Sunday, October 25, 2015

Sea Level Rise

My dear sister, see last post, is worried about sea level rise and a lot of it.  She is worried about 200 feet.

The current value is 2 to 3 mm per year.  Let's do the arithmetic...

An inch is about 25 mm, I'm going to do some rounding here, so we have an inch every 8 years.  The a foot every 96 years (12 * 8!).  So to get to 200 feet we are talking about 96 * 200 = 19000 years.  So let's mobilize now, because if nothing changes we are talking about severe problems by the year 21015 or so.

Of course this assumes that the rate stays constant like it has for the last 8000 years.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1d/Post-Glacial_Sea_Level.png

If you look at the chart above, you might notice that there have been times when it's been a lot lower.

Still afraid?  Sure you can assume all the ice at the polls is going to melt.  But I'd expect that water levels will be a lessor worry than other things.






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