Getting weary of arguing with poster who says that 3 foot sea level rise won't matter

[CreekDog]

http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=2145059

[Speck Tater]

1. Kinda pointless trying to educate people who prefer to remain ignorant. nt

[immoderate]

2. I find there are some hard-core climate deniers that no reason can influence...

It is like dealing with a fundamentalist. Whatever intellect they have is used to parry your argument.

--imm

[sinkingfeeling]

3. Tell him to move now to the Florida Keys.

[Scuba]

4. +1

[CreekDog]

8. !

[PADemD]

5. Don't know if this helped

http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=2149706

[NoOneMan]

6. To some, its a disaster. To others, it wont be their primary concern

Many of us will be too hungry to give a damn about a little more water by that time

[GliderGuider]

7. That's my take on it as well.

The impact on crop-growing weather is going to be orders of magnitude more important to most people over then next few decades.

[OKIsItJustMe]

11. I tend to agree

A friend at one point was despairing that we lacked the agricultural skills of our grandparents. My reply was that even our grandparents had a tough time growing food if the weather didn't cooperate.

[NoOneMan]

13. The answer is trees, trees and more trees

We had a major drought last summer and didn't see a drop of rain for over 4 months. The garden didn't produce well but the pear, apple and plum trees did great

We need to start planting trees now and create carbon sinks that produce food with little labor (once established). They help the soils retain nutrients and water, and promote biodiversity.

We must incorporate woody perennials into our food systems in a major way during the next few decades. We likely will not.

[OKIsItJustMe]

18. Trees are at best part of a possible answer

Back before we got involved in the ecosystem in a big way (you know, cutting down forests, burning coal, stuff like that) CO[font size="1"]₂[/font] levels (and temperatures) fluctuated.


You’ll see that it took about 100,000 years to lower CO[font size="1"]₂[/font] levels about 100ppm.

We would like to lower CO[font size="1"]₂[/font] a similar amount (maybe a bit more.)

[NoOneMan]

21. Well, it depends on what you are trying to solve

If you are looking at building resilience in food systems so we don't face massive famine, trees can be a big part of the answer.

If you are looking at somewhat immediately restoring the atmosphere so we can maintain our way of life without too much interruption, then they are a tiny part of the answer. I don't see us feasibly lowering our CO2 levels by 100 to 200 ppm any time soon, whatsoever, despite whatever tech we throw at it.

[OKIsItJustMe]

22. 2°C warming was (somewhat arbitrarily) decided to be the safe limit

Notice that a level of about 300ppm CO[font size="1"]₂[/font] is associated with about 3°C ∆T.

[Stevepol]

24. The Moringa tree also could serve a role.

This tree has leaves with high nutritional content and grows in the same latitudes where the greatest need for increased nutrition occurs around the world. It grows quickly and has many uses for both human and animal nutrition.

Trees For Life, an environmental organization, along with quite a few other orgs, is pushing the planting of this tree and is investigating ways to use the leaves that would be easy to incorporate in the diet of those most in need of it.

Here's one site that is much involved in this effort:

http://www.treesforlife.org/our-work/our-initiatives/moringa

[NickB79]

25. "incorporate woody perennials into our food systems"

Here's the project I'm working on for my property right now with that very goal in mind:

http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10150438605171847&set=a.10150438604701847.357661.574696846&type=3&theater

http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10151092155116847&set=a.10150438604701847.357661.574696846&type=3&theater

http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10151092156886847&set=a.10150438604701847.357661.574696846&type=3&theater

I weeded out about half of them this fall that were too puny (under 1 ft of growth), erected a fence to stop rabbits, and will see how many survive the winter. So far we've only hit -10F all year, which is nothing for Minnesota, so I'm pretty confident winter-hardiness won't be a problem.

[NoOneMan]

28. Awesome work!

Thats a big part of not starving in hard times. Plus, its damn good for the environment. Of course theyll be hardy enough to make it.

[FarCenter]

9. The actual impact is probably closer to "won't matter" than to "horrible"

'Horrible' sea level rise of more than 3 feet plausible by 2100, experts say

"The consequences are horrible," Jonathan Bamber, a glaciologist at the University of Bristol and a co-author of the study published Jan. 6 in the journal Nature Climate Change, told NBC News.

So the question is, given that coastal management has to plan for tides, storm surges, and wave action on top of storm surges, how much practical difference does 3 feet of sea level rise make when tides can typically be a couple of meters and storm surge and waves can easily add another 10 meters on top of that?

[FBaggins]

10. Oh! I see now!

You assume that tides, storm surges, and wave action all stop when sea levels rise three feet.

Obviously that's mistaken.

[FarCenter]

12. No, the sea level rise makes the 30 foot surge the equivalent of a 33 foot surge.

Or it makes a storm of a given intensity at low tide equivalent to one at high tide for a place with 3 foot tides.

[FBaggins]

16. Your examples miss the reality.

33 vs 30 seems like a minor (merely 10%) change... but in reality, 30 feet is about the largest storm surge on record. It's close to the highest theoretical surge.

But defenses designed to handle five foot waves on top of a three foot storm surge on top of a one foot high tide (not at all uncommon) are completely overwhelmed by the same scenario with a 3ft higher base sea level. 33 vs 30 seems small... but 12 feet when you've got a design that can handle 9 is disaster.

And the cost associated with protecting each additional foot is not a linear progression.

[FarCenter]

19. Katrina was 27 feet over about 20 miles

Since a Katrina-scale hurricane can hit any of the Gulf coast, that is what needs to be managed.

Hurricane Sandy's Storm Surge Mapped ... Before It Hit
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/11/08/hurricane-sandys-storm-surge-map_n_2094939.html

shows the difference between the 12 and 14 ft contour lines on Staten Island. The area flooded by the actuall 14 ft surge is not much greated than that for the predicted 12 ft surge.

[FBaggins]

26. You may have noticed that Katrina overwhelmed coastal defenses.

More than one noteworthy area would have benefited from three fewer feet of water, wouldn't you say?

Since a Katrina-scale hurricane can hit any of the Gulf coast, that is what needs to be managed.

That's an odd statement. We don't currently plan to "manage" Katrina-scale disasters all along our coastline. Or did I miss the 30-ft seawall running all along the southern boarder. There is always a tradeoff between estimated risk and the cost to avoid that risk. Each additional foot of protection adds more expense than the last one.

The area flooded by the actuall 14 ft surge is not much greated than that for the predicted 12 ft surge.

Sorry... that's ridiculously misguided. All along that border are homes that missed flooding by, say, six inches... that would have been near total loses with two and a half feet of water in them.

I don't know how to state it more simply... three extra feet in any flooding disaster is almost always a big deal. And, more importantly, three feet is often the difference between defenses that hold, and those that collapse. Your misguided appeal to Katrina demonstrates this clearly. There were entire neighborhood (perhaps almost all of NOLA) that would have seen little damage with three fewer feet of storm surge.

[NoOneMan]

15. So at the tail end of the Age of Cheap Energy and Plentiful Food...

We have bankrupt governments people don't believe in, failing dykes, crumbling bridges, obsolete sewer systems, hungry people, etc, but we are supposed to imagine that in the next 50 to 100 years (after food systems are devastated and we suck most of the easy oil out of the sea) governments will find the energy, capital, political will, labor, materialials, etc, to compensate and mitigate the effects of the rising seas?

If there is any time to fix our cities for climate change, it was yesterday. It didn't happen. Its not going to get easier. We aren't going to be able to brush this off any better in the future.

We are squandering what is left of our bounty on useless toys, presuming that when we get to the cans we kicked down the road that we will be able to handle the issues (as if energy is infinite). That is a fantasy.

[FarCenter]

17. I'd expect that by 2100 the population will be small enough to live on higher ground

Given your dystopic scenario, widespread war, famine, and pestilence can be expected by about mid-century. The Australians have demonstrated twice that biological means can reduce a population by about 95%.

[NoOneMan]

20. And that is the only reason I'd rate this as "won't matter" (so much)

We will be neck deep in other shit. It might not be all that difficult for people to abandon the megacities to the sea if they have somewhere to retreat to.

[Systematic Chaos]

14. Uhhhh...huh huh...mmmm heh heh...huh huh...he said..."Fundy". Mmmm huh huh huh....

http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=2149101

[CRH]

23. Three feet is much for the Florida Keys, but,

it is also a moot point. Most all the IPCC models are so far from reality, even the World Bank and PWC see 4-6*C by 2100. With those kind of temperatures Greenland and the west Antarctica are history, you will need a submarine to visit Miami, New Orleans, and Houston; even Lady Liberty will get her bloomers wet.

[OnlinePoker]

27. It will matter in that people have adapted to living on the coasts of every continent

Last edited Tue Jan 8, 2013, 08:50 PM - Edit history (1)

But the reality is, during the last interglacial period, ocean levels were 6 to 10 feet higher than they are today and the temperatures were higher than they are today. The question is, why? What drove the climate to change then, and then flip into an ice-age scenario and why do we assume this natural action can't happen again with or without man's contributions?