The Greens oppose the CPRS not because it is too weak, but because it will point Australia in the wrong direction with little prospect of turning it around in the timeframe within which emissions must peak, says Senator Christine Milne.
Girt by sea, to underwater: See Australia post-warming
|
The final installment of the Garnaut Review this week didn’t raise anyone’s hopes. As the professor himself said, “If we fail, the failure of our generation will haunt humanity till the end of time.” Heavy stuff. But what does failure really mean for Australia? Given that 80% of Australians live in coastal areas, rising sea levels are an important issue. According to Garnaut, if we get the international community on board we’ll only see a 59cm rise. But that’s the best case scenario, Garnaut says a more realistic outcome is a target of 550ppm. Here’s what our resident climate change scientist Dr Andrew Glikson had to say about what this means for sea levels:
Since neither Glikson or Garnaut gave us a visual aid, Crikey thought we’d check out what exactly 25 metres of rising sea will look like for Australia on this cool flood map. Alex Tingle of Fire Tree created these maps using raw data from NASA and google maps. Unfortunately it only goes as far as 14 metres — some would argue that’s scary enough. Below are some nice pictures of each capital city 14 metres below sea level, and a few positive points about flooding on a national level. Sydney Malcolm Turnbull would be able to appeal to a different Australian demographic — the homeless — as his waterside mansion gets swallowed by Sydney Harbour…
Melbourne The Grand Prix will be forced to become a submarine race, allowing water to absorb the sounds of engines roaring and make the bikini clad babes appear rather sensible.
Brisbane The beautiful river running through the city just got bigger! How lovely.
Hobart The Tasmanian Parliament will be underwater. That can only be a good thing.
Darwin We don’t know a lot about landmark location in Darwin, but if anyone does, send us an email!
Canberra Canberra will be fine. That’s no silver lining.
Adelaide Sport in Adelaide will come to an end, with Port Adelaide Park, Football Park, Cheltenham and Morphettville racecourses all submerged — and since both the airports will be inoperable due to excess fluid, no one will be able to escape except via the Nullabor.
Perth Perth’s riverside suburbs will be underwater, plus Burswood Casino (gambling problem solved), Rottnest Island (goodbye quokkas) and the home of the SAS at Cottesloe.
|
|
|
14 Comments
Entertaining projections (aka wild guesses).
Compare this from CSIRO: “Recent observations show the observed sea levels from tide gauges and satellites are tracking near the upper bound of the IPCC 2001 projections since the start of the projections in 1990 (Rahmstorf et al. 2007). This upper limit leads to a global-averaged sea-level rise by 2100 of **88 cm** compared to 1990 values.”
So how do we get from 88 cm to 25 metres? That’s more than a 2,500% jump!
I like the crack about the Tasmanian Parliament though.
I know that everyone has to bag Canberra as a catharsis for whatever indignities they were forced to endure on some school excursion during their spotty years. Its not our fault you didn’t get any on the excursion, OK. You were repulsive at that age, you would not have gotten any in Sydney, Melbourne, New York or Paris either. Let it go.
To the point. Canberra might not be under water, but it will not be fine because it will be close to a desert. Not a good thing for us territorians.
I think Dave Liberts has hit the nail on the head.
It’s all an evil real estate scam.
AGW denialists are Lex Luthor to Rudd’s Superman. But I’m not sure I want to be saved….my lowbrow suburb may become beachfront realestate ……”sooner than you think” as Tim Flannery is wont to repeat but evidently not soon enough for me…..
Oh and Bill….a significant number of Port Power supporters are already homeless…..
These maps are very interesting, but I suspect that at least for Melbourne they underestimate the areas under threat.
A rise of 2m will flood half of Flinders Street and nearly all of Southbank and Docklands.
See these contour maps of Melbourne http://www.melbourne.vic.gov.au/info.cfm?top=94&pa=756&pg=3978 and get your highlighters out for some do-it-yourself flood prediction fun!
I think you’re onto something here Eleris / Chris … we don’t need pipelines and dams to get water to the capitals, we just need some way of diverting all this extra sea to Canberra.
Oi what happened to the Sydney map?
Ann
These global warming alarmists delight in scaring the pants off everyone.
Given that the increase in CO2 levels since 1850 has averaged 0.68 ppm interpolated forward, and if nothing changes, by 2050 the atmospheric ccncentration will be 416 ppm. Associated with that the increase in sea levels at 2 cm per year will result in a rise of 8 cm by 2050.
Even if the total increase in CO2 can be proved to be man-made, and that is a long way off yet, Australia’s share is only 1% of 7gt which is only 0.003% of total CO2 emissions. If we reduce our emissions to zero or, more importantly, even if we double our emissions it will make absolutely no difference at all. Our total annual CO2 emissions are equal to about one day of emissions in China. We are going to be slugged with huge price rises in energy et al for no man-made change in the climate at all
Ooh, with a bit of luck our place will be beachfront. Hopefully not 1 metre underwater. Looks pretty close either way.
I gather that a lot of the uncertainty about the amount of rise comes from factoring in the fate of large ice sheets. If the antarctic or greenland sheets melt then there is certainly enough water to raise sea level by several meters.These do seem to be melting quite a bit faster than was anticipated in earlier predictions, an they probably don’t melt in a linear fashion since the melting accellerates more melting until large chunks just break off and float away to warmer climes.
As an aside re the venom directed a Garnault for authoring the report - he is really just the messenger for a whole lot of science. He could be the most puffed up, the most highly paid, the most annoying of bureaucrats and it would not make one whit of diffrence to the findings. Its not just false prophets that used to get stoned, it was anyone with a new idea.
How much has the sea level risen at Fort Denison during the last two decades? How much of that last year?
Sorry, there is a typo im my previous post.
The increase in sea levels is calculated at 2mm per year NOT 2cm.
Or it could be a double whammy confidence trick. IPCC members could be buying up cheap real estate 20m above sea level in coastal cities around the world……. induce panic buying and selling amongst the natives and then sell knowing all the while that sea levels are actually rising minuscule increments…..then buy beachfront….
How good is this? If the prediction is correct a significant number of Port Power supporters will be drowned and or homeless.
The best news is that it’s Garnaut’s final instralment. How much have we paid this inflated mandarin to tell us nothing we haven’t already heard ad nauseum?
And I presume he will be paying it back with interest when his predictions fail to eventuate?
In the good old days they used to stone the false prophets!