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. 
Caution….trigger warming
Anyone that can’t walk any faster than that……
The boy who cried “Wolf!” parable seems to apply here.
Was this guys ‘paper’ published in the ‘Wanted’ ads of Science Direct?
“Emeritus sociologists seeks attention and funding…..”
Perfectly put.
There could be more than 2 billion if global cooling occurs.
Meanwhile a new island (Shelly) grows off the coast of North Carolina.
I’m not paying a month’s rent to read that paper. {My rent in 1965.}
I’ll just WAG that this is based on an impossible scenario — maybe the Yellowstone Caldera will go up in a glorious explosion or, perhaps the UN’s Representative Concentration Pathway (RCP) 8.5 happens. About equal probability, I think, but I give the nod to Yellowstone.
Amazing how the most disastrous climate calamity ever seen in this planet, with agriculture suffering the worst part and a 6th wave of mass extinction running wild in the few countries that will have survived the increase in sea level… will for some reason not be enough to prevent human population from increasing to 11 billion LOL
aahhhhh all of these “if this.. if that” statements remind me of what my father used to say…. “if my aunt had balls, she would have been my uncle”….. though in California it seems like the balls aren’t required anymore….
Cheers,
Joe
The dynamic nature of coastlines is never addressed in these scare stories. Huge storms can cause the coast to recede inland. But in between major storms, the coastline is being built up and expanding seaward in many areas, even at the present rate of sea level rise. A natural coastline is fairly resilient against sea-level rise at the current rate, and there is no indication that the rate is increasing.
It appears that contour maps of coastal flooding are derived from matching a projected sea level rise with the equivalent contour of a current topographical map, as if the rise was instantaneous. That is not how it works. 100 years of sea level rise will have to battle it out with 100 years of coastal expansion. This is a very complex problem, but the net result will certainly be far less than projecting an instantaneous sea level rise on a given coastline.
But, but, but think of the children!
/s
I think we can take it as a given that the buffoons responsible for this tall tale have never even heard of the science called physical geography.
What if giant sea monsters begin attacking coastal cities? What if tiny sea monsters turn people into zombies? What is the sea itself becomes a giant amoeba? What if potatoes grow legs?
Give me tax money, enact my policy preferences, because potato.
Zombies are real: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OyBf0nhlT8U
Cornell University, where excrement takes the form of science publications.
Charles Geisler, professor emeritus of development sociology at Cornell: “The future rise in global mean sea level probably won’t be gradual.”
The rarified air far above Cayuga’s waters leads some people to make unsupported claims.
Instead of people in the USA going to stand on the Florida peninsula thus causing it to slowly sink from their extra weight, perhaps we should ask them to go and stand and jump up and down in Alaska thus redressing the balance. This makes about as much sense as the specious alarmist claims. Indeed, perhaps we could pay to bus the alarmists backwards and forwards between Florida and Alaska to keep things evened out. The cost would probably come in under the money being spent on totally unproductive green schemes and give useful employment to bus drivers.
No doubt it is easier to invent nonexistent problems that to try to solve any of the real ones in the world.
I always take my questions about sea level rise to the nearest developmental sociologist, like
Professor Geisler. Never heard of developmental sociology, actually, but it must be good, judging by the terrific success of the other Sociological disciplines. (sac)
The way I see it, some folks are really going to be really happy with their unexpected and new found oceanfront property! I’m going into real estate now!!!!
File this between to the government’s plan to counter the zombie apocalypse and the war department’s scenarios for countering a planet of the apes style simian attack on human infrastructure.
Doesn’t make sense, I thought Climate change was going to be bad for mankind. Now they are saying the climate change is leading to an ever increasing population, so looks like beneficial to mankind.
In the past –
“5 ancient civilizations that were destroyed by climate change | MNN “
Meanwhile back here on empirical planet earth, where we all empirically live:
“Scientists who mapped where land and water have shifted were surprised to find that Earth has gained more land than it has lost since 1985”
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2016/09/water-land-sea-levels-shift-map/
.
No room for facts in climate alarmism.
Go sit in the corner!
Another sociologist – a discipline that by necessity depends almost exclusively on the work done by others.
The proposition that sea level rise will displace 2bn people by 2100 is questionable.
Even if accepted as an actionable analysis of likely future circumstances, displacement will actually run at around 25m pa (2000m over the next 80 years). This ignores mitigation likely to be implemented over the next 80 years in existing coastal areas.
The impact on rainfall and agriculture in areas currently remote from the coast will inevitably change. The coastline wont disappear – simply change location.
It also assumes that population estimates are correct. There are already far too many homo sapiens exploiting limited resources. Political correctness and religious interest groups will not permit any tinkering the right to procreate. In truth we are like any other animals reproducing to the point of prompting an extinction event as animal numbers overwhelm sources of food and other materials.
Well, everyone who has ever asserted that we will run out of resources has been laughably wrong, but that should not stop anyone from asserting it over and over again anyway.
In what year will people stop getting fatter?
This ‘paper’ explains why the lead author is emeritus. He has clearly lost it.
If you want to find someone with an advanced degree in sociology or English lit in a college town, just hail a taxi.
“The colliding forces of human fertility,” Bjorn Lomborg, in his latest opinion piece a few days ago in the WSJ, continued his long-running theme that climate change will happen and that there is little man can do about it. In particular, he says that spending trillions of $ on CO2 reduction is a fools errand. The world would be much better off spending that money on economic development, clean water, education, war reduction and health care. I agree.
As we all know, rich societies reduce their birth rates substantially over poor ones. There-in lie the solutions to population and climate. Using free market principles, we can increase the economic well being of all and the problems of warming, food supply, and life and liberty all solve themselves. Why the greenies and the global politicians can’t see this logic is a mystery to me.
+10
Oh, they can see it John, but in they can also see that in this future, they are not in charge. People not under their control might do things that they don’t approve of. This frightens them, so obviously people need to be controlled (or so they think). Being morally and mentally superior, they of course must lead. But it is a burden they are oh so willing to accept.
The big mystery is why they simultaneously promote policies that guarantee increasing numbers of people?
Like, forcing wealthy countries to accept by the millions, then feed house and clothe them for free, refugees who breed like flies?
And doing everything they can to keep the poor countries poor…when everyone knows full well that rising prosperity decreases birth rates.
The biggest factor in birthrates though, is the educational level of women in a society.
Get the girls to school, then college, if you want less people.
“…intensifying storm surge…”
Lol
Doesn’t seem to be affecting coastal housing prices.
At the current (claimed) rate of sea level rise – 3.3 mm per year [http://www.smh.com.au/environment/rate-of-global-sea-level-rise-jumps-50-per-cent-in-two-decades-20170626-gwyu52.html] – that 6 meter rise would take only 1800 years (about 90 generations) – far longer than any modern structures will last.
For the past 7000 years (since the end of the last Ice Age) the sea level has been rising 5.7 mm/decade (4m/7000y), mainly due to the greatly diminished availability of glaciers. When the glaciers are completely gone there will be no significant source of water to feed sea level rise.
Even the most panicky warmists seem ignorant of the fact that the NATURAL rate of sea level rise associated with the end of the Ice Age was about 106 meters in 8000 years (13,000 BCE to 5,000 BCE), or 132.5 mm/decade – 40 times faster than the rate that has them all soiling their undies.
the likely #1 cause of sea level rise is ground water extraction, followed by thermal expansion and glacier melt
1. From NATURE: Source found for missing water in sea-level rise
“A team of researchers reports in Nature Geoscience that land-based water storage could account for 0.77 millimetres per year, or 42%, observed sea-level rise between 1961 and 2003. Of that amount, the extraction of groundwater for irrigation and home and industrial use, with subsequent run-off to rivers and eventually to the oceans, represents the bulk of the contribution.”
http://www.nature.com/news/source-found-for-missing-water-in-sea-level-rise-1.10676
Think California, Texas, Louisiana et al will shut down wells?
Groundwater extraction can also lead to land subsidence.
Well in my country we did have one attempt to claim refugee status o the grounds of sea level rise.
This person was from Kiribas.
The New Zealand court sensibly threw his case out and he was sent home.
Ironically, NZ has a immigration quota for Kiribas and it appears that it is rarely if ever filled.
Cheers
Roger
http://www.thedemiseofchristchurch.com