Gentle Decline 1/13: Discussion & Digressions

Hello. Someone in work remarked "you're pretty cynical about politics", and it was all I could do not to laugh at them. What other position could anyone have about politics? People continue to vote for candidates who represent business as usual, with business being almost as important a term in there as "as usual", and the appearance in various seats of a slightly more significant number of Green electees is seen as being shockingly different and unexpected, despite the clear evidence of rising concern, and the actual evidence of a need for concern. There's an Irish Times article from the 27th of May in the wake of the elections with a headline "Greens’ long-term goals would involve serious adjustments to our lives". Well, no shit. This whole newsletter is about my cynicism, in a way: I don't believe we're going to be able to halt the climate disaster, and they best we can do is slow it down and try to plan for how to ride it out.

Results are are just about finished coming in for the European and local Irish elections (elections at the county level, not national ones), but there's plenty of attention being paid to a "Green Wave". This is essentially the establishment parties panicking as the Greens (and some other environmentally sensible groups) move from just-about-there representation to a-few-seats-here-and-there representation. In particular, one can imagine the grey eminences of Fine Gael scarpering around the place looking for wherever they left the cans of greenwash from last time, and worrying that they might actually have to do something which would cut into the profit margins. Where, of course, "have to" will be fought every inch of the way in the name of the holy euro, and conceded to only exactly as much as necessary to assure re-election.

Sorry, the cynicism is dripping on the floor. I'll get a mop or something; it's pretty caustic stuff. I do think that given the way the younger end of the population are voting (or at least polling), that this is going to be more and more of an ongoing tide. With every year that passes, conservative votes decrease, and left/green votes increase, just by virtue of deaths and comings-of-age.

I was also asked by a (different) co-worker a couple of weeks ago, who knows I'm into this stuff, "if there is only one thing I can do to make things easier for myself in 20 years time, what would it be?". I've been thinking about this. Like minimum movement blocks in combat, it's best looked at in terms of efficiency; what's the minimum investment of effort and energy for the maximum return? And I think it comes down to: move inland. Even if you're renting, move inland. And uphill, getting to at least 50m above sea level, and maybe watch out for where there are rivers or even streams. Do it soon.

First and foremost, there is going to be coastal flooding in the next 20 years. The current predictions (which in themselves are constantly increasing) are for a 2m rise, give or take a bit, by 2100. That's 81 years away, which means there'll be an average of 2.5cm a year between now and then, alongside an increase, both in numbers and intensity, in storms, which both provide more rainfall and push water against coasts with wind. It won't be an even progression, and more of it will happen toward the end of the century than at the beginning, but it's still going to have effects. Rivers, streams, and even things like land drainage can also cause flooding, and while rainfall could drop in specific locations, it's pretty certain that there will be more intense rains from time to time - see the current flooding in the Great Lakes region of the US. Dublin has already been shown to flood unpleasantly along the Liffey with 10cm of rainfall in 24 hours if there's a high tide at the peak of the flow, and it's more and more likely that that will happen more often. And if you need any more convincing, there's already a village in Wales, Fairbourne, which will be officially abandoned in the next 20-some years. You want to be well back from the 2m expected rise, too; that's the average sea level, which doesn't account for high tides, storm surges, or just plain big waves.

It's also worth pointing out that while we can measure where a 2m higher shoreline would be on the current shape of the land, that too will change. Sea water, and waves, are one of the most powerful forces of erosion on the planet, second only to glaciers. So when the sea is 2m higher, it's going to get its erosive forces going on whole new areas of land, many of which are currently covered in topsoil, which really doesn't stand up well to waves. Large areas of what's currently agricultural land will be lost to this, and the sea will reach even further.

Second, we're going to need inland infrastructure when everyone else moves. You can get something resembling your pick of locations now in all kinds of places, and by moving inland, you'll encourage the local authorities to upgrade facilities. Things like ring roads to facilitate small town traffic, better train stations and public transport frequency, broadband, water supplies, and so forth are all going to be very necessary. Even writing to local authorities saying "Hi, I'm considering moving to $town, can you tell me about the availability of parking, public transport and broadband over the next few years?" can be astonishingly effective. Not least because your one email (or better, letter) might represent a 100% increase in such queries.

In Ireland, a lot of people live on the coasts, because Dublin, Cork, Galway, Waterford, Wexford, and Sligo are all coastal cities or towns. That's where the work is, too, so it's not easy to move inland. But companies, too, will have to move inland, and that will become evident before the 20-year mark. Anyone who can work remotely, commute along train lines, or indeed find work in the inland towns would be well-advised to do so sooner rather than later.

Carlow, Kilkenny, Tullamore, Athlone, Birr, Cashel, Longford, and a bunch more inland towns I'm not remembering, plus all the inland edge-of-greater-Dublin towns in Kildare, Meath and Wicklow, are currently underserved in terms of infrastructure, but they're improving. Dunboyne, Maynooth and Naas are on train lines (or almost on, for Naas), and away from coasts. Naas is actually a crucial few metres higher than Maynooth, which means that there's sometimes snowfall there when there's only sleet where I live - but that's a difference that will only be relevant if we reach an ice-free planet, and at that stage which specific bits of the remaining Irish Isles are above water will be a minor detail against the complete breakdown of civilisation.

Obviously, having a surge of population will likely lead to some degree of rejuvenation in these inland towns, some of which are rather moribund at present. This has been done in one form in France, and gives me some hope for those towns being more pleasant places.

Ireland's east coast rail line isn't well placed to handle sea level rise, sadly. Some bits of it may be underwater at 2m, and a lot more at high and spring tides. And because it's a single line, one bit of it being out means the whole thing is pretty much out.

One of the areas of concern here in the medium term is third-level education; a good few people I know are are either academics or work in academic administration, and university campuses are hard (though by no means impossible) to move. In Dublin, University College Dublin is at a probably-safe 25m, Dublin City University at a fairly definitely safe 50m (most of Dublin north of the city centre is past a sharp rise at the edge of the Liffey Valley), but Trinity College is at most at 10m above sea level, and I think that's actually a rounding error in the tools I'm using to get heights. Trinity already had flooding issues in the east end in the late 90s, and while it has walls almost all around it which make flood defences easier in the short term, it's also built on reclaimed land which is notoriously porous. University College Cork is at 20m. But those are the actual campuses, and third level education has a wider need for space - mainly accommodation. UCD, in mostly fairly low-lying south Dublin, and UCC, in already-frequently-flooded Cork, are going to have issues here too.

So there's going to be a need to increase the funding for inland educational institutions, and to start to look at moving the coastal colleges in. This could start with external campuses, moving one department at a time, say, which wouldn't put undue pressure on whole universities. Or there could be cooperation with inland educational institutions - there are universities and institutes of technology in Athlone, Maynooth, and Carlow. And one can see Kilkenny being a good university town.

Overall, the places that are going to see the most growth from this climate migration will be towns near motorway junctions (most of our motorways, possibly by pure coincidence, or possibly by actual forward thinking on someone's part, are well above sea level), because motorways are the new rivers, and motorway junctions are the new fording and bridging points. Somewhere that has both a motorway junction nearby and a rail service (and there are a few, because the Galway rail line more or less parallels the M4/6, and the Sligo one parallels the M3) will have a running start - assuming that flood defences can be put in around Heuston station, which is currently more or less at the Liffey's tidal limit. Oddly, the Sligo/Westport line is well-elevated at its coastal end in Dublin, and that might be enough to keep it viable. It is possible, although I don't see it as being all that likely, that canal transport will see a resurgence, but that'll really only happen if roads and rail are under enormous pressure.

Thirdly (you may have to scroll back up for firstly and secondly, sorry), the rising sea isn't going to be the only issue on the coasts: there are going to be more, bigger storms. Now, I love storms. But the red weather warning we had for the arrival of ex-Hurricane-Ophelia wasn't a lot of fun, and the mile-wide tornadoes in the US are definitely unpleasant. The chances of quite a few more hurricane-force storms reaching Europe in the next couple of decades are pretty high, and North America can expect to be hammered in all kinds of interesting ways. And coasts are bad places to be during storms - the sea gets a lot of eroding done at these times, so chunks of land (possibly chunks containing roads or rails) may just plain disappear during the bigger ones, and coastal roads are not really safe to be on (don't make unnecessary journeys). Inland areas are not necessarily going to be safe, but they will be better.

All of this, though, comes back to: move inland. There will be a land rush in the next couple of decades, and if you're ahead of that, you're going to save yourself a lot of hassle.

There will be similar chunks of reasoning for other countries. 2m of sea level rise is not beyond technological means to keep out of cities, or small areas of cities, so it's entirely possible that chunks of New York and London will have sizable flood defences built - but I guarantee you that those will be around business premises, and maybe the residences of some very rich people. Otherwise it will be very much worth getting away from any coastline anywhere.

And while I don't want to harp on about this too much, I also want to say: 2m is the current prediction. That was 50cm only a few years ago, and we still don't understand all the feedback mechanisms. Methane is on the rise.and there's a huge cavern under the Thwaites Glacier in West Antarctica. And if the Thwaites Glacier melts, then we will immediately, there and then, no messing, get 60cm of sea level rise, followed pretty quickly by a not-all-that-predictable-but-probably-more-than-2m-rise caused by all the stuff that that particular glacier is preventing from sliding into the sea. Just 2m by 2100 would frankly be a good outcome at this point.

I'm pretty sure I had another bunch of things I wanted to reference here, but they largely seem to have escaped into future issues. In the meantime, though, Venkatesh Rao has an... offbeat take on how the next two decades will play out.

This issue has been brought to you by several new books about climate and the future, some serious over-use of italics, a pack of Super Salmiakki brought to me by Finnish friends, and more coffee than is really reasonable, and on which I should probably start to cut down sometime soon. Topics in upcoming issues will likely include traffic, housing, and future storms, except in the likely event that the muse brings me something else and makes me write about it (link very probably Not Safe For Work, and the rest of that webcomic is completely so; don't say I didn't warn you).