Global warming may have already passed irreversible tipping point

[Beefhammer]

Sorry, but anyone posting Cato bullshit isn't being honest

NOAA would like to have a word with you.

We've known PC2 is a dishonest poster since his first post.

[Edge-]

STEM can solve ACC.

It absolutely can and they've been providing solutions (there is no single solution) for decades. You just seem to consistently reject those solutions in favor of your preferred science-fiction where they come up with solutions that don't require us to change anything about our current lifestyles.

- - - Updated - - -

My point earlier was that you seem to think science can have a methodology that can determine politics/policy.

Replace that nonsense word with "inform" and you're on the right path.

It's absurd, science is primarily about understanding the natural world, it has nothing to do with politics

Does politics not happen in the "natural world"? Should say, considerations about the longterm sustainability of fresh water sources and using ground water to supplement shortfalls never be considered because that's "natural world science" that somehow doesn't impact the millions of citizens and businesses relying on that water and the expectation that they can continue doing so safely?

unless you specifically have a political explanation that can be physically *tested*.

No, this is just your arbitrary strawman. Nothing more than a convenient dummy to beat up that doesn't argue back.

[Shadowferal]

science is primarily about understanding the natural world, it has nothing to do with politics unless you specifically have a political explanation that can be physically *tested*.

This is laughable.
Science has become very political in the past year. Maybe you should pay attention..

[cubby]

Very interesting portrayal of expected sea level rise effects on various cities around the world after a 3 degree Celsius temperature increase from human caused global warming.

[Forogil]

Very interesting portrayal of expected sea level rise effects on various cities around the world after a 3 degree Celsius temperature increase from human caused global warming.

Yes, it's striking but does it have anything to do with reality in this century or did they just find a way to make scenes look flooded?

As far as I can tell:
Plaza de la Catedral in Havana is 9 meter above sea-level at the moment, and is at least 2 meter below sea-level in that picture.
Buckingham palace is 6 meter above sea-level at the moment, and is about 1 meter below sea-level in that picture.
Durban city hall is 23 meter above sea-level at the moment, and is about 1 meter below sea-level in that picture.
Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalaya in Mumbai is 11 meters above sea-level at the moment, and is about 4 meters below sea-level in that picture.
Temple of Literature in Hanoi, Vietnam is is 15 meters above sea-level at the moment, and is about 0.5 meters below sea-level in that picture.

Obviously sea-level rise will not be completely uniform, but 7-24 meter seems like way too large difference; and even 7 meters seems to require that Greenland melts more than half which according to IPCC previously has been estimated to be centuries away. Above 10 meters not even Greenland suffices.

Obviously something just at the coast is more likely to be flooded - so a pier or similarly at the coast is at high risk, but Hanoi is like 90 km from the coast, and the lowest part is 5 meter above sea-level.

[Mihalik]

sip.

Averages.

Averages.

A 1m sea level rise on average can translate into ten times that during storm events.

You, like how the difference between being half a meter above water or half a meter under water in Venice is just a stormy day.

[Edge-]

Unfortunately that's just clickbait, not based on any actual science and such "articles" do more harm than good. Tabloid level of "research".

When you don't bother clicking on the article or the linked studies it's easy to say that there's no science and it's just clickbait.

You'd be wrong, but you can sure say/type that.

[Edge-]

It is not the first time such "research" was done. It happens every few years with similar pictures, just in time when people forgot that prognosis made in last research didn't pan out.

Except that it largely does. Not exactly 100% as predicted - predicting the future ain't an exact science - but the warnings have largely come to pass and been overall accurate.

This is just bog standard climate change denial and not worth taking seriously. I'll listen to a bunch of experts on a topic over some random on the internet, just like I'd listen to mechanics telling me about why my car doesn't work instead of polling randoms on the internet.

[Forogil]

Averages.

Averages.

A 1m sea level rise on average can translate into ten times that during storm events.

Wrong on two levels - sea level rise during storms is additive not multiplicative - so you add a few meters (now and in the future; depending on geography etc) - you don't multiply the sea level rise.

And these are not storm event pictures. Just look at them: calm water, clean blue sky!

[cubby]

It is not the first time such "research" was done. It happens every few years with similar pictures, just in time when people forgot that prognosis made in last research didn't pan out.

In case you didn't catch it, Edge is saying you're WRONG about the article I posted. It is in fact based on science, has good sources, and is not "click bait". You really ought to open things before you comment on them, otherwise you're just posting click bait comments.

- - - Updated - - -

Yes, it's striking but does it have anything to do with reality in this century or did they just find a way to make scenes look flooded?

As far as I can tell:
Plaza de la Catedral in Havana is 9 meter above sea-level at the moment, and is at least 2 meter below sea-level in that picture.
Buckingham palace is 6 meter above sea-level at the moment, and is about 1 meter below sea-level in that picture.
Durban city hall is 23 meter above sea-level at the moment, and is about 1 meter below sea-level in that picture.
Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalaya in Mumbai is 11 meters above sea-level at the moment, and is about 4 meters below sea-level in that picture.
Temple of Literature in Hanoi, Vietnam is is 15 meters above sea-level at the moment, and is about 0.5 meters below sea-level in that picture.

Obviously sea-level rise will not be completely uniform, but 7-24 meter seems like way too large difference; and even 7 meters seems to require that Greenland melts more than half which according to IPCC previously has been estimated to be centuries away. Above 10 meters not even Greenland suffices.

Obviously something just at the coast is more likely to be flooded - so a pier or similarly at the coast is at high risk, but Hanoi is like 90 km from the coast, and the lowest part is 5 meter above sea-level.

The visuals are great, but the article itself is well researched. I would hit those links in the article, that the authors cited, for better info. Frankly, I don't know much about how sea levels rising will impact various areas - I would ignorantly assume a uniform rise and impact, but I just do not know.

I did have a question for @Edge or @Endus - how are cities able to "prevent" sea level rises with man made blockades? Wouldn't the sea just rise up around and come in from the other side? Or are these levies and such so large that they would actually be effective?

[Forogil]

Except that it largely does. Not exactly 100% as predicted - predicting the future ain't an exact science - but the warnings have largely come to pass and been overall accurate.

That is true for the actual warnings - not the hyperbole you see in news-stories.

Look at https://www.climate.gov/news-feature...obal-sea-level - their extreme scenario for 2100 has a sea level rise of 2.5 m. Obviously that will be a problem for many, but it is not 7 m - and certainly not 24 m.

[Endus]

I did have a question for @Edge or @Endus - how are cities able to "prevent" sea level rises with man made blockades? Wouldn't the sea just rise up around and come in from the other side? Or are these levies and such so large that they would actually be effective?

The secret is that it's mostly about storm surges.

Sea level naturally varies; there's tides, there's a few other factors as well which are why some tides are higher/lower. Then you've got waves on top of wherever the tidal level is at, and waves can be bigger or smaller too. That natural variance is already built into infrastructure; if your city's not regularly flooded, it's because existing measures account for this natural variance already. There's also storm surges; storms are low-pressure events, and that low pressure actually allows the ocean to "bulge" upwards somewhat, increasing sea level further (some people think it's bigger waves, but it isn't).

So, sea level increasing by a few inches pushes all those values up by the same amount (roughly; it's inevitably more complicated in detail but this'll do for the explanation". Normal tides encroach closer to the built limits, storm surges become increasingly more likely to top over the existing limits.

It isn't like filling a bathtub and suddenly it's pouring over the edge. Think instead like you've got your kid in the bathtub, and your kid is the Moon/the weather systems in this analogy. They're sloshing around and the water's coming right up close to the edge, but still mostly staying in the tub. Right? Now add another three inches of water. NOW there's gonna be water all over the floors and your bathroom's a mess. Even if the water would be well within the tub's capacity if there were no kid sloshing around (no tidal forces from the Moon, no weather events triggering storm surges).

Storm surges piled on top of a high tide mark is where you'll see flooding events like what happened to NYC in Hurricane Sandy. That's the breaking points that are being hit right now, because existing systems were mostly built for conditions from the '50s, and can't handle the rising seas that push those limits.

You also can get some more-complex variants. I did some work with Charlottetown PEI (part of a team; I'm not a solo wizard) on their adaptation options, and they're lucky enough to have a wide harbour basin with a narrow entrance. One option proposed that we didn't expect to be adopted due to cost was an actual seagate on the harbor entrance. It's about a kilometer across at the narrowest point, and some of that would be seawall not gate, but the idea is you overbuild the seawall/gate for expected conditions, and when there's a storm surge coming, you close the seagate. Then, it acts like any other dam or lock; it seals so the rising waters can't pass through into the harbor, protecting it and the city's waterfront. While it involved relative heavy construction at that one point, it was actually less overall than some other options, like a closer seawall project. This was highly reliant on the local geography, though; for a lot of cities, just building a bigger, higher wall is basically the only real option, other than trying to raise/floodproof the buildings themselves (also an option; you can look at Venice, Italy for a functional example though that started due to the land sinking, not the seas rising).

Adapting to mitigate these effects, for the most part, is gonna be very, very expensive. NYC is already investing billions into their projects.

- - - Updated - - -

That is true for the actual warnings - not the hyperbole you see in news-stories.

Look at https://www.climate.gov/news-feature...obal-sea-level - their extreme scenario for 2100 has a sea level rise of 2.5 m. Obviously that will be a problem for many, but it is not 7 m - and certainly not 24 m.

It boils down to not actually looking at the study that produced the images, and not understanding what they're talking about.

Using state-of-the-art new global elevation and population data, we show here that, under high emissions scenarios leading to 4 ○C warming and a median projected 8.9 m of global mean sea level rise within a roughly 200- to 2000-year envelope,

They're not looking at 2100. They're taking a much longer-frame look at warming. If we hit 3C of warming by 2100, sea levels won't stop rising in 2100, so pulling figures for projected SLR by 2100 as a counterpoint is just . . . ignoring what they're actually talking about to point at a straw man.

https://iopscience.iop.org/article/1...48-9326/ac2e6b

[Forogil]

The visuals are great, but the article itself is well researched. I would hit those links in the article, that the authors cited, for better info. Frankly, I don't know much about how sea levels rising will impact various areas - I would ignorantly assume a uniform rise and impact, but I just do not know.

I cannot see that the CNN article even links to the article from Climate Central https://www.climatecentral.org/news/...ng-our-future; although they mention it a lot. And that press-release by Climate Central also seems centered on their photo-realistic images - they don't even mention how much sea-level rise there are the various places.

Digging deeper we see that it's worse than I feared in terms of misleading, as the main scientific paper is https://www.pnas.org/content/112/44/13508 and they are not projecting what will happen before the year 2,100, but before the year 4,000 based on the future impact of the Carbon emissions (unless we do something radical - like CCS).

I did have a question for @Edge or @Endus - how are cities able to "prevent" sea level rises with man made blockades? Wouldn't the sea just rise up around and come in from the other side? Or are these levies and such so large that they would actually be effective?

26% of the Netherlands is below sea level, the lowest point is 6.7 m below. If there's a will it can be done.

[Endus]

Digging deeper we see that it's worse than I feared in terms of misleading

By "misleading", you mean "you made a bunch of assumptions based on nothing and on checking the actual paper, found out your assumptions were wrong, but that's somehow the researchers' fault and not yours for making faulty, baseless assumptions in the first place".

[Forogil]

Using state-of-the-art new global elevation and population data, we show here that, under high emissions scenarios leading to 4 ○C warming and a median projected 8.9 m of global mean sea level rise within a roughly 200- to 2000-year envelope,

They're not looking at 2100. They're taking a much longer-frame look at warming. If we hit 3C of warming by 2100, sea levels won't stop rising in 2100, so pulling figures for projected SLR by 2100 as a counterpoint is just . . . ignoring what they're actually talking about to point at a straw man.

I couldn't see that link in the CNN-article.

CNN shows images with a sea-level rise of 24 m and discusses 3°C, and suggest the data is within the next 100 years.
Article discusses 8.9 m increase for 4°C during the next 2,000 years.

That's click-bait reporting.

- - - Updated - - -

By "misleading", you mean "you made a bunch of assumptions based on nothing and on checking the actual paper, found out your assumptions were wrong, but that's somehow the researchers' fault and not yours for making faulty, baseless assumptions in the first place".

Nope. Here's what CNN writes:

"In less-optimistic scenarios, where emissions continue to climb beyond 2050, the planet could reach 3 degrees as early as the 2060s or 2070s, and the oceans will continue to rise for decades beyond that before they reach peak levels."

Note that they consistently write "3 degrees"; never more.

Writing "decades" and meaning 2,000 years is misleading. Rome fell decades ago?

They picture a sea level rise of 24 m in places. That's a bit above 8.9 m.

Even their own visualization tool doesn't show Durban city hall getting its foundation wet before 3.7°C - but still they claim that it will be flooded already 3°C in the image. Maybe their data-set is broken - but generating photo-realistic images is obviously more important than correct facts.

[Endus]

I couldn't see that link in the CNN-article.

I literally went to Climate Central and the link's right on the front page. This isn't a complaint; CNN was clear as to their source.

CNN shows images with a sea-level rise of 24 m and discusses 3°C, and suggest the data is within the next 100 years.

They did no such thing.

This is where you made unwarranted assumptions and are trying to blame the research you didn't bother reading first.

Article discusses 8.9 m increase for 4°C during the next 2,000 years.

That's inaccurate. 8.9m of global mean sea level rise, during the next 200-2000 years.

For someone who's complaining about "clickbait", you're sure using those tactics yourself.

- - - Updated - - -

Nope. Here's what CNN writes:

"In less-optimistic scenarios, where emissions continue to climb beyond 2050, the planet could reach 3 degrees as early as the 2060s or 2070s, and the oceans will continue to rise for decades beyond that before they reach peak levels."

Note that they consistently write "3 degrees"; never more.

Writing "decades" and meaning 2,000 years is misleading. Rome fell decades ago?

The picture a sea level rise of 24 m in places. That's a bit above 8.9 m.

CNN is not solely talking about that one bit of research.

So, again, you made a bunch of unwarranted assumptions, and you're trying to blame CNN and Climate Central for your failure to understand the actual research.

Even their own visualization tool doesn't show Durban city hall getting its foundation wet before 3.7°C - but still they claim that it will be flooded already 3°C in the image. Maybe their data-set is broken - but generating photo-realistic images is obviously more important than correct facts.

I seriously think you fail to understand what "global mean sea level rise" actually means, in practice. Particularly when you factor in tides and storm surges, in particular.

"Mean sea level" is not set at the high-tide mark.

[Forogil]

I literally went to Climate Central and the link's right on the front page.

Of Climate Central - not CNN. Including images from a site, but not the linking to it is bad reporting.

They did no such thing.

Wrong, they wrote "decades" after 2060s and 2070s. That suggests the data is within the next 100 years.

And none of the images indicate the sea-level rise at the specific places, and they know that the elevations they use are often inaccurate.

This is the kind of bad reporting that people remember and they later point to when they say climate scientists are scare-mongers and haven't been right before. Not realizing that is a problem on your side.

- - - Updated - - -

CNN is not solely talking about that one bit of research.

That doesn't make it better.

As they don't provide sources for other parts of research either - CNN link to CNN; and the main point of the article are those images - that are given without linking to the source.

I seriously think you fail to understand what "global mean sea level rise" actually means, in practice. Particularly when you factor in tides and storm surges, in particular.

Storm surges on a windless day with a blue sky!

Sure, hun. That will add 10 meter more.

[cubby]

This is the kind of bad reporting that people remember and they later point to when they say climate scientists are scare-mongers and haven't been right before. Not realizing that is a problem on your side.

Actually, this is the kind of bad posting that comes from someone not reading the article and sources before commenting and then not having the intellectual honesty to just admit they were wrong and move on. You had every chance, and didn't take it.

As they don't provide sources for other parts of research either - CNN link to CNN; and the main point of the article are those images - that are given without linking to the source.

That CNN article has at least a dozen embedded sources - did you click on any of them?

[Endus]

Of Climate Central - not CNN. Including images from a site, but not the linking to it is bad reporting.

They very clearly cited their source. They're not obligated to link it directly, and it's trivial to locate for anyone who wants to do so.

Wrong, they wrote "decades" after 2060s and 2070s. That suggests the data is within the next 100 years.

Again, CNN is talking about more than this one report. Your confusion is not an argument that CNN's reporting was flawed.

And none of the images indicate the sea-level rise at the specific places, and they know that the elevations they use are often inaccurate.

This is the kind of bad reporting that people remember and they later point to when they say climate scientists are scare-mongers and haven't been right before. Not realizing that is a problem on your side.

Yes. They do. You've provided no argument on this.

As they don't provide sources for other parts of research either - CNN link to CNN; and the main point of the article are those images - that are given without linking to the source.

This is not correct. Here's a hint; "research" is not a concept settled by "I followed one link and it didn't tell me what I want and now I'm done".

Storm surges on a windless day with a blue sky!

You're literally just explaining that you don't know what storm surges are or how weather works, here. Also, apparently, not recognizing that it's an artist's depiction and not literally a photo from the future.

[Forogil]

That CNN article has at least a dozen embedded sources - did you click on any of them?

Yes, I counted a dozen embedded sources to other CNN-articles.

That's why I wrote CNN link to CNN.

So, to quote some:

Actually, this is the kind of bad posting that comes from someone not reading the article and sources before commenting and then not having the intellectual honesty to just admit they were wrong and move on. You had every chance, and didn't take it.

- - - Updated - - -

They're not obligated to link it directly, and it's trivial to locate for anyone who wants to do so.

It's good reporting to link to sources.
CNN doesn't: CNN links to CNN.

Yes. They do.

I stated that the images don't indicate the actual sea-level rise in terms of elevation. That's why I had to look up the specific places to see what the actual values are - and noted that they are not really sure about elevations either; so we are back to pretty images.

If you claim otherwise you have to provide evidence. "They do" isn't an argument.

This is not correct. Here's a hint; "research" is not a concept settled by "I followed one link and it didn't tell me what I want and now I'm done".

There were a dozen sources in the article, all to CNN - none to outside article.

I don't have to click on all of them to see that a link saying "cnn.com..." leads to CNN.

Storm surge is the abnormal rise in seawater level during a storm, https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/...stormtide.html

You're literally just explaining that you don't know what storm surges are

Also, apparently, not recognizing that it's an artist's depiction and not literally a photo from the future.

A photo-realistic image without a relation to reality is just a fake.

You still don't realize that these images is what people remember and later say: climate scientist were wrong, we don't have water outside Durban city hall.