JohnMakin
12 hours ago
With a layman's understanding of sea level rise projections from studies like this, I now have a macabre fascination walking around in popular public places that are either barely above sea level or already below sea level and have been for a long time - like Balboa Island near Los Angeles [0], and marveling at the fact that in ~100 years time these places may not exist at all or at least in a drastically different fashion than they do now. This became fascinating to me because some of these places haven't even really been around that long. In geological time scales 100 years is nothing, or even in human history time scales - places that are just a ~century long blip in the historical record can easily be forgotten by future civilizations. It makes me marvel at how much of human history we have likely lost to climate change and other external factors. To us, 100 years seems like an eternity, because that's beyond the span of most humans' natural lives. A mighty metropolis like Los Angeles at the bottom of the ocean in 2000 years may not even end up being discovered!
This is all I can do really because thinking about it with any other feeling than awe or apathy is extremely difficult. We're living in what will surely be a pivotal moment in history, and not all societies have been able to say that.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balboa_Island,_Newport_Beach