Tuesday, October 13, 2015

The Evolution of Models - 14

Just another one of the doomed areas.
The conservative viewpoint in the IPCC concerning sea level change (SLC) has always been wrong.

"Too conservative" is an explanation bandied about, but the meaning it conveys to me is criminal denial of reality, or cowardice in the face of the facts we who are conscious find to be out there in reality.

The psychological reality being what it is, I use a more conservative model to project sea level rise (SLR) and sea level fall (SLF) recently.

I do so for clueless readers who drift through, so that no one loses their mind when they find out where they actually are (You Are Here).

Yes, regular readers are some of the most savvy on the planet, but there are those who get here and are shocked even by lightweight posts (let's hope they do not drop by on a heavyweight post day and have a heart attack).

But, these days even lightweight projections and observations tend to be cataclysmic, so you who are clueless, up until now, are going to have to get real.

A recent paper came out with another, IMO, very conservative estimate, which nevertheless, is a description of cataclysmic events here and now in our lives on our planet:
Anthropogenic carbon emissions lock in long-term sea-level rise that greatly exceeds projections for this century, posing profound challenges for coastal development and cultural legacies. Analysis based on previously published relationships linking emissions to warming and warming to rise indicates that unabated carbon emissions up to the year 2100 would commit an eventual global sea-level rise of 4.3 – 9.9 m [14 - 32.5 ft.]. Based on detailed topographic and population data, local high tide lines, and regional long-term sea-level commitment for different carbon emissions and ice sheet stability scenarios, we compute the current population living on endangered land at municipal, state, and national levels within the United States. For unabated climate change, we find that land that is home to more than 20 million people is implicated and is widely distributed among different states and coasts. The total area includes 1,185 – 1,825 municipalities where land that is home to more than half of the current population would be affected, among them at least 21 cities exceeding 100,000 residents.
PNAS, PDF). In other words, SLR will swallow Miami, New Orleans, etc., the study finds (Phys Org).

Meanwhile, global marine analysis suggests a food chain collapse (Phys Org).

Enough said for one lightweight day.

The next post in this series is here, the previous post in this series is here.

3 comments:

  1. That lightweight PNAS paper did not mention sea ports.

    It is a heavyweight subject (link).

    ReplyDelete
  2. Good point Randy.

    i think somebody over at Huffpo is reading your blog, Dredd:



    114
    Comment

    More Than 400 U.S. Cities May Be 'Past The Point Of No Return' With Sea Level Threats

    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/us-cities-sea-level-threats_561d338fe4b0c5a1ce60a45c?ncid=txtlnkusaolp00000592

    [begins]

    Millions of Americans live in places where it's too late to slow the threat of rising sea levels, a new study warns, and researchers are hoping those findings will serve as a call to action for cities that can still be saved by cutting carbon emissions.

    [hah - too late, as usual!]

    Tom

    ReplyDelete