Ooops!! Sea Level Rise In Miami Moving Far Faster Than Originally Thought
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"People ask me all the time: 'When is it going to happen? When will we start seeing sea level rise?'" says Brian McNoldy, a senior research associate at UM's Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences. "We've already passed that. It's happening."
To chart that rise, McNoldy recently crunched nearly two decades' worth of data from a tidal monitoring station on Virginia Key. First, he looked at the heights of high, low, and mean sea level measured at the station from 1996, when it was set up, until today.
In research posted last week, he reported that in 2014, the linear trend in all three was more than three inches higher than in 1996. Even more worrying, though, the data suggests the trend is accelerating. By charting just the highest tide each day and breaking that info into five-year chunks, McNoldy found that the high-water mark rose by an average of 0.3 inches per year overall -- but a much higher 1.27 inches per year over the past five years.
"It was surprising," McNoldy says. "I didn't realize that over such a short time, going back to only 1996, you'd see that much of a trend."
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http://blogs.miaminewtimes.com/riptide/2015/02/sea_level_rise_threatens_to_drown_miami_even_faster_than_feared_um_researcher_finds.php
= new reply since forum marked as read
345 Feet
We are all going to drown...
http://kottke.org/13/11/what-if-all-the-ice-melted
As you can see it is only 216 feet, so Britton Hill will still be above water if all the ice in the world melted, the rest of Florida would be under water but NOT Britton Hill.
If you want a more detail and interactive map on sea level try this one, you can shift from 7 meters (What would happen if the West Antarctic Ice Sheet collapses, something that can raise world wide sea levels 7 or more meters within weeks) or less sea level increase OR more sea level increase (up to the 65 meters sea level would raise if the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, the much larger East Antarctic Ice Sheet and the Greenland ice Sheet would all melt).
http://flood.firetree.net/
Please note, present theory gives over a century for the East Antarctic Ice Sheet (EAIS) to Melt
EAIS could melt away by 2100:
http://news.sciencemag.org/2013/07/east-antarcticas-ice-sheet-not-stable-thought
Peak oil would have hit (Present prediction says in 2005, which lead to the recession of 2008 which in turn kept oil usage below what it had been in 2008, thus the full effect of peak oil will NOT hit till after 2020 when oil production worldwide, actually starts to drop as oppose to holding still).
Side note: Peak oil is when 1/2 of all oil has been produced. It took 146 years from Drake's first well in 1859 till peak oil in 2005, and will take another 146 years to get the other half out, but at lower each year production and at increasing costs. You will have 2 to 5 year periods of lower costs when demand shrinks more than production but those will be shorter and longer apart as prices go higher. The oil producers are doing artful accounting (such as adding Natural Gas liquids a as "oil"
, careful engineering (such as using nitrogen to pump out oil from old fields) and out right lying (The amount of oil that can be obtain from Fracking has gone DOWN as people actually looked into the fields to be fracked and find little or no oil but the original estimates are repeated over and over again). We are either past or right at peak oil but no one wants to admit it, for to admit it means gasoline prices will start to climb and there is nothing we can do about it.
One group of Peak Oil people actually predicts that Global Warming will be stopped by Peak Oil, with oil production dropping, followed by coal and Natural Gas, CO2 releases will go down NOT because of Government Action, but each is at its production peak or will be soon.
Article on peak coal USAGE is occurring now:
http://e360.yale.edu/feature/peak_coal_why_the_industrys_dominance_may_soon_be_over/2777/
US Coal production peaked in 2008, for the simple reason the only coal left is buried to deep to mine at a profit (i.e. cost more ENERGY to get the coal OUT then we get in energy from the Coal):
http://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/Peak-Coal-Will-the-US-Run-Out-of-Coal-in-200-Years-Or-20-Years
China is long past its peak coal:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/01/30/china-peak-coal-demand_n_6582336.html
Report that most of the coal that is left in the world is low quality coal and hard to mine:
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2010/09/100908-energy-peak-coal/
The top ten coal mine in the US are in West but mine sub-bituminous coal (better then Lignite but worse then Eastern US Bituminous coal):
http://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.cfm?id=10591
In term of coal, 40% of all coal mined in the US comes from Wyoming and Montana, but those mines only provide 20% of the ENERGY provided by coal in the US. The reason for this is the coal from the Powder River basin has half the energy content per ton as the coal from Appalachian.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Powder_River_Basin
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal
US coal production IN TERMS OF BTU peaked in 1995, US coal production in terms of TONS MINED has increased since 1995, but it is replacing high energy bituminous coal with lower energy content subbituminous and lignite coal.
http://www.resilience.org/stories/2007-05-21/peak-coal-sooner-you-think
Unlike coal and oil, which we have an good idea of how much is left and the cost to get those forms of energy, Natural gas is more a question mark. Coal we know has to be mined and the deeper we go the more it costs to mine. Oil cease being oil when it goes below 20,000 feet (which could be drilled in 1938) is turned into Natural Gas by the heat of the earth itself. Thus oil we have a good feel for, we do NOT have such a feel for Natural Gas, for Natural Gas can exist 100,000 feet (20 miles) below the surface of the earth.
One of the problem with Peak Natural Gas is the natural of gas wells. Unlike oil wells that tend to climb in production then peak and then decline, Natural Gas wells tend to climb to a peak, then peak and stay at that rate till the well runs dry and then the well is capped. With Fracked wells ("Tight" Wells is what they are called in the industry) this tends to be about three to five years after the well is drilled. In traditional wells it had been 20 to 30 years. Thus the prediction of Natural Gas surplus by 2015 ready for exports, peaking in 2017 and back to what we were producing in 2000 by 2025. Each Natural Gas Well will peak produce at maximum rate and then do dry. Over a field this rate can be spread out and a prediction made, thus the above numbers.
On the other hand, the exact amount of Natural Gas is presently unknowable and thus can change (and has) drastically over time. Given those problems when it comes to Natural Gas production peaks, this site says 2040 but also 2020:
http://blogs.wsj.com/moneybeat/2014/12/04/who-to-believe-u-s-natural-gas-may-peak-in-2040-or-2020/
http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2012/12/10/1296991/how-the-us-can-get-80-percent-co2-reductions-by-2050-in-the-middle-of-a-natural-gas-boom/
Thus we may NOT be able to get to the Carbon level needed for a 65 meter increase in world wide sea levels, not because people will do something to prevent it, but that we will run out of carbon based energy forms before it reaches that level.
On the other hand I do see a huge increase in sea levels do to global warming, for till we run out of carbon based energy forms, they will be used.
Now the most traded item in the world is oil. Everything else pales in comparison with oil when it comes to international trade (Through Natural Gas and Coal are also top exports and imports). If energy in the form of Coal, Natural Gas and Coal can no longer be traded, then you will see a drop in trade, but other items will be traded even if we have to use wind to propel the ships during the trading.
As to immigration, people tend to move where relatives are FIRST, then to other places. Bangladesh will be the place most affected by any large scale increase in Sea Levels (i.e. West Antarctic Ice Sheet collapses) but most people will move to someplace in India not the US. Thus such immigration will have little affect on people trading. In fact given the lost of energy, they may be a demand for actual workers to do things now done by machine. Given dropping birth rates, we may see a population SHORTAGE not a surplus as sea levels increase.
Just a comment, that the change in sea levels will NOT be all bad, some good will come from it. Do not be a pessimist, instead try to do the best you can do under the circumstances and things will work out.
I live in a place in a place in California where a few of the roads have family names.
My least favorite ancestors and their relatives were intolerant of "white trash" and Okies. Even my fairly tolerant grandfather freaked out when I decided to marry, in his words, "a Mexican girl." He did not attend our Big Catholic Wedding. Much to his credit he got over that, but I'm still a little suspicious he'd suffered some small stroke and forgotten whiteness made any difference to his Wild West pseudo-WASP family honor.
Like he should talk, he had Irish Catholic ancestors too, and my artist dad had married a Catholic heretic/dissident, corrupted from her dreams of being a celibate nun to becoming someone who liked to have much wild unprotected sex and many babies.
As a ten year old I knew how to change a diaper. Not me nor any one of my siblings had babies before we were certain we could support them. My "choose life" mom always offered to support our babies if by some accident we had them, but thoughts of having more siblings in the household, biological random genetic combinations or otherwise, just more diapers to change, greatly inhibited us. Just think of the diaper pail and embrace birth control. That stinky diaper pail is much scarier than any confession to God's man on earth, condoms, pills, or even slight friction at the pharmacy counter. I own these pills and condoms, I own my sexuality.
Very fortunately for me, my WASP ancestors got beaten down hard in the Great Depression. The worst of them are long dead. The more flexible among them, my most direct ancestors, learned a little humility.
They'd owned large chunks of San Francisco, Los Angeles, and San Diego, but they lost it all playing highly leveraged money games.
I'm a very lucky human being. I might have been Mitt Romney insufferable as a wealthy autistic spectrum trust fund kid.
Instead I've experienced the glory of being an indigent U.S. American kid living in a French public park, and a few years later, as a semi-homeless dude living in my car.
Life is an adventure that kills us all eventually. What we can celebrate here on earth are the stories.
