Rising oceans will force millions away from coasts even if global temperature rise remains below 1.5C, analysis finds
Sea level rise will become unmanageable at just 1.5C of global heating and lead to “catastrophic inland migration”, the scientists behind a new study have warned. This scenario may unfold even if the average level of heating over the last decade of 1.2C continues into the future.
The loss of ice from the giant Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets has quadrupled since the 1990s due to the climate crisis and is now the principal driver of sea level rise.
The international target to keep global temperature rise below 1.5C is already almost out of reach. But the new analysis found that even if fossil fuel emissions were rapidly slashed to meet it, sea levels would be rising by 1cm a year by the end of the century, faster than the speed at which nations could build coastal defences.
There’s a game I like to play called Eco. It is basically a multiplayer economy sim with Minecraft building. One server I played the gimmick was every few days they’d raise the sea level by a block. It was an absolute disaster. The entire world economy turned into making sea walls. If you weren’t making the construction materials or placing the walls you were useless, nobody would buy your stuff, the wall building was just too critical to put money anywhere else. We started having to cut our losses and let entire towns get swallowed so we could consolidate population and better focus on fewer walls to upkeep. At some point we abandoned the economy entirely it was all hands on deck to the wall the people who were left knew their roles and did it. Eventually we lost too much farmland and couldn’t keep up with the calorie demand, we didn’t have enough people, a hole in the wall caused our capitol, primary mine, and underground Intercity transit to all flood. We were cooked