Thread by @kzhill

Well. This looks like confirmation of the existence of a positive feedback loop that may make it even harder to prevent extreme sea level rise, and all the other #climatechange extremes.

Not surprised, but very concerned. (Thread) unenvironment.org/news-and-stori…

...the thing about this new Arctic study is, it’s a clear example of how #climatechange can be worse than what we’ve been told.

Most studies show it is likely to be worse, as we continue to do this puzzle- putting the complex pieces together, with an ever uglier result. 2/3

In my own area of research, it turns out that including #groundwater in coastal #flooding projections can drastically expand the amount of area affected.

Not just by emergent flooding, but by remobilizing soil pollution we capped decades ago but didn’t line from below. 3/4

So it turns out we can’t easily “retreat” from former urban areas without leaving serious, cancer-causing pollution behind, swirling around in a flood zone linked to the nearshore env of bays and oceans.

And, rising sea levels will drive this polluted water ever farther inland.

And there are design solutions for this, that require us to excavate that polluted soil, sequester it, and allow some floating development in the excavated ponds to bring in some private capital.

But we need people to listen. And there’s so much noise and denial out there.

I keep telling myself we can do this.

But I’m worried that these signals don’t reach our political system. It lags because big donors care about other things, and because public agency staff have been reduced to skeleton crews w very little creative capacity to see new paths

I think I’ll go try to engage an elected official from a coastal district about this.