You can make a difference to the hurt being caused by climate chaos and the great extinction event in your town or your city! How? Reuse, repurpose, and recycle this information. You can push your local politicians to act. It will make a difference!
This is the letter for week 176 of a weekly climate strike that went on for 4 years in front of San Francisco City Hall, beginning early March 2019. For more context, see this story. For an annotated table of contents of the topics for all the strike letters, see this story. Meanwhile…
STRIKE FOR THE PLANET
They’re heeeeeeeeere
This week’s topic: Ready for Disaster? You Better Be!
Thwaites
This is an Antarctic glacier. The glacier is the size of Florida, and its meltwater is responsible for 4% of current global sea level rise. The glacier is held in place by a floating ice shelf that’s jammed against an underwater mountain 50 km offshore. That ice shelf is being attacked by warm water from below and warm air from above, and will collapse in 3-5 years.
The amount the melted ice shelf will raise sea level is over 60 cm (2 ft). That’s assuming the glacier doesn’t follow it.
Greenland
Greenland’s melting at the fastest rate in the last 12,000 years. Greenland’s zombie ice (ice on the edge of ice sheets that is not accumulating fresh snow and is unable to gain mass) will melt and raise sea level 25.4 cm (10 inches) no matter what we do to reduce CO2 emissions. A heat wave over Greenland triggered a major melting episode this month. At its peak last Saturday, 12 billion tons of ice melted into the ocean in one day.
Greenland stores 7.2 meters (24 ft) of potential sea level rise in its ice.
San Francisco
Elevations range from sea level to 285 m (934 ft) above sea level. A conservative 120 cm (4 ft) sea level rise puts much of the bay coast and Treasure Island underwater, i.e. the populations already most impacted by environmental racism and economic injustice. 120 cm (4 ft) of sea level rise puts two of SF’s four sewage treatment plants plus a number of toxic waste sites underwater, and destroys a huge chunk of housing and vital transportation infrastructure.
So what’s the plan?
All the water listed above is just immediate flooding from sea level rise. Climate change is also causing flooding from extreme precipitation events, storm surges, and hurricanes (as these are working their way up the coast farther and farther north).
And this is just flooding. There are heat events, megadrought, mass extinction, famine, and so much more in store for us.
Are you ready?
Are you kidding.