Source: Antarctic glaciers losing ice at fastest rate in 5,500 years, finds study Antarctica is covered by two huge ice masses: the East and West Antarctic Ice Sheets, which feed many individual glaciers. Because of the warming climate, the WAIS has been thinning at accelerated rates over the past few decades. Within the ice sheet, the Thwaites and Pine Island glaciers are particularly vulnerable to global warming and are already contributing to rises in sea level. Now, a new study led by the University of Maine and the British Antarctic Survey, including academics from Imperial College London, has measured the rate of local sea level change—an indirect way to measure ice loss—around these particularly vulnerable glaciers. . . . Now if they would slip into the sea and flood Maro Largo. Bob Wilson
I read the main graph in that study to indicate 0.2 to 0.5 meters of SLR for the rest of this century. Seems like a moderate prediction to me. There is a lot of infrastructure on Florida cost including space launching stuff. You might wish ill on certain residences but SLR is a non-specific tool. Get a hurricane gun. == Current SLR is 0.4 cm/yr with a positive 2nd derivative recently. So, my empirical has 0.32 meters of SLR for the rest of this century as a minimum. Is 0.5 an appropriate maximum? I hope so because a lot of human enterprise (mostly not in US) gets non-specifically tooled between 0.5 and 1.0 meter SLR.
BTW building sea walls looks like a very good business model. What is the cheapest way to do that in terms of money and CO2 emissions? If only I knew an engineer
OT but now on my mind. Many space-launch facilities are low latitude for 'fuel economy'. Merritt Island, Musk's little bit of Texas, and Wenchang, Hainan, China are low-lying coastal. Others including Kourou, 'French' Guiana are set higher. Presuming all are intended for long-term ops, being where melted water will come seems like poor planning. "We had no way of knowing..." Ever heard that before?
Sand is a rare precious resource these days, An estimate would be ship in compressible dirt to make giant ship sized bricks, giant aggregate could work in the mess but “leaks”. Building a foundation and mechanism to get water out is another matter then clad the mess in Roman salt water cement Might be able to make use of pyrolysed junk tire waterproofing or some other material to reduce the subsurface and above land leaking for a time. It’s “polluting” but it’s not like we didn’t submerge rubber for decades Like Holland and dykes you would probably need windmills for “reasons “ Lower level of buildings should be left as water resistant parking and lounging areas in case “weather” happens. Likely not want items that cannot submerge below the max surge/wave ocean level The “issue “ is that available materials of adequate qty are rarely available “locally” , shipping can be the most co2 intensive clad compressed earth uses a much smaller amount of energy than heavy manmade materials but if the volume needed is extracted locally in an area already underwater massive consequences can easily occur in and by the area you mine out.
Some mitigation strategies: off-shore stations - in effect, a retired oil drilling platform used for vehicle launch. launch ships - there was a couple of decades ago experiments in specialized ships launch rockets. But these were disposable rockets. Of the different approaches, I am a fan of a near shore launch platform with barge based landing platforms. A combination launch and landing platform makes sense too. Bob Wilson
