"As climate change threatens, NASA has options that include hardening facilities against the rising seas with barriers and structures adapted to storms and flooding, or if adaptation is not possible, to strategically retreat."
This article makes it seem as if protecting against rising water levels is an almost impossible feat. For everyone who thinks it is, I invite them to come to the Netherlands. The majority of the Netherlands lies under sea level, yet because it is completely protected by dikes/levees no floods have taken place for decades. In fact, all places that indexed by direct economical damage were a flood to take place; and get protected accordingly. A highly populated area or industrious zone might get a rating that only a flood every 10.000 years is acceptable, while for some rural areas may get a rating that a flood every 300 years is acceptable. https://www.rijnland.net/downloads/floodcontrolrijnland-1-1....
I wonder what rating Dutch dike safety experts would give to the NASA launch platform, but seeing such an important economical site with hardly any protection against floods certainly boggles me.
Netherlands whole coastline is what, 450 miles? For a 850 billion gdp it makes sense to have a high quality system in place. You guys are facing a billion euro/year to just update the existing system [1].
Nasa needs to protect 70 miles, 1/6th of you're whole country's coast. That far south in the Atlantic has much more extreme weather. So in addition to building a system, they'd need to build a much more robust system, compared to the Netherlands, to deal with the extremes.
Is it possible? Hell yeah, they're smart people. Is it worth it? eh. Maybe just move and have a few more mars explorers instead. The big buildings and tracks are cool, but offices hangars and tracks are much simpler (and cheaper!) to build than a hurricane proof levee system.
Plus, as the NYT article points out, KSC "sits in the middle of a vast wildlife refuge", which limits what can be done. Also, the ground is permeable - it doesn't help to build a dike if the water can seep up through the ground.
Hey, in New Mexico we already have a spaceport. http://spaceportamerica.com/ Also, we have enough open space that occasionally we get nuked. So that's pretty sweet.
I don't think you have enough space for rockets to launch without parts potentially landing on people. Even the Russians end up dropping spent stages in areas that aren't entirely empty: http://www.russianspaceweb.com/baikonur_downrange.html
Reuse cuts down on the problem a lot, but there's still the possibility of things going wrong and debris coming down on stuff you'd rather stayed not-flat.
Further south matters. Basically, from the earth's rotation, you get 1000 MPH x cos(lattitude) of free velocity toward orbit, so being closer to the equator is a fairly big deal.
It's nice, but remember that Russia launches from 45N, so it isn't that critical. The boost is 880mph for KSC, vs. 790mph for Denver vs. 710 mph for Baikonur. The deltas are only 100-200 mph, vs. the 17,500 mph needed for orbit.
It depends on what orbit you're trying to reach. Looking at the raw speed needed doesn't tell the whole story, because now that the space race is over and most launches actually try to do something besides set a record, you can't just launch into whatever orbit is convenient.
If you're going for something highly inclined then it doesn't matter at all. Launching to the ISS from Baikonur is no more costly than launching to the ISS from Canaveral or Guiana. Launching into a high equatorial orbit, like for a comsat, is far more costly because you can't naturally achieve an inclination lower than the latitude of the launch site, so you need an expensive plane change. If you wanted to launch into a low equatorial orbit for some reason then it would be even worse, and the high-latitude launch sites would become impractical.
And actually, Israel is far from the worst case. The worst case would be something like launching into an equatorial orbit from a site at one of the poles. This would require something like 25-30% more delta-v, which because of the rocket equation means vastly more rocket for the same payload. But for a polar orbit, launching from the poles would be fine, actually very slightly better than an equatorial launch site because you wouldn't have to cancel out the speed you get from the Earth's rotation.
You make valid objections to my objections of the simplified model of the g'parent poster. We were indeed only talking about putting something into orbit, not putting something into useful orbit.
That said, I pointed out that Israel has geographical and geopolitical difficulties, which force them to launch to the west rather than east. Would it be harder for Israel to place something in GEO from Palmachim, which must first travel west over the Mediterranean before going east, or for Sweden to place something in GEO from Esrange, which requires a plane change?
(I'm trying to be somewhat realistic. I think Esrange is the most poleward launch facility, though they only do suborbital. Otherwise, consider a possible Norwegian launch facility on Svalbard.)
Thinking about it more, once you get to the point where a bi-elliptic transfer is the most efficient way to do a plane change, the launch site doesn't make a lot of difference. That's basically Baikonur and up, counting Israel as effectively having a ~150-degree latitude.
Anyway, the penalties can be pretty big, but they're often tolerable. For GEO you want minimal latitude, for others latitude may not matter at all. But other considerations (like Israel having land to the east) can easily override the penalties.
For the particular example discussed here, if you could ignore the problems with squishing people and buildings downrange, Colorado would make a decent launch site. KSC's latitude is better, but it wouldn't be a huge deal. You'd even get at least a little bit of it back because you'd be launching from higher altitude.
Plus the closer you are to the equator, the less (very fuel-expensive) orbital correction you need to get to geostationary orbit. Being close to the Tropic of Cancer, Florida's pretty well-positioned in this respect.
I am not commenting on NASA's options; I am hardly qualified. I'm simply pointing out that there are plenty of areas on the continent far away from sea-level issues (although as other posters have commented there are other reasons to avoid the area). I'm enjoying the commentary on why the option is untenable.
I am not familiar with the geological features of the Netherlands, but much of the Florida coastline is formed from porous oolitic limestone, meaning you can build as many dikes and dams as you want, and the water will go under them and appear to come up from the ground on the side where it is not wanted. This is why so many coastal wells here in Florida have such problems with saltwater intrusion.
> I asked everyone I met in South Florida who seemed at all concerned about sea-level rise the same question: What could be done? More than a quarter of the Netherlands is below sea level and those areas are home to millions of people, so low-elevation living is certainly possible. But the geology of South Florida is peculiarly intractable. Building a dike on porous limestone is like putting a fence on top of a tunnel: it alters the route of travel, but not necessarily the amount.
The NASA facilities are routinely subjected to hurricanes! Is the Netherlands prepared to handle huge surges of 30 feet of water all at once?
Is the Netherlands prepared to handle the 10-15 feet of base sea level rise that is coming in the next century? I'm not so sure that they are. In fact, aren't the Netherlands debating similar questions, about building much bigger walls, or, in fact, retreating?
I believe so. The Dutch Delta Works were instituted as a result of the 1953 North Sea Storm, which resulted in a storm surge of (I think?) 20 feet. I'd imagine they built in some excess capacity in the surge protection system as well.
That sounds bad, but they've got a whole century to deal with it. That rate works out to only 1-2 inches/year. Also, they've got a millennium of experience. They'll probably be fine.
I never heard retreat as an option, but the issue it is definitely discussed here. In 2010 the "Delta" program started, making place along the river sides for the water to flood when needed [1].
There are also projects started to strengthen the dikes and dunes. I live in the Netherlands and I'm not worried.
Estimates of sea level rise are very difficult and always changing. New research suggests that it could be "several meters", as published in a paper a few weeks ago. There is no scientific consensus on how much the sea level "will rise" - since it depends very much on our behavior as a species in the near future.
> Without a sharp reduction in greenhouse gas emissions, the global sea level is likely to increase “several meters over a timescale of 50 to 150 years”
>> Estimates of sea level rise are very difficult and always changing.
Trust me, I'm pretty sure the people in the pacific islands are going to be a bit more paranoid about these changes than we are. And yet, some of the predictions have been wildly off the mark. Remember the United Nations Environment Programme who said in 2005:
Imminent sea-level rises, increased hurricanes, and desertification caused by “man-made global warming” would lead to massive population disruptions. In a handy map, the organization highlighted areas that were supposed to be particularly vulnerable in terms of producing “climate refugees.” Especially at risk were regions such as the Caribbean and low-lying Pacific islands, along with coastal areas.
The 2005 UNEP predictions claimed that, by 2010, some 50 million “climate refugees” would be frantically fleeing from those regions of the globe. However, not only did the areas in question fail to produce a single “climate refugee, by 2010, population levels for those regions were actually still soaring. In many cases, the areas that were supposed to be producing waves of “climate refugees” and becoming uninhabitable turned out to be some of the fastest-growing places on Earth.”
Whoops.
When I read stuff like this, it makes hard for objective people like myself to determine where the hype ends the facts start.
> When I read stuff like this, it makes hard for objective people like myself to determine where the hype ends the facts start.
You are confusing a political prediction with a scientific prediction. What scientists were saying that there were going to be large sea-level rises between 2005 and 2010?
(Assuming that you are serious, since you don't point to any source, and your text is incorrectly quoted.)
Some people do blame the civil wars in the Middle East on climate change, though its a bit indirect. That worse weather caused food prices to soar that year. That did happen around that time and caused a refugee crysis.
You're looking at the short term. Yes, grain prices would have been high that year anyway. But Egypt is not naturally dependent on imported grain; it took decades of mismanagement to make it so. If planting decisions had been made by independent farmers as they had been for millennia, Egypt would have retained the wheat-growing capacity that it had for millennia. In that situation, higher grain prices would actually have been good for Egypt. Instead, through Mubarak's twisted cronyist version of land reform, farmland was taken from real farmers and given to shadowy corporations who misused it in various frivolous schemes like growing flowers for Europe for a few years until it was unsuitable for further agricultural use.
I go by what the IPCC states. As poor as its past performance has been in refining the science into accurate predictions, it is by far the best source of "scientific consensus" we have. And there have been many papers published over the last 20 years claiming a whole number of things.
James Hansen has been wrong so many times in the past, I'm not sure why anyone still listens to him. And if you have any feel for the data at all, several meters of sea rise in 50 years should strike you as nearly impossible. There's certainly no strong (or even weak) evidence for this.
Hansen, at this point, is about supporting his preconceived notions rather than trying to understand what is actually going on with the climate system.
". But if you go by scientific consensus, we're looking at 1-3 feet.
Lol you can't just invent things and call it consensus, or disregard actual sources as "histrionics" because what they say is inconvenient for you.
Here's actual consensus:
>With successful, strong mitigation measures, the experts expect a likely rise of 40-60 cm in this century and 60-100 cm by the year 2300. With unmitigated warming, however, the likely range is 70-120 cm by 2100 and two to three meters by the year 2300 [Source: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0277379113... ]
10-15 feet, or 2-3 meters, is the currently accepted consensus estimate of a worst case scenario (total polar ice melt). It's also conveniently the consensus estimate of historical water levels before the current ice age millions of years ago.
The water on Earth being 3 meters higher than today is not revolutionary, is not without precedent, and will absolutely certainly occur on this planet in the future.
Of course, once we warm enough for the arctic methane positive feedback loop to rapidly warm the climate, the worst case scenario becomes far more likely in the 100 year window instead of 300 year window. Only with strong mitigation does scientific consensus agree that we can delay the worst case 2-3m estimates caused by total polar ice melt.
Worth noting that (a) this is an analysis of scientific consensus, so environmental effects (like the "arctic methane positive feedback loop") should already be included in the numbers if such effects are significant, and (b) GP was referring 1-3 feet in the next century, which matches your quoted numbers of 70-120 cm reasonably closely.
"(b) GP was referring 1-3 feet in the next century, which matches your quoted numbers of 70-120 cm reasonably closely."
Critical difference is that 1-3 feet is consensus in one case: dramatic mitigation measures.
1-3 feet is NOT the estimate for 100 years of no-action. In that case, "histrionics" as the other poster condescendingly and incorrectly called it, are far closer to reality than rosy projections of strong mitigation that simply is not manifesting in any industrialized nation. Heck, with the global recession of 2008 depressing economies and fuel usage and thus carbon emissions, many nations believe they have made progress when economic downturn is the source. We are not mitigating at all so 1-3 feet is hopelessly optimistic under today's reality...
The Netherlands is accounting for up to 1.3 meter (4 feet) of sea level rise by the end of this century, and 2-4 meter (roughly 12 feet) by 2200 [1]. Note that the report is not just focusing on the sea level rise itself, also its secondary effects (increased salinization of land and prolonged droughts) which would make fresh water more scarce.
You know, they could go to south Texas, where there's plenty of inland areas with low population density east out to the Gulf. It'd be on the same, or lower, lattitude than KSC. It'd also be closer to Johnson Space Center, where they already have Mission Control and astronaut training.
It's probably cheaper to rebuild/move everything from Kennedy than to try to save Florida.
The only thing that might be a problem is if the political pork-barrel process can't stomach not distributing NASA money across two areas instead of one.
Thanks for your correction! I was genuinely unaware and made a mistake interpreting a map. The majority of the Netherlands (55%) is actually at risk of flooding.
> A highly populated area or industrious zone might get a rating that only a flood every 10.000 years is acceptable, while for some rural areas may get a rating that a flood every 300 years is acceptable.
Or until a king decides to flood the country to stop an army from advancing.
Sea level rise at the Netherland coast will not be as high as the sea level rise in Florida. They could be lucky and their coast is just at the sweet spot where the sea level will neither decrease (which would suck for Rotterdams harbour) nor rise.
Did I misread this article? It pointed out that the coastline has been receding, that it's been due to erosion, and that if climate change models are correct, it'll get worse in the future due to AGW.
This reminds me of a video I saw recently whete Ted Cruz, along with other republican senators, politically attacked NASA for studying Earth's climate!
The modern economy is in for extreme contraction unless we get a handle on this quick.
It's time for civilization to control carbon emissions the way it controls nuclear proliferation, actively and aggressively.
For example, Indonesia can not be allowed to engage in uncontrolled burning the way it is now.
Indonesia fires release more carbon than the entire United States [1]
We also need to begin a global carbon capture and sequestration effort, along with increased subsidies for solar and wind.
Zoning laws need to change. All new single family construction needs to be net zero energy for example.
Bioenergy with carbon capture and storage is the only technology that can bring atmospheric carbon back down to a safe level like 350ppm. We are currently over 400ppm and we are seeing melting and increased extreme weather. [2]
We have to genetically engineer hyper efficient algae, have it soak up atmospheric carbon, burn it for energy and sequester the carbon emissions on a massive scale.
The alternative to doing this is simply unacceptable economically, and politically.
A world at 500ppm will be unstable, war torn and out of control. Quite simply, we will all be poor. Markets will contract, insurance prices would skyrocket and food insecurity would be the norm.
"For example, Indonesia can not be allowed to engage in uncontrolled burning the way it is now."
The peat in Indonesia has accumulated there naturally, so essentially its a carbon-neutral sink. Its a sovereign country as well, and they can do whatever the hell they want.
"We have to genetically engineer hyper efficient algae, have it soak up atmospheric carbon, burn it for energy and sequester the carbon emissions on a massive scale."
This is the only good suggestion that doesnt smell of statism.
Here I was, worrying about the fortunes of the USA military-industrial complex, once we taxpayers realize what a scam the currently-hyped "threat" is. Those guys are so creative, to already have another scapegoat lined up, especially such a large Muslim nation populated by not-white people! It's like a perfect mash-up of Iraq and Vietnam! Bravo, defense lobbyists!
Climate Change = Fear-mongering. Remember 15 years ago the way people were predicting foot to meter per year seawater rise? It's a miracle the Empire State Building isn't underwater already as some predicted. There's been no global warming for over a decade. All of those models used to predict disasters that never happened turned out inaccurate and wrong. But that doesn't stop corrupt organizations who have perverted "science" from continuing to use these "theories" for their political ends.
Ocean levels have been rising for thousands of years and will continue to do so until the next ice age (barring human intervention to prevent it from occurring - might be a good thing?), so NASA would be wise to use technologies such as levies to prevent flooding of their facilities. They might've been even smarter to build them at higher elevation to begin with.
> Remember 15 years ago the way people were predicting foot to meter per year seawater rise?
What you suggest was far from a generally accepted prediction. The IPCC's 2001 report was for <1 meter rise over the entire century. See http://www.grida.no/publications/other/ipcc_tar/?src=/climat... . It emphatically was NOT a "foot to meter per year seawater rise."
Do you have evidence that it wasn't just kooks saying what you suggested?
> "as some predicted"
Who predicted that? Some guest on Coast to Coast AM who also thinks alien UFOs create chemtrails?
> use technologies such as levies to prevent flooding
As brought up several times in this thread, levies won't work at KCS. Water would simply go through the porous rock under any such levy.
If these statements of your are false, or at best straw man arguments, why should anyone believe the rest of what you write?
There's a lot of motte/bailey'ing[1] going on in the climate change debate.
There is tons of histrionics and scare mongering out there. I particular remember during the COP15 meeting in Copenhagen, art installations illustrating how the city would be under water if sea level rose 7 meters, which is the estimated rise if all of the ice on Greenland melts. The Day After Tomorrow, not to mention An Inconvenient Truth.
While there certainly are and were voices critical of these things and their dubious relationship with the science (whether settled or consensus or not), their usefulness in advancing the agenda appears to be appreciated more than their role in misrepresenting the science. This is an actual quote from a scientist listed in the "criticism" section of the "The Day After Tomorrow" Wikipedia page[2]: "I'm heartened that there's a movie addressing real climate issues. But as for the science of the movie, I'd give it a D minus or an F. And I'd be concerned if the movie was made to advance a political agenda.". This is an actual scientist on the record believing that TDAT is "addressing real climate issues". That is like applauding Swordfish[3] for addressing cyber security issues. That is the Bailey.
Then, years after, when these things perhaps look a bit more absurd (and some very specific predictions turned out not to come through, at least not as unambiguously as expected), we get "The IPCC's 2001 report was for <1 meter rise over the entire century ... Do you have evidence that it wasn't just kooks saying what you suggested?"
That's the Motte.
You can't have your cake and eat it, too. If it was only kooks saying it, certainly none of the non-kooks bothered throughly rebutting them at the time.
Where are the people who said that the sea level would raise 1 foot to 1 meter per year?
You didn't answer that question. Everything you wrote is a distraction, which ends up increasing the confusion you describe and complain about.
You pointed to some artists and movies. So what? I can point to movies who have depicted meteors crashing into modern day Earth, and volcanoes erupting in Los Angeles, and even have the core of the Earth stop spinning. Artists have different goals. They are not required to only depict what science predicts +/- 1 sigma.
You point to a scientist who liked that "The Day After Tomorrow" used climate change as a plot device, even if the science was awful. So what? I'm sure some Spacewatch people like "Armageddon" and that some geologists like "The Core", even though the science is awful in both. Are you equally disdainful towards those scientists? Or do only climate scientists draw your ire? (BTW, "Water World" used global warming as a plot device, was almost 9 years before TDAT, and portrayed an equally scientifically absurd future.)
You mentioned "An Inconvenient Truth". Does Gore make a prediction that there will be 30cm or higher water rise per year? Does he even predict that the Atlantic will have reached the base of the Empire State Building by now?
How is the IPCC 2001 report not an attempt at a thorough rebuttal? What level of rebuttal would you require before you say it was sufficient? Do we all need to be like Neil deGrasse Tyson and pinpoint every single scientific flaw in a movie? Or go even further and reject every movie with a flaw?
In other words, I'm not going to get into a goalpost argument with you before you even say what the goalposts are.
Your argument of the structure of the argument is useless. It's so easily inverted. Watch: You have set up your own Motte and Bailey about what's going on in this HN thread, so nothing I say can dissuade you. You have inserted irrelevant commentary from your bailey to defend your views. Now you can ignore me because you think I'm using irrational arguments, because you have placed me in a spot where you think I can be ignored. Now you can enjoy your motte.
I argued that the OP presented a straw man argument that misrepresents what the large majority of climatologists and policymakers like Gore were making 15 years ago. Do you agree or disagree with me?
I presented the IPCC report to supports my argument. Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth" also supports my argument. If you disagree, do you have an actual examples of people who predicted 30+cm/year sea rise, or even that much of Manhattan would be underwater by now?
I am guilty of reading "predicting foot to meter per year seawater rise" as a satirising exaggeration for "predicting immediate, catastrophic (plausibly sea-level related) consequences" and I did not state that clearly. With that amendment, I think my comment still has merit, but it may no longer have responded to anything you wrote. Sorry about that.
That said, An Inconvenient Truth did suggest a 20-foot rise as something imminent. Did it "predict" it? No, not explicitly, it suggests and imagines and calls to action. It also doesn't specify the timescale, but there is great urgency. With that, your GP, while very much on the high end, is way closer to AIT than AIT is to IPCC.
A short note on movies and art: the difference between "The Core" and TDAT (and "regular" art and the "climate" ditto) is that the latter didn't use science as a plot device, it explicitly injected itself into a political debate, dominated by a scientific discourse.
How do you figure it is a satirising exaggeration and not a straw man designed for ridicule?
I found a transcript of "An Inconvenient Truth" at http://www.admc.hct.ac.ae/hd1/courses/blog/gw/An%20Inconvien.... The section on 20 foot sea level rise is a description of what would happen "If Greenland broke up and melted, or if half of Greenland and half of West Antarctica broke up and melted" and ends with "Is it possible that we should prepare against
other threats besides terrorists? Maybe we should be concerned about other problems as well."
I agree that it's a call to action. I disagree that it's a prediction of something imminent, as in, an outcome that will happen within a couple of decades of when the movie was made. I read it as a need for imminent action, to prevent one possible long-term outcome.
(While incorrect, I do not think it seriously affects the underlying meaning. The choice of "snow" over "glacier ice" should be read as an homage to Hemingway, with some poetic license allowed.)
Gore predicts Glacier Valley will have no glaciers within 15 years, or 2021. NPS estimates no later then 2030, https://www.nps.gov/glac/learn/nature/glaciers.htm , so Gore may be a couple years off there as well.
Gore was willing to make testable predictions in the 10-15 year span, which is a clue that the 20 foot rise in sea level that he described was not meant as a prediction of something imminent.
I can't understand what you're getting at with The Day After Tomorrow. The scientist is basically saying "WTF this sucks, what were they thinking?" but more nicely.
Have you ever seen someone express a position that you agree with, but do it so badly that you wish they hadn't, because they make you uncomfortable and just give ammunition to your opponents, while convincing nobody of the merits of your position? And then you try to formulate some sort of response to say, well, you're right, but oh how I wish you hadn't made your case so badly? That's basically this.
I don't think the scientific consensus was ever for that much sea level rise during the last few decades. The fact is that greenhouse gases are undeniably increasing the earths temperature and this is destabilizing the major ice sheets. Exactly how fast these ice sheets will melt is uncertain but there is no doubt that the rate of their melting is accelerating.
This article makes it seem as if protecting against rising water levels is an almost impossible feat. For everyone who thinks it is, I invite them to come to the Netherlands. The majority of the Netherlands lies under sea level, yet because it is completely protected by dikes/levees no floods have taken place for decades. In fact, all places that indexed by direct economical damage were a flood to take place; and get protected accordingly. A highly populated area or industrious zone might get a rating that only a flood every 10.000 years is acceptable, while for some rural areas may get a rating that a flood every 300 years is acceptable. https://www.rijnland.net/downloads/floodcontrolrijnland-1-1....
I wonder what rating Dutch dike safety experts would give to the NASA launch platform, but seeing such an important economical site with hardly any protection against floods certainly boggles me.