
Antarctica’s potential collapse could damage coastal cities across the globe - pratap103
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/05/18/climate/antarctica-ice-melt-climate-change-flood.html?_r=0
======
TheRealDunkirk
In the late 70's, I can remember a rash of stories on the nightly news,
telling us that scientists were predicting that half of Florida was going to
be underwater by the 2000's. Perhaps, even as a kid, I was sensitized to
reporting on science, since my 4th-grade science text book was also predicting
we'd be in a mini ice age in the 80's, and completely out of oil by 2000. And,
dang it, I was looking forward to driving.

It's forty years later, and the only land that I've read about that we've lost
to global ocean level rise is some "islands" in the South Pacific that were
only a couple millimeters above sea level anyway. Can someone here point me to
actual, significant, usable land loss due to rising sea level? I'm not saying
it hasn't happened, but I figure, if it had, it would be something that gets
trotted out at every one of these discussions.

Now we're getting a beautifully-rendered Times article where some NASA
climatologist says that, in another 10 years, we could have some "significant
retreat." After half a lifetime of hearing this, and not seeing anything like
the kind of change that would threaten man's survival, I'm sorry, but I'm
skeptical.

~~~
Retric
What your remembering from the 70's was actually happening then. In Florida 50
square miles of wetlands were disappearing each year. Thing was it was caused
by erosion and frankly we changed how water flowed across much of Florida and
rearranged a lot of the coast to keep it from happening.

But, this is not just limited to Florida. We now do a lot to keep coastline
looking like you're used to. The barrier islands around North and South
Carolina are largely man made structures at this point.

However, beach houses are built on stilts and you can keep moving sand so it's
not that noticeable. But, the larger context of what's going on is flooding
keeps getting worse. NYC for example was underwater in a recent storm doing a
lot of damage and largely shutting down the city. Such events are going to
become more regular as it goes form Massive storm surge, to normal storm
surge, to unusual high tides, to regular high tides. But, NYC is on bedrock so
they can use dikes and keep things ok. Other areas like Miami with different
geology can't use the same approach.

PS: Also, don't forget, Chicago Was Raised Over Four Feet in the 19th Century.
So, if you’re willing to spend a lot of money we can keep building in swamps.

~~~
SimbaOnSteroids
Miami has been investing heavily in water pumping systems because they
experience 'sunny day' flooding as a result of sea level rise and high tides.
It will buy them some time but eventually they're going to either have to
abandon ship or go full Venice.

~~~
aaroninsf
I continue to be confounded by the real estate bubble in Miami for this
reason. They can adopt whatever euphemisms they like; what they are
experiencing is now sea level rise as a result of climate change. The trend
towards inundation is clear and accelerating.

Why then would you invest at Bay Area-level prices for a condo in a building
which cannot keep its lobby dry, already?

The entire Gulf is based on porous limestone bedrock which makes sea walls
completely untenable as a solution. Water will find a way in.

QED absent some truly miraculous black swan technological advance, Miami etc.
are literally doomed to drown.

WTH are people thinking?

The only thing I can come up with is that it's a temporary parking place for
foreign money banked at a loss if necessary to exfiltrate it into the US. :P

~~~
Arizhel
>what they are experiencing is now sea level rise as a result of climate
change. The trend towards inundation is clear and accelerating.

>Why then would you invest at Bay Area-level prices for a condo in a building
which cannot keep its lobby dry, already?

>WTH are people thinking?

Because the people of Miami simply don't believe you and don't believe that
there's any climate change happening. And it's now the official position of
the US government that there's no climate change.

~~~
SimbaOnSteroids
A lot of them also don't plan on living long enough to see the seeds bear
fruit though or they're knowingly buying property that they know is on a
bubble but also know that they don't plan on holding the property long enough
to see the bubble burst.

------
godshatter
> Extensive satellite monitoring began in the 1990s and, within a decade,
> evidence emerged that the ice sheet was already starting to speed up,
> retreat and destabilize. Since then, the rate at which some of the glaciers
> are dumping ice into the ocean has tripled. More than 100 billion tons are
> lost every year.

I have a pet peeve about large numbers being thrown about without context. 100
billion tons of ice lost every year is a large number. How many tons of ice
are in the whole of the ice sheet? 30M km^3 * 0.239913 mi^3/km^3 * 3.82
Gt/mi^3 = ~27.5 million gigatons. So that gives us about 275,000 years at
current rates before the ice sheet is gone.

I got the 30M km^3 from here:
[https://www.sciencedaily.com/terms/antarctic_ice_sheet.htm](https://www.sciencedaily.com/terms/antarctic_ice_sheet.htm)
and other conversions from here:
[http://www.sealevel.info/conversion_factors.html](http://www.sealevel.info/conversion_factors.html)

~~~
blondie9x
If the whole ice sheet disappears, we disappear.

~~~
cmurf
I don't see the correlation. The disappearance itself doesn't seem to be the
problem, but the accumulation of consequences of even the process of it
disappearance that are the problem; not least of which is the cost of
adaptation.

~~~
blondie9x
If it disappears sea level would rise significantly. Therefore we would
disappear because most of our civilization would be effected that lives around
sea level.

~~~
lambdadmitry
That's a non-sequitur right there. It's not like the entire Antarctica melts
in a year or two; in the worst case, it's multi-decade process. It's pretty
easy to adapt to such change; we (obviously) built cities before and can do
that again.

~~~
godshatter
At the time scales we are talking about, our cities can ooze away from the sea
slowly just by abandoning property that is currently flooding. The sea is
rising at around 3mm / year, which is about a foot a century. Even if we
multiplied this ten-fold, that's still only about an inch and a quarter a year
we'd have to cope with. We'd have to raise some levies, abandon some property,
and maybe update some other infrastructure. Not great, but not the end of the
world.

------
i_feel_great
Here is Brisbane, Australia, the property market for low-lying areas is still
running hot. This is despite the flood of 2011 (which was so great it caused
sea levels to drop by as much as 7mm) which destroyed many of them, and the
insurance companies have either refused to insure them or at very high
premiums with low coverage. No one cares, they still vote for politicians who
promise the coal jobs will come back and still burn coal for most of the
electricity.

~~~
wahlschweizer
Here is Amsterdam, Holland, the property market for low-lying areas is still
running hot since about 800 years and we are, not will be, 2 meters (7 foot in
Freedom) under sealevel. [0]

And about two thirds of the country is vulnerable to flooding, while the
country is among the most densely populated on Earth. [1]

Not trying to deny possible flooding by melting ice and expanding seawater,
just saying (at least the Dutch) people tend to not care to much about
"possible" "one day" "change of 1 in a 100" scenarios while the living is
good.

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amsterdam](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amsterdam)
[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flood_control_in_the_Netherlan...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flood_control_in_the_Netherlands)

~~~
mcv
Netherland absolutely takes flooding very seriously. After the 1953 flood, it
was decided that that level of flooding should not happen more than once every
10,000 years. The Deltaworks [0] are the result of this.

Sea level rise reduces the effectiveness of this coastal protection, so a lot
more money is needed to improve the Deltaworks. Fortunately we're a rich
country and we can afford it. But only up to a point. There's no way to
protect Netherland against a 50 m sea level rise.

So as global warming continues, this is going to cost us increasing amounts of
money, and eventually our descendants are going to have to abandon this
country anyway.

Note that it was never about us drowning. It's about our grandchildren and
further in the future. Unfortunately a lot of people have quite literally an
"apres moi le deluge" attitude about this.

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delta_Works](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delta_Works)

------
r721
Take notice that this is Part 2, here is the Part 1 (there's also Part 3):

[https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/05/18/climate/antar...](https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/05/18/climate/antarctica-
ice-melt-climate-change.html)

------
mattparlane
How did they decide what is West Antarctica and what is East Antarctica? Isn't
it all North Antarctica?

~~~
danieltillett
Western hemisphere, Eastern hemisphere. Ultimately down to the 0 meridian
running through Greenwich and for this you can thank English naval power.

~~~
omellet
Or you can thank the English for figuring out how to measure longitude.

~~~
danieltillett
Well yes :)

Greenwich is actually not a bad location to place the 0 meridian since it
makes the international date line run through the least populated region of
the world.

------
jnsaff2
There's a very good Omega Tau episode on this.

[http://omegataupodcast.net/229-ant-arctic-sea-
ice/](http://omegataupodcast.net/229-ant-arctic-sea-ice/)

------
shusson
> If that ice sheet were to disintegrate, it could raise the level of the sea
> by more than 160 feet

I was wondering how they got 160ft, it looks like it's from this paper
[http://www.the-cryosphere.net/7/375/2013/tc-7-375-2013.pdf](http://www.the-
cryosphere.net/7/375/2013/tc-7-375-2013.pdf).

------
stctgion
6ft eh? I'm sure there's a technological solution to that
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raising_of_Chicago](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raising_of_Chicago)

~~~
lhopki01
6ft by the end of the century. 160ft in total.

~~~
averagewall
Both these figures are just sensationalism. 6 feet is the newly added
"extreme" scenario. The low is still 1 foot by 2100. Just to repeat that -
current science predicts that sea level might rise by 1 foot in 2100.

160 feet for the whole Antarctic ice sheet is not a problem at all because it
will take 1000s or at least 100s of years. Most buildings don't last even 100
years. Neither do a lot of national borders. We'll have rebuilt all our cities
by then so it's plenty of time to gradually move the rebuilding further and
further inland as the sea encroaches. Even better, our predictions are only
going to get more and more accurate so we can do more planning further in
advance. Nobody's predicting any disaster due to the whole Antarctic ice sheet
melting. High sea level - yes, problem for people - no.

------
kfk
I think we should fight greenhouse emissions as much as possible, but at the
same time we should be realistic and plan accordingly. We should have a
disaster plan (how to we move everybody to cities that won't be flooded, any
nuclear plants on the coast to take care of? etc.) and a geo-engineering plan
(can we capture this CO2 in some way?) and... a space exploration plan.

who knows? maybe defeating aging will push us to think longer term

~~~
pif
> a space exploration plan

As you talk about a dramatic disaster touching billions of people, would you
mind to explain me how space exploration could make a dent in such a colossal
situation?

~~~
dsr_
Ah, that's easy. The best sites to test designs for sustainable colonies on
Mars are in the deserts; the best sites to test designs for sustainable
colonies on Europa are in the oceans; the best sites to test designs for
sustainable colonies on asteroids are at the tops of mountains.

Once you have sustainable colonies in the deserts, the oceans and the
mountaintops, you have much less urgency to move them out to space...

------
pyankoff
What's wrong with underwater ice melting? Ice density is lower than waters, so
water level should actually decrease from that.

~~~
danieltillett
I hope you understand that an iceberg floating in water displaces the same
volume as ice as water [1].

1\. I am ignoring the complexity of freshwater and saltwater mixing.

~~~
natch
The relevant part of the article was talking about ice that is sitting on
land. Land that is below sea level. This particular ice is not floating.

------
i5h4n
A really well designed article. Kudos to the web design team at NYtimes on
that.

~~~
retube
Really clunky, jittery scroll with a load of blank space for me. Would much
rather a clean, simple HTML+CSS layout without all the fancy javascript. (IE
10)

~~~
ux-app
> (IE 10)

try upgrading to Netscape Navigator? ;)

------
rwnspace
Off-topic: I'm surely not alone in utterly despising this kind of website
design?

On-topic: If we think the immigration crisis is 'bad' now... It's like
comparing a dispute over garden fences to WWII.

~~~
blowski
I love to see experimentation with different layouts. I most definitely
wouldn't want to pay my energy bills on such a site. But this kind of content
is like a coffee-table magazine, where such variety encourages you to think
about the content differently.

For me personally, the trend towards all websites looking like Medium or
Google material design is much worse.

~~~
prawn
I suspect presenting content in bite-sized chunks can help people focus rather
than skim.

I think Medium layouts are a great way to get people reading just the content
without sidebar ads and interjections to read a related article - that stuff
wrecks so many news websites.

------
ahel
Could?

------
MichaelBurge
The good news is that wealth inequality will go down: Rich people all own
expensive property near the coast, so it'll get flooded and they'll have to
pay the poor to move them closer inward.

~~~
Xylakant
The wealthy also own all the expensive property inlands. In general, the poor
don't own a lot of property at all, one of the reasons of the widening wealth
gap (property prices rising only benefits the people that own property).

------
jstewartmobile
This stuff would probably go over better with the red state crowd if the same
outlets hadn't chicken littled us in the 70s with global cooling.

Also, I don't know how much of a difference we can make in the west when China
and India are polluting so hard that it blots out the daylight.

~~~
jstewartmobile
^ This was not meant as a denial of global warming. I'm just complaining about
media sensationalism and Chinese air quality standards.

~~~
flukus
Not denial, but still makes 2 claims (the first one is completely false) that
deniers always make.

~~~
jstewartmobile
Apparently Wikipedia and I must be sharing a mass hallucination about _Time_ ,
_Newsweek_ , and a pop science show narrated by Leonard Nimoy.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_cooling#Concern_in_the_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_cooling#Concern_in_the_1960s_and_1970s)

If the media weren't such blatant purveyors of disaster porn, people would be
taking this issue more seriously.

------
dwe3000
> Dr. DeConto and Dr. Pollard do not claim that this is a certainty

Boil 'em in oil, the stinkin' deniers.

Oh, wait, that's the scientists that this did this study about a time a
century in the future.

More sensationalist journalism just stirring up emotions.

