EnviroLink Forum

In another thread I put together some rough calculations.

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With friends like Guido, you will not have enemies for long.

“Intellect is invisible to the man who has none”
Arthur Schopenhauer

"The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits."
Albert Einstein

Given the England spent ~$600 million pounds ($940 million USD) a year in 2005-2006 on sea-level control for 12429 km of coastline and there are 1,634,701 km of coastline in the world, there is ~132 times the coastline to control. That would be a minimum of ~$125 billion USD in cost if the numbers are extrapolated.


However, there are specific costs that would be required to protect against sea level rise as predicted. Just for the east coast surrounding the Thames the cost in 2006 was projected at 6 to 9 billion pounds, which is 10 to 15 times the yearly cost just to bring the area into the same level of protection. The cost of not providing this protection by the English insurance companies was 7.5 to 16 billion pounds for one flooding incident similar in nature to that of the 1953 flood.

This takes the lowest cost for England extrapolated over the globe to ~$1250 billion USD, which is ~1/3 of that of the Netherlands extrapolation but still ~18% of the world GDP for a year. Of course this can be spread out over a few years, but the percentage of GDP is still going to be high and the costs of maintenance is not included in this figure, just the lowest additional cost.

The highest cost would give ~2007 billion USD or ~29% of the world GDP for a year. This places the English extrapolation at ~35% to ~55% of the previous calculation, which given the rough nature of the extrapolations is not that bad. What is bad is the cost of mitigating the sea level rise, but worse is not mitigating since the costs according to the insurance companies would be much higher for just one big flood event.

_________________
With friends like Guido, you will not have enemies for long.

“Intellect is invisible to the man who has none”
Arthur Schopenhauer

"The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits."
Albert Einstein

Given that Antarctican spends $0.00 on sea defense and the increase in sea level will at worst case produce a less than 2 foot sea level rise by 2100 a 10% increase in sea defence budgets will cope happily with such a tiny rise the expected cost of such a rise is 1.1x $0.00 = $0.

That would be absolutly fine for Antarctica but to extend it to the rest of the world is utter drivel. A bit like taking one coastline's figures and projecting the cost of the whole world (including Antarctica) from them. That would be "typical green/commie lieing".

Given your retreat to Antartica to try to make an unsupportable claim, I think we can discount your personal beliefs on the subject by 99% or more. Unless and until you can give us some real data on costs your beliefs will get the respect they deserve ... none as they are countered by another personal belief and trumped again by actual data not guesses and hopes.

_________________
With friends like Guido, you will not have enemies for long.

“Intellect is invisible to the man who has none”
Arthur Schopenhauer

"The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits."
Albert Einstein

Right, because hardly anyone lives in Antarctica. We're talking about where folks are already concentrated. Further, are we to ignore other potential catastrophies associated with an uptick in temperature or is your comprehension strictly limited to sea levels?

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TANG SOO!

My point is that you cannot use any single nation's cost of coastal protection and then multiply that by the world's coast line.

Just as you can organise words into sentences which have no meaning and are utter gibberish you can and have done the same with numbers.

My position on the costs of a sea level rise of less than 2 feet over a centuary is that it does not sound very catastrophic. It sounds like something that will be extreemly easy to deal with.

As has been pointed out the Dutch have very high dykes which allow them to use land which would natually be below sea level. Some of these are (I think) 10 - 15m heigh. They might have to put an extra metre on them, but since it was economic to build them in the first place it will be easy to finance the improvement.

Again, the problem is that Antarctica isn't a nation. It takes people for that.



Try not to confuse an inability to comprehend meaning for it not being there.



That's because, #1, you're not taking into account the fact that the bulk of humanity lives near the water and, #2, you're missing root causes, which have profound effects on things other than sea level.



Sure, if one grossly underestimates or ignores other effects.



Yep, you pointed that out when stated that we can't use any single nation's cost of coastal protection out the opposite side of your mouth.

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TANG SOO!

This thread is about sea level rise costs.

Less than 2 feet over a centuary will flood no cities.

Any land valuable to humanity will be protected at small cost mostly by the continuation of existing such activities, or by the slight increase in such budgets, or will generally not be required.

You are desperate to have a catastrophy. Sea level rise due to global warming is not going to be the problem you are desperate to have. Applying psudo-maths to make the numbers huge will only make all your other points less credable.

Of course, if we derive cost in a way you say it shouldn't be done. Did you mention something about pseudo-math?



You're right. Given all else associated with/causing a 2 foot rise, the rise itself may be far less catastrophic by comparison. But no, I'm not desperate for any of it.



Spoken from experience?

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TANG SOO!

Sure you can if you need a rough idea of the costs. Averages work wonders for things such as that.



Since have given no numbers and tossed out unsupported wild guesses, I suppose you think that is a better way to deal with an issue?



Open heart surgery does not sound that catastophic to some either. It is not what somethign may or may not "sound", but what the evidence shows us and you have no evidence to show outside of some wild guesses.




Maybe to you, but sounding as if it might be easy and actually being so are two very different things.



Maybe and maybe not. You speak as if adding a meter to the height is just that and there would be no additional base supports required. To someone who has no experience with force and vector mechanics that might make sense, but in practice it does not.

Also I provided the data for the English protection costs for a portion of the coast, which has no such high dikes that cost so much, but still has an impressive price tag.

_________________
With friends like Guido, you will not have enemies for long.

“Intellect is invisible to the man who has none”
Arthur Schopenhauer

"The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits."
Albert Einstein

Not according to those who study such things.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/45337850/ns ... l-warning/

"Damages from a coastal storm in the New York City metropolitan area that currently occurs on average once every 100 years would be significant. At current sea level, economic losses from such a storm would amount to about $58 billion. Losses under a 2-foot sea level rise scenario increase to $70 billion and to $84 billion under a 4-foot sea level rise scenario," the report said.

"...The effects of such a flooding scenario would occur rapidly. For example, many of the tunnels lying below flood heights (including subway, highway, and rail) would fill up with water in less than 1 hour," it added. "At the low-lying La Guardia Airport, sea level rise would wipe out the effectiveness of existing levees, even for less severe storms."




And you have what data to back up this wild guess?



You mean like claiming there will be small costs based only on wild guesses and hopes as data?

_________________
With friends like Guido, you will not have enemies for long.

“Intellect is invisible to the man who has none”
Arthur Schopenhauer

"The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits."
Albert Einstein

It seems the current projections are wrong then, seeing as in every interglacial in the past 5 million years has seen sea level rise to 20m or up to 26m in the region, this must mean sea level has been a lot higher elsewhere in the world at the time, ie. approx 100,000 years ago, and then in the 90,000-120,000 steps.

This clearly means that the human induced increase in sea level rise is minute overall if it is the norm in an interglacial.

That's just bringing it back to normal if, that is big word if, it would be better to plan ahead and build for 200 years of sea level rise or somehere there abouts. If they don't they just have to do it all over again as the seas continue rising for the next several centuries.


http://www.eenews.net/public/climatewire/2012/05/22/1


One of the first victims of the flooding will likely be the same underground transit systems that make New York's carbon dioxide emissions so low. A recent report by the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority warned that the combination of sea-level rise and the surging ocean currents that can accompany a powerful storm could flood many of the city's subway, highway and rail tunnels "in less than one hour."

According to state and federal estimates, the resulting damage could take weeks, even months, to repair. The New York state study estimates that the economic losses from a once-in-100-years storm, including workers unable to get to work, could range from $58 billion to $84 billion, depending on the extent of sea-level rise and the size of the storm.

when Japan had a tsunami, some of the cities built 30 foot walls to keep out the ocean. From 20 years ago that is damn good. The earth quake dropped the wall down 3 feet and the water came in over the top and flooded the town. Our best efforts hopefully will work.

A lot of the nuclear power plants are built for around 7.5 earthquakes next to the sea also in the US. If we get soemthing like Japan had, will it be enough? Things are really stable until........................ something happens.

It seems as though we could spend 10 to 20 billion today and save 58 billion loss from happening. But do we have the will to do so? Is it just a matter of when a big storm will hit NYC?




http://www.eenews.net/public/climatewire/2012/05/22/1

The Netherlands and England have built their barriers. Italians are building one to protect Venice, and the Russians are completing a system that would protect St. Petersburg. Estimates for building a barrier or network of barriers to protect New York City and its surroundings begin at about $10 billion.

Bowman, a past member of Bloomberg's committee focused on climate change, said that, so far, city officials have resisted the idea. "It was clear they didn't really want to go there," he said. "I don't know why; too expensive, too ambitious, I guess."

According to Adam Freed, deputy director of New York's Long-Term Planning and Sustainability Office, Bloomberg has committed to completing 132 initiatives in his climate plan before he leaves office next year. So far, building storm surge barriers is not among them.