[HN Gopher] Sea level much higher than assumed in most coastal h...
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Sea level much higher than assumed in most coastal hazard
assessments
Author : jacquesm
Score : 95 points
Date : 2026-03-04 16:24 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.nature.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.nature.com)
| bikenaga wrote:
| [flagged]
| buildsjets wrote:
| The only thing you ever post is AI summaries of articles. Why?
| Schiendelman wrote:
| I assume that's a bot that helps us not have to click on
| articles for basic information. Personally, I find it quite
| useful. I'd love to have that built into HN.
| solid_fuel wrote:
| I think every browser has an AI summary feature now, if you
| find reading and engaging with information just too
| difficult and challenging.
| MisterTea wrote:
| We are more than capable of reading thanks.
| sebmellen wrote:
| The saddest part of global turmoil around AI, Iran war, etc. is
| how dramatically climate change has disappeared from the 'global
| conversation'. This is not something we can afford to ignore for
| much longer.
| jatari wrote:
| Climate hasn't been a real topic of discussion since the Obama
| administration.
| jonahrd wrote:
| I disagree, Greta Thunberg's whole thing started in 2018,
| leading to larger and larger climate protests and action
| globally...
|
| ..until about 2020, with COVID/russia-ukraine/Oct 7/trumps
| re-election following and burying it below tons of other news
| cycles.
| crystal_revenge wrote:
| And the Obama administration really just talked about it. It
| was under his administration that the US shale oil extraction
| really started heating up.
|
| The problem is the only solution to climate change is keeping
| oil in the ground. There are other things that can be done to
| make a zero emissions transition less painful, but oil (and
| all other fossil fuels) need to start staying in the ground.
|
| During the Obama administration is when we started to see a
| dramatic _increase_ in US oil production [0]. The US hegemony
| is oil powered and founded on the petro-dollar. There 's no
| way US policy can be aligned with anything remotely
| resembling a path towards a sustainable energy environment.
|
| 0. https://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/hist/leafhandler.ashx?n=pet&s
| =m...
| michaelteter wrote:
| Fox News and Trump still routinely say it's a hoax. And their
| devotees repeat that line in one breath, and in the next
| breath say, "wow, we just set a new high temp record in
| January!"
| tencentshill wrote:
| No, it just got boring. There have been massive renewable
| buildouts since then, as a direct consequence of those
| policies. No matter how much trump hates it, the economic
| scales have already tipped.
| spwa4 wrote:
| The point is that renewable buildouts don't help. ONLY
| permanently preventing exports in oil producing countries
| helps. Not temporary reductions. Stopping exports entirely
| before the oil is dug up. Everything else might be nice in
| it's own right, but doesn't change the global warming
| calculation much at all.
|
| Which effectively means that renewable deployment in the
| west might still be a good idea, but not because it
| supposedly slows or stops global warming.
| pocksuppet wrote:
| We've been getting progressively more dog-eat-dog short-term
| since Reagan.
| dingnuts wrote:
| Close, but it's actually Nixon and the end of Bretton Woods
| andai wrote:
| Isn't that artificially imposed survival fear the natural
| consequence of fractional reserve banking?
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| I don't think climate change is being ignored: AI, war
| profiteering, ICE, detention centers, destruction of the
| international system, global fascism _are_ their answer to
| climate change.
|
| It's not to prevent it, or to mitigate its damages, it's for
| the people who disproportionately caused it, and have already
| benefitted from it, to finalize their control over the
| resources they want. Some of those resources are some of us.
| georgemcbay wrote:
| And they aren't even really bothering to hide it anymore.
|
| A lot of Trump's seemingly odd obsessions like taking over
| Greenland and Canada are less odd (but still very unsettling)
| when you accept that the global power elite have already
| accepted that run-away climate change is inevitable and the
| only open questions are who is going to profit from it and
| how.
| spankalee wrote:
| This is it exactly. Russia and Canada are in the best
| position to possibly "benefit" from global warming.
|
| The US has Alaska, but if it wants more newly arable land
| in the future, the only options seem to be Greenland and
| Canada, the two places which Trump just so happens to be
| obsessed with annexing.
| surgical_fire wrote:
| You don't have to worry about the future if you ensure there
| is no future.
| axus wrote:
| Disagree, the motives are the same with or without climate
| change. We're still at the slow part of the curve. Knowing
| what's coming doesn't change their behavior.
| beedeebeedee wrote:
| There are also some people in power who believe climate
| change is related to the end of times and eagerly welcome it
| to hasten their idea of 'Armageddon'
| Herring wrote:
| You're giving them too much credit. They're just blindly
| seeking profit.
|
| Humans are not that good at planning longer than 6 months to
| 5 years out. The brain is legacy hardware, optimized for the
| Pleistocene epoch. Reward circuitry (Striatum) often
| overpowers logical simulation (Cortex).
| sebmellen wrote:
| The other thing is, we can't stop. Someone always will
| outcompete you if you try to pause.
| maest wrote:
| The US has been taking steps in the wrong direction wrt climate
| change and they will undoubtedly be judged to jave been on the
| wrong side of history on this one.
|
| In the near term, however, Americans will blame everything
| except man-made pollution for the fallout from climate change.
| sebmellen wrote:
| Regardless of the politics of the day, where is the long-
| term, popular will (or capacity) for a "green/electric"
| revolution in the US? We are massively dependent on fossil
| fuels, and our quality of life is too.
|
| At the same time, we don't have China's industrial capacity
| or their stomach for massive state-driven subsidies. I don't
| see how you escape peak oil otherwise.
| Retric wrote:
| Oil is just one aspect of climate change, coal was far more
| important because there's plenty of coal to case extrem
| harm.
|
| The vast majority of new electricity generation installed
| in the US over the last 15 years has been wind and solar.
| That naturally results in fossil fuels being fazed out when
| existing power plants age and thus need to be replaced. 70%
| of US electricity came from fossil fuels in 2010, that
| dropped to 60% by 2020. More significantly it mostly
| swapped to natural gas which emits far less CO2/KWh than
| coal.
|
| We could go faster but the tail end of the curve represents
| a small fraction of the CO2 vs the peak. Even natural gas
| is facing severe pressure from ultra cheap battery backed
| solar. More importantly natural gas power plants don't last
| nearly as long so will get fazed out much faster.
|
| EV's are also about more than tailpipe emissions, making
| and transporting gasoline is quite harmful before it ends
| up in a gas tank.
| shimman wrote:
| Your comment ignores how much corporate welfare the US
| already provides. Maybe the better question to ask is why
| the US government cares so much about making such a small
| amount of people more rich at the expense of not only the
| living population but future generations as well.
|
| We absolutely have the capacity, it's just being given to
| already wealthy families to ensure their wealth is
| contained to themselves rather than the country.
| danaris wrote:
| I mean, to some extent, you're not wrong, but if a Democrat
| were in office right now, we wouldn't be actively fighting
| the rising tide of solar power.
|
| At present, the _bare economics_ of it, without any
| subsidies, put solar as _the_ most cost-effective new power
| capacity to add.
|
| Last year--2025, the first year of Trump's second term--
| something like 90% of _all new generating capacity_ in the
| US was solar. Even _with_ his active antipathy toward it.
|
| There no longer needs to be a massive movement willing to
| pay more for energy just to get it decarbonized. All we
| need is for the fossil fuel industry and the people in its
| pay to _get out of the way_.
| mullingitover wrote:
| > At present, the bare economics of it, without any
| subsidies, put solar as the most cost-effective new power
| capacity to add.
|
| Not just more cost-effective for new power.
|
| The _operating expenses_ for a given coal plant are
| greater than the buildout cost for the equivalent
| solar+battery plant.
|
| It no longer makes financial sense for coal plants to
| continue existing in almost all cases. This isn't some
| environmentalism thing, it's strictly hard math. Fossil
| energy is no longer viable without taxpayers keeping it
| on life support.
| mmooss wrote:
| IIRC, polls show most Americans support action on climate
| change. When it's politicized, then they oppose it.
| 0xffff2 wrote:
| I say this as an American... I can't help but feel that the
| US will be judged to have been on the wrong side of history
| in virtually every topic for which there are sides in the
| last decade if not longer. For reasons I don't understand, we
| seem to be actively and aggressively working to destroy our
| country and as many global institutions as we can.
| datsci_est_2015 wrote:
| > For reasons I don't understand
|
| History is full of examples, but maybe not explanations, of
| the type of behavior coming out of the current
| administration in the US. They're not particularly special,
| or extraordinary, by any measure. They've simply made the
| decision to hit the "defect" button over and over again
| like a teenage boy discovering porn for the first time.
|
| And since the adults that preceded them were reasonable and
| responsible, they built up plenty of rules and norms,
| creating many opportunities to now hit "defect".
| mmooss wrote:
| Could you give us some of these examples?
| datsci_est_2015 wrote:
| People spend entire careers doing these types of
| analyses, so my off-the-cuff comment will always be
| amateurish in comparison. But here goes anyway, some
| examples of blunders that come from a place of arrogance,
| or being overeager to hit the "defect" button:
| - Various Roman emperors overextending and destroying
| what their predecessors slowly built - Indigenous
| peoples (especially the Americas) allying with colonial
| forces to defeat other indigenous enemies (won the
| battle, lost the war) - Brexit - Perhaps the
| most documented regime of all time, 1930s and 40s
| Germany. Specific event? The eastern offensive
|
| Edit: - Royal lineages have plenty of
| examples, like Louis XVI
| mmooss wrote:
| Here's an hypothesis: A fundamental model of politics is
| similar to the model of innovation in markets: The status
| quo power and the challenger or disrupter power.
|
| The status quo's power rests on its institutions,
| stability, and the fact that it is the social norm -
| generally humans are tied to social norms and attack
| anything that violates them. The challenger, to succeed,
| needs to disrupt the institutions, stability, and norms,
| and one tactic is to just constantly attack them,
| regardless of the consequences, as a means to the end of
| taking down the status quo and gaining power.
| crystal_revenge wrote:
| > wrong side of history on this one.
|
| There's not much _history_ left. What we 're seeing right now
| is people getting ready to win the end game of civilization.
| The oligarchs are well aware of the myriad existential
| threats to our civilization (and species) and are playing the
| game to make sure they're the last person alive living in
| comfort.
|
| History will increasingly be told by powerful, oligarchical,
| modern warlords.
| crystal_revenge wrote:
| Reducing the severity of climate change (we've already signed
| up for potentially civilization destroying consequences, even
| if we could go zero emissions today), requires keeping proven
| reserves in the ground. No amount of "green" energy will impact
| our future if it doesn't mean we start using _less_ fossil
| fuels (globally) than today.
|
| Darkly, a disastrous global nuclear war that sends us back in
| time 500 years would be the most effective and most probable
| way of achieving this.
| spongebobstoes wrote:
| what if we could capture carbon at a significant rate? I know
| that we can't right now, it's a hypothetical
| KellyCriterion wrote:
| yes, I guess with fusion this would be possible?
| bgnn wrote:
| It's not only carbon. There are a multitude of gasses which
| cause greenhouse effect.
| noncoml wrote:
| Not because of AI or Iran war. It's because we, in the US,
| voted for it to disappear.
| metalman wrote:
| Watch your warming oceans expand in real time here
|
| https://nsidc.org/sea-ice-today
|
| above shows what may be the earliest ever peak sea ice
|
| and
|
| https://www.ospo.noaa.gov/products/ocean/sst/contour/
|
| and the one above is absolutly terrifying , or should be to
| wanabe hegemnons thinking that the naritive, is thiers.
| lazyasciiart wrote:
| Can you explain what background knowledge I need to be
| terrified looking at the second one?
| metalman wrote:
| it is a tool that shows daily snap shots of the SST to use it
| you need to have a good grasp on geography/oceanography, and
| then spen a bit of time each day looking at it, and cross
| corelating with things like hurricanes, to see the trace
| spiral of cooler water that a giant storm will imprint into
| the oceans surface, or this year, the very significant
| chanhes in the worlds major hot and cold currents, and size
| of the spill over from the south wester pacific into the
| atlantic.
| bvdw wrote:
| The first link contains a banner that perfectly illustrates the
| tragic moment we're in: "Due to non-renewed funding, several
| Sea Ice Today tools and services are now suspended or reduced."
| sebmellen wrote:
| So we are more than 1 million square kilometers lower than our
| record minimum year of 2012. Holy shit.
|
| https://nsidc.org/sea-ice-today/sea-ice-tools/charctic-inter...
| measurablefunc wrote:
| In almost every fictional story1 dealing w/ near future outcomes
| every author just assumes that Miami & New York are under water.
|
| 1https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ministry_for_the_Future
| pjmlp wrote:
| We just started another war with unforeseen consequences to the
| planet, while destroying all resources to feed the AI monster,
| forget about all those paper straws.
| mmooss wrote:
| > ... 90% of the hazard assessments assume coastal sea levels
| based on geoid models, rather than using actual sea-level
| measurements.
|
| > A geoid is an equipotential surface model that approximates MSL
| based on gravity and the rotation of Earth. As geoid quality
| depends on gravity observations, uncertainties in global geoid
| models can range up to several metres in regions that suffer from
| gravitational data paucity ..., predominantly located in the
| Global South. Moreover, actual sea-surface height is not just
| determined by the gravity and rotation of Earth, but also by, for
| example, ocean currents and large-scale circulation, winds,
| tides, seawater temperature and salinity. As a result, time-
| average sea-surface height can deviate strongly (up to several
| metres) from a geoid, and its difference is the so-called mean
| dynamic topography (MDT).
|
| I don't quite grasp how those flaws in geoid models lead to an
| overall significant underestimation of sea-level. Shouldn't all
| those average out?
|
| > uncertainties in global geoid models
|
| Why would those tend toward underestimation?
|
| > sea-surface height is not just determined by the gravity and
| rotation of Earth, but also by, for example, ocean currents and
| large-scale circulation, winds, tides, seawater temperature and
| salinity.
|
| Other than temperature and maybe salinity, those factors move
| water in a closed system: increasing water one place reduces it
| in another (?).
|
| > time-average sea-surface height can deviate strongly
|
| Why would average deviation by positive and not zero or negative?
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