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.
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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. 
The goal of crap like this is to create a basis for further “land planning”. What lands do we want control & in what manner. … how best to manage the masses (in a manner that makes him feel that his life is not a complete waste).
The warped psychology driving guys like this includes his desire & need to control others being at odds with his ideals of freedom that he learned in the 60’s.
He extrapolated 2 billion from the 1.4 billion that he says we will have in 2060.
He picked a date outside of his lifetime….
If he is correct I promise I will make it point to put flowers on his grave. If he is wrong no one will know.
+1
Well instead of giving tax breaks to people who buy electric vehicles maybe the coastal states should give a tax credit for purchasing a mulching mower. All those grass clippings could probably keep pace with the sea level rise.
The St. Petersburg tide gauge shows a rise of 2.71 mm/yr while the GPS “gauge” shows the land is sinking at a rate of 2.2 mm/yr. See http://www.psmsl.org/data/obtaining/map.html and https://tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/sltrends/sltrends_station.shtml?stnid=8726520 for the data.
I think the final number will be closer to a trillion by 2025
/sarc
Make your checks out now to the New Orleans levee boards or the Democratic Party. There will be a 20 percent penalty if you are late.
Not having paid to read the paper, I’m still willing to bet it has the ‘needs further research’ caveat to make it clear that more funding is required.
I have an idea for a paper: The effects of climate change on the diurnal sleep patterns of Felis catus and the corresponding loss of interest in balls of string.
it’s from a sociologist, to be fair when it comes to the ability to produce BS and ignore facts climate ‘scientists’ run sociologists a close race , so claim could , has it as in the past, have easily come from them .
Sea level rate has generally not changed during at least one global cooling and global warming period. The change in climate made no difference to the rate whether warming or cooling.
The high majority sea level rise has been caused by increasing mass in the oceans specifically by volcanic activity. Volcanic eruptions under the ocean have always caused sea levels to slowly rise by consuming space that the ocean previously occupied, but this fact is not mentioned by alarmists. The planet has experienced huge changes with exception to this, but has been caused by huge glacial changes around polar and mountainous regions, with varying continental plates and ocean configurations.
The no change in rate provides evidence that any glacial changes over recent decades have made no difference to the overall rate, mainly caused by igneous rocks forming in the oceans.
The claim of any rate greater than about 3 mm per year is not supported by any scientific evidence and based on assumptions not verified by any observed data.
The GIA (glacial isostatic adjustment) is also an assumption and easily has an error 50% or greater.
Nothing Wrong With doing worst case scenario studies.
Note this is not a prediction.
It is a scenario study.
[there’s PLENTY wrong with it when such scenarios are used to scare people, and this one assumes there’s no adaption or mitigation. It assumes people will lose their homes and become “refugees”. In other words, its bullshit. -Anthony]
The Greenland ice cap melting by 2100 is not a worst case scenario study, it is IMPOSSIBLE to occur.
An honest worst case scenario study would have projected a 1 meter rise in sea level by the end of the century. If they’re just going to make up stuff, why pick 6 meters? Ten meters is a nice round number, no?
The plots of sea level over time show virtually no second derivative. We’re well past the point where the sea level rise was predicted to accelerate. Something’s not working out. The modelers clearly need to go back to the drawing board and figure out why their predictions missed the mark by such a wide margin.
Instead, they publish ever more inflated predictions and the only defense they can mount for this silliness is that they’re “worst case scenarios.”
Seriously?
“The future rise in global mean sea level probably won’t be gradual…..
The key qualifier as the present data indicates a gradual sea level rise too insignificant to support his claims.
The sea level regularly goes up AND down (and up again)
In only 20 times the length of time since the Battle of Hastings:-
The Polar Ice Cap has shrunk from London to the other side of Greenland
And the English Channel has filled with sea water.
In only 100 times the length of time since the Battle of Hastings,
The Polar Ice Cap has expanded from the other side of Greenland all the way to London and then back again.
And the English Channel has emptied of sea water and then filled-up again
Evidence and detail in my blog article :-
http://steelydanswarandpeace.blogspot.co.uk/2009/01/will-brighton-be-swallowed-by-sea.html
But I thought our species had already been reduced to a few breeding pairs in the Arctic.
The Carl Sagan Award for Ludicrous Climate Predictions from Saddam’s Oil Well Fires goes to…..
I’m feeling embarrassed for my alma mater.