[sailfast]

> Water levels around Wilmington would rise 2 feet by 2050. That reflects the median of possible warming scenarios

2 feet is the median!? And things continue to accelerate?

I thought I followed climate change issues but somehow did not know that in most people's lifetimes sea levels will rise multiple feet. I would've thought folks would be more... concerned? The maps of New Jersey, New York, and Connecticut look like they are going to cost us billions to trillions to mitigate between now and 2100.

[akiselev]

When people talk about sea level rise, they usually mean the global average sea level, or the change in total amount of liquid water in the ocean. When talking about local sea level rise, they usually mean the change in maximum high tide. Given all the unique coastlines, gravitational/water tides, and temperature differences, an average global sea rise means different things to different regions.

A shallow bay in the tropics that is right in the way of ocean currents, for example, can see an order of magnitude more change in high tide than the global sea level, let alone during surges and swells.

[graeme]

I have no idea why people aren't more concerned. I think the desire to avoid sounding "apocalyptic" has led to people not emphasizing the expected damage if we keep using CO2.

Anyone with a child born this year can expect that child to live past 2100. A future grandchild will live well past 2100. Even most people reading this can probably expect to live past 2050.

It's not an abstract issue that will affect future generations. It will affect us and our direct descendants.

[stale2002]

Well, that is because things aren't literally apocalyptic.

The science says that sea levels will rise by a meter or so over the next hundred years. That won't end the world.

The science says that climate change will cause trillions of dollars of damages, over the next hundred years.

Trillions of dollars in damages is bad. But it is on the same scale of "badness" as another iraq war.

I'd want to prevent a third Iraq war, but I am not going to pretend that it would put billions of lives in danger.

[graeme]

Science can't predict the economic effects of such a change over a 100 year period. Economic forecasting just isn't that good.

That's also not the right way to look at Iraq war costs. A lot of the war cost is just "shuffling".

Eg pay $1,000,000 in soldier salaries, the money is moved from taxpayers to soldiers. Then the soldiers spend the money. What was lost?

The real cost is the alternative work the soldiers could have done. The private sector could presumably have put them to better use. This would be more acute if the economy had full employment.

Bombs and munitions are worse, as there is real destruction of material. But much of the money is still recycled back into the domestic economy.

By contrast, a trillion simply lost from a catastrophe is just lost. It's a loss of real infrastructure. It's a loss of whole cities such as Miami, etc

To speak of "science" in this context is to misuse the term.

[diggernet]

But a lot of the catastrophe cost is just "shuffling".

Eg pay $1,000,000 in construction worker salaries, the money is moved from taxpayers to workers. Then the workers spend the money. What was lost?

The comment about alternative work still applies, but much of the money is still recycled back into the domestic economy.

So it's not a trillion simply lost.

All in all, I think the comparison to war is very apt.

[graeme]

Real resources go into the building of those buildings though. You could have built other things, but instead you must rebuild new york.

Whereas, soldiers probably weren't doing much economically productive in the first place. And as long as there is spare capacity in the labour force, moving people from "unemployed" to "soldier" isn't a massive misallocation of resources.

It's not nothing - taxpayers could habe spent the money better had they kept it. But it's not the same as if you levelled a city.

Further, the vast bulk of costs associated with the iraq war are interest on debt. That is really just shuffling money around. Especially if the debt is held by americans.

Money is just a unit of exchange. It isn't synonymous with wealth itself. Climate change will actually directly destroy wealth: it will level capital stock, it will lower crop yields, etc.

This is very different from movements of money back and forth that leave the physical economy untouched.

Iraq suffered destruction of capital during the Iraq war. Not sure if a dollar figure was attached to it, but that would be a more comparable situation.

Iraq's economy is $200 billion per year. I'm guessing the dollar loss to them was much less than 2.4 trillion. And yet I'm sure the real hardship caused by capital loss is greater than americans feel from their financial loss - even if you account for population size differences.

[stale2002]

It is still not literal end if the world. We destroyed lots of cities in Iraq. That didn't end the world.

Yes, hundreds of thousands died. But not billions. Not even close. That's the only point I am making.

[sailfast]

The main difference here is that the Iraq war was funded by the government. The trillions of dollars for climate change will be put on homeowners, property owners, businesses, localities, etc and will be used to replace something, rather than be transferred. Further, for places where building dikes / walls are practical, that money will have to come from somewhere and I just don't know where that is right now.

I very much doubt the Federal government will be providing (or will have the funds to provide) much of the assistance required to mitigate this kind of rise, and it will come down to cities / states handling it themselves for a lot of this.

As for the lives in danger - I was considering this in terms of economic damage to the NE United States, but I'd imagine globally it could be on the scale of millions having to migrate / move.

I would not personally equate the impacts of climate change to the Iraq war because of the overall scale and global impact, but I understand how it compares in terms of order of magnitude for a mental model.

[dragonwriter]

> Anyone with a child born this year can expect that child to live past 2100.

Overall life expectancy at birth is not greater than 81 in the US, though it is at 81 for females.

[graeme]

Oh, I'm in Canada, ours is over 82. Also, for people reading this who have a higher SES, I would expect their children to have a higher life expectancy.

I should have said "anyone university educated". In the US that adds ten years to life expectancy vs those without a high school degree:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4435622/#!po=0....

[shagmin]

From my understanding that is likely going to be local to the eastern US seaboard. The gulf stream goes northeast towards Europe, and "pulls" water away from the east coast, effectively making the sea level on the east coast about 6' lower. So the gulf stream just has to lose a little strength to make local sea levels rise drastically, even if globally sea levels are barely rising.

[throwaway7312]

> I thought I followed climate change issues but somehow did not know that in most people's lifetimes sea levels will rise multiple feet. I would've thought folks would be more... concerned?

According to Sir David King (head U.K. climate scientist) in 2004, all continents other than Antarctica will be uninhabitable by 2100 due to manmade global warming.[1]

I wouldn't be worried about New York. I'd be on the next ship down to Antarctica to go stake my land claim right now before it all gets gobbled up.

I mean, if this manmade global warming stuff is real, and it's as bad as they say it is.

[1] http://web.archive.org/web/20100817023019/http://www.indepen...

[superjan]

King is not stating that here. He just says that the earth was no fun place to be, the last time greenhouse gasses were as high as they’ll likely be in 2100.

[vonmoltke]

> "No ice was left on Earth. Antarctica was the best place for mammals to live, and the rest of the world would not sustain human life, he said.

> Sir David warned that if the world did not curb its burning of fossil fuels "we will reach that level by 2100"."

[Emphasis mine]

He literally did say that, unless you think "would not sustain human life" is compatible with "habitable". That quote was an asinine statement to make and only serves to provide ammunition to those who want to convince people that climate change is not a real problem.

[stale2002]

Imagine if I were to say "the last time that large amounts of people walked around in suits on daily basis, we had two world wars!". This is both true and misleading.

No scientist believes that climate change will cause such sire circumstances.

The experts on the matter believe that sea levels will rise by a meter or so over the next hundred years.

If you believe that this will end the world, then you should know that the experts disagree with you, and that you should go read some more science.

So yes, it is true that "the last time C02 levels were at this level, the world could not sustain life". But it is also misleading as it implies causation.

The scienctists do not believe that these levels would cause mass extinction of human life. The badness is closer in scale to another Iraq war.

[graeme]

I read the article. King does seem to be stating that. At least, he says the last time co2 was as high as it will be in 2100, then only antarctica was suitable for human life.

Now, there's a lag to warming, so it might only reach the full temperatures by 2150 or so, but King did explicitly seem to be saying we're likely to make the world uninhabitable. Or at least that the last time co2 was that high, the world was uninhabitable.

I haven't figured out why people don't take this more seriously. A child born today can expect to live past 2100. People have children and grandchildren, and yet....

[stale2002]

King is being maliciously misleading with his statements.

He is implying causation, but no scientist actually believes that the world will be uninhabitable by 2100. That is the opinion of the experts.

[pdonis]

King has no basis whatever for his claim that the rest of the globe other than Antarctica was uninhabitable 60 million years ago. There are fossils from this period, including fossils of mammals, from all continents. The global average temperature during the PETM (which I assume is what he is referring to) was about 8 C warmer than today, which is warm but by no means uninhabitable. It's also a lot warmer than the expected warming by 2100.