Street View + Climate Change = World Under Water

It would be very neat if they actually did worldwide calculations of the actual waterlevels as they will be when the Greenland ice-sheet has melted in 20 years or so. That is between 6 and 9 meters ocean sea-level rise. That would not only be neat, but actually useful.
 
Hmm, I think it would have been a lot more interesting and impactful if you could set a rise in sea levels and then compare it to your address using altitude data.

Even if all the ice caps melted the sea level would "only" rise about 200 feet. I'm not trying to comment on climate change or the impact of sea level rise on the worlds (human) populations, but rather point out that I happen to live at a location that is 1300ft above sea level.

That renders this untruthful and gimmicky, rather than impactful and interesting, IMHO.
 
TastEPlasma said:
Hmm, I think it would have been a lot more interesting and impactful if you could set a rise in sea levels and then compare it to your address using altitude data.

Even if all the ice caps melted the sea level would "only" rise about 200 feet. I'm not trying to comment on climate change or the impact of sea level rise on the worlds (human) populations, but rather point out that I happen to live at a location that is 1300ft above sea level.

That renders this untruthful and gimmicky, rather than impactful and interesting, IMHO.
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If your home is at a location 1300ft above sea level, and the sea rises 200 ft, your home is going to look absolutely nothing like it does now anyway, every major city in the US besides Denver moves in to your backyard.
 
yawn...yep...ever since the north pole shifted....and what caused climate change in the 1600s (the "mini ice age"...) ? I guess you can't blame humans for that one eh? Ah the conceit of humans to actually think they affect the Earth's climate...LOL..And the fact that this has happened to the Earth several times before humans were even here...so stop with the smug "global warming" comments...k?
 
I think like globally, I read somewhere, that 50% of the world's population is living on a coastline and that number is higher in the US. It would be total suckness to see stuff like that happen, but the good thing is that sea level rise isn't gonna be like an overnight thing so people don't have to start running away from the ocean to escape a sudden huge flood.

Oh well, at least Florida will finally go away. That place was a lame, alligator infested swamp anyhow.
 
phawkins633 said:
And the fact that this has happened to the Earth several times before humans were even here...so stop with the smug "global warming" comments...k?
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You're totally right, the shift we're seeing on this scale has happened many times before. The only difference is it normally takes about a hundred thousand years instead of a hundred.
 
According to that link to national geographic I posted, it would take an estimated 5000 years for all the antarctic to melt. If that were to occur linearly (unlikely), it would be an average increase of .48in./1.22cm per year. Not exactly a tidal wave.
 
thenapalm said:
This is exactly the reason nothing will be done until it's too late. People have no concept of time when things happen this slowly.
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People in the US are a lot more concerned about fixing short-term problems that are kinda meaningless in relationship to the pretty drastic impact even a little climate change can have. It's sorta sad to see it happening even when there's a huge pile of supporting evidence. We're way too focused on narrow next week and next year junk. :(
 
tetris42 said:
You're totally right, the shift we're seeing on this scale has happened many times before. The only difference is it normally takes about a hundred thousand years instead of a hundred.
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It wont happen in 100 years.

Only gullible people think that.
 
thenapalm said:
This is exactly the reason nothing will be done until it's too late. People have no concept of time when things happen this slowly.
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Morbidly obese people drink supersized sodas because they can't feel the difference from one soda. The effect of that is undeniable and obvious, doesn't stop them.
 
Ah yes, climate change, fuel for the liberal political machine.
 
leeleatherwood said:
It wont happen in 100 years.

Only gullible people think that.
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Even if someone doesn't buy into it, I don't think that it justifies being wasteful or just ignoring the idea of saving energy. Not that you are or anything, but there are sooo many people driving around huge trucks and SUVs with only themselves in them to get to and from work everyday while leaving a bunch of things plugged in and turned on at home while they aren't even there to use those things. It seems sorta like a no-duh from a "save piles of moolah" perspective which keeps short-sightedness happy and mixes pretty well with conservation too.
 
SDplus said:
It would be very neat if they actually did worldwide calculations of the actual waterlevels as they will be when the Greenland ice-sheet has melted in 20 years or so. That is between 6 and 9 meters ocean sea-level rise. That would not only be neat, but actually useful.
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You mean the seas where much higher when the Vikings origianlly settled greenland and the land was actually farmable instead of covered with ice? Then how do you explain that these coastal areas Greenland where not under water back then?
 
Cali3350 said:
If your home is at a location 1300ft above sea level, and the sea rises 200 ft, your home is going to look absolutely nothing like it does now anyway, every major city in the US besides Denver moves in to your backyard.
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just for giggles i decided to enter in denver and of course it shows denver as being under the same amount of water as everywhere else.

so yeah.... the statement that this is really untruthful and gimmicky holds true.
 
I don't know shit, but did you ever drop an ice cube in a glass of water? When it melts the water level in the glass remains constant. Something in physics about displacement. If all the icebergs melted I think sea level would remain the same, just a guess.
 
Cali3350 said:
If your home is at a location 1300ft above sea level, and the sea rises 200 ft, your home is going to look absolutely nothing like it does now anyway, every major city in the US besides Denver moves in to your backyard.
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Unless you have 100 acres of land and your house is in the middle of it.

In that case I sell 50% of my property for millions and still have a ton of privacy. :D
 
We simply need to educate people to stay more hydrated, then we can easily compensate for rising water levels by drinking it.
 
CreepyUncleGoogle said:
Oh well, at least Florida will finally go away. That place was a lame, alligator infested swamp anyhow.
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WTF?! Are you serious? I've always thought you were a troll, but flooding Florida to get rid of it isn't the best answer. You said it yourself - ALLIGATOR INFESTED SWAMP. Where are those 'gator's going to go when it floods? They'll move to the new swamps and waterways. Keep them in the current swamps, not in my backyard. Unless I am able to hunt and eat them, I'll stay back. :)
 
whiz187 said:
I don't know shit, but did you ever drop an ice cube in a glass of water? When it melts the water level in the glass remains constant. Something in physics about displacement. If all the icebergs melted I think sea level would remain the same, just a guess.
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What about glaciers and other bodies of ice that are not displacing the ocean at all right now?
 
whiz187 said:
I don't know shit, but did you ever drop an ice cube in a glass of water? When it melts the water level in the glass remains constant. Something in physics about displacement. If all the icebergs melted I think sea level would remain the same, just a guess.
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Ice that is IN THE WATER has already displaced it (when you drop the ice cube in the water level rises, that's when it was displaced). None of the ice you see above sea level is currently displacing anything.
 
Ur_Mom said:
WTF?! Are you serious? I've always thought you were a troll, but flooding Florida to get rid of it isn't the best answer. You said it yourself - ALLIGATOR INFESTED SWAMP. Where are those 'gator's going to go when it floods? They'll move to the new swamps and waterways. Keep them in the current swamps, not in my backyard. Unless I am able to hunt and eat them, I'll stay back. :)
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Well, besides covering it with ocean, how else are we gonna get rid of it? It's not like it's on its own tectonic plate and is gonna break off from the rest of the US and go away by itself like California will eventually (thank goodness) and I don't see all those lazy people living in Florida digging a big ditch so there's a waterway keeping Florida's awful influence to itself. There really isn't any other way of solving the Florida Problem other than by global warming and melting ice. :mad:
 
CreepyUncleGoogle said:
Well, besides covering it with ocean, how else are we gonna get rid of it? It's not like it's on its own tectonic plate and is gonna break off from the rest of the US and go away by itself like California will eventually (thank goodness) and I don't see all those lazy people living in Florida digging a big ditch so there's a waterway keeping Florida's awful influence to itself. There really isn't any other way of solving the Florida Problem other than by global warming and melting ice. :mad:
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Safest bet is to just start building a 20' tall wall of sandbags around the state now. That'll keep them on their side and be added insurance that useful states aren't flooded.
 
tetris42 said:
You're totally right, the shift we're seeing on this scale has happened many times before. The only difference is it normally takes about a hundred thousand years instead of a hundred.
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Depends on your perspective. We have never been around for one of the major shifts in terms of recorded history. As a geologist, one thing we don't have a firm grasp on is the rate of change. We know it takes a long time to change, but do you see an acceleration at any point along the curve towards that change.

Let's say it's an ice age, and over 100,000 years you transition into a hot age. That rate of change from 0 to 99,900 is 1x. Over the last 100 years the rate may change to 2x or 3x. The geologic record is simply not designed for 100 or even 1000 year inspections.

One thing to note is that, eventually, the climate will change on it's own. The ice will melt, and sea levels WILL rise. If it's the natural course of the Earth to have this cyclic changes in climate, should we even tamper with that? If we are against 'negative' climate change - in essence a global warming event that may be partially caused by humans - then when the Earth naturally gets colder or warmer should we tamper to prevent those scenarios?

The periods in which Earth has been a relatively nice place for people to live, climate was, is very few and far between. The geologic records is littered with catastrophic events.
 
Ducman69 said:
Safest bet is to just start building a 20' tall wall of sandbags around the state now. That'll keep them on their side and be added insurance that useful states aren't flooded.
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That's a good idea too! It'll give us a 5,000 year head start on getting rid of that terrible place if we have a sandbag wall now.
 
Perhaps OT, but the only way that any species can survive in the long term is to become independent enough to not need one very tiny specific rock to have a very specific climate. Space faring races at least have the potential to survive for millions or even billions of years. Planet bound species, eh, not so much.
 
CreepyUncleGoogle said:
Well, besides covering it with ocean, how else are we gonna get rid of it? It's not like it's on its own tectonic plate and is gonna break off from the rest of the US and go away by itself like California will eventually (thank goodness) and I don't see all those lazy people living in Florida digging a big ditch so there's a waterway keeping Florida's awful influence to itself. There really isn't any other way of solving the Florida Problem other than by global warming and melting ice. :mad:
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I don't care about the people. I'm just concerned about alligators getting relocated to other places.

Wait - does California go away, too? I can deal with those gators if Florida AND California are gone. :D
 
Ur_Mom said:
I don't care about the people. I'm just concerned about alligators getting relocated to other places.

Wait - does California go away, too? I can deal with those gators if Florida AND California are gone. :D
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Yup, California getting eaten by earthquakes comes free if you act now and call within the next 5,000 years to flood Florida under the Atlantic! In fact, if you call right away, our operators will throw in a free, lifetime supply of alligator-proof fences for your yard!* Don't wait! Call now!

*Just pay separate shipping and processing.
 
CreepyUncleGoogle said:
Even if someone doesn't buy into it, I don't think that it justifies being wasteful or just ignoring the idea of saving energy. Not that you are or anything, but there are sooo many people driving around huge trucks and SUVs with only themselves in them to get to and from work everyday while leaving a bunch of things plugged in and turned on at home while they aren't even there to use those things. It seems sorta like a no-duh from a "save piles of moolah" perspective which keeps short-sightedness happy and mixes pretty well with conservation too.
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Whether AGW is bullshit or not, I don't know any normal people who believe pumping poison into the environment in any measurable amount is a good idea. However, the belief that alternative energy has a shot in hell at fixing this problem are beyond naive. Are we going to quit using plastics? Electronics? Medicines? Pesticides?

We'll never be able to re-balance our ecosystem with a limitless human population. We're essentially 6 billion apex predators who not only eat, but live in large structures, utilize tons of hazardous materials and can live for 110 years. That's a recipe for disaster that will only be re-balanced when the planet kills most of us.
 
leeleatherwood said:
It wont happen in 100 years.

Only gullible people think that.
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I wasn't talking about flooding, the guy I was replying to was saying we're having no effect on global warming. I'm talking about the level of climate shift we've already had over the past 100 years normally takes about a hundred thousand.
 
SilverSliver said:
One thing to note is that, eventually, the climate will change on it's own. The ice will melt, and sea levels WILL rise. If it's the natural course of the Earth to have this cyclic changes in climate, should we even tamper with that? If we are against 'negative' climate change - in essence a global warming event that may be partially caused by humans - then when the Earth naturally gets colder or warmer should we tamper to prevent those scenarios?.
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Well on a timescale of it happening naturally, we may already be extinct or evolved into something else by then, so I don't think it's worth worrying about. More generally however, I think the bottom line is we generally want humanity and a good level of diverse life in general to survive. So if we were facing some apocalyptic cooling event, sure, global warming should be our priority, but that's not really the situation we're in at all. That would imply we had some purpose to what we're doing. In our current case, I'd say it's mostly just a huge side effect of 150 years of industrial growth.
 
Draxanoth said:
Whether AGW is bullshit or not, I don't know any normal people who believe pumping poison into the environment in any measurable amount is a good idea. However, the belief that alternative energy has a shot in hell at fixing this problem are beyond naive. Are we going to quit using plastics? Electronics? Medicines? Pesticides?

We'll never be able to re-balance our ecosystem with a limitless human population. We're essentially 6 billion apex predators who not only eat, but live in large structures, utilize tons of hazardous materials and can live for 110 years. That's a recipe for disaster that will only be re-balanced when the planet kills most of us.
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Yup, I don't at all disagree that there's some sort of planetary carrying capacity that represents a stable population. I mean, if we're like any other predator population, we're on an S-curve whether we like it or not and that's, I think, not something that will change even if we find other planets to live on. In the meantime, what is there to do but try to have less impact and, using what we know from research, do what we can to push the downward decline further out?
 
Ur_Mom said:
I don't care about the people. I'm just concerned about alligators getting relocated to other places.

Wait - does California go away, too? I can deal with those gators if Florida AND California are gone. :D
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But if California goes away where will all the Californians go? I don't want all those self-entitled idiots moving into my state.

Did you know that the top 5 most polluted cities in the US based on Ozone, year round particle pollution, and short-term particle pollution are all in California? So much for being green.
 
tetris42 said:
Well on a timescale of it happening naturally, we may already be extinct or evolved into something else by then, so I don't think it's worth worrying about. More generally however, I think the bottom line is we generally want humanity and a good level of diverse life in general to survive. So if we were facing some apocalyptic cooling event, sure, global warming should be our priority, but that's not really the situation we're in at all. That would imply we had some purpose to what we're doing. In our current case, I'd say it's mostly just a huge side effect of 150 years of industrial growth.
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Says who? What if we came started recording history in the last 5000 years of a cycle? When did this cycle start? When does it end? These are all very basic questions that are very important that we simply cannot answer.
 
Can I see the areas that aren't just major cities, because London isn't really a town I'm worried about.
 
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