Thu Feb 16, 2012 2:06 pm by Targe
That's cool but there's two things to keep in mind with sea level rise:
1 - sea level rise is not constant all over the world. It is very much affected by plate tectonics for example. Some parts of the world are rising (Greenland, as the ice melts, which is NOT plate tectonics but a good example, is rapidly rising out of the sea faster than sea level rise, as the millions of tons of ice are removed from it each year) other areas are sinking (one local area I know of is Richmond, Vancouver. That's what happens when you industrialize on a sandy mud river delta).
2. - the potential vulnerability of an area is far more influenced by seasonal storms and high tides than global sea level rise. There' s an area here that is a sandy spit. Now, the ocean is coming up at say 3-4 mm a year, but that spit will be long gone by the time the sea level get's up to it, because all it will take is 1 bad winter storm with a coinciding high tide and those waves will be peaking 3 metres higher than normal and they'll blow right through the highway there and cut that spit into multiple sections, creating damage that's too costly for the small community near it to afford to fix. So we will see lots of this going forward, permanent storm damage that's too costly to repair (and is throwing good money in a money pit that will be swallowed by the ocean in 100 years anyway, so why bother). I see New Orleans and areas of Florida and the Netherlands and key areas where this will happen in our lifetimes.
'Out here on the perimeter there are no stars. Out here we is stone, immaculate'
