Cecil discusses global warming in this column.
My follow-up question–will rising sea levels, combined with drought (brought on by climate change), cause Florida water wells to be contaminated with seawater?
If so, how soon can we expect to see coastal wells ruined?
Florida has addressed the problem by banning the use of the terms “global warming” and “climate change”. :rolleyes:
As usual, everything in Florida is about real estate scams.
Groucho Marx in the Cocoanuts: “800 wonderful residences will be built right here. Why they’re as good as up – better. You can have any kind of a home you want… why, you can even get stucco. Oh, how you can get stucco!”
I live in Florida. It’s a nice place, Groucho notwithstanding.
Look, Miami is in trouble even without climate change. The entire state of Florida is karst, and it is rotting from underneath. It is sinking faster than the sea level is rising. I figure my house in central Florida will be beachfront property inside of 100 years.
People are too busy blaming each other for climate change instead of doing anything useful to mitigate its effects. There are, after all, plenty of things we could do beyond driving Priuses. Spraying seawater into the upper atmosphere is cheap and would have a significant cooling effect. Reforestation pulls carbon out of the air.
Paying trillions of dollars to third world dictators who will just use the money to buy yachts, jets, and gas guzzling cars is a lousy way to fight climate change. But, so far, that seems to be the favorite option among the watermelon socialists (green on the outside, red on the inside). We need that money to protect our own cities and our own people.
Paying trillions of dollars to third-world dictators is even more popular among the right wing than the left.
Oh, and as the article points out, you do need the climate scientists and the computer models to propose and properly deploy solutions like that one, until many contrarians decide to finally drop their hate for climate scientists and computer models not much will be done.
Clearly you do not check General Questions.
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=20283366&postcount=32
Bold added, and I may add that I have to say that I did see that watermelon analogy used against the Cristian Democrats in El Salvador back in the 80’s (Green was their color used in their flag. By then the real communists and plain people that demanded change had taken to arms and even the moderates like the Christian democrats were demonized by the right). As the Truth commissions showed, the extreme right then (in the USA and in El Salvador) used analogies like that to demonize others falsely and to justify the killing of a lot of politicians that did not have any communistic leanings.
Of course that “watermelon” analogy was also used against environmentalists further in the past in the USA but the Point here is that you need to be aware of how many others are aware of the hate contained in that analogy.
So, now we are going to use Global Warming to avoid taking any responsibility for everglade destruction and over-pumping?
HAH? 
Geez … I lose internet connection for a week and a half and look what happens …
C’mon, Unca Cece … are you seriously saying that moving tens if not hundreds of millions of people is cheaper than building one meter sea walls … and we have 100 years to build these one meter sea walls …
bo-whoa-whoa-whoa-whoa-gus …
So I’m driving down my local rural interstate freeway and it’s a least one meter above ground level, let’s call it 20 meters wide for the lanes going one way … a proper sea wall can be half that width, and we have the 20 cm steel-reinforced concrete for armoring (which is decidedly overbuilt for a sea wall) … now we’ve crisscrossed the entire United States with freeways like this and it only took us a lousy 25 years … please please explain how using a quarter of the materials for a tenth the length of just Interstate 80 is going to bankrupt the World Economy …
I challenge anyone who lives near the coast to take a one meter stick down to the shoreline during high tide when the Moon is either full or new (best in January) … that’s how high the ocean water will be at it’s very highest … and that only for a couple hours … that’s all your great-great-grandchildren will have to deal with …
If we need to be hysterical about anything, maybe we should think about running out of fossil fuels … it’s not like the filthy stuff bubbles up from the Earth’s interior … half the world’s population lives in cities, that means half the world’s food supply has to be transported from the farms to the cities … and right now this transportation is all but completely depended on the burning of fossil fuels … this one meter sea level rise is trivial compared to three billion city folks starving …
Unca Cece … didn’t this occur to you when you were waiting in line for two hours to buy five gallons of gasoline back in the 1970’s?
Whatever the uncertainties … climate changes at a glacial pace … and only where it is indeed changing … 79% of the world’s surface is ocean, and there’s nothing that will change the climate over the open ocean … it’s “Oceanic” today, it will be “Oceanic” ten thousand years from now …
Even the glaciers beg to differ.
It will be if we do make a concerted effort to avoid the worse scenarios, with ideas like yours the contrarians only want to get us into the then more likely worse scenarios that also do mention things like the entire oceans turning to poison in less time than the one you are referring to.
[QUOTE] In which Hank details the five scariest things that will likely happen because of climate change. At SciShow[/QUOTE]
One thing to take into account: once we do decide to do something about the issue all the costs of that and taking care of all the displaced and the wars that are likely to come does not translate into the improvement of the world economy.
[QUOTE] Hank boils down a new report from the United Nations about global warming and tells you five things you really need to know about our warming world. [/QUOTE]And it seems that you need to catch up a lot still. The reports told us that the ocean rise was likely to reach about a meter by the end of the century, ** provided that an acceleration of the loss of cap ice was not observed**. Unfortunately it has been observed. So, the estimations change.
“Spraying seawater into the upper atmosphere” (I presume you mean the upper stratosphere or mesosphere) even if feasible, will have little effect on average temperature and may even increase CO[SUB]2[/SUB] concentrations from entrained gas while the water vapor itself returns to the ocean. Atmospheric temperature is actually dominated by the oceans which act as heat reservoirs, so just cooling the atmosphere by some kind of hypothetical evaporation effect is impractical, notwithstanding the additional energy that would have to be applied (presumably in the form of cargo jets or other transportation system) to delivery water to the appropriate altitude. The impact of atmospheric carbon sequestration by forestation is difficult to assess but even the most optimistic efforts provide only a fraction of an order of magnitude of the amount of carbon we are pumping into the atmosphere. The only practical means to sequester large volumes of carbon dioxide is from entrained air in the oceans, and the lag time to come to equilibrium with the atmosphere is still measured in centuries. There isn’t any magic fairy dust technology that is going to offset the impact of global climate change.
I don’t know where this straw man argument comes from but this doesn’t represent anyones’ proposed solution. Providing subsidies and aid to developing nations to use renewable sources rather than cheaper but highly polluting fossil fuels is a way to avoid increases in carbon output as those nations grow in both population and expected standard of living, but even that is only a partial mitigation.
The problem of climate change isn’t just what you characterize as a slight increase in sea level; it is vastly more energy stored in the atmosphere and oceans, which translates into into more climate activity (e.g. extreme weather events) along with an elmination of heat sinks (polar and glacial ice), which will result in both more destruction and displacement of both populationsand agricultural regions which populations that are geographically separated are dependant for sustinence. These changes have not been occurring “at a glacial pace”; in fact, they’ve been radically faster than the historic record, and in fact faster than anything we see in the geologic record in the last fifty million years, which is consistent with the release of tens of millions of years of sequestered atmospheric carbon in the span of less than two centuries.
As you note, nearly 4/5 of the world surface is water, and while we often regard the oceans as being distinct from the atmosphere, there is actually a very active and complex interplay between the oceans and air that is largely driven by ocean dynamics, in which we have also seen radical changes. This is not withstanding the potential for release of of methane clathrates which could radically enhance the greenhouse effects producing climate warming. Ignorantly dismissing all of this as essentially “too big to fail” is obtuse and foolish. In fact, the system is too big and too dynamic to control by any means at our disposal or even practicably conceived, and we’re going to have to take steps starting now to cope with inevitable changes that go vastly beyond building sea walls to protect ocean front property.
Stranger
Saltwater Intrusion. Overpumping depletes the amount of freshwater available above the fresh-saline interface. Draining wetlands reduces the recharge of freshwater to the upper aquifer, further depleting it. The combination of both processes means that the elevation of the regional freshwater-saltwater interface is rising.
Melbourne’s point was that the scenario you asked about in your OP (Florida water wells contaminated with seawater) would be happening regardless of climate change. Climate change is certainly exacerbating it, but that’s a long-term process. Mismanagement of water resources happens on much shorter timescales.
Indeed, almost all the cases I heard mentioned of water sources close to the sea are being lost for over pumping, the clear and small increase in the ocean rise seen so far makes one wonder though, hence the question mark in the early post I made.
But the main point was that the ocean rise is beginning to be a factor on that issue. If we do not control emissions soon what it is provable will become more certain as seeing an increase of just a foot to be really bad for wells and if the quantity of emissions that matches the bad scenarios continue, we are likely to see that foot rise before the middle of this century.
No disagreement there - was just explaining Melbourne’s post for Bosda.
Thanks, that did help.
In the conclusion of The Master’s article, He touches upon the uncertainties inherent in just about all the claims that are being made about the future … my comments were about one thing we can be certain of … the cost of mitigating sea level rise isn’t even trivial compared to the cost of building 500 commercial nuclear power plants … hell’s bells, just the cost of the sea wall is trivial compared to the cost of buying up the real estate to put the fool thing on …
Here’s a blurb from NASA describing “Arctic Amplification” … over the past 50 years we’ve noted that the poles are warming faster than the equator … this means that the temperature difference is becoming smaller, thus the energy flow is reduced leading to less average power in the atmosphere, regardless of total energy content … now if we’re talking about droughts, floods or hurricanes … then we’re talking about dynamic events that require power to form … so if this short term tread is in fact an indicator of the long term treads, then we’ll be seeing less extreme events and they will be less powerful (on average) … this is just a simple application of the Second Law of Thermodynamics …
Your dread and catastrophe about our agricultural lands is somewhat misguided … most deserts form underneath the divergent zones created by the large-scale convective circulation cells in our atmosphere … where the tropical cell meets the temperate cell (aka the horse latitudes) we find a narrow band of descending air, which increases pressure and in turn decrease relative humidity; inhibiting precipitation … perhaps you could clarify what physical process would also inhibit precipitation in areas removed from these divergent zones … I’m sure The Master would be interested as well … “they’ll merely have drought and general aridity to deal with” … have a teaspoon of hyperbole with your cup of StraightDope? …
The atmosphere/ocean interaction is abundantly obvious where I live, as in how many times I have to empty a 5 gallon bucket in winter … four times this last winter, about average … please fight my ignorance, what magical property of the methane clathrates causes it to release energy as it sublimes … because if we’re waiting for solar energy to conduct down to these depths, we’ll be waiting a very very long time … and please focus on the conservation of energy, violations of this law are considered felonies around here …
I agree that “too big to fail” is obtuse and foolish … I spent many an hour waiting in line to buy 5 gallons of gasoline back in the 1970’s thinking of all the ways to deprive Big Oil of my money … working within a few miles of my home … using almost strictly BPA hydroelectricity … recycling plastics and metals … living like it’s Yom Kippor 1973 everyday of my adult life … easy peasy …
So … yeah … you folks do need to start making the changes, and you’ll be paying a hell of a lot more for energy … either pay or conserve, your choice …
Of course this shows that you did not learn anything from Jennifer Frances and the other Polar expert that contrarians pointed before as the beesnees; when in reality they were pointing out that the reduction of the winds actually leads to weather patterns getting stuck for longer periods of time, incidentally the energy coming from the sun is still there and accumulating thanks to the greenhouse effect.
Regarding that what I understood is that currently the wind shear is one reason why hurricanes are not developing as often in the north Atlantic, unfortunately since the temperature is increasing that state of affairs is bound to change, the reckless position is indeed to demand that we follow a path where more hurricanes appear besides being stronger thanks to the increase of the water vapor and the energy from the sun that accumulates thanks to the greenhouse effect.
As for the risks of Methane, more is bound to be released if the permafrost melts more.