I've Become Obsessed with Global Warming - part 1 of ?

I'm in Cambria this afternoon, a little coastal town that is not as famous as the big nearby tourist attraction, Hearst's Castle, about 8 miles up the road, but a delightful coastal community.  This area in San Luis Obisbo County is one of the areas that is suffering from severe drought, so bad they have closed the bathrooms at Hearst Castle to save water and brought in port-a-potties.  But Cambria is still a peaceful bucoloic place to spend some time.  We saw Dolphins cavorting around the surfers when we went out to watch the Sunset last night.  Actually the Dolphins had probably found a school of fish under the surfers so were mostly hunting but they look cavorting ish much to the delight of the tourists on shore watching the sun go down behind the clouds.

I'm neither a global warming fanatic, nor a global warming denier.  I accept that the science suggests we are probably heating the world up with our industrial development and lifestyle.  Sure we don't even know what we don't know, but you have to make decisions based on the evidence available, at least if you want to behave conservatively in the true sense.  If you pick at the weaknesses in the evidence so you have an excuse to deny the most likely explanation for all the evidence, you are not practicing good decision making.

But for many years I wasn't really inclined to pay too much attention to global warning.  It is pretty clear to me a political solution is not going to happen since trying to control global warming by cutting back emissions pits the haves with developed economy's against the have nots with billions of people who want to enjoy something like the standard of living the haves have.  Even within the haves there is conflict between the people that take the long view and the people that don't want to upset their advantageous current economic situation.  So a unified world response is not going to happen.  The weather will change in some undetermined manner, rainfall patterns will change in some undetermined manner, and there will be winners and losers.  But, I've thought, we here in California, blessed with so much diversity, will be able to adapt to the changes.  So it was pretty low on my list of concerns.

Then I saw the National Geographic article a while ago about how much the sea level will rise if all the ice caps melt in Greenland and Antarctica.  The science guys who study melting ice and such things said it would all melt in 100 years if melting continues at the rate it has been occurring, and that would bring the sea level up 216 feet.

Presumably it won't be the sea level jumping up 216 feet on January 1, 2114.  It will be sort of like compound interest, rising little bits at first then accelerating over the years, but it still would be an astounding change to our physical environment.

In the article, and in other sources I have seen they talk about the disaster rising sea levels would cause in Bangladesh, but 216 feet, or even 26 feet would threaten coastal areas all over the world.  When I was 20 years old 100 years seemed an unfathomably distant future.  Now at 67 it seems much shorter.  100 years ago my grandparents were in their teens.   Coupled with the fact the science is imprecise, it could happen sooner (or later) but what if, for example, it rose 25 feet in the next couple decades?

I live on the ridge that forms the eastern boundary of the City of Berkeley looking out at the San Franscisco Bay.  So I pulled up a google map of the bay area and set it on the terrain setting to have access to the elevation markings.  If the sea level rises 216 feet the economic engine that is the bay area today will no longer exist.  The houses on the ridges that surround the bay will be looking at a much bigger bay that has swallowed up all the commercial areas.  From the financial district in San Francisco, to Silicon Valley to the I-880 stretch of development in Oakland, it would all be under water.  Even 26 feet would swamp all the Bay Area airports and much of the crucial economic infrastructure

When I expanded the map I saw that at 216 feet Sacramento, and Davis, the town I lived in for 30+ years will be under 150 or so of water.  Stockton will be gone, Fresno will be the bay front property at the southern end of a second inland bay.  Much of Napa and Sonoma County will be underwater, the northern end of the expanded bay will be about Geyserville and St. Helena.

Most of Los Angeles and much of San Diego will be seafloor.  On the west coast Portland will be largely underwater, and much of Seattle.  The whole eastern seaboard, including Boston, New York, Washington DC, Baltimore, Charleston, and most of the State of Florida will be underwater.

Rising sea levels would have a massive economic impact on the United States.

So now I go to some nice relaxing beach resort like Cambria and I find myself looking around imagining what is going to be underwater, both in the near future, and in the longer term.  I pull up topographical maps to see how far up the canyon that brings Santa Rosa Creek down through town will the sea intrude.  I imagine which houses up on the hill are going to have great view, which houses are going to be isolated on little islands surrounded by the intruding sea.  I speculate on where the business district down along Santa Rosa Creek will go as the sea swallows up the current business district..

The California I've known all my life is going to be reshaped in ways that affect people I know and love today, and I want to know what it will look like.

Next:  The politics of global warming - who wins and loses from rising sea levels.