Mod+ 234. GLOBAL WARMING, CLIMATE CHANGE AND OUR ILLUSION OF CONTROL

Fracking has actually been going on for a long time: it's only been popularised recently because environmentalists have a knee-jerk reaction to anything that involves oil, coal, or gas. Fracking is actually more environmentally friendly than conventional drilling.

good info... and good final point. I don't know enough to agree or disagree, but agree with your "compared to what" framing of the situation.
 
The green movement is profoundly anti-human and hypocritical.

Michael, this is made crystal clear by an abundance of cruel and hateful (not to mention batshit crazy) statements from environmental leaders and high-profile supporters in politics, academia and the media. The roots of my own skepticism regarding CAGW go back to them, as well as to hysterical pronouncements about overpopulation from groups such as the Club of Rome and authors like Paul Ehrlich. Here are some examples of what I'm talking about:

“Even though it is quite true that any radical eugenic policy will be for many years politically and psychologically impossible, it will be important for UNESCO to see that the eugenic problem is examined with the greatest care, and that the public mind is informed of the issues at stake so that much that now is unthinkable may at least become thinkable.”
-- Julian Huxley, first director general of UNESCO, 1947

"At present the population of the world is increasing at about 58,000 per day. War, so far, has had no very great effect on this increase, which continued throughout each of the world wars... War... has hitherto been disappointing in this respect... but perhaps bacteriological war may prove more effective. If a Black Death could spread throughout the world once in every generation, survivors could procreate freely without making the world too full... The state of affairs might be somewhat unpleasant, but what of it? Really high-minded people are mostly indifferent to happiness, especially other people's happiness"
-- Bertrand Russell, in his book, The Impact of Science on Society, 1953

"The world has cancer, and that cancer is man."
-- Merton Lambert, former spokesman for the Rockefeller Foundation, quoted from Harpath Journal, 1962

"A cancer is an uncontrolled multiplication of cells; the population explosion is an uncontrolled multiplication of people. ... We must shift our efforts from the treatment of the symptoms to the cutting out of the cancer. The operation will demand many apparently brutal and heartless decisions"
-- Stanford Professor Paul Ehrlich in The Population Bomb, 1968

“I got the impression that instead of going out to shoot birds, I should go out and shoot the kids who shoot birds.”
-- Paul Watson, a founder of ‘Greenpeace,’ as quoted in Access to Energy, 1982

"We, in the green movement, aspire to a cultural model in which killing a forest will be considered more contemptible and more criminal than the sale of 6-year-old children to Asian brothels."
-- Carl Amery, founding member of the German Green Party, quoted in Mensch & Energie, April 1983

“If radical environmentalists were to invent a disease to bring human populations back to sanity, it would probably be something like AIDS.”
-- Miss Ann Thropy, anonymous member of the radical group Earth First!, 1986

"In the event that I am reincarnated, I would like to return as a deadly virus, in order to contribute something to solve overpopulation.”
-- Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, first president of the World Wildlife Fund – as reported by Deutsche Presse-Agentur (DPA), August, 1988

“The extinction of the human species may not only be inevitable but a good thing….This is not to say that the rise of human civilization is insignificant, but there is no way of showing that it will be much help to the world in the long run.”
-- Economist editorial, December 28, 1988

“Human happiness, and certainly human fecundity, is not as important as a wild and healthy planet. We have become a plague upon ourselves and upon the Earth….Until such time as Homo sapiens should decide to rejoin nature, some of us can only hope for the right virus to come along.”
-- David Graber, ecologist, National Park Service, in a 1989 LA Times book review

“This is a terrible thing to say. In order to stabilize world population, it is necessary to eliminate 350,000 people a day. It is a horrible thing to say, but it’s just as bad not to say it.”
-- Oceanographer Jacques Cousteau, as quoted in UNESCO Courier, November 1991

“A total population of 250-300 million people, a 95% decline from present levels, would be ideal.”
-- Ted Turner, media mogul, as quoted in Audubon, November-December 1991

“You think Hiroshima was bad, let me tell you, mister, Hiroshima wasn’t bad enough!”
-- Faye Dunaway as the voice of “Mother Earth/Gaia” in the 1991 WTBS series “Voice of the Planet”

"I would be overjoyed when the first scientist is killed by a liberation activist."
--Vivien Smith, Former Animal Liberation spokesperson, USA Today, September 3, 1991

“We have no problem in principle with the humans reducing their numbers by killing one another. It’s an excellent way of making the humans extinct.”
-- Geophilus, “spokesorganism” of the Gaia Liberation Front, as quoted by Les U. Knight of the Voluntary Human Extinction Movement (These Exit Times, 1992)

"To feed a starving child is to exacerbate the world population problem."
-- Lamont Cole, ecologist at Cornell University, as reported by Elizabeth Whelan in her book, Toxic Terror, 1993

"Cannibalism is a radical but realistic solution to the problem of overpopulation.”
-- Lyall Watson, anthropologist and commissioner for the The International Whaling Commission, as quoted in The Financial Times, 15 July 1995

"...every time someone dies as a result of floods in Bangladesh, an airline executive should be dragged out of his office and drowned."
-- George Monbiot, from a column in the Guardian, Monday 4 December 2006

Some undated statements:

"We have wished, we ecofreaks, for a disaster or for a social change
to come and bomb us into Stone Age, where we might live like Indians in our valley, with our localism, our appropriate technology, our gardens, our homemade religion-guilt-free at last!"

-- Stewart Brand, Whole Earth Catalogue

“I suspect that eradicating small pox was wrong. It played an important part in balancing ecosystems.”
-- John Davis, editor of Earth First! Journal

"Human beings, as a species, have no more value than slugs."
— John Davis, editor of Earth First! Journal

“Phasing out the human race will solve every problem on earth, social and environmental.”
-- David Foreman, co-founder of Earth First!

“My three main goals would be to reduce human population to about 100 million worldwide, destroy the industrial infrastructure and see wilderness, with it’s full complement of species, returning throughout the world.”
-- David Foreman, co-founder of Earth First!

“We advocate biodiversity for biodiversity’s sake. It may take our extinction to set things straight.”
-- David Foreman, co-founder of Earth First!

"There are too many people and [banning DDT] is as good a way to get rid of them as any."
--Charles Wuster, chief scientist and co-founder of the Environmental Defense Fund

Finally, lest people believe that fantasies of plague, starvation and murder are a thing of the past on the part of green groups, there's this thoroughly detestable video put out by 1010global.org on October 1, 2010:


Doug
 
Stuff and nonsense. That one word, "denialists", gives the game away, showing what you really think behind the facade of civility.
If that word is such a turn-off, then it would be best if it weren't used anymore. But you might consider the possibility that Stephen genuinely did not mean to invoke anything close to Holocaust denialism. And everyone in this thread who has spoken against climate change activism would do well to consider that, just because certain people have advocated radical, inhuman, and insanely horrible solutions to the problem, that doesn't mean anything close to the majority of climate activists, or people concerned about climate change, would ever support such things.
 
If we take out the issues discussed in this thread and replace them with other topics such as near-death experiences or psi, it is pretty much a perfect fit. We see the sceptics on this forum eagerly creating doubt at every opportunity, but they never offer any explanation of their motives. If we consider "in order to delay action to address the problem", that could be a very plausible motive for the sceptics activities.

The comment about the "handful of scientists" sounds an awful lot like the "guerilla sceptics" frequently highlighted by Craig Weiler, where a relatively small number of people are attempting to disrupt the way in which certain topics are viewed.
This is what I was referring to earlier when I said I was surprised that parapsych enthusiasts weren't more sympathetic to climate change activists, especially here in the States.
 
A few more quotes to expose the dark side of environmental leaders and those who support them:

"I believe that human overpopulation is the fundamental problem on Earth Today. ... We humans have become a disease, the Humanpox."
-- Dave Foreman, Sierra Club and cofounder of Earth First!

"War and famine would not do. Instead, disease offered the most efficient and fastest way to kill the billions that must soon die if the population crisis is to be solved. AIDS is not an efficient killer because it is too slow. My favorite candidate for eliminating 90 percent of the world's population is airborne Ebola (Ebola Reston), because it is both highly lethal and it kills in days, instead of years. “We've got airborne diseases with 90 percent mortality in humans. Killing humans. Think about that. You know, the bird flu's good, too. For everyone who survives, he will have to bury nine"
-- Dr. Eric Pianka, University of Texas evolutionary ecologist and lizard expert, showed solutions for reducing the world's population to an audience on population control

"Given the total, absolute, and final disappearance of Homo Sapiens - not
only would the Earth's Community of Life continue to exist but - the ending
of the human epoch on Earth would be greeted with a hearty 'good riddance.'"

-- Dr. Paul Taylor, Professor of Philosophy, City College of New York

"The only real good technology is no technology at all.
Technology is taxation without representation, imposed by
our elitist species (man) upon the rest of the natural world."

-- John Shuttleworth, co-founder of Mother Earth News

"The collective needs of non-human species must take
precedence over the needs and desires of humans."

-- Dr. Reed F. Noss, The Wildlands Project

"If you ask me, it'd be a little short of disastrous for us to discover a
source of clean, cheap, abundant energy because of what we would do with it.
We ought to be looking for energy sources that are adequate for our needs,
but that won't give us the excesses of concentrated energy with which we
could do mischief to the earth or to each other."

-- Amory Lovins in The Mother Earth-Plowboy Interview, Nov/Dec 1977, p.22

"....we must go back to the spinning wheel, returning to a beatific state
of endless drudge labor, six days a week, and exhaustion on Sunday."

-- Paul Ehrlich, Stanford University

"Frankly I had thought that at the time Roe was decided, there was concern about population growth and particularly growth in populations that we don’t want to have too many of."
-- Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, speaking about the Court's 1973 decision legalize abortion in the US.

"Childbearing should be a punishable crime against society, unless the parents hold a government license. All potential parents should be required to use contraceptive chemicals, the government issuing antidotes to citizens chosen for childbearing."
-- David Brower, first Executive Director of the Sierra Club

"The composition of the Greens seems to be the same as that of the population in general — mainly pieces of drifting wood, people who never think."
-- Pentti Linkola, Finnish environmentalist

"Any dictatorship would be better than modern democracy. There cannot be so incompetent dictator, that he would show more stupidity than a majority of the people. Best dictatorship would be one where lots of heads would roll and government would prevent any economical growth."
-- Pentti Linkola, Finnish environmentalist

"Everything we have developed over the last 100 years should be destroyed."
-- Pentti Linkola, Finnish environmentalist

Doug
 
"As the US urges world leaders to ramp up action on climate change, the leader of one small island chain in the North Pacific Ocean has already got the message - watching helplessly as rising seas slowly erode his birthplace.

The idyllic beaches on the island of Buoj where Marshall Islands President Christopher Loeak fished as a boy are already submerged, and the ever-encroaching ocean now threatens to wash away roads, schools and airstrips.

"The end of the island gets shorter every year. Some places we used to stand on the beach to fish are now in the water," Mr Loeak, 60, told AFP."

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/en...washing-away-Pacific-leaders-home-island.html

Really, this is terrible news and I'm sure the hearts and earnest good wishes of ALL here go out to these people. Better than silence...
 
When members of the U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency arrived in Majuro last week to assess the damage -- Marshall Islands has been independent since 1979 but retains defense and aid ties with the U.S. -- de Brum didn't mince words, greeting them with a preview of what lies ahead for island nations like his: "welcome to climate change."

http://www.wunderground.com/news/marshall-islands-climate-change-happening-now-20130630

Posted in the daily mail Sunday 5/1/14
John Kerry says there is 'irrefutable and alarming evidence' that climate change is real
  • US Secretary of State John Kerry made the remarks Monday during an address to the Pacific Islands Forum
  • Mr Kerry argued that climate change is alarming and will only get worse if no action is taken to cut emissions
  • European and PIF leaders also spoke, calling on the rest of the world to act before it is too late
US Secretary of State John Kerry is concerned about the threat posed by global warming.

Speaking Monday via satellite to climate experts gathered for this week’s Pacific Islands Forum (PIF) in the Marshall Islands, US Secretary of State John Kerry asserted that climate change needs to be taken more seriously and that action can be taken to stem the tide of consequence.

The Marshall Islands, at no more than three feet above sea level, are especially at risk of rising seas, one of the many effects of global warming.

Concerned: US Secretary of State John Kerry is concerned nations aren't taking the threat of global warming seriously

‘The science is clear. It is irrefutable and it is alarming,’ Mr Kerry said via satellite from Washington, DC. ‘If we continue down our current path, the impacts of climate change will only get worse.’

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...le-alarming-evidence-climate-change-real.html
 
Marshall Islands
Extremes and Trends in Sea Level. Due to the low elevation of the atolls, and the concentration of development in the coastal areas of all islands, extreme high tides, storm surges and the gradual rise in sea level due to global climate change present a high risk to the RMI. High sea levels contribute to coastal flooding and to greatly accelerated erosion. Extreme low sea levels impede navigation and expose reefs, stressing the reef ecosystem and possibly contributing to coral bleaching...

Accelerated Coastal Erosion. A recent study (SOPAC, 1997) of Majuro Atoll, but with implications for all of the RMI, reported that most of the ocean and lagoon coastlines are erosional. Shoreline retreat of 10 to 20 m has occurred in some places.

(from Secretariat of the Pacific Regional Environmental Programme)
 
This is probably due to subsidence rather than sea level rise: see what Nils-Axel Mörner has to say:

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/07/31/the-marshall-islands-and-their-sea-level-changes/

Frankly, I've lost with "wattsup" etc.



Vice President John Kerry's address at Majuro, Marshall Islands:
published 1 September 2013.

"The science is clear. It is irrefutable, and it is alarming." - Kerry

and this article from President Chris Loeak of the Marshall Islands and referring to Kerry's speech: Climate Change Has Reached Our Shores

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/25/opinion/climate-change-has-reached-our-shores.html?_r=0
 
When members of the U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency arrived in Majuro last week to assess the damage -- Marshall Islands has been independent since 1979 but retains defense and aid ties with the U.S. -- de Brum didn't mince words, greeting them with a preview of what lies ahead for island nations like his: "welcome to climate change."

http://www.wunderground.com/news/marshall-islands-climate-change-happening-now-20130630

Posted in the daily mail Sunday 5/1/14
John Kerry says there is 'irrefutable and alarming evidence' that climate change is real
  • US Secretary of State John Kerry made the remarks Monday during an address to the Pacific Islands Forum
  • Mr Kerry argued that climate change is alarming and will only get worse if no action is taken to cut emissions
  • European and PIF leaders also spoke, calling on the rest of the world to act before it is too late...

You beat me to it there Jules...really I just don't get it other people here can't find this information
 
The people of the Marshall Islands are our neighbours. They are currently requesting aid from the people of New Zealand to enable them to respond to way GW is ALREADY impacting on them. Or do you think their story is also part of the conspiracy? Well you can explain to them that it doesn't matter if sea water leaches into their drinking supply. You don't need scientists to say what's happening. The people of the Marshall Islands can tell you that. Any 10 year old there can explain to you what you don't understand.

These are some of the more frightening ideas to me. The idea that if you're a skeptic you could cause the death and destruction of others. The idea that doing nothing is paramount to destruction. The idea that if you dissent you could cause others to dissent and then watch out for you and those you care about. I have only recently come onto this site and it's really my first exposure to forums. So I don't understand the politics of it and am surely missing some of the inside moves, so to speak. That said, I hope you continue to follow your logic and mind in this process Alex. The idea that you could effect the psi world and thus have a responsibility to something bigger than yourself sounds more like manipulation than inspiration. These groups start with consensus then move to some catastrophe and then, using consensus press for immediate action (false flag operations). Medical doctors are often forced into action when they don't know for sure what's happening. All you have to do is google number of people killed by doctors a year, to see that action is not always better than inaction.

Friedrich Hayek in his book "The Fatal Conceit" shows in multiple ways how "we" take action and cause massive problems. I have been thankful for the back and forth on this topic on this forum. It has helped me with the concept that I have been going back and forth with as well. I don't really know the science and it's great to watch the patterns of interaction (this fits my logic base better than discerning the science) as this debate rages forward. I am impressed how it goes from emotional back to humanity and then back at it. The 20 ton elephant in the room is so what, what are you going to do about it and what vehicle are you going to use to achieve it. I know that all the people aren't using their actual names in this thread but I haven't noticed what seemed to be any Chinese input. Does that make anyone else go, hmmm? What kind of damage could we cause in our fatal conceit? Think the US with military in over 70 countries going into Iraq for weapons of mass destruction. How many weapons did we find? How many innocents have we killed? Do you think we might be able to create a war or two over this? Can you feel the dissent on this forum? Do you think politicians might start posturing and decide to send our children to war over this?

Should the folks of the Marshall Islands be helped? I know there are many people who give freely to those in need. To link them to the guilt of the developed nations is insane. To think we just magically start sending money from place to place is going to fix everything is also insane - fatal conceit. I wouldn't be so worried if we EVER apologized or any government EVER apologized for getting it wrong. Maybe then we could evolve as a group and get somewhere. I don't know my science that well but I don't know of anything that is able to evolve or grow that doesn't get feedback on its failures. Maybe some of you in other countries think your countries could pull this all off. Me, I live in the US and I've been to the DMV. I've dealt with programs our central planners have put together. Count me out.
 
And for a little comic relief:

The graph used in the video that you posted is extremely misleading. The temperatures depicted in that graph are from Greenland ice core data which doesn’t directly correspond to the global temperatures during that time.

Crux of a Core, Part 1 - addressing J Storrs Hall

The original source of this specific misinformation seems to come from J Storrs Hall, a nano technology engineer from the Foresight Institute. When this blog post hit the internet it quickly made the rounds to all the popular climate skeptic blogs and is now a permanent resident of the "interweb" and continues to misinform people.

From Skeptical Science:

This argument is based on the work of Don Easterbrook who relies on temperatures at the top of the Greenland ice sheet as a proxy for global temperatures. That’s a fatal flaw, before we even begin to examine the use of the ice core data. A single regional record cannot stand in for the global record — local variability will be higher than the global, plus we have evidence that Antarctic temperatures swing in the opposite direction to Arctic changes.

From RealClimate:

Over the last decades, numerous researchers have painstakingly collected, analyzed, dated, and calibrated many data series that allow us to reconstruct climate before the age of direct measurements. Such data come e.g. from sediment drilling in the deep sea, from corals, ice cores and other sources. Shaun Marcott and colleagues for the first time assembled 73 such data sets from around the world into a global temperature reconstruction for the Holocene, published in Science.

Marcott_PAGES2k.png


shakun_marcott_hadcrut4_a1b_eng.png
 
Frankly, I've lost with "wattsup" etc.



Vice President John Kerry's address at Majuro, Marshall Islands:
published 1 September 2013.

"The science is clear. It is irrefutable, and it is alarming." - Kerry

and this article from President Chris Loeak of the Marshall Islands and referring to Kerry's speech: Climate Change Has Reached Our Shores

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/25/opinion/climate-change-has-reached-our-shores.html?_r=0


Is that the John Kerry of the "Skull and Bones" fraternity. George Bush was also in that fraternity though he got better grades than John Kerry. I don't like demonizing people or name calling but I was shocked by how stupid I thought George Bush was and then doubly amazed that when Kerry ran for president, no one pointed out this connection. I don't quite trust his credentials to make an informed decision - can I at least say that. I do trust that he'll create political havoc and sell those who have been duped on a solution where he and his get richer while you and yours become more poor. You can download this free PDF where you can read how he's committed fraud (well it's not actually fraud if you're a senator or a congressman) with many other politicians in the markets.: http://hkstrongwind.com/pdfs/EBook/Throw Them All Out_ How Politicians and - Schweizer, Peter.pdf This is what consensus starts to breed.
 
These are some of the more frightening ideas to me. The idea that if you're a skeptic you could cause the death and destruction of others. The idea that doing nothing is paramount to destruction. The idea that if you dissent you could cause others to dissent and then watch out for you and those you care about. I have only recently come onto this site and it's really my first exposure to forums. So I don't understand the politics of it and am surely missing some of the inside moves, so to speak. That said, I hope you continue to follow your logic and mind in this process Alex. The idea that you could effect the psi world and thus have a responsibility to something bigger than yourself sounds more like manipulation than inspiration. These groups start with consensus then move to some catastrophe and then, using consensus press for immediate action (false flag operations). Medical doctors are often forced into action when they don't know for sure what's happening. All you have to do is google number of people killed by doctors a year, to see that action is not always better than inaction.

Friedrich Hayek in his book "The Fatal Conceit" shows in multiple ways how "we" take action and cause massive problems. I have been thankful for the back and forth on this topic on this forum. It has helped me with the concept that I have been going back and forth with as well. I don't really know the science and it's great to watch the patterns of interaction (this fits my logic base better than discerning the science) as this debate rages forward. I am impressed how it goes from emotional back to humanity and then back at it. The 20 ton elephant in the room is so what, what are you going to do about it and what vehicle are you going to use to achieve it. I know that all the people aren't using their actual names in this thread but I haven't noticed what seemed to be any Chinese input. Does that make anyone else go, hmmm? What kind of damage could we cause in our fatal conceit? Think the US with military in over 70 countries going into Iraq for weapons of mass destruction. How many weapons did we find? How many innocents have we killed? Do you think we might be able to create a war or two over this? Can you feel the dissent on this forum? Do you think politicians might start posturing and decide to send our children to war over this?

Should the folks of the Marshall Islands be helped? I know there are many people who give freely to those in need. To link them to the guilt of the developed nations is insane. To think we just magically start sending money from place to place is going to fix everything is also insane - fatal conceit. I wouldn't be so worried if we EVER apologized or any government EVER apologized for getting it wrong. Maybe then we could evolve as a group and get somewhere. I don't know my science that well but I don't know of anything that is able to evolve or grow that doesn't get feedback on its failures. Maybe some of you in other countries think your countries could pull this all off. Me, I live in the US and I've been to the DMV. I've dealt with programs our central planners have put together. Count me out.

All I ask is that we acknowledge there's a problem and how its happened. What we do, when, how and for whom is a different argument. And yes, its a difficult one.

Yes people (governments, corporations, individuals) have done corrupt things but I don't think we should sit back and shrug our shoulders. This isn't about guilt. It's about acknowledging we are all connected.

Reading your post I can see you've been burnt by experience. I acknowledge what that must feel like.

Jules
 
Is that the John Kerry of the "Skull and Bones" fraternity. George Bush was also in that fraternity though he got better grades than John Kerry. I don't like demonizing people or name calling but I was shocked by how stupid I thought George Bush was and then doubly amazed that when Kerry ran for president, no one pointed out this connection. I don't quite trust his credentials to make an informed decision - can I at least say that. I do trust that he'll create political havoc and sell those who have been duped on a solution where he and his get richer while you and yours become more poor. You can download this free PDF where you can read how he's committed fraud (well it's not actually fraud if you're a senator or a congressman) with many other politicians in the markets.: http://hkstrongwind.com/pdfs/EBook/Throw Them All Out_ How Politicians and - Schweizer, Peter.pdf This is what consensus starts to breed.
So what do you think we should do?
 
The graph used in the video that you posted is extremely misleading.

Hah! The Marcott reconstruction. This is discussed extensively at WUWT and Climate Audit (just search for "Marcott" at either blog, but of course you won't). It's a sorry saga and too complicated to go into in detail here, but after meticulous dissection, Steve McIntyre finally discovered the trick to the new hockey stick. This graph is nice:
alkenone-comparison1.png

The magic was performed by redating cores: typical deception. In Marcott's thesis, there was no uptick:
thesis-short1.png

But in the paper in Science, this is what we find:
figure-1c.png


Marvellous what a little bit of data manipulation can achieve, isn't it? It's hiding the decline all over again.

Eventually, Marcott et al. had to respond with a FAQ at Realclimate, where the following admission was made:

The 20th century portion of our paleotemperature stack is not statistically robust, cannot be considered representative of global temperature changes, and therefore is not the basis of any of our conclusions.

Even Andy Revkin (an AGW supporter) has this to say:

...there’s also room for more questions — one being how the authors square the caveats they express here with some of the more definitive statements they made about their findings in news accounts.
This is what you get if you only consult Realclimate and other Warmist blogs: lies and misinformation.
 
Last edited:
Rapid accumulation of committed sea-level rise from global warming
vol. 110 no. 34 Benjamin H. Strauss, 13699–13700, doi: 10.1073/pnas.1312464110

By midcentury, the central estimate of commitment would rise to >3.1 m assuming today’s trends continue or to 2.1 m under an aggressive emissions cutting and atmospheric carbon dioxide removal scenario. Both scenarios threaten the future viability of many hundreds of coastal municipalities in the United States alone, but the low emissions path would likely spare hundreds more, including many major cities.

Climate study predicts a watery future for New York, Boston and Miami

For the study, a location was deemed "under threat" if 25% of its current population lives below the locked-in future high-tide level. Some 1,700 places are at risk in this definition. Even if bar is set higher, at 50% of the current population, 1,400 places would be under threat by 2100.

The list of threatened communities spans Sacramento, California – which lies far from the sea but would be vulnerable to flooding in the San Joaquin delta – and Norfolk, Virginia. The latter town is home of America's largest navy base, whose miles of waterfront installations would be at risk of being locked in to future sea level rises by the 2040s. The Pentagon has already begun actively planning for a future under climate change, including relocating bases.

About half the population of Cambridge, Massachusetts, across the Charles River from Boston and home to Harvard and MIT, could be locked in to a future below sea level by the early 2060s, the study found. Several coastal cities in Texas were also vulnerable.

But the region at highest risk was Florida, which has dozens of towns which will be locked by century's end. The date of no-return for much of Miami would be 2041, the study found. Half of Palm Beach with its millionaires' estates along the sea front would be beyond saving by the 2060s. The point of no return for other cities such as Fort Lauderdale would come before that.

"Pretty much everywhere it seems you are going to be under water unless you build a massive system of dykes and levees," Strauss said.

14 U.S. Cities That Could Disappear Over The Next Century, Thanks To Global Warming

http://www.climatecentral.org/wgts/FutureSeas/map.html
 
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