Sea levels and impact on the United States.

[telemann.livejournal.com]

As a follow-up to airiefairie's excellent post on March 11, 2012 ("The drowning country: a case of climate migration"), I wanted to share a new report that has been released in the interim.


NBC Nightly News featured a new scientific report suggesting significant changes in sea levels will impact the United States much sooner than thought. The report entitled Surging Seas

finds the odds of “century” or worse floods occurring by 2030 are on track to double or more, over widespread areas of the U.S. These increases threaten an enormous amount of damage. Across the country, nearly 5 million people live in 2.6 million homes at less than 4 feet above high tide — a level lower than the century flood line for most locations analyzed. And compounding this risk, scientists expect roughly 2 to 7 more feet of sea level rise this century. [see graphic below]

The report has been made available online, and Climate Central has designed a super elegant and user friendly interactive map to see what impact sea level changes will have on your own community. The map draws its information from a peer reviewed study. And it uses the National Elevation Dataset, a product of the U.S. Geological Survey.



The effects of a five foot sea rise on my home town of Hampton, Virginia. The solid blue line indicates the current shoreline, gray shows the areas affected by rising sea levels with the interior blue line the new coast line. The "city" of Poquoson would be completely wiped out. This portion of Virginia is called "Tidewater" and it would be affected the most because of the low laying tidal flats and swampy areas. On a personal note, two weeks ago, my insurance agency dropped home coverage due to my proximity to living near a flood zone in Brooklyn. The letter cited increased risks from hurricanes and other issues associated with climate change (i.e. rising sea levels).

Here what happens to Staten Island, Brooklyn, and Queens (5 foot rise):




This is the full feature from NBC Nightly News (you *MAY* have to refresh your browser page to reload the embedded video correctly ;)

Comments

[mrbogey.livejournal.com]

It's important to be scared and vote Democrat.

[dwer.livejournal.com]

shhhh! it's all a hoax, remember? Science is inherently liberal, and therefore cannot be trusted!

[telemann.livejournal.com]

Zzz.

Hush, hush, hush. Here comes the Bogey man. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8RLgKOamoME&list=FL8AR71E_ddIkROfNsfKi9JA&index=12&feature=plpp_video)

[ddstory.livejournal.com]

Reality is biased, obviously.

[luvdovz.livejournal.com]

I vote Piratpartiet, tack så mycket! :)

[ddstory.livejournal.com]

But are you scared? It's a necessary condition.

[telemann.livejournal.com]

Yah!

FOR REAL!!



with a report about the credentials of those that "support" and those that "oppose" the consensus, (http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2010/06/04/1003187107.abstract) and you won't find this on Fox or in the WSJ!

[luvdovz.livejournal.com]

Pirates are not scared of anything. Except maybe stinking socks and running out of rum. Bugger!

[luvdovz.livejournal.com]

Apparently 3 scientists are not convinced. Ergo, SCIENTISTS ARE NOT CONVINCED!

And what do some scientists matter when I have faith?

[dwer.livejournal.com]

obviously, they're brainwashed! THIS IS WHAT LIBERAL SCIENCE HAS TO OFFER!

[ddstory.livejournal.com]

Yeah, but can we ever be sure of anything? How do you know something to be true if you're not seeing it yourself? What do words mean, are you sure they all mean what every one of us thinks they mean? HOW DOES SCIENCE WORK, DAMMIT?

[mahnmut.livejournal.com]

Hm, at least three pinky sages among a sea of green hyena verminz.

[dexeron.livejournal.com]

The problem with this report is not that the dangers are false. It's that they put a specific timeframe on them. Which means that if the exact specific events don't happen within the exact specific timeframe listed in the article, it will be held up as more "proof" for all of the science denialists and conspiracy theorists. "See! You were TECHNICALLY incorrect! It must be a global marxist conspiracy!" It's what's already being done now by denialists with earlier predictions that were certainly true, just badly estimated (in terms of timeframe).

But hey, I'm a few miles inland in Florida. My home will become beachfront property eventually, so why worry, right? Climate change is TOTES beneficial, ya know.

/sarcasm

[luvdovz.livejournal.com]

I find your lack of critical thinking distur..... meh, pass me that rum. Bugger!

[airiefairie.livejournal.com]

I think everything will be all right, if we believe really, really hard... =)

[telemann.livejournal.com]

ELITIST TOO! THEY USE BIG WORDS.

[malasadas.livejournal.com]

Reminds me of that one lone dentist who did NOT "recommend sugarless gum for their patients who chew gum" in the old Dentyne ads. My assumption was that he was cleaning up making bridges for the dumbass patients who kept chewing sticky sugar bombs and lost their teeth.

[mahnmut.livejournal.com]

And walls of text. They kill teh lulz.

[htpcl.livejournal.com]

You mean it'll stop being so cold here?

[hardblue.livejournal.com]

"Well actually the Genesis 8:22 that I use in there is that 'as long as the earth remains there will be seed time and harvest, cold and heat, winter and summer, day and night,' my point is, God's still up there. The arrogance of people to think that we, human beings, would be able to change what He is doing in the climate is to me outrageous."

-- Senator Inhofe (http://andrewsullivan.thedailybeast.com/2012/03/fundamentalism-and-public-policy.html)

You obviously need to read more Genesis. Oh, ye of little faith!

[telemann.livejournal.com]

Yeah, in the NBC report, they give a CATO spokesman a bit of air time, so you know John Q. Public will see that and the take-away will be: "Oh see, they're all are not agreed after all!"

[telemann.livejournal.com]

Well the predictions were wrong about one thing: real sea ice melt is happening a lot faster than predicted :/

Summer sea ice changes

Sea ice changes this year were dramatic, with the Arctic September minimum reaching record (or near record) values (depending on the data product). Updating the Stroeve et al, 2007 (http://www.cee.mtu.edu/~reh/papers/pubs/non_Honrath/stroeve07_2007GL029703.pdf) analysis (courtesy of Marika Holland) using the NSIDC data (ftp://sidads.colorado.edu/DATASETS/NOAA/G02135/Sep/N_09_area.txt) we can see that the Arctic continues to melt faster than any of the AR4/CMIP3 models predicted.

[telemann.livejournal.com]

Yeah, and Alaska and Australia too!

WHAT DOES GLOBAL MEAN ANYWAY!

Global, schmobal....

[gunslnger.livejournal.com]

That's what I'm working for. We've had polar ice for far too long.

[telemann.livejournal.com]

He was scheduled to appear on Rachel Maddow's show, but I wondered if he cancelled that.