Thread: Sea level Rise

Back in January Boston's Mayor Marty Walsh referred to man-made sea level rise as one of Boston's greatest threats. In the past century sea level as rising about a foot with up to another 2 feet by mid-century. This past week Boston received record sea flooding. Currently, there are roughly 60,000 homes within 3' of sea level. This is all too typical of the growing threat. Galveston sea level has risen by 28" over the past century and even conservative politicians are starting to express concern about whether Houston will need to move in the future. Millions of Americans are likely to be displaced in the next few decades. A recent Pentagon study estimated that more than half of US bases are vulnerable to climate change is driven climate change--they are planning regardless of the politicals of denial.

Well, I live in the Netherlands. The whole country is build with an increasing sea level in mind. Dykes are plentiful, predetermined floodplains, river "uiterwaarden". This last thing is a dutch word, and there is no translation in english i know of. It means an area within a river area that is designed to flood to give a river more room when necessary.

This combined with sluices and "gemalen" which is another dutch word with no translation into english. It is a threaded pumping system designed to keep water out of a lower based area.

I don't like feet, inches and such. It makes me think how much 60.000 american homes are in non american homes units. .

But, these terms are a necessity to keep your "2 feet" from getting wet.

We sacrifice some area's to the flood, to keep high populated area's dry. We pay a certain tax, "waterschapsbelasting" to pay for dykes and other water works. And everyone pays an overal portion, so the area's above the sealevel don't pay less than those below. I think every family or house pays a particular amount, based on the surface area of the city they live in, and the amount of people living in the city. I believe i pay about 200€ a year or so.

I hope this gives you some ideas of what there is to do.

Several visits there when I lived in Europe. Quite impressive engineering combined with beautiful landscape and equally nice people. That being said such projects are monumentally expensive, do massive ecological damage and won't work due to geology in most places.

(I find standard units much easier to work with though as a scientist I'm proficient with metric--natural units are far more practical for everyday understanding and estimation)

Some areas of the globe have too much water whilst other areas have none.
Surely science has figured out a resolve by now?
We have technology to convert seawater into oxygen for submarines.

Originally Posted by Aeronaut

Some areas of the globe have too much water whilst other areas have none.
Surely science has figured out a resolve by now?
We have technology to convert seawater into oxygen for submarines.

Yes we have these long tubular thingies called "pipes".

Originally Posted by Lynx_Fox

Quite impressive engineering combined with beautiful landscape and equally nice people. That being said such projects are monumentally expensive, do massive ecological damage and won't work due to geology in most places.

The Netherlands is a special case, almost a thousand square miles of land reclaimed from the sea and a major effort in the Delta Works to keep the sea at bay (so to speak).

Global warming is already well underway. I read yesterday that if we had changed our energy profile 30 years ago we'd still be having the climate instability we see today. This thing is much bigger than a few coal plants or your neighbor's Hummer. It's something our children, grand-children and great-grand-children will have to deal with.

Some arctic areas will become temperate (especially if Antarctica keeps calving and Greenland loses its ice sheet). Earth's albedo will change, the oxygen level in the atmosphere will change, some areas will flood, some deserts will become arable. Hopefully it'll happen slow enough that people will be able to adjust. We have in the past.

Bear in mind, we're just coming out of the Quaternary Ice Age with periodic ups and downs since then (see Little Ice Age). Earth's temperature has always varied -- just not this fast before.

Originally Posted by Lynx_Fox

Back in January Boston's Mayor Marty Walsh referred to man-made sea level rise as one of Boston's greatest threats. In the past century sea level as rising about a foot with up to another 2 feet by mid-century. This past week Boston received record sea flooding. Currently, there are roughly 60,000 homes within 3' of sea level. This is all too typical of the growing threat. Galveston sea level has risen by 28" over the past century and even conservative politicians are starting to express concern about whether Houston will need to move in the future. Millions of Americans are likely to be displaced in the next few decades. A recent Pentagon study estimated that more than half of US bases are vulnerable to climate change is driven climate change--they are planning regardless of the politicals of denial.

The earth has been through at least five ice ages and we are still currently in one. Once all the snow and ice has melted, then we will have maximum see level. Whether man has/is speeding the process up is under debate but climate change is an inevitable pattern.

And then in the many thousands of years to come, the planet will then cool.

Originally Posted by Sore Knee

Whether man has/is speeding the process up is under debate

Not by scientists, there is a clear consensus. The debate is political.

Originally Posted by Bufofrog

Originally Posted by Sore Knee

Whether man has/is speeding the process up is under debate

Not by scientists, there is a clear consensus. The debate is political.

You think it is a genuine political debate?

Do you accept the bona fides of hose who argue that human civilization is not warming the planet in a probably catastrophic way? (not to mention the other ways we are damaging grotesquely the overall ecosystem)

Originally Posted by geordief

You think it is a genuine political debate?

What is a genuine political debate? It seems that conservatives do not want to do anything about global warming because it would negatively effect the bottom line of businesses.

Do you accept the bona fides of hose who argue that human civilization is not warming the planet in a probably catastrophic way? (not to mention the other ways we are damaging grotesquely the overall ecosystem)

Climatologists are the people I listen to regarding the climate.

Originally Posted by Bufofrog

Originally Posted by geordief

You think it is a genuine political debate?

What is a genuine political debate? It seems that conservatives do not want to do anything about global warming because it would negatively effect the bottom line of businesses.

Suppose I should have made it clear that I was wondering whether the people digging their heels in over measures to minimize climate change were genuine rather than whether the debate as a whole was genuine.

Still if one side of the argument has bad faith ,that does affect the debate as a whole since in democracies everyone's votes count,even as Trump would have it those of the ignorant. (he calls them "uneducated")

If we filled all the gas & oil pipelines, storage facilities and empty wells in the world with water would it have an effect on sea level?

Originally Posted by zinjanthropos

If we filled all the gas & oil pipelines, storage facilities and empty wells in the world with water would it have an effect on sea level?

I am not a numbers man,but it is hard for me to imagine that the effect would be measurable.

Whoops, wrong thread

Originally Posted by zinjanthropos

If we filled all the gas & oil pipelines, storage facilities and empty wells in the world with water would it have an effect on sea level?

When you consider the volume of caves, caverns, lava tubes, cenotes and porous rocks, there is bound to be some take-up, in those voids not inundated to date, as SLR gains access to 'raised' inlets that were not accessible until SLR raises water levels to spil into these. And still t will not be enough to stop it.

My postulation (see my first post, tags Ecotoxicology and Sea Level Rise) is that SLR will inundate all man-made waste voids, washing the contents out to sea and eventually poisoning every coastline on earth,

The causes of global sea level rise can be roughly split into three categories: (1) thermal expansion of sea water as it warms up, (2) melting of land ice and (3) changes in the amount of water stored on land. In 2019, a study projected that in low emission scenario, sea level will rise 30 centimeters by 2050 and 69 centimetres by 2100, relative to the level in 2000. In high emission scenario, it will be 34 cm by 2050 and 111 cm by 2100.

So, you've managed to plagiarise your first sentence from here and the last two from here.
Got anything else to tell us?

Maybe we should build more dams. Apparently dams slow SLR.

https://phys.org/news/2020-08-20th-c...ffset-sea.html

Maybe off topic but questions... Is there more coastline in the world now than ever before? I'm thinking maybe. If so, has more coastline helped reduce the water levels today than say for a supercontinent? I guess a dam creates more coastline, now that I think about it.

Another question.....if all the ice melts then the weight of water pushing down on the seabed should increase I assume. How much if any will that added weight compress the ocean floor and increase depth? I’m thinking since Glaciers on land by their own weight compress the land then the same thing should happen if their thawed ice fills the oceans. Meanwhile on the land glaciers once occupied one should expect an isostatic rebound there.

*Stuff like this confuses me, from Google:

Quote:Pangaea was the most recent mega continent to have existed and the first to be reconstructed by scientists. The size of Pangaea was 148.43 million square kilometers 57.83 million square miles. Nowadays, the area of all the continents of the planet is 148. 33 million square kilometers 57.27 million square miles

From what I’ve read, Pangaea had little or no ice caps and as you can see had a surface area practically the same as exists today. Wouldn’t that mean that sea levels were at maximum, yet there was all that surface area above it? However scientists are estimating that Greenland itself has enough ice that if thawed will raise sea levels 20’. This makes me wonder why, if all the world’s ice melts,** a lot of land disappears below sea level when in comparison during the time of Pangaea the sea level had to be at maximum. Anyone explain that? What have I missed?

*copied query from another forum but it is mine.
** Just read a Nat Geog article that says water levels will rise 216' if worlds ice melts. Can't link it for some reason.

It isn't as simple as comparing land areas. "Land" is part of a plate (as in tectonics), most of which is below sea level at any given point. The size and interaction between the plates can affect how high mountains are and how deep the ocean is at different points. All of which will have a bearing on "sea level". In Pangea I'm guessing as all the land was glommed together you had the land surrounded by a very deep global ocean as most of the plate edges would be under land. Currently that is not the case and our current oceans may well be much shallower than those surrounding Pangea.

Originally Posted by PhDemon

It isn't as simple as comparing land areas. "Land" is part of a plate (as in tectonics), most of which is below sea level at any given point. The size and interaction between the plates can affect how high mountains are and how deep the ocean is at different points. All of which will have a bearing on "sea level". In Pangea I'm guessing as all the land was glommed together you had the land surrounded by a very deep global ocean as most of the plate edges would be under land. Currently that is not the case and our current oceans may well be much shallower than those surrounding Pangea.

The big consideration is to separate sea level from sea height? Pangaean surface would have been farther from the ocean floor than today’s land masses?

Dunno, I'm not an expert I was just highlighting the situation is not as simple as just comparing land areas...

Originally Posted by PhDemon

Dunno, I'm not an expert I was just highlighting the situation is not as simple as just comparing land areas...

I’m thinking something is wrong with either how it’s measured or the estimate of Pangaea surface area. Have heard that isostatic rebound plus added weight of water is not figured in. But even if that reduced SLR by 10% we’re still underwater should all the ice melt.

Been reading about oil extraction. From oil price.com :

.
Aug. 20, 2019 — Total estimated world oil consumption, from 1950 to 2018, then, is estimated at 1.457 trillion barrels

Multiply that by 42 for amount of gallonage. Reason I mention this is that with every barrel of oil extracted there’s 19 barrels of water that comes with it. Stand to be corrected but if correct , that’s a lot of water. That water used to get hauled off to evaporation reservoirs but today for the most part I think it is pumped back into the well. Water would naturally seep back into these wells but I don’t know the rate or how long that would take. So I would assume that there’s still a lot of water to be added to the earth to regain the balance it had prior to oil extraction plus the space that was occupied by more than 1.4 trillion barrels of oil. That ought to take care of a few glaciers I imagine.

What happened to all the water in the evaporation ponds?