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You are here: Home / Open Threads / Manhattan’s sinking like a rock

Manhattan’s sinking like a rock

by DougJ|  November 6, 20132:44 pm| 103 Comments

This post is in: Open Threads

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Pretty amazing picture of what the coastline of the US will look like after the polar ice caps melt. Many of the places that will be underwater will be places where elite east coast librul Accela riders live, so who cares. But Florida — portions of which are certainly Real America — will be underwater too.

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Previous Post: « Safe or Politically Correct: Don Lemon’s Faux Choice on #StopandFrisk
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Reader Interactions

103Comments

  1. 1.

    The Red Pen

    November 6, 2013 at 2:46 pm

    Dear Miami, you’re the first to go
    Disappearing, under melted snow

  2. 2.

    Kyle

    November 6, 2013 at 2:50 pm

    The Central Valley in California will be a sea. Wow.

  3. 3.

    shortstop

    November 6, 2013 at 2:52 pm

    They wrote a book about it; they said it was like ancient Rome.

    This makes me laugh even harder because an undergraduate classmate of mine, who now teaches high-school history to impressionable young minds, assured me last night that forcing people to buy health insurance is JUST LIKE WHAT CAUSED ANCIENT ROME TO FALL! JUST LIKE IT!

  4. 4.

    Violet

    November 6, 2013 at 2:52 pm

    Looks like moving to Colorado or Iowa is a good idea.

  5. 5.

    Betty Cracker

    November 6, 2013 at 2:53 pm

    On the bright side, just think of all the cool scuba diving and snorkeling excursions!

  6. 6.

    Chris

    November 6, 2013 at 2:54 pm

    Well, that solves the question of why they’re such huge fans of global warming.

  7. 7.

    catclub

    November 6, 2013 at 2:55 pm

    216 feet is a lot.

    I will have beachfront at 75ft rise. Should be a while

  8. 8.

    shortstop

    November 6, 2013 at 2:55 pm

    @Violet: Not Colorado — the water wars are going to be awful. My spot next to 1/5 of the world’s fresh water is looking pretty good right now. Perhaps I haven’t put up with these winters for nothing.

  9. 9.

    J.A.F. Rusty Shackleford

    November 6, 2013 at 2:55 pm

    It’s all a hoax. Al Gore is fat and lives in a big house.

  10. 10.

    Tommy

    November 6, 2013 at 2:59 pm

    When this happens, and I clearly don’t think it will in my lifetime nor that of anybody I know, but still sooner then it should! In the midwest where I live I ought to start buying land :). I joke, but clearly it isn’t funny.

    Side story. I live in a “Great Lake” state and there is actually a council of “Great Lake” states that for years have met, cause we have most of this nations “fresh” water. We’ve been asking the south and other parts of the nation to come meet with us, talk about water. We’ve spend billions and billions cleaning up this water, which we used to shit in. Nobody comes. Then about, what was it, four years ago the Coke-Cola plants in Georgia had to shut down for a few days/weeks cause they didn’t have water.

    They asked us for water and we mentioned we had asked them to talk about this with us, they didn’t. We told them to go pound dirt. I am not a “the sky is falling” kind of guy on these issues, but getting really close.

  11. 11.

    sparrow

    November 6, 2013 at 3:01 pm

    Link won’t load for me — what happens to Baltimore?! I’m guessing under water. :(

  12. 12.

    raven

    November 6, 2013 at 3:02 pm

    Day after day, more people come to L… A…
    Don’t you tell anybody, the whole place’s slipping away
    Where can we go, when there’s no San Francisco?
    Better get ready to tie up the boat in Idaho

    Do you know the swim, you better learn quick Jim
    Those who don’t know the swim, better sing the hymn

  13. 13.

    shelly

    November 6, 2013 at 3:03 pm

    Guess she should all be putting our houses on stilts.

  14. 14.

    jl

    November 6, 2013 at 3:03 pm

    @Kyle:

    ” The Central Valley in California will be a sea. Wow. ”

    Just like it was in the good old days! That takes out about half of ‘Red’ California.

    Most of that damned liberal San Francisco will be left. Hah! Take that, teabaggers.

    Edit: though to be fair, Central Valley has been tilting purple lately. And it includes Sacramento, which is pretty blue, and willing to elect, you know, those people, to be mayor and stuff.

  15. 15.

    shelly

    November 6, 2013 at 3:06 pm

    I used to regret that our family decided. back in 1990, to sell our cottage down at the Jersey Shore.
    Not anymore.

  16. 16.

    jl

    November 6, 2013 at 3:07 pm

    @raven: You hate us for our arugula and hand crafted artisinal baby lettuces, don’t you?

  17. 17.

    El Caganer

    November 6, 2013 at 3:07 pm

    Carmel, Cali, hold on tighter, I think you’re sinkin’ down…..

  18. 18.

    Violet

    November 6, 2013 at 3:08 pm

    @shortstop: Hmm..yeah. I wonder where a good place to move is? Of course global warming might change a few thing climatologically so that Colorado has more rain/water. Who knows.

  19. 19.

    handsmile

    November 6, 2013 at 3:10 pm

    @sparrow:

    Sorry, sparrow, there will only be aquatic birds in what was Baltimore. (no orioles either)

  20. 20.

    piratedan

    November 6, 2013 at 3:11 pm

    somehow this seems appropriate here:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZaeEopDW0V4

  21. 21.

    Tommy

    November 6, 2013 at 3:12 pm

    @shelly: I’ve always felt liberals, myself included, make things more complex then they have to be. Make it stupid simple. Anybody that lives in a costal area, heck anybody with a solid middle school education, should understand tides. Think of where high tide today is then low tide. Do the math of the changes. Sand castles and everything. Then do it again and again when your house or your business is said sand castle.

    IMHO folks that live in a costal areas ought to get the concept of raising tides more then most …..

  22. 22.

    Violet

    November 6, 2013 at 3:13 pm

    @sparrow: Did you try the direct link to the National Geographic map? http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2013/09/rising-seas/if-ice-melted-map. You can toggle cities on and off.

  23. 23.

    raven

    November 6, 2013 at 3:13 pm

    @jl: My entire family lives in LA. hell, I moved to Whittier in 1957.

  24. 24.

    scav

    November 6, 2013 at 3:16 pm

    Having seen similar maps since, hell, mid 80s, I’m giggly. Oh My Shit! Elevation Discovered! What have all those stats of global population within x of coastline and cost of built infrastructure within same been going on about? Weather is a big wild card, especially if undersea patterns of heat-exchange are impacted.

  25. 25.

    shelly

    November 6, 2013 at 3:18 pm

    ” Anybody that lives in a costal area, heck anybody with a solid middle school education, should understand tides.”
    ***********
    I spent half my life down at the Shore. Thru all those years, tropical storms and hurricanes would come up the coast, people would prepare, some evacuate, some not….and then the storms would always veer off the east and clobber Long Island. In spite of everybody solemnly saying that someday we would get hit with ‘the Big One,’ people became complacent. And then came Sandy.

  26. 26.

    NotMax

    November 6, 2013 at 3:19 pm

    “And if you’ll turn your attention to the starboard side, one can still make out the message on what was renamed the Chris Christie Memorial Bridge back in 2089.”

  27. 27.

    EconWatcher

    November 6, 2013 at 3:20 pm

    Go long on Dutch stocks. With their hundreds of years of experience in protecting cities below sea level, they will be our new overlords. And I, for one, welcome them.

  28. 28.

    Trollhattan

    November 6, 2013 at 3:22 pm

    @Kyle:

    My entire metroplex is gone, baby. Am a good eighty river miles from salt water, but only at about 16 feet above sea level. The ocean always wins that battle.

  29. 29.

    Violet

    November 6, 2013 at 3:22 pm

    @EconWatcher: They’ll be selling their expertise, for sure. Then they’ll all have to move because their country will be underwater.

  30. 30.

    Trollhattan

    November 6, 2013 at 3:23 pm

    @EconWatcher:

    We’re all hot on raising our flood standard from 100 to 200 years (sounds like a LOT) while the Dutch are finding their 10,000-year flood protection, lacking.

  31. 31.

    EdTheRed

    November 6, 2013 at 3:26 pm

    Sweet, a second time around for a great song.

  32. 32.

    Tommy

    November 6, 2013 at 3:27 pm

    @shelly: I was an infant in Louisiana for Camille. There for Andrew, which was horrifying. A Yankee that had no clue what was about to happen. Wow.

    When I saw Katrina was heading there I was yelling, “get out, get out.” IMHO when you live in a place people tell you to run, run, run from 24/7 and then there is no reason to run, well on the 100th time you should you don’t.

    As you said:

    And then came Sandy.

  33. 33.

    eric

    November 6, 2013 at 3:28 pm

    @Tommy: it matters more than anything that liberals not be correct about anything. Period.

  34. 34.

    Trollhattan

    November 6, 2013 at 3:28 pm

    OTOH it looks like our Cuba-Florida “problem” will finally be over, not to mention Louisissipibama.

  35. 35.

    Ruviana

    November 6, 2013 at 3:28 pm

    @Betty Cracker: I was going to suggest the commenters start a fund to evacuate you to higher ground!

  36. 36.

    Bill E Pilgrim

    November 6, 2013 at 3:29 pm

    Oh Lord
    Drowning in Lodi again

  37. 37.

    Suffern ACE

    November 6, 2013 at 3:30 pm

    Well it does look like my hometown is going to be on the beach. While I welcome the city folks and their lifestyle, if thye name one building in my village “Trump” something, I’m not going to share my last cans of food with the refugees.

  38. 38.

    BillinGlendaleCA

    November 6, 2013 at 3:30 pm

    @Tommy: Tide comes in tide goes out, can’t explain that.

  39. 39.

    David Hunt

    November 6, 2013 at 3:31 pm

    Well, on the bright side, nobody will care about the politics of the Panama Canal…

  40. 40.

    handsmile

    November 6, 2013 at 3:33 pm

    That map demonstrates why Neo-Confederates are so determined to prevent or postpone meaningful action on climate change.

    The Coastal Elites will all be drowned or refugees. Heartland aka Real America – or whatever its name will be in Mandarin – WINS! Just like Jesus intended.

  41. 41.

    jl

    November 6, 2013 at 3:34 pm

    @raven:

    ” I moved to Whittier in 1957″

    Sounds like that left a scar. I can see why, being an ex-SoCal-ian myself.

  42. 42.

    raven

    November 6, 2013 at 3:35 pm

    @jl: Yea, don’t mean nothin to me. A semi-annual visit to the Manhattan Beach Pier will do me.

  43. 43.

    Violet

    November 6, 2013 at 3:35 pm

    OT, but the ACA enrollment figures don’t sound good:

    A team of tech whizzes working through nights and weekends to fix the troubled health insurance marketplace website will be hard-pressed to finish repairs as promised by the end of November, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said Wednesday.

    “We are not where we need to be,” Sebelius told a hearing of the Senate Finance Committee. “It is a pretty aggressive schedule to get to the end of the punch list by the end of November.”

    As a result, not very many people have been able to sign up yet. “I can tell you our early enrollment numbers will be very low,” Sebelius said. HHS has promised to release its first numbers next week on how many people have bought health insurance on the site.

  44. 44.

    Thoroughly Pizzled

    November 6, 2013 at 3:35 pm

    Finally, Fenway Park and the entire AL East will be no more.

  45. 45.

    Betty Cracker

    November 6, 2013 at 3:36 pm

    @Ruviana: Aw, that’s sweet, but I’ll by pushing up daisies water lilies by then…

  46. 46.

    Narcissus

    November 6, 2013 at 3:36 pm

    Nationalize the corporate profits and use the dough to build a space-age system of sea-walls and shit.

  47. 47.

    Bill E Pilgrim

    November 6, 2013 at 3:37 pm

    @BillinGlendaleCA: The best part was when he doubled down with “Where’d the moon come from? How come we have that, and Mars doesn’t? Huh?”

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ShjTbghQGcU#t=122

  48. 48.

    Tommy

    November 6, 2013 at 3:37 pm

    @BillinGlendaleCA: LOL. Yeah that how science is a lie, from the pit of hell. The moon, well it does nothing :).

    Just a happy thought. My lifelong Republican family members, in their 70s, are voting for Democrats for the first time in their lives. Dad PhD educated. Mom MA. The favorite line I had from my mom in the last decade or so:

    Palin is shit all stupid and I refuse to vote for her, She is an affront to smart women.

    Dad followed in the last election.

  49. 49.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    November 6, 2013 at 3:39 pm

    @shortstop: @Violet: Not Colorado — the water wars are going to be awful. My spot next to 1/5 of the world’s fresh water is looking pretty good right now. Perhaps I haven’t put up with these winters for nothing.
    I sometimes half seriously wonder if Phoenix/Vegas and Detroit/Cleveland aren’t going to see mirror images of growth/decline rates of the next fifty years compared to the last fifty

  50. 50.

    Citizen_X

    November 6, 2013 at 3:50 pm

    @handsmile:

    Neo-Confederates are so determined to prevent or postpone meaningful action on climate change.

    Look again. The Confederate states lose way more of their land, proportionally. New Orleans & Baton Rouge, gone. Memphis? Gone. All of Florida, gone. Houston, we have a problem. It’s all coastal plain on the southeast, and it doesn’t take much sea level rise to lose a lot of land.

  51. 51.

    ultraviolet thunder

    November 6, 2013 at 3:51 pm

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist:
    I’m a lifelong Mitten State resident. All those displaced New Yorkers should check out Chicago. Seriously, you’ll love it there. Not Michigan. Just a buncha farmers and backward rednecks up there. Nope, gotta be Chicago for you.

  52. 52.

    EconWatcher

    November 6, 2013 at 3:52 pm

    @Citizen_X:

    Hmmmmm. Maybe we’ve been too hasty on all this climate-change hysteria. I’m starting to think the teabaggers have a point. Maybe the data isn’t all that solid…..

  53. 53.

    ruemara

    November 6, 2013 at 3:55 pm

    @EconWatcher: I sea what you did there.

  54. 54.

    KG

    November 6, 2013 at 3:57 pm

    I’m pretty sure looking for new surf spots is going to be the least of our worries, because: Titanoboa.

    I don’t like our current standard issue 6 foot long snakes, one the size of a school bus? Um, I’m going to have to pass on that.

    ETA: saw the map earlier in the day, wish we could zoom a bit, because I live blocks from the ocean.

  55. 55.

    scav

    November 6, 2013 at 4:01 pm

    @Violet: OT similar, if Large Scale Tech Issues Spell DOOM, here’s another candidate for immediate wholesale destruction and extinction, right? Wal-Mart website glitch mistakenly offers shoppers absurd deals. Come on, Red ‘Merka! You can Do It!

  56. 56.

    scav

    November 6, 2013 at 4:03 pm

    @scav: Please let this not be a typo!

    “We apologize for any convenience to our customers,” said Ravi Jariwala, a spokesman for Wal-Mart’s online operations.

  57. 57.

    ice weasel

    November 6, 2013 at 4:04 pm

    But Florida will — portions of which are certainly Real America — will be under water.

    Not soon enough

  58. 58.

    Jeffro

    November 6, 2013 at 4:07 pm

    Totally OT but I LOVE THIS:

    http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/report-cuccinelli-has-no-plans-to-call-mcauliffe

    Can’t even pick up the phone and fake it…must be tough over in GOP la-la land today…

  59. 59.

    Fair Economist

    November 6, 2013 at 4:14 pm

    I joke that global warming will make my house oceanfront with the creek in back being an inlet from the actual ocean. Looking at the topo map, that is actually very close to the truth, although I think I’m just a few feet low and would probably end up next to the seawall.

  60. 60.

    NonyNony

    November 6, 2013 at 4:16 pm

    @Tommy:

    Anybody that lives in a costal area, heck anybody with a solid middle school education, should understand tides.

    Ahem.

    Bill O’Reilly would like to have a word with you.

    O’REILLY: I’ll tell you why [religion’s] not a scam, in my opinion: tide goes in, tide goes out. Never a miscommunication. You can’t explain that.

    SILVERMAN: Tide goes in, tide goes out?

    O’REILLY: See, the water, the tide comes in and it goes out, Mr. Silverman. It always comes in, and always goes out. You can’t explain that.

    Bill O’Reilly grew up in Long Island (closer to the coast than many of the rest of us) and apparently graduated from college. So you can see why I’m skeptical of your assertion…

  61. 61.

    chopper

    November 6, 2013 at 4:16 pm

    @catclub:

    luckily i live at 233 feet.

  62. 62.

    MomSense

    November 6, 2013 at 4:17 pm

    @scav:

    HAHAHA!!!

  63. 63.

    cmorenc

    November 6, 2013 at 4:18 pm

    One vivid reminder that coastlines change dramatically is that when I was a teenager in my hometown 60 miles inland as the crow flies on the flat coastal plain of eastern North Carolina, we used to go shark-tooth hunting in the sandy banks of the Lumber River, whose mean elevation is about 125ft above the current sea level. These were fossil salt-water sharks, not fresh-water river sharks either. You found them by taking scoops of sandy soil and sifting them through a mesh screen seive, and so these were not fossils of sufficiently venerable age they were embedded in limestone rock, although the youngest were at least thousands of years old.

  64. 64.

    KG

    November 6, 2013 at 4:19 pm

    @Jeffro: speaking of GOP la-la land, I’ve been trying to keep an eye on Redstate lately – I figure Hewitt will give me the establishment talking points (more or less) and Redstate will give me the Tea Party alternative. So, after shedding a few tears that Cuccinelli didn’t attack Obamacare more or talk about abortion more, he moved on to pissing outside the tent again. Apparently Wendy Davis filed a defamation suit against a newspaper a few years back after losing an election (the case was thrown out and the Texas Supreme Court upheld the decision). Among the damages claimed were, as Erickson says, Davis’ “mental health.”

    Now, anyone who knows much of anything about defamation (slander or libel) knows that it is a tort and that you can get emotional distress damages. But the howler monkeys have decided to pick this line up and run with the line that Davis has “mental health problems.” I’d be shocked, that part of my brain retired sometime after Clinton was impeached – it tried to come out of retirement, but then Florida 2000 happened and the Davis recall election, and it just said “fuck this, gimme more vodka.”

  65. 65.

    Fair Economist

    November 6, 2013 at 4:24 pm

    @Citizen_X:

    The Confederate states lose way more of their land, proportionally. New Orleans & Baton Rouge, gone. Memphis? Gone. All of Florida, gone. Houston, we have a problem. It’s all coastal plain on the southeast, and it doesn’t take much sea level rise to lose a lot of land.

    The land may be in Red States, but the people affected are disproportionately urban and so blue. Most coastal and even river ports get obliterated (Miami, Houston, Boston, Memphis). In some there will still be land left in the city but even then the downtowns and most inhabited ares will be lost (New York, San Francisco, Seattle). I think the only coastal downtown that will survive is Los Angeles, which ends up on the beach.

  66. 66.

    Lurking Buffoon

    November 6, 2013 at 4:28 pm

    It’s a shame this map, and others I’ve seen over the years, doesn’t let you zoom in. I’m really curious whether my home would be beachfront property or just submerged. Furthermore, I am shocked that while the lyrics aren’t a perfect fit, no one has linked yet. Absolutely shocked I tell you!

    Also I suck at getting HTML tags to stop thinking everything I type is part of the link.

  67. 67.

    Hill Dweller

    November 6, 2013 at 4:29 pm

    @Violet:

    OT, but the ACA enrollment figures don’t sound good

    Republicans, who have sabotaged the ACA at every level of government, will pay no price for it. Hell, if it isn’t fixed, they’ll actually benefit politically.

    This is the story of Obama’s time in office. Republicans have engaged in behavior not seen since the confederacy, but the Village refuses to point it out. Instead, they pile on and enable their behavior in an attempt to destroy a Dem in the WH. But let Dems try the same thing, and the Village will crucify them.

    Couple that with the staggeringly ignorant electorate, and it’s hard not to believe this country is circling the drain.

  68. 68.

    Chris

    November 6, 2013 at 4:34 pm

    @Hill Dweller:

    The story of the last thirty three years at least, you mean. They fuck up the government, the government has trouble keeping itself running, they say “see, see how much these fat cat bureaucrats suck!” and get sent back to Washington. And the Village, of course, goes along. Civility, you understand.

  69. 69.

    tybee

    November 6, 2013 at 4:35 pm

    at 12.5 feet above mean high tide, i’m going into the snorkle business.

  70. 70.

    Belafon

    November 6, 2013 at 4:40 pm

    @Violet: Remember who the ACA targets, though. Most of them have not actually had insurance before. They will keep trying, and will eventually get it.

  71. 71.

    handsmile

    November 6, 2013 at 4:40 pm

    @Citizen_X:

    While it’s true that much of the Old South will be underwater (now that’s what I call a “lost cause”), today’s Neo-Confederacy extends north and west to the Plains and Rocky Mountains states and into the Southwest. The political heirs of Inhofe, KIng, and Arpaio will rule over a parched, hard-baked domain that will certainly not be “the land of cotton,” but where human bondage will likely rise again.

    Thus, their current insistence to “look away, look away…”

  72. 72.

    Jeffro

    November 6, 2013 at 4:41 pm

    @KG: Wow. That sounds like the kind of substantive, policy-based agenda I’d expect to see from Texas Republicans (he said, with a straight face and rolled eyes).

    Honestly though, I must have a naivete’ bone somewhere – I actually do get a little shocked every time the GOPers go straight to the slime well on their way towards displaying their utter lack of anything to offer voters..

  73. 73.

    West of the Rockies

    November 6, 2013 at 4:42 pm

    @J.A.F. Rusty Shackleford: I know, right? Isn’t this pretty much the entire argument of the global warming naysayers anyway? Oh, that and, “Hey, it was really cold yesterday where I live, so science is all wrong and stuff….”

  74. 74.

    Trollhattan

    November 6, 2013 at 4:43 pm

    O/T. I don’t see enough headlines like this: “Sheriff: Sanger man with hatchet set Johnny Quick store ablaze”

    Ten minutes’ more work and you’ve got yourself a country song. Sadly, at 328′ msl Fresno becomes California’s de facto inland capital.

    http://www.fresnobee.com/2013/11/05/3592360/sheriff-sanger-man-with-hatchet.html##storylink=cpy

  75. 75.

    Trollhattan

    November 6, 2013 at 4:48 pm

    @West of the Rockies:
    Or, even more curtly: “It’s snowin’. Where mah global warmin’? Har-har-har!”

    Particularly poignant coming from a Minnesotan.

  76. 76.

    David in NY

    November 6, 2013 at 4:50 pm

    Looks like there’s finally a solution for the mistake of including South Carolina in the Union in the first place.

  77. 77.

    Shalimar

    November 6, 2013 at 4:51 pm

    But Florida will be under water.

    Most of the population of Florida will be dead long before then anyway.

  78. 78.

    Bill Arnold

    November 6, 2013 at 4:58 pm

    Google terrain maps are useful for those interested in whether they or their heirs will own waterfront property (or for whatever other reason), if you’re not at the location and can’t consult a GPS unit.
    The contour lines are pretty wide, 200 feet, so you’ll need to interpolate.

  79. 79.

    Sir Nose'D

    November 6, 2013 at 5:00 pm

    South polar ice caps aren’t gonna completely melt. It just ain’t gonna happen as long as the continent is sitting where it is (isolated, at the pole, with a cold current ocean surrounding it). Heat the planet 5, 6, 7, 8 C, and the ice will still persist. So the maps are a bit alarmist.

    My money is still on global warming being faster and more severe than laid out in the IPCC consensus document, though.

  80. 80.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    November 6, 2013 at 5:01 pm

    OT, how is Joe Biden not one of my goofier uncles

    Vice President Joe Biden and a couple of other Democrats phoned the wrong Marty Walsh to congratulate him on his victory in the Boston mayoral race, according to the Cape Cod Times.
    Biden, Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz and Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybak called a former Edward Kennedy staffer also named Marty Walsh instead of the mayor-elect.

  81. 81.

    Mnemosyne

    November 6, 2013 at 5:13 pm

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist:

    Somebody at the DNC is getting fired for that since they managed to have three different politicians call the wrong guy.

    Lord knows I’m not the world’s best assistant, but I can usually manage to get my boss to call the right person.

  82. 82.

    Cliff in NH

    November 6, 2013 at 5:22 pm

    If you want a interactive sea level simulator try this one:
    http://flood.firetree.net/?ll=37.5096,-77.3876&zoom=5&m=60

    You can change the level of catastrophe to suit your needs…

  83. 83.

    catclub

    November 6, 2013 at 5:27 pm

    @Sir Nose’D: The maps are for 216 feet of sea-level rise – time period not determined.

    I suspect 30ft over the next century would be gigantically bad enough. It kills all the present coastal cities. Except those protected by our Dutch seawall overlords.

  84. 84.

    Mnemosyne

    November 6, 2013 at 5:27 pm

    @Cliff in NH:

    That’s the one I wanted — I wanted to see if where we’re living in LA County would eventually become beachfront property. Sadly, no, though we would end up about 10 or 15 miles from the new shore in the worst-case scenario. And those rich fuckers in Palos Verdes would end up with a lovely island rather than being underwater.

    Also in the worst-case scenario, Disneyland would need to turn into a new Disney Seas park.

  85. 85.

    Gene108

    November 6, 2013 at 5:30 pm

    The Earth is a great big killing machine; the biggest tease to life on this planet.

    Just ask the trilobites, dinosaurs, homo habilis, brachiapods, etc.

    Wait! You can’t. They are all dead!

    The Earth: No one gets out alive.

    Deal with it.

  86. 86.

    LanceThruster

    November 6, 2013 at 5:33 pm

    I guess on the upside it will put my high desert locale closer to the ocean, which should give me more of the Mediterranean clime that the LA basin currently has,

  87. 87.

    Quaker in a Basement

    November 6, 2013 at 5:42 pm

    Now booking: All-inclusive cruises to exotic Atlanta-by-the-Sea!

  88. 88.

    fuckwit

    November 6, 2013 at 5:55 pm

    The single biggest issue to face the human race is exactly this: climate change.

    It’s the most important issue, really. Everything else kind of gets dwarfed by comparison.

  89. 89.

    Comrade Mary

    November 6, 2013 at 6:00 pm

    Some Canuckistanis remind you to think beyond your shores.

  90. 90.

    fuckwit

    November 6, 2013 at 6:01 pm

    Also, I’ve long nurtured the conspiracy theory that Clinton, Shrub, and Obama all received a detailed but highly classified briefing from the DoD within days of assuming office. And that this mythical briefing described the inevitable chaos, starvation, war, famine, and destruction that is coming, nothing to be done to prevent it, and is the single greatest long-term security threat to the United States, indeed to all of the current states on the planet. And including the review of the JCS’s alternative plans and reccomendations for dealing with it: basically martial law, allowing death to occur on a massive scale, and a state of continual warfare. And all these new Presidents all walked around shell-shocked for a few weeks/months afterwards. And told nobody about it, because of how classified it was.

    It’s the best explanation I can think of why Shrub, after getting into office, built a completely green, off-the-grid, bunker-like compound in the middle of Texas.

  91. 91.

    Fair Economist

    November 6, 2013 at 6:06 pm

    @Sir Nose’D:

    South polar ice caps aren’t gonna completely melt. It just ain’t gonna happen as long as the continent is sitting where it is (isolated, at the pole, with a cold current ocean surrounding it). Heat the planet 5, 6, 7, 8 C, and the ice will still persist. So the maps are a bit alarmist.

    Nope, during the Late Eocene Antarctica was isolated at the pole but there were still deglaciated periods. Here’s a paper estimating that about 750 ppm CO2 would melt the Antarctic. That’s far less than we get if we burn everything; even if they’re way off we could still get there.

  92. 92.

    johnny aquitard

    November 6, 2013 at 6:12 pm

    From that link to the post-ice-cap map: “If a supervillain wanted to inflict the most pain on the world’s poorest people, global warming would be a great option.”

    That supervillain would be the GOP, and it is precisely why they persist in denying global warming. (See Davis X. Machina’s entry in the BJ lexicon re: their willingness to be reduced to eating pigeons roasted on a curtain rod, as long as an unequal distribution of curtain rods is in their favor.)

  93. 93.

    chopper

    November 6, 2013 at 6:21 pm

    @Fair Economist:

    the antarctic did some thawing during the late oligocene, but was it relatively complete?

  94. 94.

    johnny aquitard

    November 6, 2013 at 6:26 pm

    @Kyle: If I remember from John McPhee’s book, Assembling California the central valley was a large chunk of seafloor that collided with the west coast, with geological flotsam and jetsam that piled up behind it to form the coastal range.

    As things are going it will become a seafloor again. I guess it would all get recycled eventually by plate techtonics and erosion, but I was hoping that would be in a hundred million years, not a hundred.

  95. 95.

    Jack the Second

    November 6, 2013 at 6:28 pm

    Honestly the ice probably isn’t going to melt fast enough.

    It would take about 7 billion petajoules of energy to melt all of the ice on Earth (not all of it has to melt to raise the sea level the maximum amount, but a lot of it isn’t really positioned to fall or slide into the ocean). The Earth, meanwhile, is currently heating up at a rate of about 200 terawatts.

    So the simple math says, at the current rate, it would take about 1100 years to melt all of the ice on Earth. This is both an underestimate and an overestimate. It’s an underestimate because the excess heat is not focused like a laser beam upon the icecaps (it’s focused like a laser beam upon the oceans, which absorb 90% of the excess heat). It is an overestimate because the rate of heating is probably going to go up in the future.

    On the one hand, 1100 years is not really that long — we still know the names of people who were alive eleven centuries ago, and people eleven centuries from now are sure to know the names of those to blame or praise from this century.

    On the other hand, 1100 years is a fantastic amount of time. You see, sea level rise is maybe fourth or fifth on the list of terrible things that happen because of global warming. It’s the steam roller coming at you at a mile per hour. As long as your feet aren’t stuck in cement, it’s easy to get out of the way. No one has to die for it, as much as it sucks to abandon great cities and entire countries in the face of it.

    The number one most scary thing about global warming, on my list anyway, is days over a hundred degrees. Photosynthesis only works in a certain temperature range, you see, and stops working entirely at around 105 degrees F. Plants don’t die immediately, but they start respiring — they stop taking in CO2, start taking in O2, burning their stored sugars, and releasing CO2, just like animals. While the increase in CO2 is troubling in an abstract sense, the terrifying part of that last sentence is “burning their stored sugars”. We don’t want plants to burn their stored sugars, we want to burn their stored sugars, by eating them. To many days over a hundred degrees means that crops can’t grow and food can’t be produced. No food being produced is pretty much the worst case scenario.

    So I would love for sea levels to rise faster, for the ice to melt faster and absorb as much heat as possible. The Futurama solution could work, probably for at least 500 years, maybe for as long as 1100. The sea levels would rise a little faster, 2 or 3 inches per year, and we’d have to abandon Manhattan in a hundred years instead of a thousand, but I’ll take the logistics problem of relocating a billion people from the coasts over a century or five over the whoops-we’re-all-dead problem of world-wide famine. A 200 foot sea level rise and a +0C increase in surface temperatures over the next few centuries is way better than a 20 foot sea level rise and a +7C increase in surface temperatures.

  96. 96.

    chopper

    November 6, 2013 at 6:43 pm

    @Jack the Second:

    It would take about 7 billion petajoules of energy to melt all of the ice on Earth

    the oceans have gained about 170 million petajoules of energy in the last 30 years. crazy, huh?

  97. 97.

    wrb

    November 6, 2013 at 7:08 pm

    I want a beachfront house on the Sea of Sacramento, tucked up in the Sierra foothills.

    Although the barbecue would be good on the Gulf of Memphis

  98. 98.

    wrb

    November 6, 2013 at 7:11 pm

    @Jack the Second:

    Great post

  99. 99.

    wrb

    November 6, 2013 at 7:21 pm

    @Sir Nose’D:

    Yea, it could.

    People forget that

    a) it is getting really hot ther in summer, when there is 24 hour light

    and

    b) it is still so cold there in winter, due to being dark, that the dew point sez little snow can fall because the air can’t carry moisture.

  100. 100.

    Bill Arnold

    November 6, 2013 at 7:26 pm

    @fuckwit:

    The single biggest issue to face the human race is exactly this: climate change.

    Single most predictable huge issue, yes, by far.
    There are plenty of other very bad things that can happen too, they are just less likely or of unknown probability.
    (e.g. the world still has thousands of nuclear weapons: imagine deliberate or accidental “budget geoengineering” with thermonuclear devices, firestorms (forests, or cities), nuclear winter. Properly calibrated they could buy us time…)

  101. 101.

    Lurking Buffoon

    November 6, 2013 at 8:23 pm

    @Cliff in NH: Thanks for the awesome link! And it turns out my home would be underwater. But some of the neighboring towns would be fine (barring major storms ala Sandy of course). At least until Long Island refugees head over to turn it into the New Jersey New Shore and proceed to make shitty reality TV that enrages what’s left of the state.

  102. 102.

    Jack the Second

    November 6, 2013 at 8:31 pm

    @chopper:

    the oceans have gained about 170 million petajoules of energy in the last 30 years. crazy, huh?

    My favorite number: 16 terawatts. That’s about the energy budget of the human race, from all sources. That a solid 8% of the 200 terawatt heat gain the Earth is currently experiencing. Which is to say: 92% of global warming is from extra sunlight being trapped by greenhouse gasses, but 8% is because we’re burning enough stuff to make the whole world hotter.

    And that number increases at about 5% per year; by 2050 humans should be utilizing about 100 terawatts, which unless (even if? I’m not sure.) a majority of it is solar/wind, that will be 100 terawatts directly heating the Earth. Over the next century we could cut our CO2 emissions to zero, and we’d still have runaway global warming, only instead of an indirect warming from sunlight and greenhouse gasses, it’d be a direct warming from our fusion reactors.

    100 terawatts isn’t even that much; it’d barely be enough to bring the world’s population up to year-2000 American standard of living, let alone whatever the best standard of living in 2050 will be.

  103. 103.

    Redshirt

    November 6, 2013 at 10:01 pm

    I’ve got a sweet compound in the mountains, and you’re all welcome to visit once your ocean enclaves are flooded! *

    *Must pass a series of trials to reach my mountain compound. Only the worthy shall survive.

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