Was reading this excellent article in the Independent on global warming and its impact on flat, watery Bangladesh. Sea level rises are going to be death on that poor country....So I got to wondering...what's going to happen to Taiwan? Fortunately someone using Google Maps was ahead of me. Here is a map with variable sea rise settings that enables you to see what might happen (try here if that doesn't work). Good-bye Penghu! The map's default setting, 7 meters, is what will hit if we rise a couple of degrees C in average temps. You can check out the any part of the world on the map, including Vietnam, which loses Hanoi and everything around it, and China, which takes a massive hit in Guangzhou. The human cost is frightening. You can even zoom in as close as the map supports....
[Taiwan]
Wow! I'm sure the constructions gangs have this all figured out and have already bought the choicest pieces of real estate.
ReplyDelete7m is very wrong. I'm not sure why they make that the default. The best prediction we currently have is from the IPCC report of 2007 which gives a range of 18 to 59 cm (7.08 to 23.22 in).
ReplyDelete7m is more than 10x as much as the upper value predicted, and in fact, the map you linked to gives 1m as it's minimum choice which is still about 60% greater than the predicted maximum.
7 metres is actually how much the sea level would rise if the Greenland ice sheet melts. The West Antarctic ice sheet would add another 5 metres. The best case scenario is about a one metre sea level rise by the end of the century.
ReplyDeleteWhat this doesn't cover though, Michael, is the other effects of global warming. I have read many times before that China is about to get a whole lot more arid, especially once the Himalayan glaciers are gone. So in addition to losing all of Shanghai (which is already sinking, by the way) and most of the land around Guangzhou, China will have even less water than they have now at a time when their population will still be huge.
ReplyDeleteTaiwan will suffer, but not on the same scale. I think Taipei is actually lucky thanks to geography. A well-placed dike across the Danshui River would probably save the city.
The effects on the US will be huge as well. Luckily for them, the population is a quarter of that of China, so can probably weather the storm better.
I saw a news report the other day that so and so (some scientist) has estimated that the future "first world" will start around 40 degrees north. Half of China and the US are below. Now might be a very good time to start buying land in Alaska :)
Craig:
ReplyDeletethe IPCC report is far too conservative, according to cutting edge scientists and to many who helped construct it (like Jim Hansen). It is more of a political compromise than solid science. Hansen expects at least a 2 meter rise this century (see here. Lovelock, the Gaia fellow, is even more pessimistic. He thinks it is too late now for humans to do anything.
Yes, David, that is the Greenland ice sheet melting. If we stay on our present course, do you expect that the ice sheet will remain? I don't.
Michael
The end of the century is a fairly long time away, and even given that the effects will start to be felt well before that, why would young people choose to live / buy property in places that are slowly - in human terms, if not geological - being overtaken by water?
ReplyDeleteWhere people can, they'll move away from the problem, or their children will.
We're unlikely to deal with the situation, but the planet will.
7 metres is actually how much the sea level would rise if the Greenland ice sheet melts. The West Antarctic ice sheet would add another 5 metres. The best case scenario is about a one metre sea level rise by the end of the century.
ReplyDeleteYup, someone here actually knows something. The water level will rise suddenly if the moment any of the LAND ice drop into the water (i.e. Greenland). The ice on water is already accounted for today because of Archimedes' principle. Scary thought if you think about how many people could die the moment Greenland ice drop into the ocean.
Good to know that even at +1 meter half of my country (the Netherlands) will be under water......
ReplyDeleteThe commentary in the IPCC report may be overly conservative but the data and numbers should be accurate (as accurate as a prediction can be that is). A complete melting of the Greenland ice sheet is only predicted to occur if/when the average temp in Greenland rises another 3deg. That amount of warming is thought to be likely within a century, however the associated melting that would then occur is forecast to occur over a millenia. A 7m rise due to Greenland would more than likely require av temps to increase by as much as 8deg, and we wouldn't expect to see the complete rise until the year 3000 or so.
ReplyDeleteThere are too many variables and unknowns to accurately model climate that far in advance. It annoys me when people (the media especially) try to make those claims - as someone who studied and has a degree in climatology, I know all too well the likelihood of global warming. Making claims such as this only serve to strengthen the skeptics, who unfortunately still hold a lot of political and financial power in the world (think US administration, oil companies etc).
People may move away from the problem, to Greenland, Alaska, to higher ground, etc. But the fact is that this is pure projection. What we really are coming to terms with is globalized disaster (tornadoes, floods, etc.). It is even possible, I suspect, that earthquakes might be a more frequent result, because of the shift in mass, as well as the flow of water into areas where plates are more volatile. I am no scientist, but I think I know enough to ascertain such particulars might be accounted for.
ReplyDeleteWe might be affected more by temperature changes, storms, water poisoning, etc. than simply by rising water.
I flipped on CNN yesterday and saw a muppet with the newscasters doing a spot on green energy. I just thought.. Why the hell is there a muppet on CNN? Are children watching CNN now?
ReplyDeleteThings be really bad, or they have found a way to make money going green. Green is the new black!