In my new book, Climatopolis, I argue that anticipation is the first step in developing pro-active strategies to cope with climate change. Even if we could reduce our greenhouse gas emissions to zero today, we would still face climate change due to the cumulative stock of emissions. My book examines how cities around the world will cope. Major cities such as New York City and San Diego have been commissioning “crystal ball” studies for what their cities will be like in the mid-21st century.
Sea level rise represents a serious threat for coastal cities. The amount and the timing of such sea level rise remains an open question. In California, the Pacific Institute is using GIS software to identify areas around California that are likely to face significant flooding due to climate change. In the typical GIS analysis, researchers superimpose maps to identify the land area that is likely to be affected by climate change induced flooding. These researchers then overlay Census demographic information counting how many people and housing units are currently located in this new flood zone. The payoff of such an analysis is that we see who and how much economic activity is at risk from climate change. Within city migration protects the population against this risk.
To reduce this expected damage, society can use insurance pricing and zoning to nudge economic activity away from such at risk areas or encourage the “victims” to take actions to reduce their risk from natural disaster (i.e elevate their homes or re-enforce them with better materials).
Not all cities will suffer equally from climate change. There are over 300 major cities to choose from in the United States. A city such as Seattle may suffer much less. An implicit assumption throughout Climatopolis is that there will always be some safe area where our cities can thrive and we can migrate to. If the entire 7 billion people on the planet lived at Hong Kong’s density then we would need 1.1 million square kilometers of habitable land. This represents just .7% of the world’s land mass.
Suppose that California’s coastal cities suffer greatly from climate change due to the combined punch of sea level rise, hotter summers, drought and rising electricity prices.
Self interested households will see that California cities are no longer great places to live and they will “vote with their feet” and migrate to other cities that have suffered less from climate change or perhaps even gained due to warmer winter temperatures.
Growth economists have long argued that human capital (attracting and retaining the footloose, skilled) is the key for a nation or a city to enjoy sustainable growth. If a city such as Los Angeles loses its quality of life edge, then the skilled will move elsewhere and firms will be less likely to move to Los Angeles. Similar to a neighborhood with high crime or bad schools, local real estate prices will fall. The owners of such assets will bear the incidence of this “new news”. While real estate values would decline in cities deemed to be increasingly at risk, there are other cities that could actually experience a windfall. Today, you can trade one home near UCLA for 100 Detroit homes. In 2070, will this exchange rate still hold or will there be parity?
Our ability to migrate means that urban places can suffer while urban people continue to prosper. Within the New York City metropolitan area, New Jersey employment centers may gain if Southern Manhattan and Wall Street are under siege from sea level rise. Land owners in Southern Manhattan will suffer but workers at downtown Goldman Sachs would not.
Does this same optimism hold in the developing world? In the United States, there are a large number of cities scattered across various geographical regions. In other nations such as Bangladesh, there is unlikely to be the same menu to choose from. As “environmental refugees” seek out safer havens they may cross political boundaries into nations where they are not welcome. Developed countries could ease adaptation in the developing world if they loosen immigration restrictions. Migration also represents an upfront investment that requires resources. The poorest of the poor may be unable to move and not to have the information or social networks concerning potential beneficial destinations.
Not all is bleak here. Self interested migrants have the right incentives to seek out cities offering them jobs and opportunities. Cities with a growing upper middle class gain when low skilled workers enter as this makes basic services more affordable. There are gains to trade across income groups in the city as the less skilled provide time intensive services such as cooking and cleaning and gardening. Urban growth offers such migrants the opportunity to increase their household income and their children’s educational prospects. My grandfather arrived in Ellis Island in the 1920s from Poland with a 5th grade education and his son (my father) went to medical school. Such “Horatio Alger” transitions will continue to take place.
Optimists can point to Japan, South Korea and recent poverty reduction in China and India as examples of the sharp growth that can take place as economies open up to global markets. Do not forget your Law of 72. A nation whose income grows at 4% per year doubles its per-capita income in 18 years. Cities foster growth through trade and specialization. As urbanites in LDC cities grow richer, they will eat a better diet, live in better housing and be able to afford electricity and durables that we take for granted. Each of these choices will enhance their ability to adapt to climate change.
In the developing world, most of the migration induced by climate change will be poor farmers choosing to move to cities. For many farmers, climate change may make farming so unprofitable that they choose to try their luck in the cities. As the urban poor’s count rises in such mega-cities, local rents will rise and the low skill wages will fall due to competition. How rural to urban migration affects a city’s income inequality and overall well being for the poor will be an important research future topic.
redc1c4 says:
you obviously didn’t get the latest distribution of the talking points memo:
the latest term is “Global Climate Disruption”, since no one but the usual suspects fell for the sophistry represented by the previous terms, “global warming” and “climate change”.
please adjust your propaganda machine to reflect the new reality: we have always been at war with Eastasia.
September 21, 2010, 1:52 amBruce Hayden says:
At what increase in the sea level are you seeing major flooding issues with coastal cities? And how does that affect different cities? (We all know, I think, that much of New Orleans is a lost cause, already residing below sea level).
It would be interesting to see the population displacement at different rises in the sea level. Then, we could look at the historical data to estimate how long it will take before these different groups of people would be underwater – if they didn’t move.
Finally, let me suggest that there is not enough water tied up in glaciers, ice caps, etc., to flood enough of this country that we couldn’t all fit comfortably. Some other countries? Likely not as much. And, I don’t see them all melting as very likely.
September 21, 2010, 1:52 amMalvolio says:
I just want to point out that the highest estimate for sea-level change I could find was about 1100 millimeters over the next hundred years. For those of you who have trouble with metric: 1100 millimeters is about waist high.
How many buildings that exist today are in danger of flooding by a three-foot increase in mean high tide, phased in over a century? I think that number would be be right around zero.
September 21, 2010, 2:48 amRicardo says:
Land being rendered uninhabitable by rising sea levels is only one issue. Melting snow caps would create water shortages in some areas and make life at least a bit less comfortable if not exactly requiring mass migration. Most of the Southwest U.S. gets its water from the Colorado River and a reduction in the volume of that river would have dramatic consequences for the region. Desalination is a very expensive alternative at this point and makes even less economic sense in inland areas than it does in coastal areas.
Ice caps and glaciers are highly seasonal in nature so I don’t the concern is that these will disappear forever as much as the minimum summer extent will get smaller and smaller. If we’re talking about the northern polar ice caps, those are, as I understand it, mostly fresh water and if they continue to melt substantially they wind up changing the salinity of the ocean permanently.
September 21, 2010, 2:51 amBruce Hayden says:
Permanently? That is a bit long. The Earth is, what 5 billion years old, and it has been suggested that we may have another 5 billion years before our Sun reaches its end. Looking at what has happened in the last 5 billion years, it is hard to accept that anything that we do here concerning CO2 or H2O would affect the next 5 billion years.
September 21, 2010, 3:07 amRicardo says:
The Netherlands is planning on spending something like 100 billion Euros to strengthen their system of dikes to prevent the flooding of coastal areas. Gulf Coast communities like New Orleans and Galveston, TX are at very high risk from future flooding as well.
September 21, 2010, 3:08 amBruce Hayden says:
Then, again, maybe more water would be flowing into the Colorado. We just don’t know. But keep in mind that one of the ramifications of global warming (of any type) is that it increases the amount of moisture that can be suspended in the air, and, thus, may increase the amount that can and will be picked up in clouds and moved east to the Rockies.
September 21, 2010, 3:11 amRicardo says:
Bruce, so basically your argument is, “Hey, unless something has effects 100 million years or so in the future, who cares?” If weather patterns in the North Atlantic change, I’m not sure what the comfort will be in knowing that those anomalies will eventually disappear at some undetermined point tens or hundreds of thousands of years in the future.
September 21, 2010, 3:19 amRicardo says:
Previous warming undoubtedly dramatically reduced precipitation in the Southwest. Large parts of what are now desert in the Southwest U.S. were forest during the last Ice Age.
So I have to think of your hypothetical as purely that without much evidence to support it.
“Hey, maybe nothing bad will happen so let’s do it anyway” doesn’t strike me as a persuasive argument.
September 21, 2010, 3:24 amBruce Hayden says:
Not sure if you can say that just because there were trees during an Ice Age, that warmer means less water.
It does look a bit suspicious that the Anasazi seemed to abandon their cliff dwellings about the time that the Medieval Warming Period was coming towards its end, and the Little Ice Age was kicking off. Something to do with drought, if I remember correctly.
September 21, 2010, 4:05 amBruce Hayden says:
No, my argument was with your use of the word “permanent”. I was pointing out that your use of that word was an exaggeration, which you seem to be admitting now. What is your real estimate? Surely, you don’t expect us to believe 100 million years. How many ice ages have we had in the last 100 million years? Heck, we only split off from the chimps maybe 7.5 million years ago.
So, how about giving us a real number, and then back it up.
September 21, 2010, 4:14 amRicardo says:
It’s your theory that warmer weather means more precipitation. I merely point out that in the region through which the Colorado River flows, your theory appears to be falsified by the evidence from natural history.
September 21, 2010, 4:19 amRicardo says:
This is tiresome quibbling on your part. I am thinking about time-frames that are relevant to actual human beings who live in the real world. You seem to be thinking about time-frames that are relevant to geologists. In a thread about actual human beings living in the real world and adapting to changes in the climate, I’m not sure why you are unless it is an attempt to sidetrack the discussion.
In a discussion about human beings, anything that lasts long enough to affect your and my great-grandchildren for their entire lives is permanent enough to be taken seriously.
September 21, 2010, 4:27 amthe Colonel (ret) says:
Perhaps climate is a sinosoidal motion the likes of which nature seems to love and has nothing to do with Dinosaurs driving Hummers. The warmist movement is nothing but profiteers seeking either personal wealth at the expense of the gullible (Al Gore and the author of this post) or taxation to implemnt vast govt programs.
Did you seriously just post warmist rubbish on Volokh? I have your greenhouse emissions for you bub.
September 21, 2010, 5:11 amSancho Panza says:
Instead of “society” using insurance pricing and zoning to nudge economic activity away from the coast, let’s see if people stop paying what it costs to get close to the sea.
Some people will build an hour inland, and others will insist on the waterfront, still. They’ll pay millions, still, to live in Malibu or to buy an office with a view of the Sydney Opera House. (Seemingly unaware of how worthless land is if it’s near where water is now.)
And instead of resigning ourselves to higher electricity prices, why not build nuclear power plants? Or some other technology even better than that? If governments want us to pay more to keep our lights on, then governments should explain why they’re forcing us to.
September 21, 2010, 6:04 amStephen Lathrop says:
You don’t get it. It isn’t mean high tide that gets you. Mean high tide is a peace of cake. The problem is storm surges riding on top of extreme high tide. Three extra feet on sea level would probably wipe out about 70% of the town I live in—level it. The town is mostly a sand-spit, with a few hills. (I live on a hill; when I bought my house 25 years ago I gave a bit of thought to whether it would be okay if events changed my house into an island residence in a much smaller town. Sure, why not?)
There are towns like mine all along the east coast, and some of the biggest cities, including New York, have large areas similarly vulnerable. It’s all surveyed and mapped; you can look it up.
The larger point is that Kahn seems to suggest that gradual change will call forth appropriate accommodations, lessening concerns. Maybe so. The political climate doesn’t look great for that now, however. And even if it does happen, change is a tax, and what Kahn suggests is merely that social dynamics will spread the tax around, not make it go away.
That’s happening already. After hurricane Andrew in Florida, every private insurer in my coastal Massachusetts town raised its rates sharply. Later, they all pulled out, leaving property owners—whether or not they were located in flood zones—to buy insurance from a state pool.
Those unconcerned about climate seem to be saying we don’t believe there will be a tax, and if there is we can impose it on someone else. Kahn’s reasoning suggests that won’t happen—the costs are not going to be contained or directed by geography. They are just going to happen, and they are going to spread to everyone. That’s happening now. Why wouldn’t it continue?
September 21, 2010, 8:09 amIndy says:
The sea-level rise thing seems absurd. The current rate is around 2.8mm/year. Even at 20% faster, At 3.4 mm/year, we’re talking a single additional foot by 2010. At double the rate we’re still at only half a meter. Let’s go crazy, quadruple the current rate, and call it 900mm – how much does it cost to add a centimeter of sea wall on average per year per kilometer of vulnerable coastline? (and plenty of coastline, if it’s high-banked or remote, is either not vulnerable or not valuable). It’s just *tiny* compared to alternative costs of mitigation / adaptation / emission-control.
The reason the Netherlands, has those dikes, and New Orleans has those canals, is because it’s been cost-effecting to build sea-walls on low-sloping tidal terrain, for centuries past, even if you’re just trying to reclaim a little land.
September 21, 2010, 8:13 amMarcus says:
This article seems to center around the economic opportunities presented following mass migrations of people. And appears to paint an overly bright idea of what mass migrations of our citizens means.
“An implicit assumption throughout Climatopolis is that there will always be some safe area where our cities can thrive and we can migrate to.”
This seems fairly obvious, no? “Move to higher/drier ground?” But shouldn’t discussion be more in the ability of the higher/drier ground to actually house a sudden influx of humans? I think the term “thrive” may be a bit optimistic.
“Self interested households will see that California cities are no longer great places to live and they will ‘vote with their feet’ and migrate to other cities that have suffered less from climate change or perhaps even gained due to warmer winter temperatures.”
We are not talking about the news that my favorite diner is having health code issues and I am going to find another to eat at. We are talking about the uprooting of real people, forced to relocate to an area potentially where they have no land, no family, no nothing but the clothes on their backs. Now, maybe that’s as excessively gloomy as I believe this article is excessively peppy, but the actual human costs have to weighed in this discussion and not simply the boon to the supply of cheap labor for an allegedly growing upper middle class.
To be fair, you do address this in your discussion on the developing world. Except…
“As the urban poor’s count rises in such mega-cities, local rents will rise and the low skill wages will fall due to competition. How rural to urban migration affects a city’s income inequality and overall well being for the poor will be an important research future topic.”
…why do you only reference these conditions in regards to the developing world? Wouldn’t we see the same results in America? Wouldn’t we see the same results in urban-to-urban flight?
“If a city such as Los Angeles loses its quality of life edge, then the skilled will move elsewhere and firms will be less likely to move to Los Angeles.”
But where will the newly relocated skilled labor find jobs? Is it a theory that employment will migrate with the labor?
“Similar to a neighborhood with high crime or bad schools, local real estate prices will fall. The owners of such assets will bear the incidence of this “new news”. While real estate values would decline in cities deemed to be increasingly at risk, there are other cities that could actually experience a windfall. Today, you can trade one home near UCLA for 100 Detroit homes. In 2070, will this exchange rate still hold or will there be parity?.”
I just don’t think the principal concern of the mass migration of Americans is real estate investment. I suppose that’s one reason why I am not in the upper 2% of income earners.
“Our ability to migrate means that urban places can suffer while urban people continue to prosper. Within the New York City metropolitan area, New Jersey employment centers may gain if Southern Manhattan and Wall Street are under siege from sea level rise. Land owners in Southern Manhattan will suffer but workers at downtown Goldman Sachs would not.”
I just don’t get this. Is Goldman Sacks the sole employer in Manhattan? Or are you referring to all hedge funds and investment banks? As long as the wealthy are okay, we’ll all be just fine? New Jersey employment centers are busier than ever today. That doesn’t mean people are walking out of there with jobs. I find this “keep on the sunny side”/”mass migration means investment opportunity” perspective to be very odd and superficial to me.
September 21, 2010, 8:42 amMalvolio says:
Let’s say the Netherlands spends 5 billion euros on flood control. That’s 0.09% of their GDP, for a country that’s naturally below sea level anyway. New Orleans and Galveston have similar issues.
Uh, move?
Yes, there are probably communities that could survive a 20-foot storm surge that could not survive a 23-foot storm surge and I’m sorry about that, but almost none of the buildings at risk have been built yet and none of the people who will be living in them have been born yet.
Are we really supposed to panic about a rise in the ocean that’s about a quarter as fast as your fingernail grows? Have you ever seen the ocean? Do you think you could visually detect a three-foot change in its level — especially given there’s a tidal change several times that large every six hours?
There are real problems in the world. Flooding is certainly one of them and global climate change might be another, but flooding caused by climate change? Nope.
September 21, 2010, 9:01 amStephen Lathrop says:
Charming image. Problem is, you can’t just add the extra centimeter at the top of the wall. You have to add it at the bottom, where the wall is thickest, and then re-proportion the rest of the wall all the way up. In areas with a large range of tide, seawalls have the proportions of major fortifications. But if you’re talking about reclaiming giant amounts of land (not “a little land”), or protecting a major city, you might have a point.
Quite often though, you’re talking about a barrier beach with some houses on it, stacked a few deep back from the shore, and then a lagoon, which adds a tidal threat from the rear (More or less the whole east coast from New York south looks that way.) People who live in those places always say they can’t afford adequate protection, and for some reason they get subsidies, for seawalls, sand replenishment, insurance, rebuilding, infrastructure, etc. You are saying let’s ramp that up?
Coastal fortification is surprisingly expensive. The costs are ongoing, and the more reliance you put on it, the more catastrophic the failures become.
September 21, 2010, 9:25 amLugo says:
If you believe in anthropogenic climate change, you should oppose migration from the developing world to the developed world. Developed countries have a higher carbon footprint; migration to these countries increases that footprint.
LOL, that’s already happening for reasons that have nothing to do with climate change. (But it does have a lot to do with those loose immigration restrictions between the developing world and the developed world that you think are so wonderful…)
September 21, 2010, 9:32 amStephen Lathrop says:
I feel like I’m being sucked in by someone satirizing positions he only pretends to take. I shouldn’t be responding to this, should I?
September 21, 2010, 9:37 amMarcus says:
The question should be, have you ever seen the ocean? Are you saying that one cannot visually detect tidal changes? Or are you saying that one cannot notice a tidal change that is three feet higher than normal?
September 21, 2010, 9:50 amScott says:
From Wikipedia: “A sea-level rise of just 400 mm in the Bay of Bengal would put 11 percent of the Bangladesh’s coastal land underwater, creating 7 to 10 million climate refugees.”
Remember, the expected sea level rise for this century that you quoted at top-of-thread is 1100 mm, or nearly three times this figure. That’s not a problem?
September 21, 2010, 9:53 amgasman says:
Bangladesh has >160 million inhabitants in an area the size of Illinois (144000 sq km). Most of their land is less than 10 meters above sea level.
September 21, 2010, 9:59 amEconomically they are screwed by the simple numbers of people and the amount of resources their land has. Without meaningful sea level rise (compared to predictions for decades to come) they suffer greatly from ordinary annual monsoons. None of their similarly crowded neighboring countries are well situated to absorb hundreds of millions of bangladeshis in the future (what do you think their population will be as it continues growth unabated; Mr. Kahn’s cite of the Law of 72 applies to everything, including population growth, which is currently doubling every 30 years).
Bangladesh, and every other developing country need to get a handle on their population. People are only capital if one lacks sufficient people to fully utilize local resources. If people exist in excess of that they only inhibit development. They can use migration only in so far as the world wants their export of human capital. Presently most countries have little need for the skills of the average displaced Bangladeshi.
Mark Field says:
Maybe, but even so, all that infrastructure in LA is now deadweight loss. We’re supposed to think everything’s ok because LA will end up like Detroit?
September 21, 2010, 10:11 amBruce Hayden says:
I love Wikipedia, but AGW is not one of those places where I think it can claim to be unbiased. I was perusing one page last night, and what do I find? Mann’s hockey stick. And, the page was locked. Point is that this is where the Wikipedia model breaks down, with such a controversial subject. Change wars raging as a result, with one side ultimately somewhat winning, I would guess because they had control first.
September 21, 2010, 10:15 amRicardo says:
This is misleading. CO2 emissions per capita in China are lower than in the U.S. CO2 emissions per dollar of GDP are 2.5 times higher in China, though. What this means is that as GDP per capita in China increases as it will over the next 50 years, China’s emissions per capita will surpass that of the U.S. even if GDP per capita never does. The only way we avoid this is if China makes large gains in efficiency, which it won’t do without some enticement from Western countries.
In short, you are mistakenly looking at carbon emissions as a static value when it fact it will change dramatically in the developing world over the next 50 years. Allowing more immigrants from urban China into the U.S. would probably raise emissions in the short-run but would probably lower emissions in the long run unless China dramatically changes its policies soon.
September 21, 2010, 10:16 amBruce Hayden says:
Well, actually, no. That wasn’t my theory, but rather, a suggestion on why yours might be false. One reason that those areas may have been lusher when there was an ice age is that all that water sitting around in one place (in the ice caps), at a temperature around it that at times is above freezing, might, just possibly, melt enough in the summer to fill those rivers more than they are filled right now, or be wafted into clouds as a result of evaporation, only to get dumped as rain or snow a bit later.
I frankly don’t know whether the west would get drier, or wetter if there were a bit of AGW. Or, even GW. My point was that your evidence for it getting warmer is weaker than mine that it might not, and, indeed, may get wetter. But, then, I doubt that either of us is an expert here – I obviously am not, and you do not appear to be.
September 21, 2010, 10:29 amRicardo says:
So what are you seriously proposing Bangladesh do to not only stabilize but actually dramatically decrease its population over the next 50 years? A one-child policy coupled with a Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution?
September 21, 2010, 10:30 amDotar Sojat says:
During the Medieval Warming Period, when the global climate was warm enough that the Vikings could farm Greenland, wasn’t Florida still above water?
September 21, 2010, 10:34 amRicardo says:
Certainly not. But a lot of experts in this area do appear to be concerned about the future of the Colorado River which was the whole point of my off-hand reference. I’m not sure why you are taking issue with this then if you admit you don’t know very much about the subject. If you are going to dispute the expert consensus on a subject, shouldn’t you at least have some grounds for doing so?
September 21, 2010, 10:44 amBruce Hayden says:
Not sure if I quite understand your point here about storm surges. Is it that the 3 feet (over the next 3 centuries) just raises everything 3 feet, and so if you have a 20 foot wall now, you need a 23 foot one in 3 centuries?
Or, are you asserting that the effects are not linear, but somehow more geometric, due to all that extra water in the ocean? That was how I originally read the point about higher storm surges. But from my point, that would not seem to be realistic because that would imply no storm surges when the ocean was a bit lower, and huge ones in the past when the oceans have been higher. We are still talking a fraction of one percent, maybe, using EV’s notation, a couple %% or so increase in the actual amount of water in the oceans.
September 21, 2010, 10:47 amBruce Hayden says:
Apparently not during the storm surges.
September 21, 2010, 10:50 amBruce Hayden says:
Well, there are a lot of reasons to oppose a tax. And the fact that New Orleans is somewhat likely to be under water in a century or so is not one of them. I have spent much of my life living 5,000+ feet above sea level, as I do right now, and the idea of my paying a tax so that someone’s great-grandchildren can live in their family house is, I thin, absurd.
But the big reason for opposing the tax, I think, is that it wouldn’t do a bit of good. While we may be generating more CO2 per capita than countries such as China, their growth in that area will swamp whatever gains we might make through taxing ourselves. My view is that the minute that you can get a treaty with those growing countries applying a meaningful limit on what they are doing, then come back and ask for the tax as part of that.
September 21, 2010, 10:59 amScott says:
The Medieval Warm Period was a regional event; some areas (like Greenland) experienced more warming than they have during the current warming trend, but global temperatures appear to have been slightly cooler than the first half of the 20th century. If warming was inconsistent, then sea level increases were probably smaller than the predicted increases for this century; they might even have been negated if localized cold periods in other parts of the world took up some of the slack.
September 21, 2010, 11:07 amgasman says:
The sooner some action begins the less painful the process. At the present rate of growth they will have to concede a few hundred million getting their feet wet some or all of the year if the forecasts of rising sea level are accurate. They can copulate their way into the sea if they want, but they should not expect the rest of the world to bail them out.
September 21, 2010, 11:08 amRicardo says:
1a. Why would you take anecdotal evidence from one small part of the globe as proof of “the global climate”?
1b. If you doubt the importance of ocean currents to local weather, here is an experiment. Visit San Francisco, CA in July. Then drive east to Tracy, CA. Then fly across the country to Richmond, VA. You will notice dramatic changes in temperature all along almost exactly the same degree of latitude.
2. Even if the Northern Hemisphere was substantially warmer during the Medieval Warming Period (I don’t know who to believe on this), that would not necessarily affect ocean levels. You need either the Greenland ice sheet or Antarctica to melt to raise sea levels — the northern polar ice caps float on the surface of the ocean so if they melt, they have no affect. As far as I can tell, the evidence is that the Greenland ice sheet is pretty ancient in origin and probably did not melt much during the Medieval Warming Period. If anyone knows of evidence to the contrary, that would be very interesting.
September 21, 2010, 11:10 amDotar Sojat says:
I actually just asked a question to which I did not know the answer. Thanks to all for the mostly non-snarky replies.
September 21, 2010, 11:20 amzuch says:
Not really. “Greenland” was a bit of an advertising campaign. You’d be lucky to get some wheat growing there. We will be well above MWP temperatures globally unless we do something about it.
Cheers,
September 21, 2010, 11:37 amMark Buehner says:
link
Science Daily Sept 8, 2010
The mistake is that there is something new in play here. This Israeli study shows a 1 meter swing, up and down, over the last 2500 years…
“During the Hellenistic period, the sea level was about 1.6 meters lower than its present level; during the Roman era the level was almost similar to today’s; the level began to drop again during the ancient Muslim period, and continued dropping to reach the same level as it was during the Crusader period; but within about 500 years it rose again, and reached some 25 centimeters lower than today’s level at the beginning of the 18th century.
“Over the past century, we have witnessed the sea level in Israel fluctuating with almost 19 centimeters between the highest and lowest levels. Over the past 50 years Israel’s mean sea level rise is 5.5 centimeters, but there have also been periods when it rose by 10 centimeters over 10 years.”
Maybe we should stop pretending that we know what we are talking about considering radically unexpected data keeps flowing in. Be a hell of a thing to let millions of people die of starvation and disease by allocating away resources to fight something that we neither understand nor have a definitive reason to fear.
September 21, 2010, 12:14 pmMark Buehner says:
You’d be a god of agriculture to get it to grow today.
So you say.
September 21, 2010, 12:16 pmMike Lorrey says:
Global warming is a massive fraud.
Zuch,
Greenland was, actually, rather green during the MWP, the Icelandic settlers there did quite a bit of herding before the LIA closed in on them.
And no, we wont be above MWP temperatures at any time in this century. Nor will we exceed Roman Warm Period temperatures, nor the Holocene Maximum that preceded the Copper Age, which was the highest temperatures since the end of the Younger Dryas.
During the Holocene Maximum, Proto-Inuit settled the northern reaches of Greenland and Baffin island, and elevated beach sediments from the period prove that water was open year round with wave action and no ice floe activity (the sea level was a bit higher at the time as well.)
Scott and Ricardo,
Evidence of the MWP is not limited to a small part of the globe, there are peer reviewed studies examining sediments, speleotherms, and many other proxies around the globe which prove the MWP and LIA were experienced globally, as far as New Zealand, Australia, and Vietnam, not to mention the regions that the Hockey Team AGW fraudsters actually admit to.
This authors paper flogging the idea that climate change justifies illegal immigration has been roundly debunked at Wattsupwiththat.com, as have similar papers.
September 21, 2010, 12:20 pmMalvolio says:
Yes, assuming nothing is done about Bangladesh, 6% of all Bangladeshis will have to move to some other part of Bangladesh over the next 100 years.
To put that in perspective, if each refugee has to move 600 miles from his current residence, it would require two Greyhound buses, working around the clock, to fulfill the added demand for transportation.
September 21, 2010, 12:23 pmScott says:
In Israel. That study does not necessarily scale even to the entire Eastern Mediterranean, let alone to global sea levels. The linked writeup of the article admits that global ocean levels are only one of three factors that could be implicated in this movement – and despite the readiness of the researchers to discard the other two, the fact that the Mediterranean sits in a pair of deep basins and is almost completely cut off from the Atlantic probably deserves some consideration.
September 21, 2010, 12:27 pmMark Buehner says:
Sounds much more affordable than overarching plans to tax and regulate every facet of western life and business. I’ll kick in for a few tickets.
September 21, 2010, 12:27 pmScott says:
An observation: for all that conservatives gripe about liberal entitlement and freeloading, they show a remarkable reluctance to stand up and take responsibility for their impact on the environment if it requires any change in their own consumption-centric lifestyles. Man up, boyos.
September 21, 2010, 12:37 pmIcePilot says:
Mike Lorrey – You beat me to it. A little research (even on Wiki!) shows the MWP occurred in N America, Europe and Japan! sarc on/ That’s what I call localized. sarc off/ Of course, Wiki still presents the “Hockey Stick” BS that even the
Global WarmingClimate ChangeGlobal Climate Disruption folks have backed away from.Then there are the archaeological discoveries in Greenland that demonstrate it was much warmer http://www.sullivan-county.com/id6/library.htm.
September 21, 2010, 1:01 pmM. says:
they show a remarkable reluctance to stand up and take responsibility for their impact on the environment if it requires any change in their own consumption-centric lifestyles. Man up, boyos.
I saw you palm that card. Firmly establish that this impact on the environment is severe enough to worry about, and present solid reasoning that the “change” you’re insisting on will help, and then we’ll talk.
Also, this snarky faux-macho attitude is just childish. Leave it at the door.
September 21, 2010, 1:16 pmScott says:
Yeah, the attitude is just as annoying when conservatives do it. Payback sucks, huh?
Frankly, if climate-change deniers are confident in their magical-thinking rejection of scientific consensus (and it *is* consensus – spend a little time with the scientific record) in favor of poorly-thought-out but comforting “reasonable objections,” I’m not going to waste more of my time trying to convince them. Since I have no particular expectation that humanity is likely to take proactive measures toward limiting its environmental impact in any event, there’s no percentage in correcting your willful ignorance.
September 21, 2010, 1:32 pmzuch says:
Not exactly, as Hertz would say:
and now we have this:
Cheers,
September 21, 2010, 1:36 pmLugo says:
Yes, our emissions per capita will fall (along with our GDP per capita) because we have accepted hundreds of millions of Chinese immigrants. Yaaay! That sounds like something we should want.
Now let’s move billions of people to the USA from countries whose carbon per capita production is low, and whose emissions per dollar of GDP is low. Hmmmm, doesn’t look so good now — assuming, of course, we could maintain the same GDP per capita and emissions per capita we do now (and if we don’t, then again why the hell should we immiserate ourselves because supposedly this will drive down carbon emissions per capita?).
September 21, 2010, 1:44 pmPlugInMonster says:
If AGW is real, think about how much Canadian steppe opens up to human habitation! Let’s not forget Siberia too! All conservatives vote with their feet to Siberia!
September 21, 2010, 1:55 pmPlugInMonster says:
Ah, more religious belief in “scientific consensus” of the IPCC. Never mind that most scientist in total are very skeptical of AGW due to lack of published data and methodologies.
September 21, 2010, 1:57 pmMark Buehner says:
Science isn’t done by consensus. Politics is.
September 21, 2010, 2:04 pmMarcus says:
Really? Whose?
September 21, 2010, 2:27 pmMarcus says:
Boy, are we on the same page with this one…
September 21, 2010, 2:31 pmzuch says:
Why, everyone’s, of course!
Cheers,
September 21, 2010, 2:44 pmPlugInMonster says:
Just think of the delicious irony here!
September 21, 2010, 2:51 pmMark Buehner says:
Either the people or the autocrats, depending on the system. Wanna guess who is running ours more and more?
September 21, 2010, 2:54 pmrtha says:
Well, that’s okay. It’s not like the teeming millions in the cities will need food or anything.
September 21, 2010, 3:43 pmJRL says:
Do I have to explain again how ocean levels would fall as a result of global warming, not rise?
September 21, 2010, 4:05 pmMark Field says:
Before you do that, perhaps you could give us your explanation how stoves make ice.
September 21, 2010, 4:10 pmjmaie says:
the northern polar ice caps float on the surface of the ocean so if they melt, they have no affect
Dunno about that. Free floating arctic ice has less salt content compared with the surrounding ocean, so as it melts it should raise sea level somewhat.
September 21, 2010, 4:21 pmzuch says:
Inauspicious example. IIRC, Einstein invented (and patented) a refrigerator that runs on heat; variations are in use with the propane refrigerators for mobile homes and boats…..
Cheers,
September 21, 2010, 4:31 pmScott Scheule says:
I´m not much of a griper, but for what it´s worth, I would be happy to pay some kind of Pigouvian tax on negative externalities resulting from global warming, tacked on to the price of gas, energy, plastic, etc.
September 21, 2010, 4:58 pmIcePilot says:
jmaie – First of all, ice caps are on land (like Antarctica), ice pack is the correct term for the frozen sea ice that floats in the Arctic. And since it is frozen seawater, if it melts it won’t raise ocean levels a millimeter. It’s true that as the ice ages (multi-year ice) the salt leaches out to the point that it is essentially frozen fresh water, but where did the salt go?
Answer – into the Arctic Ocean.
September 21, 2010, 5:59 pmStephen Lathrop says:
The point about a sea level increase raising everything accordingly is accurate. The effects are non-linear, but perhaps not in any special proportion to extra water. At least two factors play a part, and they interact.
One is shore profiles, which can be relatively flat or range up to vertical. Flat profiles open the way to very large flooding effects from small sea level rises. As the tide rises over a flatish beach, hundreds of feet of dry sand can be covered by a few extra inches of depth. On a flat shore profile, a 20-foot storm surge can go miles inland.
Then there are the historical practices of oceanside development. In many locales there are no sea walls at all. Buildings have simply been sited at elevations down to the elevation of extreme high tide, but adding a foot or two for storm surge. Sea walls have been scaled on similar principles. Larger storm surges, when they happen, already make a mess in those locations, and less frequently cause catastrophes. But they aren’t totally destructive in the more typical cases where they result mostly in standing water. If the depth never gets quite enough to support waves and currents, the buildings are still there when the tide goes out.
An extra three feet of depth would change that game abruptly in many places, and across broad areas of existing development on flat shore profiles. Estimating the destruction resulting from such changes, should they happen, is a matter of straightforward surveying and engineering. Projections resulting from those kinds of assessments are unlikely to be much exaggerated; the expertise has been developed over more than a hundred years, and has proved reliable in practice.
September 21, 2010, 7:27 pmMac says:
“Sea level rise represents a serious threat for coastal cities.”
So, Mr. Kahn, Al Gore just bought a multi-million dollar mansion on the California coast, why?
September 21, 2010, 7:34 pmFormer Army MP says:
“While real estate values would decline in cities deemed to be increasingly at risk, there are other cities that could actually experience a windfall. Today, you can trade one home near UCLA for 100 Detroit homes. In 2070, will this exchange rate still hold or will there be parity? ”
Assuming you are not being sarcastic…WTH?
Every poster here knows why homes in the City of Detroit are selling for under 5 thousand dollars, and it isn’t the auto industry problems. It is for the same reason homes in East St Louis are at the same price point.
No one here is going to type the reason, so I suggest you consult some stats online and come to your own conclusion.
September 21, 2010, 7:58 pmMac says:
Sorry, zuch, I was taught that as well as you and believed it until recently. It is not true.
Greenland was green and that is why folks went there. They abandoned Greenland when it got cold. At least the ones who didn’t die first abandoned it. I understand they would not listen to and follow the example of the natives who did remember how to cope with the cold. At least, that is the latest theory. I guess, if one did a few moments of serious thought about that, we might have realized that mass marketing was probably not around back then. Personally, I really, really hold it against the good nuns for ever having taught me that error and myself for having believed it for so long and not checking it out.
September 21, 2010, 8:08 pmBruce Hayden says:
I guess the question is why should I, living some 5,000 feet about high tide, have to pay so all these people can live within a couple feet of the current high tide? And, if it is going to take a century to get to that 3 feet (or 1 meter), then why the hurry? And why not just pass building codes that prohibit building within, say, 5 feet of the high tide? Within the 100 or so years it would take to get to that level, many of the buildings that might be affected could have been replaced by buildings that were far enough up that they were safe.
September 21, 2010, 8:23 pmRicardo says:
As I pointed out, you need ice caps in Antarctica (which isn’t anywhere near N America, Europe and Japan) or Greenland to melt to raise sea levels. As far as I know, there isn’t much evidence of Greenland’s ice sheet having melted during the Medieval Warming Period.
Otherwise, it seems you are playing the game “If peer-reviewed studies agree with my pre-conceived biases, they are totally right. And if they don’t, they are FRAUD!!!”
If you want to point out what exactly you think global temperatures were during the Medieval Warming Period and what specific evidence you are relying upon for your estimate, on the other hand, have at it.
September 21, 2010, 9:55 pmRicardo says:
Considering the fact that measured global temperatures have been rising for the past century and ocean levels have also been rising for the past century, you would run the rather high risk of having your elegant theory (presumably based on a naive application of high school-level science) being smacked down by reality.
September 21, 2010, 10:00 pmStephen Lathrop says:
I think that’s a good question too. It seems to be because people living by the sea (and in flood plains, avalanche zones, on earthquake faults, etc.) can vote, and because free market institutions find it profitable to bring some of their costs to you and me.
As for prohibitive building codes, wouldn’t they amount to de facto condemnations of existing structures in high hazard areas? Those will mostly be destroyed eventually, but without prospect of renewal if building were prohibited. I guess the owners would then sue the state for a taking of their property, at least with regard to the lost value of the land.
If my memory serves, something like what you suggest was tried in connection with federal flood insurance, in a bill in the early 1970s. I was following its progress through congress with interest, as a journalist. Language in drafts of the congressional bill required that if a structure in a flood plain was a total loss, and if the government paid off on the insurance, then the site was to be considered purchased by the government, and rebuilding on the site would be prohibited to prevent further loss to the government. That became controversial. When the final draft was passed and became law, the language had been mysteriously reversed, so that rebuilding was required to collect on the insurance. Some backers of the original language claimed to have been taken by surprise, and said they voted in favor of the changed bill without noticing. I have no idea what the state of that law is today.
September 21, 2010, 10:26 pmRicardo says:
No, that would be another fallacy on your part. All I did was to point out that your claim that restricting immigration would reduce emissions is wrong in the long-run.
September 21, 2010, 11:33 pmHasdrubal says:
Correlation, causation. Even in high school science I was taught that the former does not imply the latter. And in a complex system like the climate or the economy, causation is surprisingly difficult to prove.
As to the original post, I’m wondering what kind of nudge he intends society to give land owners in coastal areas. Insurance companies are already nudging people through their premiums, or even lack of availability of flood insurance. Then again, I seem to remember hearing about government programs subsidizing flood insurance for people in places like the Florida Panhandle and Louisiana coast. Maybe the best nudge would be to stop subsidizing people to live in places likely to be affected by climate change, if that’s the case? Otherwise, maybe just make sure people understand the price of flood insurance for their building and why it’s that high? (Admittedly, I’m not a big fan of libertarian paternalism and pretty leery of behavioral economics in general.)
September 22, 2010, 12:30 amRicardo says:
I said nothing about causation. The person I was responding to made a falsifiable prediction: that warming would lead to dropping sea levels. I point out that this is falsified by the existing evidence.
September 22, 2010, 1:08 amricky says:
“Developed countries could ease adaptation in the developing world if they loosen immigration restrictions.”
But if we let all those dysfunctional third world marching morons into our countries, we won’t be “developed” for long. Do you open borders folks realize how insane you are? Seriously, it sounds like you will not be happy until we’re all crammed in shoulder-to-shoulder from sea to shining (and encroaching) sea.
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[...] may be the best climate strategy, writes Matthew Kahn: “Our ability to migrate means that urban places can suffer while urban people [...]
September 22, 2010, 9:21 amLugo says:
LOL, you think that our GDP per capita will not fall if we accept hundreds of millions of Chinese?
I guess my original remark was a “fallacy” in these sense that our per capita emissions would fall if we impoverished ourselves on a per capita basis. Only in Leftist fantasy-land is this somehow a “win”. Silly me for assuming our goal is to maintain the same standard of living!
September 22, 2010, 11:31 amA. Criminal says:
It’s the White Man’s Burden* to Help and Improve our inferiors (claiming that “they” need “our” help, but not vice-versa, is dependent on a proposition of inferiority). A better answer would be to allow them the dignity to sink or swim (har har) all by themselves.
*Korea, Japan, etc., are excluded for obvious reasons.
September 22, 2010, 12:42 pmfwb says:
Interesting that something (C emissions) that is released at a rate that amounts to < 1% of the amount in the atmosphere per year would result in such a discussion. The atmosphere contains ~850 billion tons while total worldwide emissions are ~8 billion tons.
The books have changed what was claimed for CO2 levels from what was published in college texts of 40 years ago. Same thing happened with Freon-12 which is water soluble. Many books no longer state this fact. They don't say it's not, just leave out the pertinent info.
Too much of what the modelers claim amounts to voodoo. No one can demonstrate a "life" expectancy for CO2 in the atmosphere of 100 years. There is no model that takes into account ALL the chemistry, solid/liquid/gaseous equilibria that are involved.
A good maxim: All models are wrong. Some models can be useful.
The proportioning ratio between atmospheric and oceanic carbon is 1 to 50, that is for every 51 parts emitted to the atmosphere, the ocean ends up with 50. 850 billion tons C in Atm vs 42,000 billion tons in oceans.
It is NOT the CO2-H2O equilibrium that controls the pH of the oceans. That is simply ignorance running rampant. In order for the pH of the oceans to change, the solid phases in contact with the water, CaCO3 and other minerals that buffer, must first be totally dissolved. Only then can the pH begin to change.
Anyone care to wager on the amount of CO2 that is belched out of the oceans following a 0.1 degree change in water temp down to a depth of 10 m? You can locate the necessary info and set up the equations but the amount is close to the amount that the changers claim has occurred in the atmosphere. You see the solubility of CO2 in water is dependent on many factors including water temp. Warm soda/cold soda.
September 22, 2010, 6:56 pmJmaie says:
IcePilot – Thanks for the correction on my terminology.
To clarify what I meant, if all the pack ice melted it would cause a level rise when compared with the current level.
September 22, 2010, 11:46 pm