Rising sea levels threatens many lowlying islands Copyright AFP ROMEO GACAD
Monitoring sea level rises has been a very long and extremely difficult learning curve. The compound effect of ice melt causing more melt was hard to quantify. Factoring in temperature variables and sea current idiosyncrasies added more complexity.
Coastal erosion is another wellknown dynamic changing and modifyin water flow around the world. That feeds back into sea level rises and falls in different ways .
Now things are much clearer, and that’s the problem. Huge amounts of ice in the Antarctic alone are capable of raising the global sea level up to 50 metres. The euphemistic term is “catastrophic”. 450 researchers signed up to that projection.
To put that number into perspective, a onemetre rise would be enough to trash large areas of coastline.
3D and Virtual Reality simulations aren’t exactly reassuring, either.
The problem with all these projections is that the clutter of different maps and scenarios tends to generate mixed messages. That problem has finally been solved by NOAA and NASA, both or which have been streamlining and refining the simulations.
Let’s establish a few parameters:
Sea level changes are inevitable and constant.
They’re driven by temperatures, continental factors, tectonic shifts, etc.
In the past, none of the modern oceans existed. Check out the history of the world’s oceans and continents.
During the last Ice Age glacial maximum, sea levels were estimated to be up to 120 metres lower than today.
That was only a few thousand years ago, and that’s not even debatable by antiscience kooks.
It’s not “the weather”. It’s global reality.
On this hypermacro scale, global warming and cooling are simply natural cycles.
That’s not the problem.
The problem is the 8 billion people in the firing line. Most of these people live in coastal cities. Massive displacement of large numbers of people, far beyond the current scale of migration, is a very high risk scenario.
This is a survival issue, not an academic exercise.
Now let’s return to that 50 metre figure from current research. 50 metres is a very basic midlevel number. There’s nothing at all out of the ordinary historically about 50 metres. It may even be a conservative estimate.
The problem with 50 metres is that it can’t “just happen” Progressive rises are required. The chaos will start long before the 50 metre level is achieved. The various projections for different sea level rises are pretty haphazard, but the message is clear.
Massive disruptions are likely whatever the level of rising. Even one metre would be incredibly destructive. Imagine decades of disruptions.
Sea level rises don’t make appointments. These dots will join themselves, regardless of any degree of apathy.
Make sense?
Let’s put it this way – If a bathtub overflows, people pay attention. They don’t complain about being told it’s overflowing.
If a planet overflows, what happens?
Are you in any hurry to find out?
