Rising sea level won’t be stopped
A rise of at least two meters in the world’s sea levels is now almost unstoppable, experts told a climate conference at Oxford University.
“The crux of the sea level issue is that it starts very slowly but once it gets going it is practically unstoppable,” said Stefan Rahmstorf, a scientist at Germany’s Potsdam Institute and a widely recognized sea level expert. “There is no way I can see to stop this rise, even if we have gone to zero emissions.”
Rahmstorf said the best outcome was that after temperatures stabilized, sea levels would only rise at a steady rate “for centuries to come,” and not accelerate…
His best guess was a one meter rise this century, assuming three degrees warming, and up to five meters over the next 300 years…
Speakers in Oxford used history to back up their arguments on rising seas. Three million years ago the planet was 2-3 degrees warmer and the sea 25-35 meters higher, and 122,000 years ago 2 degrees warmer and 10 meters higher, they said.
“What we now see in Greenland, Antarctica could be a temporary phenomena but it could also be the start of what we saw 122,000 years ago,” said Vellinga…
About 40 million people worldwide live in flood plains, said Southampton University’s Robert Nicholls. That is 0.6 percent of the global population and 5 percent of global wealth, because of valuable assets such as airports and power plants.
The airports and power plants are assets more important to American politicians than, say, healthy or educated citizens.
Holler at your Congress-critter to support Bernie Sanders' bill to 
I don’t think the politicians will even blink at drowned airports and power plants. After all, it’s not their money. They’ll just build more.
The usual suspects will get richer.
On the other hand, there’s going to be an awful lot of pissed off rich people, who notoriously like to build their mansions on shorelines.
I suppose the politicians will solve that little problem by just expropriating land near the brand new shoreline and transfering it to the rich people, then use tax dollars to rebuild the mansions.
In fact, they already use tax dollars to rebuild mansions when the occasional storm destroys rich people’s houses, stupidly built on shorelines.
I mean, it’s only fair to support these unfortunate citizens in a disaster situation, which they had no way to foresee, did they?
Cinaedh
September 30, 2009 at 6:50 am
I don’t know about that.
Governments are responsive to the people’s wishes when there is enough of a situation (read noise) to get their attention.
Call me an optimist, but I don’t think our government is that out of touch.
Mr. Fusion
September 30, 2009 at 8:48 am
Optimist!
Cinaedh
October 1, 2009 at 8:34 am