From the “it didn’t work out with 50 million, so let’s go for 2 billion and date further our that can’t be verifed in our lifetime” department. Remember the “50 million climate refugees by 2010” scare, that worked out so badly that the U.N. had to “disappear it” from their website?
Well, like zombies that never die, it’s back, and stronger than ever. But, it’s from a sociologist, so take it with a grain of salt, and maybe the whole salt shaker.
Rising seas could result in 2 billion refugees by 2100
CORNELL UNIVERSITY
ITHACA, N.Y. – In the year 2100, 2 billion people – about one-fifth of the world’s population – could become climate change refugees due to rising ocean levels. Those who once lived on coastlines will face displacement and resettlement bottlenecks as they seek habitable places inland, according to Cornell University research.
“We’re going to have more people on less land and sooner that we think,” said lead author Charles Geisler, professor emeritus of development sociology at Cornell. “The future rise in global mean sea level probably won’t be gradual. Yet few policy makers are taking stock of the significant barriers to entry that coastal climate refugees, like other refugees, will encounter when they migrate to higher ground.”
Earth’s escalating population is expected to top 9 billion people by 2050 and climb to 11 billion people by 2100, according to a United Nations report. Feeding that population will require more arable land even as swelling oceans consume fertile coastal zones and river deltas, driving people to seek new places to dwell.
By 2060, about 1.4 billion people could be climate change refugees, according to the paper. Geisler extrapolated that number to 2 billion by 2100.
“The colliding forces of human fertility, submerging coastal zones, residential retreat, and impediments to inland resettlement is a huge problem. We offer preliminary estimates of the lands unlikely to support new waves of climate refugees due to the residues of war, exhausted natural resources, declining net primary productivity, desertification, urban sprawl, land concentration, ‘paving the planet’ with roads and greenhouse gas storage zones offsetting permafrost melt,” Geisler said.
The paper describes tangible solutions and proactive adaptations in places like Florida and China, which coordinate coastal and interior land-use policies in anticipation of weather-induced population shifts.
Florida has the second-longest coastline in the United States, and its state and local officials have planned for a coastal exodus, Geisler said, in the state’s Comprehensive Planning Act.
Beyond sea level rise, low-elevation coastal zones in many countries face intensifying storm surges that will push sea water further inland. Historically, humans have spent considerable effort reclaiming land from oceans, but now live with the opposite – the oceans reclaiming terrestrial spaces on the planet,” said Geisler. In their research, Geisler and Currens explore a worst-case scenario for the present century.
The authors note that the competition of reduced space that they foresee will induce land-use trade-offs and conflicts. In the United States and elsewhere, this could mean selling off public lands for human settlement.
“The pressure is on us to contain greenhouse gas emissions at present levels. It’s the best ‘future proofing’ against climate change, sea level rise and the catastrophic consequences likely to play out on coasts, as well as inland in the future,” said Geisler.
###
Source: http://mediarelations.cornell.edu/2017/06/23/rising-seas-could-result-in-2-billion-refugees-by-2100/
The paper: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0264837715301812
Impediments to inland resettlement under conditions of accelerated sea level rise
Global mean sea level rise (GMSLR) stemming from the multiple effects of human-induced climate change has potentially dramatic effects for inland land use planning and habitability. Recent research suggests that GMSLR may endanger the low-elevation coastal zone sooner than expected, reshaping coastal geography, reducing habitable landmass, and seeding significant coastal out-migrations. Our research reviews the barriers to entry in the noncoastal hinterland. Using three organizing clusters (depletion zones, win-lose zones, and no-trespass zones), we identify principal inland impediments to relocation and provide preliminary estimates of their toll on inland resettlement space. We make the case for proactive adaptation strategies extending landward from on global coastlines and illustrate this position with land use planning responses in Florida and China.
Apparently, the sociologist is relying on projections like this one, which suggests a 6 meter rise:
Reality suggests otherwise. Here is St. Petersburg, which has a 6 inch (0.1524 meter) rise in 65 years with no apparent acceleration. 
2100 is the new 2000. People started to project all their pet doomsday scenarios to a new date conveniently beyond their lifetimes.
Sounds to me like it is time to begin building sea walls and locks along the coast and spend those climate reparation demanded $Trillion$ protecting our own country. Start at 15′ above sea level and add a foot every other year.
At the typical rate of sea rise (or land sink, in many cases) – add a foot every 130 years.
Of course, if you start with the 15′ you recommend – you’ll be good until about the year 4000…
Go over to Skeptical science (the non science website) – they frequently print articles such as
1) sea level rise 3-6 feet rise by the end of the century.
2) accellaration of Sea level rise doubling the rate of rise in 10-15 years – starting with a rate of 1mm per year in 1870 to 3.4mm today. Yet unable to comprehend the rate of increase is due to a change in measurement and not due to any real change in the rate of sea level rise
Since most predictions do not exceed 70′ starting at 15 and adding 1 every other year will yield near the 70′ (22 meter) height by the end of the century. Then even their worst case is covered
The worst case is wasting a lot of time and money on a ridiculous theory that has no hard evidence to back it up…not one shred!
Not one cent to fight a make believe made up problem invented by scaremongers.
The fraud is coming to a conclusion very soon, with any luck at all.
Which part of “There is no acceleration of the rate of sea level rise” is unclear to those who are advocating buying into one tiny bit of this idiocy?
A lot of Holland is already below sea level. They seem to have dealt with the issue.
+1
What about Venice then? 🙂
Schiphol airport has an elevation of -3m.
@roger – Venice is a great example. Of sinking, that is. Been doing it for about 1,000 years now, in fact, ever since they founded the city on a swamp.
It has been accelerating in recent years – but not due to “climate change.” Groundwater removal for many years is the cause, no matter how much the idiots want to claim it is evil CO2. They’ve stopped pumping it out from directly beneath the city, but the water table is still being depleted “upstream,” so it is not rising either.
Well there have never been any reports of Residents of Zealandia seeking Climate Refugee Status as a result of climate caused level shifting of the Zealandia Terrain; or Aquarain.
g
There may in fact be a rush to seek asylum in Zealandia, of former America’s Cup Racing sailors, seeking refuge from the wrath of Larry Ellison; now that Emirates Team New Zealand, have won the Auld Mug, by winning eight races to Team Oracle USA’s one win, which was actually lost in a suicidal tactical blunder by the one Australian member of the ETNZ crew.
As I recall, ETNZ lost several races in Oracle’s remarkable nine win streak in San Francisco, also entirely due to totally idiotic strategic errors by the very same Australian Tactician on the ETNZ crew.
But hey Larry. The rules is the rules, and your chaps won in SF under the rules.
And YOU personally have given all of us a terrific spectacular Regatta on at least two occasions. Thank you for that.
G
Next America’s Cup will have Italy’s Luna Rossa as the challenger of record and there’s a strong possibility that a nationality clause will be inserted into the rules. How stringent that rule will be won’t be known for some time but it’s sorely needed. The Bermuda semi-finals were contested by two Kiwi-helmed boats, an Aussie-helmed boat and an English-helmed boat. The Cup itself was a Kiwi-Aussie affair.
Not that victory wasn’t sweet but if the event wants to be regarded as a truly international sport then the crews need to have a dinkum connection to the country they’re sailing for. Otherwise, as Jerry Seinfeld said about baseball, you’re just cheering for the laundry.
I know that in 1992, when American Rod Davis helmed the New Zealand boat, the level of enthusiasm for the event was not far above lukewarm in these parts.
I’d be interested to know your references about the “suicidal tactical blunder by the one Australian member of the ETNZ crew”. This has to be Glenn Ashby, who’s listed as skipper and whose main task is to trim the sail. Anything I’ve gleaned about the sailing of the boat suggests that tactics were Peter Burling’s domain.
They don’t know the difference anymore between science and science fiction.
I don’t remember who said it
“Of course truth is stranger than fiction, fiction has to make sense.”
Alice in wonderland is a much better story than Warmist – Tales from the climate crypt!
Cryptic comment that.
You can put that in acrylic.
Does this mean the fishing will get better? Bring it!
good point, the Miami hi-rises would make great artificial reefs
Well, they already make good artificial investments.
By the year 2094 dogs will be able to speak rudimentary Flemish. Now someone prove me wrong!
Yes, but they will speak with a horrible lisp. This will cause people to make fun of them, damaging their self-esteem. In retaliation, Dogs will develop a rudimentary secret code in Flemish, coordinating a massive attack on humanity. By the year 2100, there will be 2 billion dog-attack refugees, competing with 2 billion climate change refugees for their survival. It is worse than we thought!
I guess I can now add Sociologist to my resume! Awesome!
The plan will go horribly awry when cats learn to fly airplanes.
Cat’s flying planes? Now it is worse than I thought than when I thought it was worse than I thought! I need more money to study this.
The future is grim for mankind when dogs learn Flemish, and inevitably English because they learn that one cannot get by with speaking Flemish alone. My models show it will go a little something like this:
Cats flying airplanes? Now that is truly catastrophic.
MY model shows that spoken language, as we know it, will become extinct by 2150, as hand waving will replace all previous forms of verbal communication. Written communications will also follow this more gestural form, as a sort of hieroglyphics becomes the norm.
After dogs do THEIR language thing, and cats learn to fly, they all will mutate into very large beasts, many times larger than the largest dinosaurs, multiplying rapidly, increasing their numbers by billions. The resulting respiratory exhalations of their large lung capacities will increase CO2 to 2000 ppm, counteracting every measure that humans tried to limit this noxious gas.
Plants will grow to gigantic size. The Venus flytrap will increase to a size large enough to eat humans, and they will tend to prefer the taste of those who have negative attitudes towards CO2 — don’t ask me how they will know — they just will — a hormonal thing, I suspect. The flytraps will sniff out the CO2 haters and ingest them in mass numbers, thereby reducing human population numbers significantly, which will be poetic justice for those haters who endorsed this all along.
jclarke – not quite – you need some five-dollar words in there. I understood everything you said on the first pass.
Frisian, Mark, Frisian. Flemish is sorta Dutch and understandable to a Dutchman, but even klompjes can’t understand Fries!
Considering that Dogs really already understand every spoken language on the planet
Sit
Stay
Speak
Down
No
Outside
Park
Walk
Flemish should present little problem
Many Bulldogs are already fluent in Phlemish
Phlegmish…dang fast fingers
They wont be speaking Flemish if the dogs in Wallonia have anything to say about it.
6 meters of additional sea level rise by 2100?
You can’t even get to 1 meter without an exponential acceleration to a rate faster than the Holocene transgression:
There you go again, using data, logic and science to refute their nightmare scenarios! You’re not playing fair: reason, facts and science don’t fit their narrative! Shame on you for not following their rules!
I had a go at working out how melting ice sheets could raise sea levels by more than simple maths would suggest – ie, looking for positive feedbacks. There might indeed be some, but they aren’t that easy to find.
– Weight taken off land -> land rises. Clearly -ve feedback.
– Land exposed to erosion -> more silt in sea -> sea rises? Maybe, maybe not. Do glaciers erode more or less than weather?
– More coastal erosion -> more silt in sea -> sea rises? Could be a +ve feedback, but how big an impact could it have? The area involved would be relatively small.
And then, against all that, you need to consider that cities grow and shrink, and people move naturally. The average age of houses in the US is I think less than 30 years, and commercial facilities and infrastructure would rarely go that long without replacement or a major revamp, so the idea that some places will become uninhabitable in 100 years doesn’t seem all that terrifying. It’s like evolution – environments change and species adapt – and humankind is pretty adaptable. Isn’t it?
[ 6 meters sea level rise – you can’t get there from here ]
I would like to see the math that’s used to arrive at six meters of sea level rise. I never see the formula for the volume of a sphere invoked, then we’d see that each additional 1/8th of an inch of sea level rise requires slightly more volume than the previous one. Also, what assumptions are used about the volume of actual existing ice that will melt to raise the sea level. That volume cannot be 100% ice. What percentage of that volume is the bubbles that are used in the ice core analysis? What percentage of that volume is crevices and/or voids?
I won’y pay to read the paper… But my guess is that they are using an RCP 8.5 model and/or assuming a Meltwater Plus 1A style collapse of the WAIS… AKA Science fiction.
Anti-science fantasy.
Complete melting of the Greenland Ice Sheet would raise sea level some 7.2 meters. But it didn’t melt during the Eemian Interglacial, which was hotter and lasted longer than the Holocene. Its Southern Dome might have last perhaps 25% more mass than it has so far in the Holocene.
Complete melting of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet would add about another 3.6 meters. The gigantic East AIS isn’t going anywhere. It has been around for 34 million years and formed under much warmer temperatures than now.
Thank you David for injecting some facts into this inanity.
It has been long since demonstrated that the sea would have to rise faster that during meltwater pulse 1A for anything remotely like these clowns are hyperventilating about.
It is not going to happen.
Period.
End of story.
Besides, the amount of land which would become habitable if the high latitudes warmed up enough to cause enough melting at a rate rapid enough to cause any sort of dislocations.
Are any of these warmista jackasses aware of the fact that land was reclaimed from the sea by the Dutch at a time where they were using shovels and pumps powered by wooden windmills to accomplish the task.
To be a warmista, you have to be completely and willfully ignorant of all of history, and to be an alarmist you have to pretend that people are incapable and lazy fools who do not know how to walk as fast as a bacteria can crawl.
Doh!
Speaking of sea level nonsense, Bloomberg Gadfly even managed to find a place for it in an article about Black Swans
https://www.bloomberg.com/gadfly/articles/2017-06-23/middle-east-conflict-rises-oil-market-yawns
So you have found another dolt who believes that melting sea ice will raise water levels.
Actually, I think his analogy was that a collapse of the WAIS would be really bad, but is highly unlikely. And that oil traders should view potential major wars in the Middle East the same way.
Garbage in – Garbage out.
+10
They might as well determine the refugees and social unrest caused by asteroid impacts, or extra-terrestrial invasions.
Invent a doomsday scenario and one can spin all sorts of potential effects, none of which will have any effect on the number of angels dancing on the head of a pin.
If they were really serious they would be determining the social upheaval caused by erroneous and false climate alarmism.
Which is also called, “The Conservation of Crap.”
Normally “Garbage out” has a very bad smell
“Developmental Sociology”? That sort of studies is almost certainly like Environmental Health Engineering, designed for bureaucrats wanting an “advanced degree” with as little study as possible.
I was thinking a more discrete version of “propaganda minister” as that seems to be his role here.
They have officially become a mockery of themselves… Think of the mind games you’d have to play with yourself to convince yourself that people should simply obey you and fear what you’re saying because of a non-related title.
“Geisler extrapolated that number to 2 billion by 2100.”
What does “extrapolated” mean?
Multiplied like rabbits
Extrapolated: made up a number that lies outside the range of valid data. See also P.O.O.M.A. Number.
In his case: pick a scary number that will get me attention and lots of funding!
Rectal extraction
Extrapolated in this context means “made up off the top of his head”.
Dikes in Holland are 10 to 15 meters ( 30 to 40 feet) high.
1/3 of Holland would be under water without them.
NOT A PROBLEM. Lose Miami or build a dike. Let’s see. Say you have to spend 100 Billion to build the dikes.
Amortized 20 years, that’s 5 Billion per year. 800 Billion GDP for Florida, that’s a 0.5% tax on the economy to save the most populated areas.
NADA nothing, great employment for 10 years for construction and Civil Engineers.
Miami is already spending millions in preparation for accelerated sea level rise… https://www.yaleclimateconnections.org/2017/05/miami-beach-is-spending-millions-to-hold-back-the-sea/
However, sea level rise in the Miami area is not accelerating and it is rising at a rate of about 1 foot per century.
The satellite data indicate virtually no statistically significant secular sea level rise in the Miami area:
I intentionally retained the “seasonal terms and mean” and did not smooth the data because the seasonal variability is real and at least 10 times the magnitude of any secular trends in sea level.
To the extent that there is a trend (R² = 0.0945), the rate of sea level rise in the Miami area is about 3 mm/yr. This would lead to about 11 inches of additional sea level rise by 2100.
A review of USGS topographic maps reveals very little in the way of inundation by by ~7″ of sea level rise from 1950-2012…
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2017/05/16/alarmists-gone-wild-alarmist-co2-headlines-create-confusion-particularly-when-accompanied-by-sea-level-alarmism/
How much of the rise in sea level is due to rising water levels and how much is due to the land subsiding?
Do the same calculations for Gustavus, Alaska, and one will find that the sea levels is declining at an even more rapid rate.
Miami is mostly due to actual sea level rise. The post glacial rebound (PGR) in Florida is only -0.5 to -1.0 mm/yr. Southern Alaska’s PGR is interesting because the land is rising up to 3.0 mm/yr and the local seafloor is subsiding up to 7.0 mm/yr…
http://cdn.antarcticglaciers.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/milne_shennan_fig11.png
The net effect is a sea level fall of -10 mm/yr at Kodiak Island… https://tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/sltrends/sltrends_station.shtml?stnid=9457292
David:
My understanding is that Miami has had flooding issues since the early 20th Century.
Exacerbated by groundwater extraction.
That’s part of the problem. Miami has probably had flooding problems since the end of the Pleistocene
I believe that area where they are spending so much money to raise the streets 2′ is actually below sea level and has always flooded during king tides.
If one looks at the tide gages from the islands in the middle of the pacific, one might come to the conclusion that sea level is not rising at all.
And those are arguably the land areas that are the most isolated of any from any isostatic forces or groundwater issues.
They are the tops of large accumulations of rock anchored to the sea floor.
One of the reasons why coastal lands in Alaska are rising is due to stress building up. Stress that will be released in the next major quake up there.
Different forces. Part of Alaska was covered by the Cordilleran ice sheet and is experiencing crustal rebound. Crustal rebound is generally associated with lots of minor seismicity.
Alaska’s primary earthquake hazard is due to the Aleutian Megathrust Fault System…
http://jclahr.com/alaska/aeic/eq_in_ak/eq_in_ak.jpg
The Pacific Plate is subducting under the North American Plate…
http://www-udc.ig.utexas.edu/external/seminars/seminars/fall11/brown.png
This is what drives the 7-9+ magnitude quakes.
David:
Apologies for the delayed response; but Ryan Maue had a picture of a ship beached in Miami from the Great Miami Hurricane 1928, in his Twitter feed.
Miami has built out further with larger building; while drawing heavily upon the fresh water aquifer below.
The only thing protecting Miami at all are larger buildings along the ocean side.
“Amortized 20 years, that’s 5 Billion per year. 800 Billion GDP for Florida, that’s a 0.5% tax on the economy to save the most populated areas.”
You are assuming, of course, that the rest of us in Florida would want to save Miami.
And that it will not be wiped off the map by at least one and possibly several cat 5 hurricanes between now and then.
Max Hugoson
$100B to dike 5M Miami citizens?
How ’bout we give ’em $100, a cardboard box & tell them to move 100 miles north?
Typo — two billion people s/b “lives”. Which might work if it includes bugs…
“professor emeritus of development sociology”
I’m sorry but that title just makes me laugh. Is it a real job? Does it achieve anything (hysterical articles not based on science aside)? I very much doubt it.
Science from a crystal ball. Who could have seen that one coming? (pun intended)
LOL
On a happy note think of all the great scuba diving and the salvage opportunities. There’s gold in them there sunken buildings.
This trick has been described by Mark Twain in A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/86/86-h/86-h.htm#c24
Would they like to know what the Supreme Lord of Inde was doing? Yes. He told them what the Supreme Lord of Inde was doing. Then he told them what the Sultan of Egypt was at; also what the King of the Remote Seas was about. And so on and so on; and with each new marvel the astonishment at his accuracy rose higher and higher. They thought he must surely strike an uncertain place some time; but no, he never had to hesitate, he always knew, and always with unerring precision. I saw that if this thing went on I should lose my supremacy, this fellow would capture my following, I should be left out in the cold. I must put a cog in his wheel, and do it right away, too. I said:
“If I might ask, I should very greatly like to know what a certain person is doing.”
“Speak, and freely. I will tell you.”
“It will be difficult—perhaps impossible.”
“My art knoweth not that word. The more difficult it is, the more certainly will I reveal it to you.”
You see, I was working up the interest. It was getting pretty high, too; you could see that by the craning necks all around, and the half-suspended breathing. So now I climaxed it:
“If you make no mistake—if you tell me truly what I want to know—I will give you two hundred silver pennies.”
“The fortune is mine! I will tell you what you would know.”
“Then tell me what I am doing with my right hand.”
+2100
Florida has the second-longest coastline in the United States
Actually all coastlines are (almost) infinitely long… if you zoom in close enough.
Hmmm…I always had been taught that Alaska had the longest coast line, and that Maine had the second longest (due to its erose coastline). Depending on how coastline is measured CA may exceed FL.
Michigan
By whatever method you use, FL trounces CA:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_coastline
New Mexico.
The Rio Grande is a a very winding river.
Florida has rivers too.
And a whole lot of islands.
The drive from Key West to Pensacola by way of Jacksonville is near a thousand miles. That 1350 mile number fro CRS looks a tad low.
I expect a lot of “climate change policy” refugees from Sweden: http://www.climatechangenews.com/2017/06/15/sweden-passes-climate-law-become-carbon-neutral-2045/
Well that ought to blow the footing out from under tidal power. Why bother to invest all that money on tidal power generators if they are going to be underwater in about 80 years? Waste of money. And how about all those off shore wind mills? Storm surge will be knocking them down in no time at all! Best to start relocating those funds into something that might have a chance to survive at least until 2100! Or am I the only person that looks at things this way?
not to mention offshore birdchoppers…
Here’s how desperately people fear heat.
Florida has gone from half a million people in 1900 to twenty million today — a forty-fold increase in little more than a century. Most of ’em are “climate refugees” from places far to the north. Even the million or so Cubans who live in Florida come from a cooler climate. Because Cuba is an island, summertime temperatures are significantly lower than Florida’s.
California has gone from 1.5 million in 1900 to forty million today — like Florida, mostly migrants from cooler states who got tired of shoveling snow. The Mexicans in California come mostly from the Valley of Mexico, a high elevation that is cooler than the most populated parts of California.
Californians leaving the state often go to Texas, which is hotter than California.
But why should anyone heed facts, when scary propaganda is more thrilling. Believe the doomsayers, and disregard your own lying eyes.
Getting people to believe that a warmer world will be a catastrophic disaster is the probably most successful propaganda program ever.
Indeed…it is the craziest part of the whole crock of malarkey.
Return of dinosaurs “could” result in 10 Billion human T-Rex, et al. victims by 2200. I’m so certain, I’d bet money on it.
Well, there is that guy that wants to make a dinosaur out of a chicken,
It could get out of control.
More plausible than most CAGW stuff … IMHO.
The water is rising, the sky is falling, and it’s all our fault. And there is Trump with his finger in the dike holding back Climate Change. Thank God if there is one.
Reality suggests otherwise! Nice work.
Honey!!! Grab the credit cards and get the kids in the Land Rover, we have to evacuate the beach house immediately. No, leave the dog, there is no time. Don’t bother locking the door, go, go, go. Kids, start the car! Why am I speeding, we need to outrun this thing, the cops are probably all dead anyway. Yes, traffic does seem light………
Thank God for Land Rovers!
Hurry, hurry, you only have 83 years to escape!
2 billion climate change policy refugees by 2100
–Fixed that for you.
That’s a shock. The version I was familiar with was that the population would peak in the middle of the century and begin to decline because of increasing urbanization and improving living standards.
The thing that will apparently offset the decrease in fertility is extended lifespans.
The lifespan thing is a bit of a wild card. It has been said that the first person to live to 150 has already been born. link
2015 revisions here:
Look for page 1 table 1
Just take away that second oxygen atom from CO2 and then see what happens to the population!