[Vision2020] Dan Miller on Realclimate.org Article "What drives uncertainties in adapting to sea-level rise?"

[Ted Moffett]

I was reading Realclimate.org tonight, part of my usual routine to keep up
with global warming issues, and found the comment on sea level rise at the
bottom here, by Dan Miller.

So, who the heck is Dan Miller?  He is involved in a website, Climate Place
( http://climateplace.org/file/Home.html )
with the mission as stated here:
"The purpose of this site is to give people the tools and information they
need to make the case for urgent and dramatic action to address climate
change."

His point about "unadaptable impacts" in the Realclimate.org article is
important, given discussion of adaptation to global warming can reduce the
urgency of the need to mitigate the progress of climate change, when people
feel large scale adaptation is a reasonable and feasible policy, rather
than focusing more on mitigation.

His website appears to offer a lot of credible relevant information.

A short bio from this website:

Dan received his Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering, with
distinction, from Cornell University and his Master of Science in
Electrical Engineering from Stanford University. He holds three patents in
the areas of compression technology and wireless communications systems.
Dan co-authored a paper on climate change
<http://www.tos.org/oceanography/archive/23-1_greene.pdf> that was
published in the journal Oceanography.

Mr. Miller is former President of the Foundation Board of Trustees of
the Chabot
Space & Science Center <http://www.chabotspace.org/> and is a founding
member of the Climate Readiness Institute
<http://climatereadinessinstitute.org/>, a group made up of UC Berkeley, UC
Davis, and Stanford researchers who provide information to policymakers. He
is a member of the XPrize Environment and Energy Prize Advisory Committee.
He is also a member of Cornell University's Computing and Information
Science and School of Electrical and Computer Engineering Advisory Boards.
Dan is also a member of The Climate Project <http://theclimateproject.org/>.
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Vision2020 Post: Ted Moffett

Article below from Realclimate.org

What drives uncertainties in adapting to sea-level rise?

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2016/03/what-drives-uncertainties-in-adapting-to-sea-level-rise/?wpmp_tp=1

3rd  comment out of 86 as of now to the article at the web link above:

3
Dan Miller <http://climateplace.org/> says:
18 Mar 2016 at 12:42 AM
<http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2016/03/what-drives-uncertainties-in-adapting-to-sea-level-rise/#comment-647351>

Sally:

Rather than provide detailed comments on your question, let me provide some
high-level tidbits:

1. It may be (and I would say that it is likely) that the “official”
estimates we have been given for SLR are conservative and the actual rise
will be significantly higher/sooner. See Jim Hansen’s paper on “Scientific
reticent and sea level rise”:
http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/2/2/024002/fulltext/

2. Hansen also notes that Greenland is currently losing ice mass at an
exponential rate. Exponentials are not your friend and if the rate
continues for a few decades, we will have ~3 feet of SLR by 2050 and much,
much more than that by the end of the century.
http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/2012/20121226_GreenlandIceSheetUpdate.pdf

3. NASA has said that we have passed a tipping point with the West
Antarctic Ice Sheet Sheet (WAIS) and its collapse is now “unstoppable”.
This adds about 10 feet of SLR to whatever other SLR we get though the
timing is uncertain, but seems to be just hundreds, not thousands of years
and maybe sooner.

4. The last time CO2 levels were what they are today (400ppm), sea levels
were about 75 feet higher than they are now. This is where we are heading,
though it will take some time. Of course, we are continuing to increase CO2
levels.

5. As you note, once SLR gets underway, we will never have a stable
shoreline again until sea level rise a great amount (perhaps as much as 280
feet if we keep burning fossil fuels and/or natural CO2/methane release
processes run away). Therefore, retreat is the only long-term adaption
strategy for SLR.

6. Based on what I have read, I would say it is likely we will see 10~15
feet of SLR by next century (and possibly this century – see (1), (2) and
(3) above) and this means the bottom third of Florida (and many other
places) will not be on the map next century. I think facing this fact may —
just may — help us understand the need to get moving to avoid even more
serious and unadaptable impacts.
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