Doomsday glacier "hanging on by its fingernails" scientist says

[ZombieRasputin]

@Mister44

Yeah, but we won’t drown in sea water at least.

And yes - humid summers are the norm/bane here.

Remember - this summer is the coolest summer on record for the rest of your life.

[Mister44]

Well - that probably isn’t true. There will be outliers where a summer is still hot, but not as hot as last year.

But yes, the earth is warming. Everyone will be effected in some way.

[danimagoo]

That is probably the dumbest thing Ben Shapiro has ever said, and that’s a really high bar because he’s said a lot of really dumb shit.

[smulder]

@Shuck

a foot of sea level rise is pretty much enough to fuck over the entire state of Florida

even if there were no sea level rise, building at the water line would still be irresponsible because of storm surges and tsunami

“heads in the sand” is a relevant metaphor

[Shuck]

Florida is particularly screwed over by sea level rises because a) the entire state is basically at sea level now, and b) the bedrock is porous so sea walls and any other measures to hold back the ocean are completely useless. But yeah, anything that causes increases in water level, even temporarily, and the more valuable, coastal parts of the state (e.g. Miami) are hosed at minimum.

[simonize]

@Shuck

Yeah, there’s been a lot of discussion of the impacts of climate change that were expected to happen “within the next century.” Problem is, people wishfully interpret that to mean, “it’s going to happen in a century, so I don’t have to worry about it.” To make matters worse, the “century” bit was often overly generous, as we’re already seeing some of those impacts after only a decade or two after prediction.

And “within the next century,” is more about our unwillingness to make predictions over a longer timeframe. But at least for sea level rise, it looks like REALLY CATASTROPHIC levels of sea level rise are already baked in over the next 500 years.

@smulder

even if there were no sea level rise, building at the water line would still be irresponsible because of storm surges and tsunami

When somebody says things like “one foot of sea level rise doesn’t seem that bad” I point out that isn’t just one foot higher every day, but it is also one foot added to the storm surge when there is a storm.

[Shuck]

@simonize

And “within the next century,” is more about our unwillingness to make predictions over a longer timeframe.

Yeah, there’s that, too. A combination of being quite conservative in predictions and limiting the temporal scope of those predictions.

Unfortunately I think a century probably covers milestones such as “no longer able to have agriculture” and “end of civilization as we know it” on current trajectories.

@simonize

When somebody says things like “one foot of sea level rise doesn’t seem that bad”

When someone says that, I just figure they don’t know what they’re talking about, because it is quite bad, by itself. (I mean, 8 inches of post-industrial rise has been problematic, despite having had a long time to deal with it.) Even before you take into account that sea level rise due to loss of coastal ice means that sea level rise isn’t evenly distributed, being higher in the areas currently inhabited…