Where are all the people displaced by rising seas to go?

[Skidmore]

I want us to repeatedly ask this question over and over again. There are large numbers of people who must be relocated by the time this is all over from our coasts and along our major lakes and rivers and the waters back up the estuaries. There are also whole island nations that will need to relocate their peoples. As weather changes, the land available to produce crops will change as will the growing seasons. Viral discussion of this and distribution of information should be something we are all working on. To quote Joe Biden, "this is a big effin' deal."

[HooptieWagon]

7. You signed up just to post that?

I doubt youll find any customers here... what a moron.

[MineralMan]

63. Spammers get Nuked instantly.

MIRT is on the job.

[Skidmore]

68. Thankfully.

[HooptieWagon]

2. A tent camp in Bundyland?

Or maybe we can seize churches from the Talibornagain under emminent domain, and use them as shelters for the displaced.

[FarCenter]

3. Up hill?

By the time the seas rise many feet, there probably won't be many people for a whole variety of reasons unrelated to climate change.

Miami didn't exist 120 years ago. What makes you think it will exist 120 years from now?

[Skidmore]

5. Do you consider the implications of the worst case scenario?

The government of the islands my husband grew up on do have to contend with the fact that they will likely cease to exist.

[malaise]

21. The Bahamas will be history

and large sections of Cuba will disappear. Cayman and the Turks and Caicos will also disappear.
Say goodbye to coastal Guyana and Suriname. Barbados too will vanish.

[SummerSnow]

29. I thought about some of those places as well.

Might have to start calling Earth, Waterworld. Like the movie.

[malaise]

30. Hopefully more people will pay attention to this than

actually watched the movie

[arely staircase]

54. most of florida eventually nt

[malaise]

58. Yes

add NOLA and Manhattan

[HooptieWagon]

64. And the Florida Keys.

along with the Everglades, and the "big bend" region north of Crystal River to the Panhandle.

[malaise]

65. All the Florida people should be demanding that Rubio resign

What an opportunistic jackass

[oldhippie]

6. That's what I figured. nt

[Skidmore]

8. I don't assume it will, which is what prompted my question.

Why should we assume that there will not be logistical problems relocating population and that even a smaller population will not create problems on less land? I want us to think a bit about what this means for whole groups of people.

[FarCenter]

9. Americans Will Burn Less Oil 25 Years From Now

The most lasting change in the U.S. energy landscape may not be that we’re producing more oil — but that we’re using less.

Demand for oil has fallen in recent years, as Americans drive less and buy more fuel-efficient cars. Daily consumption is down nearly 2 million barrels since 2005, a 9 percent decline. The drop is small in percentage terms, but it represents a remarkable shift, one that few people saw coming.

For most of the post-World War II era, Americans burned more oil each year, a trend broken only briefly by the price shocks of the late 1970s. This time, the shift appears to be more lasting: In a new report released this week, the Energy Information Administration (EIA) said the U.S. will burn slightly less oil in 2040 than it did in 2010. Overall energy consumption per person is set to fall even more steeply, to the lowest level since 1965.

http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/americans-will-burn-less-oil-25-years-from-now/

The era of cheaply available fossil fuel is over. Production will fall as it becomes unaffordable. Economic activity will slow. Depressions and famine will ensue, followed by war. This will all happen in a time frame shorter than global warming.

[Scuba]

13. And we'll be 100 years too late to stop it.

[JJChambers]

4. The Grand Canyon

[CreekDog]

51. is that a progressive thought?

just wondering.

[Warren Stupidity]

10. the general idea is if they are poor they should just die.

on the other hand if they have some wealth to be extracted, first that wealth should be extracted, and then they should just die.

[spanone]

11. let's ask marco rubio

[arely staircase]

12. it won't happen overnight

it will not happen suddenly like a tsunami. Oceanside property will slowly (over decades) become actual ocean. because of that there won't be an all of a sudden refugee crisis.

[Scuba]

14. Is this your own pet theory? No refugee crisis?

http://www.nature.com/scientificamerican/journal/v296/n6/full/scientificamerican0607-43.html

As global warming tightens the availability of water, prepare for a torrent of forced migrations

Human-induced climate and hydrological change is likely to make many parts of the world uninhabitable, or at least uneconomic. Over the course of a few decades, if not sooner, hundreds of millions of people may be compelled to relocate because of environmental pressures.

[arely staircase]

16. like I said "over the course of a few decades"

it is a slow rolling disaster. and it is a disaster. but people aren't going to wake up tomorrow and find Galveston gone. but our grandchildren may only red about the place in books.

[FarCenter]

28. Unlike in 1492, all of the inhabitable world is occupied by well-armed populations.

There won't be relocations of hundreds of millions.

[jwirr]

44. Much of the world already have refugee camps with people who have been dislocated for one reason

or another. I wonder if we will actually get to that here in the USA?

[JCMach1]

15. Except when major flooding events (mainly storms)

hasten the process... Think Katrina, but magnitudes worse...

[Skidmore]

17. Yes. This. Plus areas of increased drought and the reduction of

arable land due to both the encroachment of salt waters and lack of rain. Higher elevations may not be able to be farmed due to more rocky terrain.

[Uncle Joe]

53. Not to mention increased acidification of the oceans which will greatly reduce food harvests

from that critical resource.

The strain on societies will come from multiple directions; massive relocation problems, diminished food resources and increased numbers of catastrophic weather events, in effect "The Perfect Storm."

[JCMach1]

69. I keep waiting for a study that looks at acidification and jelly fish increase

anyone who has dived in recent years couldn't help but notice the plague of jellyfish in even the most pristine parts of the ocean...

on edit... it just seems to be getting some attention now...

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1335337/Jelly-fish-alert-Population-surge-rising-acidity-worlds-oceans-kills-predators.html

[jeff47]

55. Farming will primarily move towards the poles.

The probable sea level rise isn't so high that we'll be relocating to the mountains, so "rocky terrain" won't be a huge problem.

The fact that the countries that now produce lots of food will no longer be able to do so will be a much larger problem. Canada will do quite well in farming. The US, not so much.

[arely staircase]

18. That is a much more immediate concern I think. It is already happening. nt

[Nobel_Twaddle_III]

39. The only thing the scientific community get wrong about this is under estimating the rate.

we will see the disappearance of low elevation pacific island nations sooner then most of us believe.

[Warren Stupidity]

31. that is just nonsense.

In many areas, it will in fact happen overnight. The combination of rising sea levels and increased storm activity and magnitude creates catastrophes like Katrina and Sandy and will continue to do so with increasing frequency and severity.

Places like Bangladesh are on the edge. A major event there could kill millions. But heck who cares? After all "Oceanside property" will take decades to be eroded out of existence.

[FarCenter]

34. The impact on hurricane frequency and severity is debatable

The atmosphere will be warmer and wetter, but the poles are warming faster than the equator, decreasing the temperature differential that drives atmospheric circulation.

A big effect would be if the sub-tropical jet stream stays north of the Himalayas in the winter, rather than switching north and south seasonally.

[CreekDog]

52. sounds kind of made up

but i prefer science to wishful thinking.

[NickB79]

19. Nowhere. They will die in the hundreds of millions

Long before the oceans rise enough to significantly reduce the planet's landmasses, the changes wrought to our agricultural systems will have caused global starvation on a level never before seen by our species.

Just because the Great Plains isn't at risk of flooding by the ocean doesn't mean it will keep cranking out billions of bushels of corn and soy as the climate goes nuts.

[Skidmore]

20. No. We will have drought here.

As we already are experiencing. How many crops can tolerate a thirsty land?

[NickB79]

22. Exactly. And we've squandered the aquifers for a century

Using valuable fossil water to grow corn and soy to feed to cattle and hogs, or using it to frack for oil.

Some days I think we're too stupid as a species to deserve another century of civilization.

[NJCher]

49. no, we won't survive

Some days I think we're too stupid as a species to deserve another century of civilization.

I accepted that fact a long time ago. We're a defective species that's not going to make it.

Individual humans can be very smart, but as a species, we make poor decisions as groups.

Said another way, it's the result of our political or governing systems. Capitalism has to be one of the worst ever in terms of intelligent group decision making.


Cher

[FarCenter]

26. North and east become a little wetter; south and west a little drier

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physical_impacts_of_climate_change#Precipitation

[FarCenter]

24. Losing Ground

In some places in Iowa, recent storms have triggered soil losses that were 12 times greater than the federal government’s average for the state, stripping up to 64 tons of soil per acre from the land, according to researchers using the new techniques. In contrast to the reassuring statewide averages, the researchers’ data indicate that farmland in 440 Iowa townships encompassing more than 10 million acres eroded faster in 2007 than the “sustainable” rate. In 220 townships totaling 6 million acres, the rate of soil loss was twice the “sustainable” level.

http://www.ewg.org/losingground/report/executive-summary.html

[Skidmore]

35. I'm aware of that report.

We also have much more wind that we used to and Iowa always has been on the windy side. The soil is being carried away.

[FarCenter]

60. The Nebraska Sandhills are desert dunes

Paleoclimate proxy data and computer simulations reveal that the Nebraska Sandhills likely had active sand dunes as recently as the Medieval Warm Period, when temperatures in the North Atlantic region were about 1°C (1.8°F) warmer than the current climate.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandhills_(Nebraska)

They will likely be dunes again.

[WinkyDink]

23. I think the plan is: Perdition.

[SheilaT]

25. I have no solution, other than to cynically

suggest they are supposed to drown in place. And which east coast state is it that has passed legislation forbidding any consideration of rising sea levels?

Some of the changes will be gradual, possibly gradual enough for a lot of reasonable adjustment. But there will be individual disasters that will be sudden enough to get everyone's attention. Keep in mind that for several decades now it's been pointed out that far too many people live along the hurricane-prone coastline of this country. And yet, our population continues to grow and every year more people move to those places. They rebuild after hurricanes. It's human nature to ignore some things and to rebuild after disaster.

The climate change that we're all faced with is going to be of a much different scale.

I keep on wondering if there won't be a sudden terrible catastrophe if, for instance, the Gulf Stream were to fail. There's also reason to believe that warming, such as we're currently experiencing, could actually make things tip over and bring on an ice age rather suddenly. Lots of scary possibilities.

[nclib]

57. I believe that would be North Carolina.

That way they can develop all they want. What a disaster.

[MADem]

27. INLAND, quite obviously!!!

Unless they can find a way to hold back the seas...

[Spider Jerusalem]

32. Not just rising seas

people displaced by other climate impacts as well. (Look at the long-range projections for weather patterns in the arid US Southwest, and the long-range projections for water levels in Lakes Mead and Powell, and ask what happens when Phoenix and Las Vegas are unlivable and irrigated agriculture in the West collapses.)

[n2doc]

33. Going to be a lot of wars

And a lot of refugees. Plan ahead, if you can. Generational time scale plan.

[blkmusclmachine]

42. Mass famine/mass extinction. And 30000 armed Drones to keep an eye on you and keep you in your place

[EEO]

36. I believe the Republican plan is for them to die.

[Skidmore]

37. The party itself is too dumb for that but the big money manipulating

these bunch of clowns likely have included these scenarios in their risk assessments and projections for profit taking. In my opinion, climate change is the battleground on which much should be fought.

[DeSwiss]

38. K&R

[blkmusclmachine]

40. Say "Goodbye" to HI, LA, FL, Cuba, PR, NYC, Houston, all island nations, Netherlands, current coast-

lines around the globe, Charleston, Savannah, Mobile, Myrtle Beach, Wilmington, Norfolk, Virginia Beach, Atlantic City, and on, and on, and on...

[Skidmore]

41. As I said, there will be a whole lot of folks needing dry land and new homes.

[Hestia]

47. If you look at the maps, south Ark. is gone too due to MS & AR rivers backing up and causing

the Gulf Coast to be somewhere around Pine Bluff on down the river. Lots of farm land being lost there.

[Shrike47]

48. Most Hawaiians live more than 2,000 feet above sea leval. Tourists lose, not natives.

[muriel_volestrangler]

59. Really? I think you're mistaking "most of Hawaii is above 2,000 feet" with

"Most Hawaiians live more than 2,000 feet above sea level". Honolulu is a major part of the population, and it's on the coast, as are most of the other cities of significant size.

[moondust]

43. Houseboats.

[tclambert]

45. Why, to their vacation homes in the mountains. Aspen, Jackson Hole, etc.

Oh, you meant where do POOR people go? Well, who cares, really? They're poor, and dirty, and smelly. No need to worry about them. The private security contractors, or the corporate police will keep them from crossing the barricades.

[Hestia]

46. That is exactly what I thought when watching An Inconvenient Truth at the theater I started sobbing

because what is the prediction, 100 million people displaced, and the thought was that it would be awhile before happened here. I don't think so if the Atlantic coast has already risen 8 inches!

[Not a Fan]

50. Kennebunkport

I did hear that Kennebunkport was definitely going under. As are a lot of coastal areas.

[Kablooie]

56. Ah don't worry so much. It won't happen for years.

Probably won't be a big problem until after you're dead and gone so what do you care?
We've got pleeenty of time.

And God won't let anything really bad happen to the human race because he loves us.
The bible tells us so.
(Please ignore Genesis. That's only good for the origin of the universe and slamming gays. The rest you can forget.)



I'd put a sarcasm thingy here except that these arguments aren't sarcasm for a lot of Americans.

[cbdo2007]

61. They aren't supposed to go anywhere, that's the point...

they'll all die, just like all other natural disasters. Not that big of a deal really as similar things have happened all through history.

[Skidmore]

67. Doesn't mean the won't try because people are

programmed for survival.

[Orsino]

62. Fuck themselves.

It's right there, written into the oil subsidies.

[lpbk2713]

66. They could go to Limbaugh's house ... if it wasn't on the Florida coast.

After all, how many times a day did he say there was nothing to this GW hogwash?