"Bangkok Could be Underwater by 2030" - World Bank President

[Obb]

World Bank president just said this on BBC News. Due to climate change.

Sweet justice.

Edited September 24, 2014 by Obb

[choochoo]

Ther is NO climate change! code word for advancement of commies and socialist!

Edited September 24, 2014 by choochoo

[mesquite]

He's an idiot. He also said the entire world is at risk for an Ebola epidemic.

He should stick to counting money and let the scientists and doctors handle their fields.

Reminds me of the time Warren Buffet said it was a certainty that terrorists would detonate a nuclear device within the US.

Edited September 24, 2014 by mesquite

[3NUMBAS]

an almost certainty given the potential flooding elsewhere that isnt so low lying ,they should be making plans now for a move elsewhere as 16 years isnt a long time to organise the new capital on high ground .but hey they are building even more mighty condos and malls further causing sinking into the sludge ,short lifespan those buildings

[Costas2008]

No worries, OP, the Thai Government is taking care of it.

They are going to put BKK on stilts.

And all that for the happiness of the Thai people..........and the farangs...................

[Berkshire]

Oh crap, if that gets out, more BKK folks will feel a need to move north, Chiang Mai, Chiang Rai, etc. As if we needed any more people!

[taff33]

Only buy tenth floor and above and invest in a motor boat?.

[Aussieroaming]

I'm starting to think ebola might be about to go globally viral too...paranoia?

As for Bangkok being under water...I think a lot of the Bangkok region is under water already.

[mca]

The TAT are currently considering promoting Bangkok as the new Atlantis....

Edited September 25, 2014 by mca

[Rancid]

Who would trust a bankers opinion?

[BillyBobThai]

You should invest in some Thai water movers and help save Bangkok. You will make a fortune.

Edited September 25, 2014 by BillyBobThai

[bannork]

Korat will be the new capital of Thailand and Issan will boom even more. Perhaps the wife should convert her land in Udon into a golf course.

[soihok]

I remember those water movers.

Funny old game.

A bit like farting on the beach to make the tide go out.

[maisodni]

The highest point in the Maldive Islands is 2.4 meters above sea level.

When I see the Maldives slip below the waves, I will start being worried about ocean rise - and not before.

In case you are wondering how sea levels in the Maldives have changed over the last 50 years, here is a very detailed, "hands-on" report from 2011:

http://myweb.wwu.edu/dbunny/pdfs/Ch7Elsevier.pdf

Brief summary: sea levels have dropped noticeably.

Yawn .....

Mais-odni

[Jingthing]

The highest point in the Maldive Islands is 2.4 meters above sea level.

When I see the Maldives slip below the waves, I will start being worried about ocean rise - and not before.

In case you are wondering how sea levels in the Maldives have changed over the last 50 years, here is a very detailed, "hands-on" report from 2011:

http://myweb.wwu.edu/dbunny/pdfs/Ch7Elsevier.pdf

Brief summary: sea levels have dropped noticeably.

Yawn .....

Mais-odni

Sure thing mate.

Denial is fun!

Nils-Axel Mörner's claims regarding sea level rise are the very definition of denial, involving nothing more than conspiracy theories and unsubstantiated accusations of data falsification wich are easily proven untrue. The mainstream media needs to realize that Mörner is simply not a credible source of information about sea level rise or climate science in general. One individual's unsupported conspiracy theories do not trump empirical observational data.

http://skepticalscience.com/Nils-Axel-Morner-wrong-about-sea-level-rise.html

[Somtamme]

If the previous flooding episode in BKK is anything to go by, the real risk is from high river levels. With rising sea level, these storm river events are going to get more difficult to manage and insure against. It is this last point which this banker is most interested in, and the risks on large businesses.

[meand]

If it does flood, they may have to actually spend some real money on infrastructure to keep the money train flowing. Oh the horror of substantial amounts of tax dollars actually being spent to maintain the city.

[attrayant]

When I see the Maldives slip below the waves, I will start being worried about ocean rise - and not before.

I'll buy some smoke detectors and fire extinguishers as soon as I see my house is on fire, and not a moment sooner!

Edited September 25, 2014 by attrayant

[submaniac]

You guys are looking at this all wrong. Ever heard of Venice, Italy? Wouldn't Bangkok be fun if it were like Venice italy? The buildings are already shophouse style with multi stories. It wouldn't be a problem to lose the first floor or two. Then we flood the streets and introduce gondolas.

it would be like this, but for all the streets.

[nzvic]

Yes, it's a huge issue which BKK needs to address with more and more high-rise going up. But much of Holland suffers the same problem and has used polders - fantastic they sorted it out so long ago - (see G. Diamond's "Gun Germs and Steel" or one of his other books). I understand this is a specialised area of Dutch expertise which the world consult them on.

[maisodni]

Sure thing mate.

Denial is fun!

All the mumbo-jumbo, and hysteria, and "adjusted data" are all a joke, as far as I am concerned. I just look at low-lying places surronded by ocean, and look to see if any of them appear to be affected by any sea level rise.

I say sea level rise, to separate that from things such as beach erosion, coral mining, tidal variations, etc.

As far as I can tell, there is no evidence of sea level rise having affected any island, anywhere, in the last 100 years. And - if the sea level was rising, ALL islands would have to show the rise. It is all or nothing. Guess what: it is nothing.

Notwithstanding what you and the other "global cooling deniers" claim.

Cheers,

MS

[meand]

I often wonder if stupid people will ever fully realize they are stupid.

[attrayant]

“Sometimes people hold a core belief that is very strong. When they are presented with evidence that works against that belief, the new evidence cannot be accepted. It would create a feeling that is extremely uncomfortable, called cognitive dissonance. And because it is so important to protect the core belief, they will rationalize, ignore and even deny anything that doesn't fit in with the core belief.”

― Frantz Fanon

[meand]

^Of course the question is not anymore whether or not humans are changing the climate, and thus the rising seas. The question becomes, why do so many people refuse to believe humans have changed the climate.

I actually was interested enough in this that I read a few theories from experts. The one that rang truest to me was "group think". First, think about it... if we asked 100 people if science is helping us in our lives, almost everybody would answer yes. So, we have to rule out the distrust of scientists. Once we've established people do in actuality trust science (easy enough to prove, they go to doctors when they are sick, they take aspirin), the only logical explanation is that people want to hold their status within their groups. If everybody in a group thinks one thing, and one person in the group thinks another, his status and ability to lead and function will be greatly diminished. It also relates to the fact that you will side with your brother in an argument, even when he is dead wrong. It is like a growing cesspool of perpetuating misinformation all based only on the need to maintain status within a group (as opposed to actual information, facts and science).

Edited September 26, 2014 by meand

[attrayant]

First, think about it... if we asked 100 people if science is helping us in our lives, almost everybody would answer yes. So, we have to rule out the distrust of scientists.

I think it's simpler than all that. People are fundamentally flawed and very bad at evaluating the world around them with any degree of useful precision. Our brains have evolved to become good at making split-second decisions (fight or flight) that are needed to ensure our survival as a species. But ask somebody to guess what the temperature or relative humidity is, and you'll get answers that are sometimes close but often wrong by a huge margin of error.

And as Frantz Fanon noted above, it is our nature to search out and embrace data that confirms our deeply-held beliefs. It just 'feels right' to embrace data that confirms our bias, and reject that which doesn't. Eye witness testimony is notoriously inaccurate - laughably so, sometimes, and yet people still insist that they saw what they think they saw. I've seen polls where people outright admit - with utter lack of shame or embarrassment - that they don't believe the earth is warming because they haven't personally felt it. And what is worse, they make no real effort to develop a more complete understanding of the situation. They're willfully ignorant, and they're as bold as brass about it.

Somebody who thinks they look at a tree growing along a coastline and reach a conclusion about events that take hundreds of years to unfold is really living in their own blissful little world.

[maisodni]

The proposition of the OP was that some supposed intelligent adult proclaimed that Bangkok could be under water 16 years from now. Read the title.

A small handful of people replying to the post stayed on that subject. I was happy to mock that specific 16 year prediction as richly as it deserved, - and then presented some evidence to support my position. Recent, strong, well-supported evidence.

So - anyway - some other "deep thinkers" here seem compelled to draw the thread off into discussions of psychology and delusional group-think. Those comments seemed wildly off topic. I guess they are driven by the obsessions of "one trick ponies". They certainly have nothing to do with the absurd proposition that Bangkok will "be underwater" in 16 years. You could even say - they waste the time of people actually interested in gaining insight into the topic of the discussion thread.

Cheers!
MS

[3NUMBAS]

all the ice melt water has to go somewhere or are the scientists all telling lies with their super computer models ?

[maisodni]

all the ice melt water has to go somewhere or are the scientists all telling lies with their super computer models ?

Gee, I dunno - did you even consider that all the water was perhaps going into a record high icecap at the South Pole?

http://www.reportingclimatescience.com/news-stories/article/antarctic-sea-ice-chalks-up-new-record-high.html

MS

[attrayant]

No we don't consider that, because your link says nothing about cap ice.

[maisodni]

No we don't consider that, because your link says nothing about cap ice.

Oh, I'm sorry, I used the word "cap" when I should have used the word "sheet".

Here is what Wikipedia says about that sheet:

The Antarctic ice sheet is one of the two polar ice caps of the Earth. It covers about 98% of the Antarctic continent and is the largest single mass of ice on Earth. It covers an area of almost 14 million square km (5.4 million sq. miles) and contains 26.5 million cubic km of ice^[2] (6.36 million cubic miles). That is, approximately 61 percent of all fresh water on the Earth is held in the Antarctic ice sheet, an amount equivalent to 70 m of water in the world's oceans.

Let's see - it has 61% of all of the fresh water on earth. That sort of suggests that it might be, oh - I dunno - maybe TWICE the size of the ice sheet in the Arctic??? And - the southern ice sheet has been setting new volume and extent records year after year.

I see nothing there to suggest that Bangkok could be under water in 16 years.

MS