A report out today in Nature finds that we've been underestimating the effects of climate-change-related flooding, and that major cities across the globe will be inundated and essentially unlivable by 2050. nature.com/articles/s4146…
Bombay, Jakarta, Bangkok, some of the most densely populated cities in the world, literally filling with water at each high tide.
"Sea levels projected by 2050 are high enough to threaten land currently home to a total of 150 (140–170) million people to a future permanently below the high tide line." 150 MILLION PEOPLE.
Before now, the satellite images used to generate height measurements confused the software that made the estimates. Basically, we were confusing the heights of the tops of trees and buildings with the surface.
So estimates of flooding were often based on the wrong information, and that meant we'd thought there was more time, and fewer effects, than this new report suggests.
The new report instead uses AI to do error-correction, and to more accurately estimate land heights. And man, suddenly the estimates were very scary.
The @nytclimate folks have horrifying visuals they've put together. Here's Bangkok. The term the Times used was "erase," which is pretty much right. nytimes.com/interactive/20… 
Most of the effects will be felt in eight Asian nations: China, Bangladesh, India, Vietnam, Indonesia, Thailand, the Philippines, and Japan. But every country will be affected. Why?
Enormous climate pressure in densely packed places destabilizes everybody everywhere, as those people struggle to find a new home. Added to other volatile ingredients like nationalism and poverty, the cocktail is explosive.
@CassSunstein once wrote about "the stark difference between American reactions to terrorism-related risks and American reactions to the risks associated with climate change." chicagounbound.uchicago.edu/cgi/viewconten…
Sunstein argued that Americans saw an immediate short-term benefit to fighting terrorism, but no immediate short-term benefit to fighting climate change, and theorized that certain conditions had to be met for that to change.
Already, the UN security council is wondering whether it should be formally treating climate change as a security threat. un.org/press/en/2019/…
And the 2019 worldwide threat assessment from the Director of National Intelligence says the US has to handle the huge instability climate change will produce. dni.gov/files/ODNI/doc…
"The United States will probably have to manage the impact of global human security challenges, such as
threats to public health, historic levels of human displacement, assaults on religious freedom, and the
negative effects of environmental degradation and climate change."
threats to public health, historic levels of human displacement, assaults on religious freedom, and the
negative effects of environmental degradation and climate change."
(Also, the report uses population projections from 2010, which means it's probably UNDERESTIMATING the number of people affected.)
If millions of city-dwellers will be forced from their homes in the next 30 years, I guess I'm thinking maybe the threats of climate change and terrorism will collapse together such that we finally move on them together. nature.com/articles/s4146…
I should also shout out @ClimateCentral, which did the research published yesterday in Nature. They do great work. climatecentral.org/news/report-fl…
