
@simon_brooke@ThirstyGayGeek@Mair_ yeah, I was mostly referring to NL which pretty much has to be relocated completely within the EU and your statement that would be doable.
@simon_brooke Don't worry, Rishi promised that everyone in affected areas will be issued with one of these by one of his wife's companies for slightly less than fifty times cost. Sorted 👍
@simon_brooke When I set the water level to 0.0m, most of the Low Countries (NL, BE, some F and D) is inundated ('toast') already whilst living in the area and looking outside it clearly isn't. My point being: the map isn't clear enough in which levels can be dealt with. At least up to 0.5m can be kept dry with current infrastructure; possibly more. So I'd be interested to see more depth (ahum) in that area - any links to more background info?
@cy Paper in Nature that was widely publicised yesterday. Note that that 5.3 metres is what is now inevitable from the West Antarctica Ice Sheet ALONE. As it melts, other things will melt too, so the total rise will certainly be greater.
@cy within this century, I think. But I also think it isn't yet well understood, so considerable uncertainty. But I've only skim-read the paper, there may be more detail in it.
@simon_brooke@cy From the authors: "It contains enough ice to cause up to 5 metres of sea-level rise, but we don’t know how much of it will melt, and how quickly"
@cy@Brendanjones@simon_brooke
I suspect sea level rise is going to be like the temperature rise, an amount that seems small on average on the face of it, but with unexpected interactions.
@michaelgraaf@petealexharris@cy@simon_brooke want to see a great example of that? Check out the Murray River, which is the lifeblood of southern Australia. While not much land goes underwater at 5m of sea rise, lots of the river goes red. Will the entire thing become salt water? That's a death sentence for the river life and surrounding land, including all farms.
@Brendanjones@petealexharris@cy@simon_brooke These submersion maps are a bit abstract, as if the ocean suddenly & calmly rose. In reality, as the level rises over years, rapid erosion will occur in many wave action zones, causing much greater land loss.
I'm confused. I remember some reports of research coming out around 2006 that showed a very high probability of complete loss of the west antarctic ice. (I can't remember any specifics to find it though) They quoted 7m rise though that may have included related melting from elsewhere. IIRC The timescale was very uncertain then though. (ca100-1000yrs)
Also I was of the understanding that the west antarctic is sitting on seabed, so it doesn't all have to melt it just has to start floating to create the full rise.
I'm no expert and I may be wrong or have misunderstood - but this is what I remember and the latest reports seem to just be confirmation of what I already "knew"
@xenogon@simon_brooke@cy Honestly not sure. Also not an expert myself. It's frustrating that the scientists (rightfully) limit their predictions because their models were limited in scope. We all just want to hear how much is going to melt and by when! Would be interesting to know what they would predict off the scientific record.
@simon_brooke living in #Norwich and previously the #Fens in Cambridgeshire and having enjoyed most of my recent holidays in the #Netherlands the threat is very real for me.
But I seriously wonder how much other people, notably our politicians who live in other parts of the country actually care - they just assume this will never impact them, so they do precisely nothing.
@JugglingWithEggs@simon_brooke I was born and grew up in Lowestoft, some of which will escape, according to the map, not the whole town. But even that amazes me.
@Sarah111well@JugglingWithEggs@simon_brooke awareness is negligible. I was speaking to people from Veere in the Netherlands today, and they had no idea whether their area could sustain even a 1 m or 2 m rise in sea level
@peterbrown@JugglingWithEggs@simon_brooke I played with the map to see how Veere fared. It came out much as I had imagined Lowestoft would. Is this information deliberately not being widespread?
@Sarah111well@peterbrown@JugglingWithEggs I think it is so horrifying and so far beyond what civil defence systems are geared to cope with that people who should know better are putting their fingers in their ears and shouting "LA! LA! LA!" at the tops of their voices.
@Sarah111well@JugglingWithEggs@simon_brooke I believe the government of the Netherlands is pursuing civil action against several multinational oil companies so presumably they are aware of the consequences. However, I don’t think the general public is in on the secret yet email.
@simon_brooke When you look at that map, the first things you notice are the obvious bits like Netherlands, Florida, Louisiana etc. Then you look closer and realise that basically every bit of man-made coastal infrastructure in the entire world will be totalled. Can you imagine? It's quite incredible.
@Penguinflight@GlasWolf Well remember, this is what the fossil fuel companies, and politicians like Sunak, Starmer and Yousaf who enable them, are actively TRYING to achieve.
@simon_brooke my house goes under at 2.0m, and is on an island well before that. Assuming of course that the dykes don't hold, or new water management isn't built. If we can keep the rise to 1m then I've got a lovely beachfront property. This is me trying to see some positivity in this 😬
@Brendanjones@simon_brooke I reckon my house would survive 5 m, but it would be a Pyrrhic victory as there would be no transport or other infrastructure.
All roads, ferry terminals and the airport would be under water, as would all the shops even if they could somehow get deliveries.
@Brendanjones@simon_brooke If it's a urban or suburban home I'm thinking that famine and infrastructure breakdown are likely to get you (and me) before the sea level. So no worries!
My house is at 170m or so - but still very vulnerable to other symptoms of collapse.
@xenogon@simon_brooke oh yeah absolutely. Even if my house wasn't underwater, the entirety of the Randstad (Amsterdam, Rotterdam, The Hague) would be underwater and all those people would need to go somewhere. I might have a beachfront property but I'll be sharing it with lots of refugees!
@simon_brooke
Round my way in #Brighton many ppl think that spending £££££’s repairing Madeira Drive victorian arches is more important than spending on measures to promote sustainable transport and reduce carbon.
Here is news for them! 👇
@simon_brooke they will continue to pump oil as long as there are profits to be made due to demand. We need to cut demand now, should have taken policy steps long before. This is a We problem not a They problem. Rich countries ignored warnings and continue to suck resources far beyond a sustainable rate.
@Chris you wonder about all those celebrities investigating fortunes in Gulf real estate. Looks like they're all in for a very well deserved early bath, but the investment will probably be a washout.
@Chris@simon_brooke Insane numbers of people flying lately. We need to make it far more expensive and get rid of private aircraft as much as possible. Air fuel taxes should be far higher and go to providing decent public transportation by high speed rail.
@darwinwoodka@Chris@simon_brooke@mmalc We could reduce a lot of flying if we just built HSR between the busiest city pairs. It’s generally far more comfortable to take a train than to fly. Make it as frequent and cheap as air travel, and people will choose it over the pain of flying most of the time. You don’t even have to penalize air travel to encourage the shift, although I’m all for taxing aviation fuel to pay for rail.
@simon_brooke The new government of Clean Green 100% Pure New Zealand appears to want more oil, too. They haven't noticed that one of the anticipated new wetlands covers much of the Horowhenua horticultural area that feeds the capital. This is where the market gardeners moved after being hounded out of the Hutt and Wairarapa valleys to waste the fertile land on houses and things.
Thames is also set to become a glorious new wetland. Good thing that they named it after a river rather than land!
@simon_brooke And areas submerged, or suffering tidal flooding, is a tiny fraction of the story. With every 1C increase in temperature the atmosphere holds 7% more water. Rain is our enemy as much as the sea, and we have recently already had too much of it.
@simon_brooke
I would guess that is 5.3 meters +- 3 meters, or something like that, and over a long period of time
as @pkrugman likes to joke, to get the increased level of gov't spending that our economy needs, the best thing would be a martian invasion, cause only war gets enough spending.
so sealevel rise is good, cause gov'ts will spend and spend and spend, which is good
@simon_brooke live in Amsterdam, and my doorstep is 60cm below sea level.
We are soon going to celebrate our 750th birthday. It makes me sad that this beautiful city is so close to the end of such a long run, but it's not like the Dutch are doing fuck-all to prevent this from happening.
@simon_brooke They only care about the money and power it brings them today. And maybe secretly hope they'll either be long gone from the scene, or that money and power will shield them from the retribution caused by them.
They will probably just use the oil money to build more boats that will require more fuel, that they will drill for more oil.
They will run Round and Round until they all fall down.
Add comment