Final Paper Workshop Session 5

Mon, Dec 04

"Peter Ward told me Bangladesh is 'doomed': 'The worst place on earth has to be Bangladesh, because it’s not just the covering, it’s the sideways salt problem that will doom them.The scary thing is that, the direct cover is what people cite, but they ignore, to date, the sideways infiltration of salt. And this, again, just a slight rise in sea level causes a huge problem. And, as you know, as the sea level rises, it’s like a diving board for storm surge. You’re causing storm surge to jump ever further inland, and that in itself means huge inundation — it doesn’t have to be the rise to destroy the crops. It’s just a bad, bad situation. Bangladesh — you cover it up, where are those people going to go?' In Bangladesh, 40 percent of land is projected to be lost with just 65 centimeters (just over two feet) sea-level rise. Could some of this flooding be avoided if the world zeroed out emissions immediately and entirely (if the Paris accords legislated 100 percent carbon-neutral energy and industry and land use)? Some, possibly. But one 2012 study by Climate Analytics suggested that even if the planet eliminated emissions entirely by 2016 a best-possible-case outcome would be sea-level rise of 59 centimeters by 2100 — just about exactly that two feet of rise that would cover 40 percent of the country."

--David Wallace-Wells, "The Uninhabitable Earth, Annotated Edition"