Waterworld Light - WWYD

[Stercutus]

Say the Oceans suddenly began steadily rising both rapidly and irreversibly. I'll pull a number out of the sky and lets go with 3.5" a year for the next 36 years. After that another steady increase of say 2" a year for 50 years. So we are looking at almost 20 feet total. Yeah, I know you will be dead by then. Till then...

WWYD?

[flybynight]

The backstroke

[the_alias]

Say the Oceans suddenly began steadily rising both rapidly and irreversibly. I'll pull a number out of the sky and lets go with 3.5" a year for the next 36 years. After that another steady increase of say 2" a year for 50 years. So we are looking at almost 20 feet total. Yeah, I know you will be dead by then. Till then...

WWYD?

Contemplate in the evenings that I should have visited Venice.

[raptor]

Go to my farm which is 150 ft +/- MSL.

This scenario would entail virtually all coast cities being inundated to some extent. Hong Kong would be less affected than say Miami or FL in general.

However IMO such gradual rise would allow an orderly transfer of people and move able assets or at least one would hope so... but probably not.

[Confucius]

I'm at a few thousand feet on the edge of the rocky mountains, so I'm going to go with... Enjoy the extra shellfish flooding the market?

Hope that too many lowlanders don't move in?


But mostly build a bitchin catamaran and grow gills

[Stercutus]

I guess I should say WIWD since it is a WWYD.

I figure everyone in power along the coasts (lots of capitols are on or near the coast) would do their best to resist the encroaching tide and demand a lot of resources to stem it. I don't think a dike and levy system could be built fast enough and cheaply enough to save a lot of places like NYC, LA or Boston.

Those thinking ahead will attempt a massive migration inland. I am about a gas tank away from the coasts myself so I am thinking they will be coming to cities near here. If I am young enough and in the mood I would sell out and move back to the place in the mountains full time.

Part of the question with a slow moving disaster like this one is will people be in denial about such an event? I am thinking a lot of people will be. People were in denial about Katrina when the flood waters were lapping at their door. It would take a pretty traumatic event to convince people to get out of the way. They would have to abandon their most valuable possessions (land and house) and start all over again.

[Confucius]

I don't think a dike and levy system could be built fast enough and cheaply enough to save a lot of places like NYC, LA or Boston.

More of LA will be okay than you'd think. The actual city is 230 feet above sea level. Sure, the beach towns will be swamped, but even most of those set on top of cliffs with the beach and the port down below. LA is a lot more mountainous than people give it credit for...

[raptor]

This a tool that claims to show what happens on worldwide (& zoomable) basis for various levels or sea level rise. It is in meters not feet so 20 feet = ~6 meters.

It is actually not as dramatic as I expected.

NOLA is of course gone as is coastal LA. Lafayette, LA is a GOM front city.

JFK airport is gone, Newark is gone so is Key West, Galveston, SFO Airport, Oakland airports, Norfolk,VA, parts of London, Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Abu Dabi, Bangladesh, Ho Chi Mihn City (Saigon), Hanoi, Hai Phong, The Spratleys, Shanghai, most of Oceania to name few.

http://geology.com/sea-level-rise/

[Zimmy]

I'd make a shitload of money with all the new construction and modification of existing industrial/municipal structures

[Stercutus]

I took the measurements from various peer reviewed studies.

The GW crowd states that the Antarctic Sea Ice is now "unstoppable" and will result in a 3m rise in 200-900 years.

https://www.sciencenews.org/article/ant ... nstoppable

Some predict a rise of 213 feet in the same time frame.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/artic ... ising-sea/

So 213 feet over 900 years and we are talking 3.5" a year more or less. That much change annually would be very notable. Currently the claimed change is 3.6 mm annually. This is increase from the previous century of about .7mm a year.

Of course right now Antarctic Sea Ice is growing and has been for a number of years so I don't know how that works in. Some sources claim it is shrinking.


On the Arctic the peer reviewed papers are at odds and also vary widely from all ice being gone by 2030, 2052, 2075, 2100 or later.

http://www.the-cryosphere.net/9/2237/20 ... 7-2015.pdf

Many of these economic opportunities may rely on SIT evolution, but current projections
have considerable uncertainty. SIT is also much more informative than sea ice concentration (SIC), especially in the
central Arctic, where future thinning can occur without major changes in the local SIC

Nailing down hard numbers and solid projections based on melt, thermal expansion and other factors is impossible. Too many estimates and methodologies. IPCC guesses on various reports ranged from 7.1"" to 2 meters by 2100. Recently they picked a worst case number as 1M by 2100. Not sure why, at least it is well rounded.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_level_rise

So I pulled numbers out of the air based on a fantasy worst case scenario of the numbers provided.

[quazi]

Personally I'm well above sea level and fairly far inland, but whatever is causing the oceans to rise might still get me. Most of the rivers around here are glacier fed, and if it is rapidly melting ice then there might be an extreme flood followed by a drought type situation. I still don't think the water would reach me, but when ice dams form things get unpredictable.

I would be very concerned about pollution. Lots of human habitation and industrial sites are right on the ocean. Since this is relatively slow moving theoretically most of the nasty stuff could be hauled to safe storage on higher ground, but I wouldn't count on it happening. Sea food might get scarce and /or poisonous.

Part of the question with a slow moving disaster like this one is will people be in denial about such an event? I am thinking a lot of people will be. People were in denial about Katrina when the flood waters were lapping at their door. It would take a pretty traumatic event to convince people to get out of the way. They would have to abandon their most valuable possessions (land and house) and start all over again.

How high are the sea walls in Holland? I don't think we would see giant walls around all the coasts of every continent, but I wouldn't be surprised if some communities with a lot of money and political pull would get large walls built around them. This would probably cause a lot of resentment among those who were forced to relocate.

[raptor]

How high are the sea walls in Holland? I don't think we would see giant walls around all the coasts of every continent, but I wouldn't be surprised if some communities with a lot of money and political pull would get large walls built around them. This would probably cause a lot of resentment among those who were forced to relocate.

Not high enough at 20 feet. Amsterdam and Rotterdam are gone.

http://www.hollandexploringtours.nl/hol ... -tours.htm


The other thing is that the tool I linked shows the MSL rising. It does not show storm surges or even normal extreme high tides. It shows only MSL.

[ZombieGranny]

It's not that easy to move once you 'own' a house. Homeowners would lose their shirts.
Nobody wants to buy them in a bad area.

In the Depression the banks still kicked people out and foreclosed on them; they would do it in this scenario, too.

[ineffableone]

Well, my property I am building a homestead on is at aprox 2,500' elevation. So I think I will be safe with a 20' rise.

[quazi]

If this was to occur, do you think people would relocate to significantly higher ground, or just far enough to stay dry for the next couple years?

[flybynight]

https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=th ... ORM=VRDGAR

[Stercutus]

If this was to occur, do you think people would relocate to significantly higher ground, or just far enough to stay dry for the next couple years?

I think people would pay a lot of attention to what would be safe in their lifetime and then relocate to a place that best suited their life style.

[Ad'lan]

The East of England would be flooded fairly often, even though land loss is not that much, the flooding of the broads and the storm surges would turn the whole area into salt marsh and meadow, rather than the bread basket of England that it is now.

My family's small holding would be okay, being as it's on high ground (for Norfolk) and the traditional means of farming and gathering that draining the fens and wetlands destroyed might return. However, they were drained for a good reason, profit, and the need to feed the growing population of the UK, which with that much sea level rise will be even less self sufficient than we are now.

So I can imagine farming samphire, salt marsh lamb and red pole, sea kale and mallow, along with fish traps and mussel ropes, maybe even oyster beds or cockles. The actuality is that these changes would cause so much disruption to the economy and society, I have no idea how viable any of these ideas are. If TSHTF in a big way, none of them are viable, because the UK will starve to death without food imports.

So, WWID? What I'm doing already, work hard, learn skills and try and emigrate to somewhere I can be self sufficient.

[RoneKiln]

I think we'd have major issues with aquifers being contaminated by salt water in addition to flooding. Water rights in a lot of regions, especially coastal agricultural regions would get real rough. The economic disruption would be quite catastrophic.

I live next to a river, which helps. I think the real issue would be the ripple effects of the economic breakdown from both property loss and disruptions in our agricultural and water distribution systems. I think I would start lobbying for expanding the community gardens in the parks surrounding me and adding stairs and landings down to the river to make it easier for gardeners to pull river water for their gardens. I think we would see food costs skyrocket and expanding local food production would do the most to improve my security.

[ineffableone]

I think we'd have major issues with aquifers being contaminated by salt water in addition to flooding. Water rights in a lot of regions, especially coastal agricultural regions would get real rough. The economic disruption would be quite catastrophic.

This is a very good point most folks don't think about. That a rise in ocean water can have effects much further inland than the new shore line due to sea water infiltration of aquifers and contamination of soils with sea salt from flooding and spray. There are a lot of places where they might still be dry land but the agriculture would be destroyed. This is one of the reason Bangladesh is brought up so often when discussing sea level rise. As the rise of sea level will (and already has) impacted the agriculture there.