2050 Underwater

This week the New York times covered new research which goes deeper than before on studying which parts of the world will be inundated by projected sea-level rises. The visuals are stunning.

“By 2050, South Vietnam could all but disappear”. The same is true for Mumbai, Shanghai, Alexandria and a swath of other places. Image copyright NYT – see the article for more.

It’s hard to imagine the social, political and human turmoil such change will cause. In some places spending billions may stave off change but with uncontrolled global warming even this would be temporary patch.

It’s hard to comprehend that as a species we can’t grasp that we need to understand these dynamics and deal with them. Processes like global heating have non-linear effects (think ice melting suddenly at zero degrees celsius) and have to be solved collectively, not individually.

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