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Comment by cryptoz | Hacker News Reader

The NASA facilities are routinely subjected to hurricanes! Is the Netherlands prepared to handle huge surges of 30 feet of water all at once?

Is the Netherlands prepared to handle the 10-15 feet of base sea level rise that is coming in the next century? I'm not so sure that they are. In fact, aren't the Netherlands debating similar questions, about building much bigger walls, or, in fact, retreating?

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I believe so. The Dutch Delta Works were instituted as a result of the 1953 North Sea Storm, which resulted in a storm surge of (I think?) 20 feet. I'd imagine they built in some excess capacity in the surge protection system as well.

That sounds bad, but they've got a whole century to deal with it. That rate works out to only 1-2 inches/year. Also, they've got a millennium of experience. They'll probably be fine.

The recent analysis argues that it is unlikely to be a linear process.

I never heard retreat as an option, but the issue it is definitely discussed here. In 2010 the "Delta" program started, making place along the river sides for the water to flood when needed [1]. There are also projects started to strengthen the dikes and dunes. I live in the Netherlands and I'm not worried.

[1] http://www.klimaatportaal.nl/pro1/general/start.asp?itemid=3... (in dutch)

"10-15 feet of base sea level rise in the next century"

Maybe if you go by the NOAA histrionics. But if you go by scientific consensus, we're looking at 1-3 feet.

Estimates of sea level rise are very difficult and always changing. New research suggests that it could be "several meters", as published in a paper a few weeks ago. There is no scientific consensus on how much the sea level "will rise" - since it depends very much on our behavior as a species in the near future.

> Without a sharp reduction in greenhouse gas emissions, the global sea level is likely to increase “several meters over a timescale of 50 to 150 years”

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2016/mar/22/sea-level-ri...

>> Estimates of sea level rise are very difficult and always changing.

Trust me, I'm pretty sure the people in the pacific islands are going to be a bit more paranoid about these changes than we are. And yet, some of the predictions have been wildly off the mark. Remember the United Nations Environment Programme who said in 2005:

Imminent sea-level rises, increased hurricanes, and desertification caused by “man-made global warming” would lead to massive population disruptions. In a handy map, the organization highlighted areas that were supposed to be particularly vulnerable in terms of producing “climate refugees.” Especially at risk were regions such as the Caribbean and low-lying Pacific islands, along with coastal areas.

The 2005 UNEP predictions claimed that, by 2010, some 50 million “climate refugees” would be frantically fleeing from those regions of the globe. However, not only did the areas in question fail to produce a single “climate refugee, by 2010, population levels for those regions were actually still soaring. In many cases, the areas that were supposed to be producing waves of “climate refugees” and becoming uninhabitable turned out to be some of the fastest-growing places on Earth.”

Whoops.

When I read stuff like this, it makes hard for objective people like myself to determine where the hype ends the facts start.

Some people do blame the civil wars in the Middle East on climate change, though its a bit indirect. That worse weather caused food prices to soar that year. That did happen around that time and caused a refugee crysis.

Food prices in the Middle East have far more to do with Mubarak's disastrous cronyist agricultural policies than with global warming.

But there were bad droughts that year that affected food prices world wide, and it wasn't just Egypt that was affected.

So, if the government is capable of developing contingency plans for handling droughts and doesn't, it's the drought's fault when shit hits the fan?

Do you not understand that events can have multiple causes? Rarely does disaster require just one single thing to go wrong.

In any case, it wasn't just egypt that had uprest that year. Egypt wasn't even the first country to have problems.

You're looking at the short term. Yes, grain prices would have been high that year anyway. But Egypt is not naturally dependent on imported grain; it took decades of mismanagement to make it so. If planting decisions had been made by independent farmers as they had been for millennia, Egypt would have retained the wheat-growing capacity that it had for millennia. In that situation, higher grain prices would actually have been good for Egypt. Instead, through Mubarak's twisted cronyist version of land reform, farmland was taken from real farmers and given to shadowy corporations who misused it in various frivolous schemes like growing flowers for Europe for a few years until it was unsuitable for further agricultural use.

> When I read stuff like this, it makes hard for objective people like myself to determine where the hype ends the facts start.

You are confusing a political prediction with a scientific prediction. What scientists were saying that there were going to be large sea-level rises between 2005 and 2010?

(Assuming that you are serious, since you don't point to any source, and your text is incorrectly quoted.)

I go by what the IPCC states. As poor as its past performance has been in refining the science into accurate predictions, it is by far the best source of "scientific consensus" we have. And there have been many papers published over the last 20 years claiming a whole number of things.

James Hansen has been wrong so many times in the past, I'm not sure why anyone still listens to him. And if you have any feel for the data at all, several meters of sea rise in 50 years should strike you as nearly impossible. There's certainly no strong (or even weak) evidence for this.

Hansen, at this point, is about supporting his preconceived notions rather than trying to understand what is actually going on with the climate system.

". But if you go by scientific consensus, we're looking at 1-3 feet.

Lol you can't just invent things and call it consensus, or disregard actual sources as "histrionics" because what they say is inconvenient for you.

Here's actual consensus:

>With successful, strong mitigation measures, the experts expect a likely rise of 40-60 cm in this century and 60-100 cm by the year 2300. With unmitigated warming, however, the likely range is 70-120 cm by 2100 and two to three meters by the year 2300 [Source: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0277379113... ]

10-15 feet, or 2-3 meters, is the currently accepted consensus estimate of a worst case scenario (total polar ice melt). It's also conveniently the consensus estimate of historical water levels before the current ice age millions of years ago.

The water on Earth being 3 meters higher than today is not revolutionary, is not without precedent, and will absolutely certainly occur on this planet in the future.

Of course, once we warm enough for the arctic methane positive feedback loop to rapidly warm the climate, the worst case scenario becomes far more likely in the 100 year window instead of 300 year window. Only with strong mitigation does scientific consensus agree that we can delay the worst case 2-3m estimates caused by total polar ice melt.

Worth noting that (a) this is an analysis of scientific consensus, so environmental effects (like the "arctic methane positive feedback loop") should already be included in the numbers if such effects are significant, and (b) GP was referring 1-3 feet in the next century, which matches your quoted numbers of 70-120 cm reasonably closely.

Still, interesting source.

"(b) GP was referring 1-3 feet in the next century, which matches your quoted numbers of 70-120 cm reasonably closely."

Critical difference is that 1-3 feet is consensus in one case: dramatic mitigation measures.

1-3 feet is NOT the estimate for 100 years of no-action. In that case, "histrionics" as the other poster condescendingly and incorrectly called it, are far closer to reality than rosy projections of strong mitigation that simply is not manifesting in any industrialized nation. Heck, with the global recession of 2008 depressing economies and fuel usage and thus carbon emissions, many nations believe they have made progress when economic downturn is the source. We are not mitigating at all so 1-3 feet is hopelessly optimistic under today's reality...

Read it again. 70cm - 120cm is for "unmitigated warming", per your source. The person you are quoting is correct.

> 10-15 feet, or 2-3 meters, is the currently accepted consensus estimate of a worst case scenario

In what archaic system of measurement is a meter five feet? 1m ~= 3.28 ft

It absolutely baffles me that those climate change deniers do not even understand that the rise of sea levels will not be the same everywhere.

But maybe gravity is only a invention of some "gravity histrionics" also?

The Netherlands is accounting for up to 1.3 meter (4 feet) of sea level rise by the end of this century, and 2-4 meter (roughly 12 feet) by 2200 [1]. Note that the report is not just focusing on the sea level rise itself, also its secondary effects (increased salinization of land and prolonged droughts) which would make fresh water more scarce.

[1] (2008, in Dutch) http://www.deltawerken.com/1392

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