Sea Level Rise

[Britannia]

Global Warming will affect each and every one of us, its having catastrophic effects not only on us but also on the environment.
If the sea rises 100 metres many of the worlds low-lying cities will be underwater.
This is how Europe would become:
http://resumbrae.com/archive/warming/europeMap.jpg
If it happens, and it most probably will, my house will be under water!
http://resumbrae.com/archive/warming/europeCloseup.jpg
And, if you live on the east coast of America:
http://resumbrae.com/archive/warming/americaMap.jpg
I watched a News article a week ago which changed the way I looked at global warming, it was almost heart-breaking to sea what we have done to our planet, we are choking and burning the planet which holds us and lets us live on it, the article said that global warming is apparently much much worse than we had expected it to be and, a British scientist expects the dreaded 3 degrees celsius rise in temperature is inevitable, we are currently 3 degrees from disaster.
For countries on the east side of the Atlantic, winters are a balmy holiday compared with the same latitudes on the west: the frigid coasts of Newfoundland and Labrador. It's a reminder that "weather" is not just a matter of the Sun's heat affecting the Earth's atmosphere. The world's interconnected oceans can store up solar heat in one part of the globe in one season, and invisible rivers in the ocean can transport the warmth thousands of kilometers to another part of the globe and deliver it in another season.

In the case of the North Atlantic, heat is carried northward and eastward by the Gulf Stream. This current warms the coast evenly through the year, in winter as well as summer. Averaged over a year, the Gulf Stream provides Western Europe with a third as much warmth as the Sun does.

This ocean warmth is so important to Europe that climatologists are seriously concerned about the stability of the Gulf Stream. If it switched off, Europe would be plunged into a mini-Ice Age. And current studies suggest that the unseen river in the North Atlantic is dangerously fickle.

The focus of today's worries is the problem of global warming - the way that human activities are changing the climate, as the world gets warmer through the build-up of so-called greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide. Climatologists think that global warming may put the brakes on the Gulf Stream. While the rest of the world comes to swelter in greenhouse conditions, Europe would freeze!

This concern is based on a new understanding of how the great ocean currents are all interconnected. The Gulf Stream is part of a giant pattern of moving water that stretches right around the globe.
from firstscience.com

Europe will be experiencing ice age temperatures (below -50 degrees celsius)

Where ever you live, you will suffer from global warming, its only a matter of time before the events start to unravel.

visit:
Global Warming (http://resumbrae.com/archive/warming/index.html)

[MapMan]

Excellent article and great maps!

In the book 'Blue Mars' by Kim Stanley Robinson, one of the Mars born humans visits Earth and goes looking for his mother in England which is almost completely underwater like in the maps. People made a whole life and industry diving down to the underwater towns and cities and salvaging artifacts.

[lycanox]

How an coincidence. Exit mundi has also payed some attention to it today.

Exit mundi (http://www.exitmundi.nl/sealevel.htm)

[plastik]

There is next to nothing that we as pathetic citizens can do about global warming. We are beyond the point of return. Our governments are greedy bastards and won't do anything to save the environment. If I was PM I would act NOW... I mean literally right this second. Tony Blair says he's gonna do all this stuff but nothing seems to be happening. No significant environmental projects have been undertaken- no encouragement to companies to make new clean technology for cars, no major effort in encouraging recycling, not enough action on building wind farms and solar panels on buildings (not even government buildings... and its not like they can't afford it). World leaders are making promises just to try and look good... but its not working with me. Im sure most of the global warming stuff is a major media hype, but people in some areas will be badly hit by our problems, and this is backed up by pretty much all scientists.
Even if we do partially solve our own countries' problems, some developing countries are yet to go through the industrialisation stage where hundreds of mega-polluting factories are built, and people begin to buy cheap 90's mega-polluting cars and by 2050 will be where we were in the 70's and 80's... just polluting away with not a care in the world.

No going back now... not without government help anyway

[Raptor Witness]

Excellent contribution Brit. :2thumbs:

Being a native of the New Madrid earthquake zone, generally, I couldn't help but notice the curious correlation between your sea level map and the New Madrid fault zone, generally.

Take a look at this. I'm sure the sea level map was draw up, based in part on historical sedimentary evidence for previous sea level intrusions. How come, I wonder, does this intrusion touch the areas that are so seismically active? Is this evidence of the fault beneath the deep sediments?

[Wikipedia] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Madrid_Fault_Zone)

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/a/ad/NMSZBig.gif

[Britannia]

There is next to nothing that we as pathetic citizens can do about global warming. We are beyond the point of return. Our governments are greedy bastards and won't do anything to save the environment. If I was PM I would act NOW... I mean literally right this second. Tony Blair says he's gonna do all this stuff but nothing seems to be happening. No significant environmental projects have been undertaken- no encouragement to companies to make new clean technology for cars, no major effort in encouraging recycling, not enough action on building wind farms and solar panels on buildings (not even government buildings... and its not like they can't afford it). World leaders are making promises just to try and look good... but its not working with me. Im sure most of the global warming stuff is a major media hype, but people in some areas will be badly hit by our problems, and this is backed up by pretty much all scientists.
Even if we do partially solve our own countries' problems, some developing countries are yet to go through the industrialisation stage where hundreds of mega-polluting factories are built, and people begin to buy cheap 90's mega-polluting cars and by 2050 will be where we were in the 70's and 80's... just polluting away with not a care in the world.

No going back now... not without government help anyway

Couldn't have put it better myself!, your absolutely right, the news and government tell us about global warming, and nothing is done about trying to resolve climate change, although there is a huge focus on cars being the main contributor of gases, these only add up to a small fraction of the global emisions, volcanoes are a very big factor in climate change, they produce extremely large amounts of pollution in one go.
But, overall, we are clearly the ones responsible for the destruction of our home, our planet and more importantly our future.
The only way we have a chance of surviving this disastrous event, is to get past the ignorant and selfish blighters we call the government!, they haven't a care in the world, as long as they have their money (from our hard work), the're all happy.

[Britannia]

Excellent contribution Brit. :2thumbs:

Being a native of the New Madrid earthquake zone, generally, I couldn't help but notice the curious correlation between your sea level map and the New Madrid fault zone, generally.

Take a look at this. I'm sure the sea level map was draw up, based in part on historical sedimentary evidence for previous sea level intrusions. How come, I wonder, does this intrusion touch the areas that are so seismically active? Is this evidence of the fault beneath the deep sediments?

[Wikipedia] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Madrid_Fault_Zone)

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/a/ad/NMSZBig.gif

Raptor Witness, where is that last picture located in the globe?, I was trying to recognize it, but I don't think I have ever seen the place.
If possible could you post a map of the location on a global scale?
Thanks.

[Britannia]

I also recall reading something Nonstradamus had predicted, he said that half of England would be under water, as well as all of the other things that would happen at the time (WWIII under way) perhaps someone could find that information of a website somewhere?, thats quite ironic, those maps also say that about half of England would be underwater, I just hope it dosn't happen, if it does, where am I supposed to live when my home is flooded?

[Luxnor]

Thx for the maps Brit! It's why I relocated myself to the mid-west, Iowa specifically. Seemed to be a safe zone. But if conditions rapidly deteoriate as I suspect they will, it may turn into a "Mad-Max" type of living. Otherwise I'd invite you over for tea and crumpets when your house freezes over/sinks into the sea.

[bass]

100 meters is too much water. Even if all the ice caps on earth were to melt (an extremely unlikely event that would take thousands of years), sea levels would only rise 50-60 meters (remember that floating ice caps won't change sea level if they melt). I wouldn't lose any sleep over sea-level inundation.
The NMSZ (New Madrid Seismic Zone) is located along the Mississippi River in Tennessee, Kentucky, Missouri and Arkansas.

[velvet noir]

That's quite upsetting, though I suppose some of the other people who commented first are correct, there is nothing we can really drastically do without the help of the government, and it seems the only REAL government official who truly cares about the environment, to my knowledge anyway, is Mikel Gorbachev. I suppose it is nothing to fret over though, since we will, probably in the next couple of years, blow eachother up, get hit by a comet, etc. and never live to see the ice caps melt enough to cause catastrophic damage

[Marajadex]

where is that last picture located in the globe?,
It is in the United States along the Mississippi River. The area highlights the states of Missouri, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Arkansas.

http://www.vacationstogo.com/images/ports/maps/756.gif

[stewey]

Whle I do not doubt the amount of change, they said the same thing would occur by the year 2000 back in the early 90s. It is near impossible to map what happens if the sea levels rise (as a computer science grad student with background in geography, I hear a lot about mapping climate change with computers). Again, I do not doubt that the world would change a lot, but take those maps with a grain of salt.

[Britannia]

Remember theres not only the rise in water levels, theres the expansion of water particles, as the climate warms up, the water is heated and therefore expands, another contributor to rising levels of water.
Only 2 or 3 days ago there were floods in the Balkans (east Europe?) and they say it is going to get worse, ie. more rain and floods.

[Britannia]

And as I watched that news article (top story), they did say it was actually worse than they had expected (more disasterous affects.)

[Britannia]

http://resumbrae.com/archive/warming/worldMap.jpg

Look at Northern Russia, Australia, Brazil, and the Maldives (oh, sorry, there are no Maldives)

[Britannia]

Closeup Map of America - 100 Metre Rise
http://resumbrae.com/archive/warming/EastCoast100-960.jpg

Take a look at this closeup of America

And for those who think 100 metres is too much how about 0, 1, 3, 10 and 30 metre rise maps just click this link American Maps (http://resumbrae.com/archive/warming/east.html)
There are huge maps there.

[nrj]

Well I don't know, this will take to long to be considered a ctaastrophy. While the cities are being swallowed by the sea we will move more and more inland, new cities will form and humans adapt like we always do. Ice age, anyone? If we could survive that, we will surely survive a relocation.

[Britannia]

Yes, thats if we survive the inevitable WWIII!

I like the sound of moving to a new place and starting fresh new cities, a chance for new life, just like the last scene of Deep Impact.

[krakatoa]

Natural Disasters could be able to do Armageddon, And yes for the present time, there is also the spectre of a ww3, And most of it because of a possible attack on Iran, that could trigger Russia, China to get involved, And we cannot forget the Palestinian, Hamas is getting help with money, coming from Russia and Iran. And China seems to be on the side of Russia. So that is why I think that an attack on Iran, could trigger WW3. This is only my opinion. so no link.

[Britannia]

That is exactly how I planned it would happen, and how Nonstradamus predicted it to be, but really, you only have to take a look at the news, it Iran this, China that, it all seems to be building up, it all kicked off in Autumn, I remeber seeing the Armageddon Online front page ever since I joined in January, things have been getting built up more and more and more, it carried on through February, March and now in April, one day its going to get so tense, that we willhave war on our hands.

[shawnee]

I think with the world heading the way it is, sea levels should be the least of our worries. Want to be a part of a govt. that "surgically nukes" another, no matter how vile that other govt. is? Gonna be fallout; where is it gonna land? Not gonna make many friends - again -; and talk about hypocrisy. Play world cop, spread nuclear fallout; now I consider THAT pollution. And when WW3 hits, and we're without electricity, sterile, "dying" for water that we can't drink anyhow because it's contaminated, starving because we have no clue how to provide for our families when stores are empty, pollution and sea levels will sound like a joke and a thing of the past.

[stewey]

I don't see a world war as the sense of WW I and WW II. While Iran scares me, I do not see Russia or China backing them in a war. In fact, I am suprised Russia has been "on their side" as much as they have been, since the whole Chechnya situation and all.

[Protostar]

5 years ago I was watching A documentary on history channel or another anyhoo,
This woman scientist was talking about the tectonic plates that meet in Sumatra
and what she said had come to pass. I have an atlas and I drew w/ pencil down
my USA map where she said was a "future" map and basically all coasts are gone.
Lousianna was gone too. Also, Ironically Ed Casey also predicted Lousianna to
lose its land. Other maps, like I Am America have similar out come.
On another note, I recently found out that the North Atlantic Current's cycle takes 1200 years for it to complete one lap. What is happening to the current is pre- determined by 1200 years. So, that gives a new spin on things.
Also ironically again, wasn't it 1200 yrs ago we had a little ice age?
surfintheapocalypse website has a future map section from all kinds of
"futurists".

It stands to reason that Japan will go into the sea as it sits upon 4 different
tectonic plates (something eventually has gotta give). But the UK and
other island countries seems to be destined to be flooded by a "roiling sea"

[CrystalSword]

Why does everyone automatically assume these "climate know-it-alls" are correct? I don't know about any of you, but I've seen some pretty convincing evidence that the warming we are experiencing is due to natural forcings, the main ones being solar activity and ocean cycles. Carbon dioxide appears to have very little effect (the most potent GHG is water vapor, anyhow) in modifying our climate. The GHG theory itself has some major flaws, the biggest being that the warming is exponentially related to the amount of GHG's in the atmosphere. In fact the inverse appears to be true; the warming occurs on a logarithmic scale.

In any case, don't believe everything you hear.

[bass]

Well said Crystal Sword.
Global warming has been continuing since the last ice age (around 10,000 years)- most of that time without human contribution. Mankind taking full credit for global warming is fairly presumptuous. Undoubtedly our "industrial" emmissions add greenhouse gasses to the atmosphere- the question of how much of a part these gasses play in present day global warming remains unanswered.
IMHO, these GHG play only a minor role- with solar cycles and ocean currents, as Crystal Sword so eloquently stated, being the causative factors

Remember theres not only the rise in water levels, theres the expansion of water particles, as the climate warms up, the water is heated and therefore expands, another contributor to rising levels of water.
However, this thermal expansion effect is more than offset by the greater surface area of the oceans as they inundate the land (with more surface area it takes greater volumes of water for each 1 meter increase in sea level height).
Japanese scientists recently recovered ice over 1 million years old from the Antarctic ice sheet- which indicates that the Antarctic ice has been stable throughout multiple cycles of global warming and cooling. It's highly improbable that all of the polar ice caps will melt during this cycle, and even if they did, it would thousands of years.

[Luxnor]

Funny, how they (the experts) seem to think the last decade has seen the warmest years in the last 100,000 years. Guess it's just a coincidence huh. r-i-g-h-t

[CrystalSword]

Yea, guess you're right luxnor. Guess the fact it was warmer during the Holocene Maximum (~6000 years ago) than it is now is just a coincidence, huh? Those expert sure are smart! (Images from geocraft.com)

http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/PageMill_Images/image160.gif

And let's zoom in on the MWP (Medieval Warm Period). It looks to me that the MWP was as warm, if not warmer, than the Modern Warm Period. Who was driving their SUV's in the 1100's? Shame on them! Also notice that the upswing from the LIA just happens to occur at the point in time when the enviros choose to start the infamous "hockey stick graph."

http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/PageMill_Images/image158.gif

Finally, just a (rather) quick comment from junkscience.com on why GHG forcing makes more sense occurring on a logarithmic scale than an exponential one.

Climate models have a great time making output 'interesting' (scary) by adding layer upon layer of positive feedback mechanisms (multipliers) but there's a teensy problem with this: the moist tropics, where the Earth tends to emit most radiation in wavelengths absorbed by water vapour, are already pretty well saturated - there's already more than enough water molecules in the atmosphere to absorb the available radiation and the absorption band overlap with carbon dioxide already means that CO2 is only absorbing about one-third the energy it theoretically could do in a dry atmosphere ("Solar Radiation Absorption by Carbon Dioxide, Overlap with Water, and a Parameterization for General Circulation Models", Freidenreich and Ramaswamy, Journal of Geophysical Research 98 (1993):7255-7264).

According to "Earth’s Annual Global Mean Energy Budget" (Kiehl and Trenberth, Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, 78:2 (February, 1997): 197-208) less than 9% of the energy leaving the Earth's surface is radiated directly to space while the vast majority is involved in various interactions with the atmosphere first (the greenhouse effect). How is this ~9% 'escaping'? Mostly through the radiative window of 8µm-13µm where only ozone absorbs part of a narrow slice of this spectrum. Note that clouds (water droplets, not water vapour) can close this window. Here's a really simplified absorption graphic (http://www.junkscience.com/apr06/absorb.jpg) from the University of Leeds (http://www.see.leeds.ac.uk/).

Only a relatively small proportion of additional greenhouse gas actually absorbs additional surface-emitted longwave radiation because it requires a molecule with the appropriate absorption characteristics to actually be in the right position to intercept that particular radiative frequency. That's the reason published guesstimates of x warming in n years are habitually way too large because there's already plenty of greenhouse gases to do the job - it's just that someone (Gaia?) keeps forgetting to add more energy - in the right wavebands - to the system.

If the radiation band for a particular wavelength of surface-radiated energy is already saturated then adding additional greenhouse gases with the same characteristics does exactly nothing. Similarly, if there is no greenhouse gas absorbing a particular bandwidth then that radiation is headed for space at light speed.

Some people apparently have difficulties with the absorption/window concept so, if you're one of them, try a little experiment: place a flashlight on your desk or table so the light shines upward. Cover it with something opaque to simulate saturating the waveband (bands in this case - the visible light spectrum), black cardboard would be great. So, you've saturated the radiation window and no light is shining from the flashlight, right? (If not, find something else to cover it with - we'll wait right here.) Now place another cover over the flashlight with the original still in place. How much of the flashlight's emissions are being absorbed by the additional cover? If you said 'none' you are right (everyone turn their flashlights off now to conserve the batteries). A 'window', where there is little or no absorption can be simulated with a hole or slot in your cover.

To simulate the approach to saturation you could try cloth of various weaves, just place more folds of the same weave over the flashlight and you'll see what we mean about diminishing response as the radiation window (through which some light or glow from the flashlight is being emitted) becomes saturated - at some point you'll find it doesn't matter if you place one more or ten more folds over the flashlight because there's no visible emission. Now you know why adding greenhouse gases to the atmosphere has progressively less effect and will eventually become completely unresponsive.

So the GHG effect actually becomes less and less the more GHG's there are, similar to a logarithmic function, instead of amplified more and more, like an exponential function. Not that hard to understand.

[Luxnor]

Thx for your evaluation CW. Maybe we all are just vain in thinking we are contributors to our own fate. While living at Lake Tahoe, they discovered trees under the water that experienced a 500 year drought. This corresponds to the medieval model you posted. Again, I'm just a layman that is vulnerable to what is "recently" discovered and exposed via the media. While GWG makes great headlines, I'm sure it's still a piece of the puzzle as far as global warming is concerned. To what degree who can really say. Underwater volcanos surely creates more warming. While all the ice won't melt at the poles it will be enough to create icebergs the size of states. And when they break off/slide off the land mass it will be like adding ice cubes to a glass of water; the water level rises. Also, isostasy or the elevation of land masses from release of all that weight will change the characteristic of land masses over time.

[Protostar]

I found an interesting article on possible cause of sea level rise.
Check out the Moat of death thread. Another underwater volcano.
Not human error peoples, A cycle in volcanism. of the Under water kind.

[shrike]

One of the absolute things we will see with a rise in earth's temperature
is a collapse of the food supply
higher temperatures will decimate crop growing areas
The armageddon scenerio will be wars fought over food and energy
The future looks grim for the 3rd world
The sahara desert is now expanding swallowing up the crop lands
its predicted that 700 million in the lower sahara alone will starve to death
and there is nothing we can do about it
i expect in the end billions will die of starvation

[Ragnor]

There is no proof of emission caused global warming. I know that Harrp is capable of warming"super heating" the ionasphere as well as Huge lazers or sun reflectors these can much more easily explain "warm" spots in the atmosphere. As well as the Tesla "earth core generator" thing that causes plasma to rain from the sky.
So I dont realy subscribe to global warming per say , although I know the ionaphere is getting weakened because I sunburn much quicker than i used to.
But reguardless of all that water is 1/3 the volume of the same mass as Ice.
So even if all the ice melted the oceans would not rise conciderably. They might even drop in my opinion.
Just my opinion , but of course I figure its right =)

[Skynet12]

One way of surviving: Buy a house boat!