> The model suggested that ice from Antarctica alone — before any additions from Greenland, mountain glaciers or thermal expansion — could raise the seas by more than a meter by 2100.
> In a 2021 update that incorporated additional factors into the simulations, DeConto and colleagues revised that estimate sharply downward, projecting less than 40 centimeters of sea-level rise by the century’s end under high-emission scenarios.
Not how soon will the seas rise, but in which direction are they trending? The world is not static - it's dynamic, always changing. Long before human civilization, the environment was getting warmer, then cooler, then warmer, etc.
Instead of freaking out about it, work to understand how we as a civilization can make it through the changes. Attempting to hold the environment stable is like plugging dikes with your finger.
I think this can be summarized as “nobody knows but it might be very bad.” Mathematical models containing large uncertainties aren’t a crystal ball. They will likely be revised again.
You shouldn’t dismiss disaster scenarios since preparation for tail risks is important. But maybe don’t focus on them exclusively, either? It’s possible to keep multiple scenarios in mind, rather than focusing on one exclusively.
In California, there are wildfires, earthquakes, droughts, and (in some places) flooding to worry about, and this partly plays out via scarce and expensive property insurance.
One thing that a lot of people seem to miss is that we talk about sea-level rise so much in relation to climate change because it's one of the things we can at least reasonably predict (even if the how much and when is hard). But the impacts of climate change increasing become hard to model as the world falls out of predictable patterns.
A great example of just how extreme things can get was the last major climate change event ~10,000-20,000 years ago (which will likely be minuscule in comparison to what we're going through now in the geological sense once this plays out).
The Channeled Scablands of Eastern Washington[0] have a very distinctive geology. For many years it was believed that these features were carved out slowly over hundreds of thousands of years. It turns out they we created in hours, around 15,000 years ago (humans were already living in WA at that time). They were created by the Missoula floods. There used to be a glacial lake over what is now Missoula Montana which would have current day Missoula under 1,000 feet of water. The glacial damns holding back this lake started to break down resulting in frequent floods the scale of which it's hard to fathom. The peak flow is estimated to have been 6.5 cubic miles per hour (for context, the peak flow observed over Horseshoe falls was 0.0055 cubic miles per hour, the Amazon river flows at an average of 0.18 cubic miles per hour)
Imagine driving East on 1-90 from Seattle towards Spokane, then as you get through the Cascades you suddenly see a 200 foot wall of water racing towards you across the horizon.
That event was in the past and it still took us a long time to piece together what actually happened. As we head into states of climate never witnessed by humans, it's genuinely hard to predict what might happen other than "this probably won't be good". Humans have made a lot of progress in the last 10,000 years, but it's no coincidence that the last 10,000 years have been some of the most stable in the Earth's climate history.
To extend the though there, the main question is not if, not when, but how long it will take. Do you bet on 90 years, 90 months, 90 days, 90 hours? Even if the change happens over 90 months (about 7 years) is that enough time to rebuild major shipping ports, forget resettling a substantial portion of the human population.
TIL that Earth crust is pushed down by glaciers, and that when glaciers subsides, the crust swells up a bit over years from the missing weight, pushing away water, slush and sliding glacier even faster.
Hard to fathom how "fluid" our ball of magma really is.
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[ 3.9 ms ] story [ 44.0 ms ] thread> In a 2021 update that incorporated additional factors into the simulations, DeConto and colleagues revised that estimate sharply downward, projecting less than 40 centimeters of sea-level rise by the century’s end under high-emission scenarios.
In essence, they have no idea.
https://climatecosmos.com/climate-news/why-the-tropics-could...
it seems there will be big problems in the 50-75 year span.
Instead of freaking out about it, work to understand how we as a civilization can make it through the changes. Attempting to hold the environment stable is like plugging dikes with your finger.
You shouldn’t dismiss disaster scenarios since preparation for tail risks is important. But maybe don’t focus on them exclusively, either? It’s possible to keep multiple scenarios in mind, rather than focusing on one exclusively.
In California, there are wildfires, earthquakes, droughts, and (in some places) flooding to worry about, and this partly plays out via scarce and expensive property insurance.
A great example of just how extreme things can get was the last major climate change event ~10,000-20,000 years ago (which will likely be minuscule in comparison to what we're going through now in the geological sense once this plays out).
The Channeled Scablands of Eastern Washington[0] have a very distinctive geology. For many years it was believed that these features were carved out slowly over hundreds of thousands of years. It turns out they we created in hours, around 15,000 years ago (humans were already living in WA at that time). They were created by the Missoula floods. There used to be a glacial lake over what is now Missoula Montana which would have current day Missoula under 1,000 feet of water. The glacial damns holding back this lake started to break down resulting in frequent floods the scale of which it's hard to fathom. The peak flow is estimated to have been 6.5 cubic miles per hour (for context, the peak flow observed over Horseshoe falls was 0.0055 cubic miles per hour, the Amazon river flows at an average of 0.18 cubic miles per hour)
Imagine driving East on 1-90 from Seattle towards Spokane, then as you get through the Cascades you suddenly see a 200 foot wall of water racing towards you across the horizon.
That event was in the past and it still took us a long time to piece together what actually happened. As we head into states of climate never witnessed by humans, it's genuinely hard to predict what might happen other than "this probably won't be good". Humans have made a lot of progress in the last 10,000 years, but it's no coincidence that the last 10,000 years have been some of the most stable in the Earth's climate history.
0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Channeled_Scablands
To extend the though there, the main question is not if, not when, but how long it will take. Do you bet on 90 years, 90 months, 90 days, 90 hours? Even if the change happens over 90 months (about 7 years) is that enough time to rebuild major shipping ports, forget resettling a substantial portion of the human population.
Hard to fathom how "fluid" our ball of magma really is.