The final installment of the Garnaut Review this week didn’t raise anyone’s hopes. As the professor himself said, “If we fail, the failure of our generation will haunt humanity till the end of time.”
Heavy stuff. But what does failure really mean for Australia?
Given that 80% of Australians live in coastal areas, rising sea levels are an important issue. According to Garnaut, if we get the international community on board we’ll only see a 59cm rise. But that’s the best case scenario, Garnaut says a more realistic outcome is a target of 550ppm.
Here’s what our resident climate change scientist Dr Andrew Glikson had to say about what this means for sea levels:
- Based on a climate sensitivity of 3 degrees for a doubling of atmospheric CO2 levels, at 550 ppm CO2 which is twice the pre-industrial level of 280 ppm CO2, mean global temperatures will rise to about 3 degrees Celsius.
- A rise of global temperature of 3 degrees Celsius implies sea level rise of about 25 metres +/- 12 metres, as recorded from the mid-Pliocene (3 million years ago) and consistent with sea level rise/temperature relations during glacial terminations.
- Temperature rises to 3 degrees Celsius imply widespread desertification of mid-latitudes, the agricultural centres of the world.
- Natural sequestration of greenhouse gases occurs over time frames of centuries to millennia and no atmospheric mechanism is known that will stabilize CO2 levels over shorter periods.
- In terms of the longevity of civilization, allowing CO2 levels to rise further than they already are (387 ppm) would prove to be a unidirectional process.
- A target of 450 ppm is dangerous, being the atmospheric greenhouse gas level at which the ice sheets began to form in the late Eocene some 34 million years ago. A target of 550 ppm CO2 is a recipe for disaster.
Since neither Glikson or Garnaut gave us a visual aid, Crikey thought we’d check out what exactly 25 metres of rising sea will look like for Australia on this cool flood map. Alex Tingle of Fire Tree created these maps using raw data from NASA and google maps.
Unfortunately it only goes as far as 14 metres — some would argue that’s scary enough. Below are some nice pictures of each capital city 14 metres below sea level, and a few positive points about flooding on a national level.
Sydney
Malcolm Turnbull would be able to appeal to a different Australian demographic — the homeless — as his waterside mansion gets swallowed by Sydney Harbour…
Melbourne
The Grand Prix will be forced to become a submarine race, allowing water to absorb the sounds of engines roaring and make the bikini clad babes appear rather sensible.
Brisbane
The beautiful river running through the city just got bigger! How lovely.
Hobart
The Tasmanian Parliament will be underwater. That can only be a good thing.
Darwin
We don’t know a lot about landmark location in Darwin, but if anyone does, send us an email!
Canberra
Canberra will be fine. That’s no silver lining.
Adelaide
Sport in Adelaide will come to an end, with Port Adelaide Park, Football Park, Cheltenham and Morphettville racecourses all submerged — and since both the airports will be inoperable due to excess fluid, no one will be able to escape except via the Nullabor.
Perth
Perth’s riverside suburbs will be underwater, plus Burswood Casino (gambling problem solved), Rottnest Island (goodbye quokkas) and the home of the SAS at Cottesloe.
Entertaining projections (aka wild guesses).
Compare this from CSIRO: “Recent observations show the observed sea levels from tide gauges and satellites are tracking near the upper bound of the IPCC 2001 projections since the start of the projections in 1990 (Rahmstorf et al. 2007). This upper limit leads to a global-averaged sea-level rise by 2100 of **88 cm** compared to 1990 values.”
So how do we get from 88 cm to 25 metres? That’s more than a 2,500% jump!
I like the crack about the Tasmanian Parliament though.
I know that everyone has to bag Canberra as a catharsis for whatever indignities they were forced to endure on some school excursion during their spotty years. Its not our fault you didn’t get any on the excursion, OK. You were repulsive at that age, you would not have gotten any in Sydney, Melbourne, New York or Paris either. Let it go.
To the point. Canberra might not be under water, but it will not be fine because it will be close to a desert. Not a good thing for us territorians.
I think Dave Liberts has hit the nail on the head.
It’s all an evil real estate scam.
AGW denialists are Lex Luthor to Rudd’s Superman. But I’m not sure I want to be saved….my lowbrow suburb may become beachfront realestate ……”sooner than you think” as Tim Flannery is wont to repeat but evidently not soon enough for me…..
Oh and Bill….a significant number of Port Power supporters are already homeless…..
These maps are very interesting, but I suspect that at least for Melbourne they underestimate the areas under threat.
A rise of 2m will flood half of Flinders Street and nearly all of Southbank and Docklands.
See these contour maps of Melbourne http://www.melbourne.vic.gov.au/info.cfm?top=94&pa=756&pg=3978 and get your highlighters out for some do-it-yourself flood prediction fun!
I think you’re onto something here Eleris / Chris … we don’t need pipelines and dams to get water to the capitals, we just need some way of diverting all this extra sea to Canberra.