The Golden Gate Barrage: New Ideas To Counter Sea Level Rise 341
waderoush writes "What do Google, Facebook, Yahoo, Oracle, LinkedIn, and Intuit have in common? They're just a few of the tech companies whose campuses alongside San Francisco Bay could be underwater by mid-century as sea levels rise. It's time for these organizations and other innovators to put some of their fabled brainpower into coming up with new ideas to counter the threat, Xconomy argues today. One idea: the Golden Gate Barrage, a massive system of dams, locks, and pumps located in the shadow of the iconic bridge. Taller than the Three Gorges Dam in China, it would be one of the largest and costliest projects in the history of civil engineering. But at least one Bay Area government official says might turn out to be the simplest way to save hundreds of square miles of land around the bay from inundation."
So... (Score:2)
Google, Facebook, Yahoo, Oracle, LinkedIn, and Intuit need to snap to it, then. If they started now they could get it in place in a few years, before the seas come rushing in. They've got the funds. Money, meet mouth.
Re:So... (Score:5, Funny)
I'm sort of neutral about Google, but drowning those other three companies in salt water sounds like a net plus to me.
Keep the heat on. Lets put a whole bunch more shrimp on the barbies! (They'll probably go extinct in a couple of decades anyway).
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Three, four, so much for basic counting in the morning....
Re:So... (Score:4, Funny)
I thought it was a statement that one of those other companies just couldn't be counted on.
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Our *three* weapons are fear, and surprise, ruthless efficiency...and an almost fanatical devotion to the Pope
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Ooops. Commenting to undo my accidental "flamebait" moderation.
Re:So... (Score:5, Insightful)
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PS:
apostrophe not required.
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Re:So... (Score:4, Insightful)
With cash reserves like their's, they can just move instead. There is nothing special about the land they are using... the historical reason such projects made sense in the past was they were reclaiming farmable land, which is not quite as interchangeable as corporate parks.
It is not just San Francisco that is worried. Water levels won't just rise in that one city.
Turns out people have already done research on who lives in low-lying coastal regions. About 10% of the global population will likely need to move. 2/3 of the world's largest cities would be swamped or submerged. [npr.org]
The United States might lose only 5% of its land. Countries like India will lose half of their land. Some island nations will be completely uninhabitable.
Even if sea walls cost quadrillions of dollars globally to delay the eventual flooding of the land, that is likely still cheaper than such a massive sudden loss of existing infrastructure. It is cheaper (for a few centuries, at least) to spend a few trillion dollars protecting major cities than it is to completely rebuild the cities elsewhere.
Yes the people will need to eventually move through both a planned migration and normal population growth. Relocating 10% of the global population in just a few short decades is a much harder problem to solve, and a much more expensive proposition, than to build the massive walls around existing large cities.
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sudden loss of existing infrastructure (Score:5, Insightful)
Like so many problems, it is not an all or nothing deal. Declare now that public funds will not be used for massive dyke projects, and publish a reasonable timetable describing tapering off of any flood coverage, such that the percentage of coverage is zero in 50 years. You can't fight nature, but there will be no end of people willing to take the money to try.
Re:So... (Score:4, Funny)
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Precisely.
The "Climate Change" that threatens these companies is the economic climate of the former Golden State.
At 3.25 inches per century (the current rate of sea level rise in California), by the time those campi have been inundated some tens of thousands of years from now, all of those companies will have either moved or gone under -- not from water, but by the flood of taxes and regulations in the Golden [Fleece] State.
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Or, instead of trying to stop the earth from moving, consider the following:
3% of earth's above-water landmass is covered in urban areas.
Counting any part of the earth's surface that has any human or agricultural footprint, 43% of the earth's land surface is "inhabited."
Instead of pouring national economy's resources into protecting a fraction of a fraction's percent of landmass, they could all just move somewhere else. 57% of the earth's land surface doesn't even have anyone on it to say otherwise.
They wo
Re:So... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:So... (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, of course. Even if for some reason the companys elected to stay, they'd naturally expect the government to build the structures using taxpayer money.
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Its hard to know if youre jabbing at companies or not. Somewhere out there, someone actually thinks its appropriate to criticize a private business for not financing a boondoogle system of locks.
Re:So... (Score:4, Interesting)
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I would just move my offices to cruse ships.
Re:So... (Score:4, Interesting)
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Maybe lash them all together with some smaller boats, forming some kind of large Raft...
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Keep dreaming. Professional sports team owners could start setting aside a portion of their annual profits to pay for their own stadium upgrades every 20 years. They've got the funds... but it's cheaper to make the taxpayers pay for it. Too big to leave town and all that.
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Of course they are. In fact the computers they're using are generating so much heat that... hey, wait a minute...
Or... (Score:5, Insightful)
...maybe put that brainpower into solving the actual global problem, rather than finding a bandaid solution to the local symptom....
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Umm, yeah, not going to happen. The powers that be in the US have pretty much decided they don't care about global warming, because it would cut into the profits of major industries like coal and oil and be expensive and unpleasant for everyone else.
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A "Golden Gate Barrage" doesn't sound cheap to me.
Then again... the taxpayer's going to pay for it so they don't care. Keep that petroleum pumping, guys!
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Global warming wouldn't do anything to the profits of oil and coal. Those would still remain uniformly high. You still need to burn something to get energy.
Global warming, or rather, programs to counteract that effect would, however, have a big effect on energy generation companies that would have to figure out how to keep CO2 emissions down from burning those hydrocarbons.
I expect that forward looking oil and coal companies with any intelligence will be looking at diversifying into other resource or ener
Re:Or... (Score:5, Informative)
You are aware, I trust, that it is rising.
http://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/sealevel.html [noaa.gov]
It's more pronounced in some areas than others, but still, it's rising. So if you live in a low-lying coastal area, then this ought to be of concern to you.
Re:Or... (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Or... (Score:5, Informative)
Why is it more pronounced in some areas?
Because the ocean isn't perfectly even. Tidal forces, wind and waves, currents, plate activity, volcanoes, it's constantly flowing every which way. I'd be surprised if the sea level rose exactly the same amount in Oahu and Cardiff.
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That's what the things we call "averages" are for.
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if the ocean is constantly moving then you can't actually measure if it's rising or falling. Because it would need to stop moving to measure it.
So when im filling a pool from a hose while the kids are playing in it its impossible to determine that levels are rising, because of the waves and turbulence?
Strictly speaking,
You are a terrible scientist?
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Hrm.
The Maldives at least should be fine. They are coral atolls which always lie at sea level, regardless of what height the ocean has been in the past (coral grows).
Wikipedia says satellites show a rate of 3.3mm per year. There's no evidence at present of an accelerating trend. So, 33cm in a century.
NOAA says:
"growth rates of 0.3 to 2 centimeters per year for massive corals, and up to 10 centimeters per year for branching corals"
Maldives should be fine.
Louisiana could have trouble, especially since it h
Re:Or... (Score:5, Interesting)
Why is it more pronounced in some areas? There is only one ocean.... A rise in the pacific ocean will raise the level of all other "oceans". Could it be that some land masses are sinking? An 3-4" rise over the next 100 years is unlikely to impact anyone currently alive and living in the Bay Area . Wake me up when ocean front property stops going up in value.
When I was in school I took a class called "Violent Weather" and the textbook for that class indicated that the Western Pacific has more water volume than the Eastern Pacific because wind and currents pool the water up in the east, and that the water must be pushed deep under the surface to go back West. This water current typically releases its flow off the coast of Chile/Peru, if I remember correctly.
Re:Or... (Score:5, Interesting)
The complexities of sea level is a fascinating subject. Ocean currents and prevailing winds can cause the water to pile up higher in places that it would otherwise be. The gravitational attraction of the Antarctic ice sheet causes sea level to be higher for thousands of miles around the continent than it would otherwise be. IIRC it's about 20 feet higher along the coast of Antarctica. More here. [yale.edu]
Re:Or... (Score:5, Informative)
Essentially your starting point is inherently invalid: a rise in the Pacific Ocean wont necessary result in a raise of all the other oceans. As pointed out, already the Pacific Ocean is higher than the Atlantic. This is most easily seen at the Panama Canal, where there's only 50 miles of seperation, yet a 30 foot difference in elevation (which when talking about oceans, is a HUGE difference in volume). You'd think there would be flow around the continents to even out the sea levels, but thats ignoring how the difference came to be int eh first place. The difference is created and maintained by the thermohaline circulation of the ocean.
Simiarly tides aren't uniform around the world. Some places the tidal range is less than a foot. Other's its >30 feet. The record is 53 feet, located somewhere in Nova Scotia (i think). Local geography (water basin shape/size) and local gravity distortions (mountains/valleys) all have an effect on tides.
Water flows. Changes in water level aren't instantaneous. Even ignoring any of the internal currents, tides, geography (that would affect flow rates), and the thermohaline circulation inherent in the ocean and assuming the ocean has a prismatic uniformity of nature, the ocean is so large that even small changes in sea level would take a long time to propogate worldwide. And as point out, some differences in sea level wont propagate.
And of course the ocean ISNT uniform in nature. its very dynamic, precisely because of its large size. the thermohaline circulation has a lot to do with why the ocean doesnt have a uniformity of elevation worldwide, and is probably similarly responsible for the most different rates/amounts of local sea level rise. then there's still the tides and such as well on top of that.
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You would think all the hot air would be up lifting...
Good one, I am stealing that line.
Re:Or... (Score:5, Insightful)
when and if sea level actually starts to rise... we'll talk.
Human activity does not just raise temperatures. It also raises the rate of increase. If you have taken calculus, and know what a derivative is, then it is not "h" that is increasing but dh/dt. So if we wait till sealevel rises, it will be too late. It is like refusing to get off the railroad tracks until you can actually see the train hit you.
The denialists made the same "show me the evidence" remark about the ice caps a decade ago. Today there is a million square miles of open water where there was previously ice for more than ten thousand years.
Steady State (Score:2)
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Good lord, the thermal mass of cities and the heat energy produced by human energy production have nothing to do with global warming. The Sun puts as much energy down on the planet in less than an hour than humans use/produce in a whole year.
Re:Or... (Score:5, Informative)
> when and if sea level actually starts to rise... we'll talk
Water level measurements from the San Francisco gage (CA Station ID: 9414290) indicate that mean sea level rose by an average of 2.01 millimeters (mm) per year from 1897 to 2006, equivalent to a change of eight inches in the last century. The rate of rise has increased to about 3 mm per year over the past 15 years.
This is the oldest tidal guage in continuous operation in the United States, and is located near the Golden Gate.
http://www.energy.ca.gov/2012publications/CEC-500-2012-014/CEC-500-2012-014.pdf [ca.gov]
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The reference quoted also shows that the US production of atmospheric CO2 is roughly flat over the years from 2008 through 2011 while China's has been steadily increasing. In 2011 according to that data, China was producing something like 55% MORE than the USA.
I know it is fashionable to bash the USA and it is a fun sport, but every now and again it may pay to take off the tinfoil hat and look at real data.
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If it were a matter of brainpower, there wouldn't be an issue.
On the other hand, if they use a few billion dollars to buy off every politician that opposes effective regulation and taxing of carbon, they might actually make a difference.
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Problems should be solved because they need to be solved; equally, elected officials should do what's best for the people who elected them, not whichever industry organization gives them the biggest kickback.
To that end, why should, say, Missouri politicians give a rat's arse about coastal flooding? Hell, if the sea level rises enough it could very well be to our advantage; ocean-front property in Branson would bring in some serious bucks :)
(in case you were wondering, yes, I am being half-assed satirical.)
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...maybe put that brainpower into solving the actual global problem, rather than finding a bandaid solution to the local symptom....
A phenomally expensive band-aid that will likely tear apart in an earthquake, adding an inrushing wall of water to the rest of the problems.
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A phenomally [sic] expensive band-aid that will likely tear apart in an earthquake, adding an inrushing wall of water to the rest of the problems.
Because no one would think to anticipate earthquakes in the vicinity of San Francisco when designing such a structure? Or do you have some other insight that I'm missing?
Re:Or... (Score:5, Interesting)
I've kind of given up on that. Between the noxious attacks by oil company shill organizations like the Heartland Institute, halfwits who buy into anything that means they can fool themselves for a few more years, and a total lack of meaningful political will, I think we're fucked.
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...maybe put that brainpower into solving the actual global problem, rather than finding a bandaid solution to the local symptom....
These comments really bother me. You do both simultaneously. Given the longevity of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, we'd still have a problem if we became an overnight net zero carbon society. A cardiologist doesn't refuse a stent because the patient lives an unhealthy lifestyle. You do both - fix the problem AND treat the root cause. It's not one or the other.
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...maybe put that brainpower into solving the actual global problem, rather than finding a bandaid solution to the local symptom....
Getting Hot in Here [thedailyshow.com]
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well, they most probably did try googling for a solution
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Even if we solve the problem of anthropogenic climate change there's probably already at least 10 feet of sea level rise built into the current conditions. It takes centuries for major ice masses (Antarctic, Greenland, etc) to fully adjust to new temperature regimes.
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SanFran would be the new NOLA. (Score:5, Insightful)
Let's build an extremely complex system of levees in an area prone to high magnitude earthquakes.
What could possibly go wrong?
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Imagine building all this to keep the sea out, and then to find that the wave you weren't expecting is coming from the shore. After the Big One. Tsunami. Crushing your system from the other side.
At least it won't have a thousand miles to travel. Traffic around LA is a beast.
A Very American Solution? (Score:2)
With how American Politicians almost uniformly deny global warming and sea level rise, I am surprised that none of them have yet suggested building a couple of large gigawatt nuclear power station barges and huge pumps then pump seawater into the middle of Antarctica where it may freeze...
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Hey, that sounds awesome. Except for the nuclear part. Haven't you heard, nuclear is out and natural gas is in. Other than that, write it up and send it. The fossil fuel companies can pretend their helping and politicians stop looking stupid for denying the obvious.
We can even call the project "Panchaea."
So, who pays? (Score:5, Interesting)
I wonder if we wouldn't just be better off writing some laws now that say, "look, don't come crying to us when your expensive beach-front property goes underwater. Factor that into the price before you buy."
We need a carbon tax just to speed the transition to less less-polluting energy sources; if we instead use that money to repair thousands of miles of coastline and keep burning fossil fuel, we solve nothing.
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We need a carbon tax just to speed the transition to less less-polluting energy sources; if we instead use that money to repair thousands of miles of coastline and keep burning fossil fuel, we solve nothing.
Problem is, under any of the currenlty-being-considered carbon tax proposals, megalithic corporations can just bribe the government into letting them pollute as much as they want, and the money from the bribes goes into the general fund, not any special 'fix the shit they break' trust.
In short, I don't disagree with the concept, I just don't trust the oligarchs to do it right and not fuck the world over for their own, personal profit.
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A carbon tax remains a policy option, but if you focus on one policy option, you might as well plan for what is really going to happen. No one wants a tax on that because no one wants to be taxed on something they don't understand and can't perceive. I know everyone's all fixated on making people pay the "social costs" of something, but I think we should drop the idealism and work on some policies that don't thrust the concept down people's throats, because it is an entirely alien concept.
I'd envision a m
Suck some silicon valley ego out of the bay (Score:5, Funny)
This Begs the Question (Score:2, Interesting)
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In the short or long term? Remember, in this world of corporate profits, the long term is absolutely fucking meaningless. Long term to the sociopaths we've put in charge of the global economy is no more six to eight quarters.
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I forget, how does "the Space Elevator" address sea level rise? Do we just put all of the water on the elevator?
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I think maybe he's talking about getting off this mudball. We'd need a series of elevators for that, though, and then a whole lot of other hand-waving besides.
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We need a whole hell of a lot more than an elevator to leave Earth. An elevator just gets you into space cheaply. That's the easy part. There's no reason to work on an elevator if we can't then travel to and colonize another place. Considering that each possible destination comes with its own massive set of challenges for permanently living there, I seriously doubt that there is anyone alive today who will witness the first permanent settlement on another rock.
It just seemed like a really weird question
Amazing (Score:5, Informative)
According to NOAA, the actual average sea level rise over the last 100 years has been about 2 MILLIMETERS per year, or 200mm/century, or about 8 inches per 100 years. Here's the official data http://tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/sltrends/sltrends_station.shtml?stnid=9414290. If you look at the chart you'll see that the trend has actually dropped to about zero mm / year for the last 30 years.
So, in light of this, we need the biggest engineering project in history?
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I can save them a few trillion dollars: move to higher ground.
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Because moving the coastal sections of a major North American urban center to new territory, some of which almost certainly is going to be privately owned, won't cost nearly as much.
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Happens all the time. Have you seen Detroit? Everybody just up and moved away.
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I think you need new glasses. I'm looking at that graph and it's an upward trend. That's a helluva a spin you put on it, but even the graph itself shows that sea level has not slowed to nothing at that station in the last 30 years.
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It's an upwards trend over 100 years, but over the past 30 it's almost totally flat (on average). Which is exactly what the AC said.
Not that sea level rise isn't going to be a problem: it is, but it's actually one of the more minor and easily soluble problems global warming introduces, because it's slow. You can re-build an entire city in less time than it takes for the water to rise significantly (and in fact, many many cities have). All you have to do is move inland. Or, as one of the posters above sugge
Why not just move? (Score:3)
Why not just move? Sea barriers is literally pushing the problem around. That solves nothing.
Joseph Elwell.
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Letting the air out of your tires to fit under a low bridge ignores the possibility of having someone pay you to design and construct a much nicer, taller bridge. If you're not the one paying for it, you may as well go for the splashiest (!) solution you can dream up.
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Why move? Build foot bridges to connect the buildings. A Venice-style corporate campus sounds awesome.
Sure, until it starts to sink into the festering cesspool surrounding it.
So, you know - not much different than current corporate culture.
huh (Score:4, Funny)
Google, Facebook, Yahoo, Oracle, LinkedIn, and Intuit have in common? They're just a few of the tech companies whose campuses alongside San Francisco Bay could be underwater by mid-century as sea levels rise
And all this time I thought Global Warming would be a bad thing. Is there any way we can speed this up, get those companies under water faster?
Don't fix it (Score:2)
What about people? (Score:3)
So we have to build this to protect companies. Actually, company property. OK, no, actually the property that they rent, since they probably don't own it. What about the PEOPLE that will be flooded. Why should I care about protecting companies? Is our mindset really so fucked up that companies come first? Rhetorical question.
Please think of the children (Score:2)
Without those companies, how will those people be able to afford their environment-saving Telsas? And send their kids to private schools so they don't have to mix with the proels. Please, please think of the children.
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So we have to build this to protect companies. Actually, company property. OK, no, actually the property that they rent, since they probably don't own it. What about the PEOPLE that will be flooded. Why should I care about protecting companies? Is our mindset really so fucked up that companies come first? Rhetorical question.
Why should I be protecting people who choose to own property in San Francisco? It's not a secret that the sea level is rising; estimates of how much it will rise vary widely but many of them have repercussions for SF. Anyone in SF right now can sell their property right now (or for many years now) and then can afford to buy almost anywhere else in the world. These are not people who require protection. These are people who require a wake-up call. I can understand why someone might rent there, but they need
Massive pumps (Score:2)
Without truly massive pumps it's not going to work because the Bay doesn't just receive water from the ocean, but also from the Sacramento River and other minor waterways (plus storm drain runoff from most cities by the Bay).
The Sacramento River peak volume during a flood event (such as might be seen during a tropical storm with heavy rainfall) is 650,000 cubic feet/second [familywateralliance.com] (18,000 m^3/sec). The pumps are going to have to pump at least that much water up over the sea wall or the Bay is going to fill up from
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Given that the bay is 400-1600 sq. miles (depends what you count as part of the bay). 400 sq mile is 11,151,360,000 sq ft. So 650,000 cu ft/sec corresponds to a rise of 5.83e-6 ft/sec -- about 2 inches for a 24 hours period. Maybe they won't have an immediate emergency if they fall behind just a little in their rate of pumping.
That's just one inlet, don't forget to add in the square mileage from all of the cities that dump their storm drains into the bay, rain entering the bay from other, smaller waterways, as well as rain falling on the bay directly - Sandy dumped 8 - 12" of rain in many places. So if you close the gates 2 days before the surge hits you may have a few feet of water behind the gates before the surge even comes.
this makes no sense at all (Score:4, Insightful)
So, in order to protect against a rise in sea level of no more than 1 foot in the absolute worst case, they need to build a system of dams, locks and pumps greater than 600 feet high???
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Sorry, but 1 foot isn't the worst case scenario. It's the "Probably not more than" scenario. The worst case is actually measured in meters, but is probably unlikely. (It requires massive releases of methane from submerged methyl cathlates.)
(Actually, even that isn't the worst case. A real worst case would be a dinosaur killer size asteroid impacting near Antarctica. That would lead to a tsunami perhaps a thousand feet high, and .... well, the rest wouldn't really matter. But all of Antarctica would me
An extreme response ... (Score:3)
From the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report:
Climate Change 2007
Sea level is projected to rise between the present (1980 - 1999) and the end of this century (2090 - 2099) by 0.35 m (0.23 to 0.47 m) for the A1B scenario ...
http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/ch11s11-9-4.html [www.ipcc.ch]
Costly too.
Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers (Score:3)
There is only one way for ocean water to go in and out, and that’s through the Golden Gate, a 300-foot-deep gap in the Coastal Range that was originally gouged out thousands of years ago by a mighty river.
As a result of this lucky geological accident, it would be possible in theory to control the water level in the Bay—to put a stopper in the bathtub drain—by building a massive tidal gate, more or less in the shadow of the Golden Gate Bridge. The ideal location, based on tidal velocities and the topography of the Bay bottom, would be about half a mile east of the bridge, as shown in the graphic above.
The author overlooked the Sacramento & San Joaquin Rivers, both of which drain into the San Francisco Bay. You don't put a "stopper in the bathtub drain" when you cannot turn off the faucet flowing into that bathtub.
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The author overlooked the Sacramento & San Joaquin Rivers, both of which drain into the San Francisco Bay.
Perhaps they're planning to sell them to Southern California.
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Actually you can turn off those rivers. You just shouldn't. The Colorado's delta is virtually dry because we divert so much water. In the early 20th century we did a lot of things like that, and now we're just starting to see the problems. The problem with dumping river water on soil in arid areas is that it concentrates salts. Some actually blame this kind of irrigation for the fall of ancient civilizations in South America. We're already seeing salination in some Central Valley soils. There have
Here's a hint... (Score:2, Funny)
We see in so many movies that have underwater cities etc... they all have bio domes and seem to have their infrastructure and atmosphere all encapsulated, but I guess this could have happened over time instead of all at once, as this could be a sign of changes to come, if the sea keeps rising, then we could just need to start building a dome like encasement, allowing us to keep the buildings where they are without too much worry about moving or losing the investment of that chosen physical location.
Umm, seems backwards to me (Score:2)
Not that I know anything at all, but it seems like their trying to hold back the ocean. That seems counter-productive to me. Wouldn't it make a lot more sense, seeing as how we're land dwellers and all, to simply build-up the land? We've been extending cities out into lakes and oceans for centuring -- filling in the ocean one block at a time. That's why my city has a front street, then a lakeshore street, and then harbour street, and then thirty yards of land, and then finally the lake.
I'd imagine that
NOT approved by the Emperor! (Score:5, Funny)
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"Or they could just move and leave it to the city"
Better yet, they could just stay where they are, and forget about it.
The IPCC's worst projection was about a 1m rise in 100 years. That means about a foot and a half in 50 years.
Hell, even the artificial island of Alameda is higher above water level that that. And San Francisco is STEEP. You can be a city block away from the water and already several meters above it.
Re:Those places must suck to work in today... (Score:5, Insightful)
Or add four feet of dirt.
The water portion of the SF Bay was once twice the size it is right now. The reason those pieces of commercial (and residential) real estate are vulnerable is they are built on areas that once were 6 inches underwater at hide tide. They are not underwater every single day because dirt was shipped in.
They shipped in four feet of dirt to create the problem. How about we solve the problem with four more feet of dirt?
As for the barrage, the ecological costs would be enormous. A few merely massive pumping stations is not going to prevent the bay water from becoming a smelly cess pool polluted by agricultural runoff and much worse from the residential areas. It is a fun idea for civil engineers, but we are wealthy enough here to employ less tricky solution that will be more reliable.
FREE relocation for corporations (Score:2)
It'll cost Americans less to fully fund relocation than it will to have our governments hijacked and made to fund idiotic and extremely expensive bandaids just because the corporations won't spend a dime to solve their problems.