National Geographic posted
nice maps of the world showing how the planet would look if the polar ice caps melted completely, raising sea level 216 feet (65 meters). You can see that this would hardly bring life to a halt; after all, it has happened many times over the past billion years. Most of the world's land area is still there, and increased rainfall might reduce the area of desert. We would endure. The problem is, what happens to the billions of people who lived in the areas now under water? Where will they go? How will they eat? Above, eastern North America. So long, Florida, Louisiana, Long Island, Delaware. Catonsville, incidentally, survives; the elevation of my house is around 460 feet.
Europe. Sayonara, London, Amsterdam, Venice, Hamburg and just about all of Denmark.
Asia. This is the real catastrophe; the low-lying land of Bangladesh, southern Burma, the Mekong Delta, and northeastern China is home to more than a billion people, and it is the exceptional fertile soil of those low-lying areas that feeds them.
Even under the direst climate change scenarios, this would take over a thousand years to happen, so we have plenty of time to prepare.
2 comments:
Completely theoretical, and does not take into account human engineering solutions.
The Netherlands have been fighting the sea for hundreds of years. I can hear them now: "Then we'll build a dyke sixty-SIX meters high!"
Cities can certainly be protected. But whole river deltas?
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