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2 Billion Refugees By 2100 Due to Rising Seas Possible

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Global sea levels have risen by 8 inches in the last 130 years.
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.”

The graph tracks the change in sea level since 1993 as observed by satellites.

 
Data source: Satellite sea level observations.
Credit: NASA Goddard Space Flight Center

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.

Contacts and sources:
Lindsey Hadlock

Cornell University
Citation:  ”Impediments to inland resettlement under conditions of accelerated sea level rise” will be published in the July issue of the journal Land Use Policy but is already available online here.


Source: http://www.ineffableisland.com/2017/06/2-billion-refugees-by-2100-due-to.html


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    Total 8 comments
    • Sulletje

      What a lame article. Like anyone knows what will happen in the future. You’re delusional.

    • DK

      The satellites show a 6mm year rise in ocean levels per year, 0.8mm due to groundwater extraction. This is constant and due to the melting of icecaps because we are in an interglacial period. Therefore 30 inches in the last 130 years not 8′, this is countered in the UK in the west because the land rises 6mm per year. The endangered land is Thailand, Bangladesh (entire country), China(East Coast), (Italy)Venice.USA(New Orleans, Orlando, Key West but that went without saying) Most pacific nation Atolls will be submerged, but they are Atolls(Google the definition).

    • unidentified

      yes everyone that lives along the coast should move inland :lol:

    • Jeffery Pritchett

      2100 eh?

      So I won’t have to deal with it and neither will my kids.

      Hopefully by then we’ll have presidents that don’t deny climate change.

      • DK

        There is climate change, it is called the interglacial, when it no longer changes it is mid glacial.

    • DISPENSER

      4 billion refugees frozen like popcycles possible in the coming Ice Age.

    • Arse

      Now please explain this, you bloody idiots. What should we believe?????

      NASA Confirms: Sea Levels Have Been Falling Across the Planet for Two Years … Media Silent
      Wednesday, July 26, 2017 14:14
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      (Before It’s News)
      NASA confirms: Sea levels have been FALLING across the planet for two years … media SILENT
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      • DK

        Rainfall, Australia itself took out 4mm for an entire year of inundation. Currently with the solar magnetic field collapse along with the solar minimum there is around 10-20% rise ‘per’ year in high energy Gamma rays hitting the earths upper atmosphere seeding clouds, incidentally washing out more Chemtrails but bringing the next ice age loser with the joint albedo effect.

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