What the world will look like if/when the oceans rise.

Interactive Flood Maps show us how familiar land contours will change as the oceans rise. (via Tim O'Reilly)

[#1 posted by Vengefultacos, September 4, 2009 7:03 PM]

Sweet. If the ocean levels go up 14m, the condo my wife and I are trying to sell will become beachfront property. Gotta add that to the real estate listing.

[#2 posted by Clemoh, September 4, 2009 7:05 PM]

Suddenly living in Winnipeg isn't looking so bad!

[#3 posted by Anonymous, September 4, 2009 7:13 PM]

Hmmm... Weird. I keep seeing maps like this but... oddly enough, the real estate prices don't seem to be responding to this at all. Just the opposite in fact.

I guess the "free market" really is dumb? I wonder...

[#4 posted by Aloisius, September 4, 2009 7:27 PM]

If the oceans rise it seems silly to assume humans won't undertake extreme measures to counteract it like say, flooding death valley and other low lying areas.

[#5 posted by Takuan, September 4, 2009 7:34 PM]

most crops are grown on flat land.

[#6 posted by Anonymous, September 4, 2009 7:35 PM]

It looks as if their server may have gone underwater...

[#7 posted by jennybean42, September 4, 2009 7:47 PM]

I love how people always look at these maps and go, "Oh, well, that's not so bad, *my* house is safe..." Because,it's not like all the people who live on the coasts are going to necessarily disappear. They are going to be moving to your dry land.

[#8 posted by Drew from Zhrodague, September 4, 2009 7:49 PM]

#1 Vengefultacos - jack up the price a bit to let them know you're serious!

#3 Aloisius - Why bother? I can imagine the gravestones beyond my back yard sinking into the water with the new beach. I think that the new tasty sealife that would grow here in Pittsburgh, might be poisonous, due to the sewage and other nasty stuff that shouldn't be in the water. Is this what brings the zombie hordes?

[#9 posted by Anonymous, September 4, 2009 8:02 PM]

Sim City anyone?

[#10 posted by gollux, September 4, 2009 8:14 PM]

Cool, Sacramento will be getting a lot of marinas and we'll have a whole massive inland bay system and wetlands to play in!

[#11 posted by Bill Albertson, September 4, 2009 8:17 PM]

I was looking at Sacramento too, but I was thinking that salinization was going to kill agriculture in the biggest breadbasket in the western US.

Then again, the city government already has an environmental impact report in hand on this issue from about 2 years ago. They just have no plan, which is pretty typical.

[#12 posted by Ninth Stage, September 4, 2009 8:26 PM]

Change is good!

[#13 posted by mdh, September 4, 2009 8:30 PM]

They are going to be moving to your dry land.

this dry land is your land, this dry land is my land... that land was drowned by you and me.

[#14 posted by Anonymous, September 4, 2009 8:45 PM]

Of course I will be called a troll or worse...

Folks, the coast lines have ALWAYS changed. In fact there are entire cities underwater today. I know it is shocking. The difference between the ancients and the typical New York resident of today is they had the sense to get out of the way.

[#15 posted by Anonymous, September 4, 2009 8:50 PM]

Note that the only part of Manhattan that will drown is Harlem. Typical.

[#16 posted by Anonymous, September 4, 2009 9:07 PM]

Just had a flashback to the old computer game Superhero League of Hoboken.

[#17 posted by nanuq, September 4, 2009 9:14 PM]

Can't get the page to load at all. You really should stop crashing web sites with important information, BB.

[#18 posted by Dean Putney, September 4, 2009 9:14 PM]

My mom does this exercise in her 6th grade science class. She gets a topographical map and has the kids color in all the area that's below a 20 foot sea level, which apparently is a real estimate for the rise of the ocean due to global warming.

The kids get pretty excited about coloring though, so she has to watch carefully that they don't color over our house. The projected sea level puts us on an island the exact size of our plot. It's pretty easy for crayon-crazed ten-year-olds to scribble over.

[#19 posted by Teller, September 4, 2009 9:19 PM]

I'm pumped about the reduced carbon footprint of trucks delivering goods from port to market.

[#20 posted by Anonymous, September 4, 2009 9:22 PM]

Come on! This is some of the most valuable real estate in the world... You don't think they could be bothered to put up a levy?

[#21 posted by Takuan, September 4, 2009 9:23 PM]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanford_Site

[#22 posted by Timothy Hutton, September 4, 2009 9:26 PM]

It seems to me they ignored the varying amounts of water required for each 1 meter increase and instead simply shaded blue everything under sea level + "n" meters that connected to the sea. I understand that, but does anyone have any pointers to something that fairly accessible that gets into the calculations of the volumes of water needed for various levels of rise in the ocean?

It seems to me that as the sea level increases linearly, the amount of water required increases at a greater rate, as the shore line receeds and the rising tide over takes previously dry land, and reaches and fills-in low-lying flatlands... I'd be interested in learning a bit more about how they would do that (which is distinct from the linked to map does)...

[#23 posted by Takuan, September 4, 2009 9:33 PM]

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/amid-the-rusting-hulks-of-a-nuclear-graveyard-a-plea-to-help-russia-avoid-apocalypse-752748.html

[#24 posted by mdh, September 4, 2009 11:16 PM]

timothy hutton, I'm not even sure how to explain this to you.

Previously dry land is underwater now. The ocean submerged it at some rate (mm / year). That rate is increasing.

Is there something particularly absorbent about land that is dry today that is not true of land which is now submerged but was dry before the average (and now the increasing) rate of submersion was calculated?

[#25 posted by Anonymous, September 4, 2009 11:30 PM]

Change you can believe in!

[#26 posted by Anonymous, September 4, 2009 11:42 PM]

I think what Timothy meant was think of it more like filling a martini glass. The shore sort of slopes most places so it will take slightly more water to fill the next d(h) higher than the one before, possibly enough to cause a difference in the ultimate final height.

Hehe... Captcha: integral

[#27 posted by Anonymous, September 5, 2009 3:21 AM]

@Timothy Hutton,

I believe that is already factored into the "sea levels will rise by _n_ feet" calculations for the figures they give to the public. Remember that every foot of ice cap on Antarctica and Greenland has more water content than the preceding foot for the same geometric reasons as your observation.

[#28 posted by Anonymous, September 5, 2009 3:35 AM]

Even with the current sea levels a large part of the Netherlands are way below sea level. This is not reflected in the so-called interactive flood map. Even with a rise of 1 meter most of the Netherlands are shown to be flooded, which is surprising when one remembers there is something like high and low tide twice a day. Being borne and raised in the Netherlands nigh 40 years ago, I don't recall ever having to wade to school or work.

[#29 posted by Anonymous, September 5, 2009 4:51 AM]

I'm against global warming and everything, but can we see about making Williamsburg an island sooner rather than later?

[#30 posted by Anonymous, September 5, 2009 5:05 AM]

MDH, he (Timothy Hutton)is right about the increasing water volume, just maybe not a clear reason/explanation prior to his question. Let me take a stab at what I think he's saying.

If earth was a perfect sphere with no surface land and you added water from an extraterrestrial source it would take an ever larger volume to add each unit of depth (pi * radius cubed=volume).

In our model we are increasing the size of the ocean (lost land mass, coastal and low lying) and the depth, both of which figure in the calculation.

I think his question is maybe looking for a more accurate depiction of the land changes where a constant increase in sea volume is seen.

[#31 posted by Anonymous, September 5, 2009 5:29 AM]

It is especially funny to me that they can never quite resist using New York City as the example for these apocryphal predictions, when that city's original name was New Amsterdam. It all presupposes we just give up on science and engineering, and ignores the fact that a number of large cities are already right at (or below) sea level.

[#32 posted by Timothy Hutton, September 5, 2009 6:35 AM]

MDH said:

Previously dry land is underwater now. The ocean submerged it at some rate (mm / year). That rate is increasing.

The interactive graphic has nothing to do with increasing rates of sea level increases - it shows the effect if the sea level rose by a given amount (a user-selected amount between 0 and 14 meters).

MDH continued:

Is there something particularly absorbent about land that is dry today that is not true of land which is now submerged but was dry before the average (and now the increasing) rate of submersion was calculated?

That's not what I asked:

It seems to me they ignored the varying amounts of water required for each 1 meter increase and instead simply shaded blue everything under sea level + "n" meters that connected to the sea. I understand that [emphasis added]

Simply put: They ignore the volume needed to achieve the effect (they didn't need to consider it, it isn't germane to their graphic), I am asking about the volume needed to achieve the effect.

I'm not questioning the absorbancy of previously dry land (where'd that come from?), I asked about the amount or volume of water required. For example, at some point the water that was previously filling the bay area in SF will slip through either a tunnel or a natural passage and start to fill up Lafayette, Concord, and other areas on the other side of the hills - requiring vastly more water to fill that valley...

They are showing what the result is, I'm asking how do people calculate the volume of water required to raise the sea level for each meter, given the varying elevations of the terrian covered.

Before anyone else goes off their hinges, I'm asking a math question, not an environmental question.

[#33 posted by teufelsdroch, September 5, 2009 6:56 AM]

Yes, this can happen. It has happened before. But it takes SEVERAL THOUSAND YEARS:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=102066621

Please please please can we start to understand that political timescales (~10 years), human timescales (~50 years), and geological timescales (~1000 years at least) are totally different?

[#34 posted by Takuan, September 5, 2009 7:02 AM]

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20327151.300-sea-level-rise-its-worse-than-we-thought.html

[#35 posted by Takuan, September 5, 2009 7:03 AM]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/sep/01/sermilik-fjord-greenland-global-warming

[#36 posted by Felton, September 5, 2009 7:21 AM]

Has anyone stopped to consider that this will be very good for the newts?

[#37 posted by Takuan, September 5, 2009 7:30 AM]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Kraken_Wakes

[#38 posted by Permanent4, September 5, 2009 7:41 AM]

I tend to prefer the Nexial Institute's global flooding maps, which are less interactive but show what happens when the seas rise 60m and 100m.

http://www.nexialinstitute.com/global_flooding.htm

I love the North American 100m map. Who in Indiana wouldn't love to their homes to be beachfront property?

[#39 posted by cosmicautumn, September 5, 2009 7:56 AM]

Looks like I'll have to move out of Brooklyn, although I guess there will be some islands in Williamsburg. Maybe we can all move into those shadow apartments in the high rises.

[#40 posted by Felton, September 5, 2009 8:15 AM]

Takuan: I'll put that on my "to read" list. Grazie!

[#41 posted by Anonymous, September 5, 2009 8:24 AM]

Note to Self: Cancel plants to move to New Orleans.

[#42 posted by Anonymous, September 5, 2009 8:33 AM]

Good map to get people talking, but it seems like they are just shading in areas below a certain elevation, not looking at sea level rise. For example, Death Valley has shading even with a 0 meter rise, because parts of Death Valley are below sea level. As the sea level goes up, more and more of Death Valley gets shaded in, but I'm not seeing a mechanism where sea water gets to Death Valley.

[#43 posted by dilinger, September 5, 2009 10:16 AM]

All of the real estate comments are cute. However, realize that if the sea level rises to these levels, it will most certainly be accompanied by changing climate as the ocean currents and associated temperatures change. The land which remains above water will not likely remain a nice place to live.

[#44 posted by Ugly Canuck, September 5, 2009 11:01 AM]

When,people,not if.
As to Tim hutton's "more volume of water needed as she rises", well,let's not forget that as water warms, it expands.

[#45 posted by MossWatson, September 5, 2009 11:18 AM]

Can we please declare a moratorium on these "global warming = new beach front property!" jokes. seriously.

[#46 posted by Takuan, September 5, 2009 11:21 AM]

you just want that so you can get a monopoly. Then flood the market.

[#47 posted by Takuan, September 5, 2009 11:34 AM]

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/09/090902133625.htm

[#48 posted by Takuan, September 5, 2009 11:38 AM]

squealing... kind of like this at 3:47
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zSBHtk8Lj2Y

[#49 posted by Takuan, September 5, 2009 1:21 PM]

wait, Harper's from Alberta, right?
http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/article/691316

[#50 posted by Takuan, September 5, 2009 1:23 PM]

oh. I see
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/8231006.stm

[#51 posted by UrinalPooper, September 5, 2009 4:11 PM]

Nice... i'll be right on the water.

"always look on the briiiight side of life..."

[#52 posted by MossWatson, September 5, 2009 7:53 PM]

...seriously

[#53 posted by Ugly Canuck, September 6, 2009 4:58 AM]

Yes, Tak: Harper, like GW Bush, "dances with who brought him". Unlike some other leaders I could name:

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/09/02

Now traditionally, what color were Judas goats?

[#54 posted by Timothy Hutton, September 6, 2009 7:18 AM]

Ugly Canuck said:

As to Tim hutton's "more volume of water needed as she rises", well,let's not forget that as water warms, it expands.

I found this article interesting on melting ice and displacement, esp. these paragraphs:

When an ice cube (or an iceberg, which is a big ice cube) floats in water, then by definition the weight of the ice cube is exactly equal to the buoyancy force, which is equal to the weight of the displaced water.

When the ice cube melts, its volume changes, but its weight is conserved (law of the conservation of mass). So the melted water from the ice cube has exactly the same weight as the water that was displaced by the ice cube when it was frozen -- therefore the volume of melted water fits exactly in the previously displaced volume -- and the water level stays the same.

Note that this argument applies only if the ice cube is made of the same water as the water that it is floating in. This is true, for example, with the Arctic ice pack, which is made of frozen sea water. However, it is not true for Antarctic icebergs, which are blocks of fresh-water ice from the continent that are floating in salt-water sea. In this case, we must take into account that the salt water is denser than the fresh water. The fresh-water iceberg still weighs as much as the weight of the displaced salt water, but because of the difference in density, the volume of melted fresh water will be slightly greater than the displaced volume of salt water -- so when the iceberg melts, the water level will rise, although the difference is very small.

Again, I'm asking about the calculation to determine the volume of water required to raise the sea level, not questioning climate changes, their causes, or their effect on the planet.

[#55 posted by Ugly Canuck, September 6, 2009 7:47 AM]

Blast! Off-topic, but further to what i said above.
I see from an internet search that the metaphor of certain leaders as being the political equivalents to "judas goats" (which i had thought to be my original) has in fact been previously used by odious people: people who are rightly held up as objects of public ridicule and contempt for their vile hate-filled racist views.

It's an effective way of snookering political opposition, though: to have odious figures of public contempt and hatred enunciate truths which the rulers find unpalatable. IIRC Bin Laden also said some things about the US learning how to control countries via its experiences in Central America the early 80's.

But if bin Laden says so, therefore it must be false, and thus unworthy of further comment or discussion, right?

So the inconvenient and unpalatable truth need not be addressed: as the stench of the person saying it blinds people to whatever validity the statement may have. It literally becomes unworthy of further discussion.

But I won't be using the 'judas goat" metaphor any more.

[#56 posted by Ugly Canuck, September 6, 2009 7:58 AM]

Ah. Mr.Hutton, your example does not take into account differences of temperature. Water at 70 degrees F. occupies a greater volume than water at 39 degrees F.

Simply warming a (closed) cup of water increases its volume: but not its mass.

That is, the density of water - hence its volume - varies with temperature. And in interesting ways, too. Apparently, pure water is at maximum density (ie is most compact) at 4 degrees C. In either direction from that temp, water becomes less dense: ie, takes up a greater space.

At an oceanic scale, it may matter (pun intended!) as to the absolute level of sea rise, whether the water temp averages 15 degrees C, or 17 degrees C.

[#57 posted by Timothy Hutton, September 6, 2009 9:03 AM]

Ugly Canuck - This is way off the topic of my original question, but let me simply say:

1) It wasn't my example, it was from the linked-to website (SEED).

2) The text I quoted was discussing the water level when ice (from cube to berg-sized) melts, the principle should be the same.

3) The linked-to article mentioned the curious property of water that you mention (varying density around a pivot-point).

4) My original question never mentioned ice, ice caps, melting, or anything else (like absorbancy) - it was simply about how to calculate the amount of water need to raise the ocean levels across the planet, considering the wildly-varying terrain the water covers as it rises.

I purposely left out any discussion about the source of the water that would cause the sea levels to rise. The graphic the original article links to is a very simplistic set of overlays (anything under sea level + "n" meters gets shaded as underwater), I was asking about the amount of water needed to raise the sea level by a certain amount (say 1 meter). For the sake of convienience, let's say aliens were to come in with an inexhaustable supply of saltwater that exactly matches the average temperature of the oceans right now (temp neither rises or lowers), and the polar ice caps are unaffected. Now, if there were a meter measuring the water the aliens added to the oceans to raise the sea level one meter, what would that meter read? That's the question I'm asking...

I'm guessing there isn't an answer - the calculation is likely too complex - because no one has pointed me towards anything (yet).

[#58 posted by arkizzle / Moderator, September 6, 2009 9:35 AM]

"4) My original question never mentioned ice, ice caps, melting, or anything else (like absorbancy) - it was simply about how to calculate the amount of water need to raise the ocean levels across the planet, considering the wildly-varying terrain the water covers as it rises."

Timothy, in your effort to remain utterly abstract (eg. not getting into a discussion of the reasons for rising sea levels) I believe you have misread Canuck's input, or discounted it because you think it unhelpful. It certainly sounds like a pertinent component of your question.

If you are looking at the factors and algorithms need to correctly model the actual resultant coastline after a general increase in water volume (from whatever source, aliens etc), you will likely need to include the new temperatures at different parts of the ocean (which will change, no matter the temperature of the new water being added; as there will be a different surface area for the sun to warm, etc), to get an accurate model.

As Canuck points out, the volume will be different depending on the various oceanic temperatures (which will not stay the same, no matter how much you don't want to entertain that variable), so the new coastline will be too.. by how much is a smarter persons guess^h^h^h^h^h calculation.

[#59 posted by Liz Burgess, September 6, 2009 9:49 AM]

I'm not sure why it thinks the Salton Sea will rise...

[#60 posted by mdh, September 6, 2009 10:19 AM]

@ timothy hutton -

For example, at some point the water that was previously filling the bay area in SF will slip through either a tunnel or a natural passage and start to fill up Lafayette, Concord, and other areas on the other side of the hills - requiring vastly more water to fill that valley...

I see your question, I still think you have it from the wrong end.

The circumference of the earth probably adds a non-trivial amount of water, but (on average) just as many low lying areas will take just as much water to fill today as they did 50 years ago, or 5,000 years ago - and the ocean is still rising (now at at an increasing rate (which I do understand is not your question)).

As the ocean has risen is a face, I assume that previously low lying areas have been filled at some point (as you suggest needs to be worked into this model). But at the end of the day the increased volume minus the low lying infill that has already happened has yielded a measured (rather than the modeled) average rate of change.

Would dry land today take more water to fill than dry land 50 or 5,000 years ago did? There were hills and valleys then too. The measured rate of change has been affected by real geography, now submerged.

How does the fact that land is dry today impact the average rate of it's filling more or less than it did for the land currently underwater?

Imagine that this were a map of 10,000 years ago, and you could raise the sea levels to reflect today's actual coastline. Would you be asking the same question?

[#61 posted by Takuan, September 6, 2009 10:48 AM]

I take comfort in our ignorance.

[#62 posted by Ugly Canuck, September 6, 2009 12:53 PM]

Hmmm..fractals were expressly developed to increase the accuracy of coastline measure and calculation, so that type of complexity (at least) ought not be a show-stopper in calculating the required mass of water to raise sea level by one meter.

The temperature of the water in any model would need to be stated, or assumed to be some given constant, as the volume of water varies with temperature (though not its mass).

Assume all ice on earth has melted. Further assume a temperature of all water everywhere to be 4 degrees C. Finally, assume the slope of the coastline....hehehe...any model would need to be simplified by several stated or unstated assumptions.

But that's true of any models whatsoever of any complex system whatsoever...and coastlines are complex systems (see comment as to fractals and their use, above): what natural system of interest isn't?

[#63 posted by arkizzle / Moderator, September 6, 2009 1:09 PM]

The closest coastline model is probably going to be a fluid simulation in an appropriately high resolution mesh model of the Earth.

At the point of estimating all the water (including ice), and accurately modeling the landmasses, you could choose (or not) to take a temperature map of the oceans to include as an extra data point.

I doubt very much there is an algorithm which will satisfactorily answer the question (including apparently landlocked areas) without running a sim on a high-res model Earth.

[#64 posted by Timothy Hutton, September 6, 2009 1:25 PM]

First off, thanks to Arkizzle, MDH and Ugly Canuck - we all appear to be on the same page now.

I appreciate the absorption rate and the temperature affecting volume issues, but if I stated the goal was a number within 10% of the actual amount, that should provide for most of those variables (surely water doesn't change volume by more than 10% between 4 degrees Centigrade and either, say, room temperature or frozen solid, does it (a sincere question))...

If all coastlines were like the White Cliffs of Dover the calculation would be easy, since the surface area of the seas wouldn't change, and if all coastlines were like New Orleans, it would be a real nightmare.

Also, as an interesting side question, what about the influence of side-effects? For example, let's say for the sake of argument that the sea level was rising (slowly) due to green house emissions. Let's then say that Death Valley was to flood, as a direct result of that rising sea level. At some point, places like Death Valley could support trees and other greenery that would, in some amount, help to cut down greenhouse gases, slowing the rate of rise - and as that happened across the planet at various locations, might that have an interesting impact on global warming?

Just an interesting thought... Thanks for the feedback.

[#65 posted by Ugly Canuck, September 6, 2009 1:25 PM]

Agreed Arkizzle.

Nevertheless, Bangladesh will have serious problems, soon enough.

As to flooding of inland areas: remember the Black Sea. And indeed, the Mediterranean itself.

[#66 posted by Takuan, September 6, 2009 1:25 PM]

faster tans!
http://www.ottawacitizen.com/technology/Ultraviolet+radiation+will+rise+cent+scientists/1968392/story.html

[#67 posted by Ugly Canuck, September 6, 2009 1:32 PM]

better than an "atom tan", though...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s6GGg6JKfA8

[#68 posted by Takuan, September 6, 2009 1:50 PM]

lots more on youtube
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6szDWFeT5dw

[#69 posted by Anonymous, September 6, 2009 5:14 PM]

A similar flood map has been created at RMIT University, highlighting which residential areas will be flooded around Melbourne Australia:

http://www.rmit.net.au/browse%3BID=6tha567p4mcaz

[#70 posted by Takuan, September 6, 2009 5:23 PM]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-kerry/we-cant-ignore-the-securi_b_272815.html

[#71 posted by Haakon IV, September 6, 2009 6:59 PM]

@timothy hutton

If I understand your question, you're asking how fast will the increased area of the ocean slow the rise in sea level with a given volume of seawater added. I think everyone is overthinking this with fractal coastlines and such. The surface area of the current oceans is much, much larger than the increase in surface area will be with a few meters (or tens of meters) of sea level rise. You are correct that you need to know this to give a precise answer, but that is going to affect the 4th or 5th decimal place. The Earth is about 71% water, and as an example, about 0.01% of the Earth's surface is between sea level and 10 meters elevation.

[#72 posted by vjinterkosmos, September 7, 2009 12:03 AM]

Just finished "Flood" by Stephen Baxter (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flood_(Baxter_novel)) last night.
Didn't sleep much.

[#73 posted by BritSwedeGuy, September 7, 2009 4:28 AM]

"London is drowning and I...
Live by the river!"

[#74 posted by imipak, September 7, 2009 5:25 AM]

Those asking basic questions: realclimate.org and the IPCC Summary for Policymakers (and the rest of the Fourth Assessment Report) explain all. Warning, it's hideously complex. But yeah, we're all fucked.

Oh yeah, and the American SouthWest is going to turn back into it's normal climate, ie arid desert. No more inland empire in California.

http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=national%20geographic%20megadrought%20south-west&meta=

[#75 posted by Takuan, September 7, 2009 8:26 AM]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Water_and_Power_Alliance

[#76 posted by Anonymous, September 7, 2009 9:16 AM]

Watching Cape Cod turn into a string of islands made me wonder what a drop in sea level might look like also. What sort of sea level DROP might it take to reconnect Britain to Europe? Might Nantucket and Martha's Vineyard merge?

What archaeological site might emerge from the mud as the oceans receded?

[#77 posted by Antinous / Moderator, September 7, 2009 10:24 AM]

Oh yeah, and the American SouthWest is going to turn back into it's normal climate, ie arid desert.

I wish. We've gone from summer dewpoints below freezing to dewpoints in the 60s and 70s in the last 10 years. Our daytime highs are slightly lower, but our nighttime lows are miserably higher.

[#78 posted by gollux, September 7, 2009 11:22 AM]

Wow, you mean I can sleep in a tent in Nevada in mid July and after soldiering through a 101 degree day, I won't be waking up in the morning with frost on everything?

[#79 posted by Antinous / Moderator, September 7, 2009 1:26 PM]

Wow, you mean I can sleep in a tent in Nevada in mid July and after soldiering through a 101 degree day, I won't be waking up in the morning with frost on everything?

Our nighttime lows are in the 80s and 90s. Low desert and high desert are quite different.

[#80 posted by Ugly Canuck, September 7, 2009 3:13 PM]

Late breaking news on the "sinking land" front:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article6823281.ece

-tres mysterioso!

Really bad news on climate change:

http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/article/691868

-maybe the whole system was more finely balanced than we had thought,eh?

A link for Britswedeguy :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FiVvA9YQpiI

-it's always better with music....

[#81 posted by Ugly Canuck, September 7, 2009 3:18 PM]

But we won't need climate change to ruin the world: we'll do itourselves...anyway, the eggheads are not optimistic:

http://wikileaks.org/wiki/EUISS:_What_ambitions_for_European_defence_in_2020%2C_Jul_2009

[#82 posted by Takuan, September 7, 2009 4:10 PM]

hah!
http://thetyee.ca/Opinion/2009/09/07/NewMonkeyTrial/

[#83 posted by Anonymous, September 7, 2009 7:20 PM]

Certainly one has to choose a single image to represent the idea when writing the post, and the visual effect is probably not very striking on the continental or global scales, but I feel obliged to point out that the southern tip of Manhattan island in no way represents "the world." There, I have ground my personal Yankeecentrism axe. Now I rest.

[#84 posted by Anonymous, September 7, 2009 10:14 PM]

I've been trying to find a map that shows the opposite; i.e. what the coastlines looked like during the last major ice age.
Anyone got a link?

[#85 posted by Anonymous, September 10, 2009 1:44 PM]

Timothy Hutton,

Temperature doesn't matter much in the liquid state of water it seems to me.
http://www.simetric.co.uk/si_water.htm

Temperature (°C) Volume (mL)
17.0 1.0022
26.0 1.0043

Great variation in water temp changes water volume by a tiny fraction of a percent. Water when frozen increases in volume by about 9% - now there's something to calculate for. So anyway...your question of how much water would it take to flood those regions.

That's a great question. Someonez with mores time on their hands and some good analytical and math skills will be required.

I think I'm going to make a simple scale model for fun and melt some big blocks of ice.

[#86 posted by Ugly Canuck, September 10, 2009 1:54 PM]

#84: IIRC national geographic ran such a maponce...something like how the world looked during the ice age...

http://trylobyte.files.wordpress.com/2008/04/ice_age_map.gif