So, pulling some numbers out of my rear end, let’s suppose that 5% of the world’s GDP comes from “land-based” activities in some sense, and let’s suppose that losing coastal land is 10% as bad as losing average land (e.g. because most farms aren’t right on the coast or near enough it to be badly affected by this change). Then losing 0.04% of the land would reduce “gross world product” by 0.05 x 0.1 x 0.0004 = 0.000002 = 2 x 10^-6 of its value, or about 2 x 10^-6 x $10^14 ~= $0.2B annually. That’s a lot of money but seems likely to be a lot smaller than, e.g., the impact on agriculture of temperature changes, or the cost of serious mitigation efforts.
(I’d guess that the costs would be relatively much greater for poorer countries, more of whose economic activity is agricultural.)
The economic impact depends mostly on the loss of homes and other buildings, not farmland. A good fraction of the world’s wealth is tied up in buildings, and those tend to be concentrated near coastlines. But levees can be built in many areas, and some buildings in other areas might be worth putting on stilts. So the costs of levees, stilts, and abandoned structures are what you most need to examine, I think, to assess the economic cost of sea-level rise.
What, that’s close to nothing! $0.03 per person per year.
And the effect is even smaller than that. Higher sea level pushes the atmosphere up as well, which means we are improving land at higher elevations by having more air on it. This will reduce the net loss of valuable land.
If the most effective charities can save a life for $2k, that’s enough to save 100k lives/year. But of course there are plenty of other things it’s small in comparison to; I mentioned a couple of relevant ones.
improving land at higher elevations
I think this is likely to be a much smaller effect. The great majority of land is no more than ~1000m above sea level.
If the most effective charities can save a life for $2k, that’s enough to save 100k lives/year.
The most effective charities can save a life for $2k today (where by “today” I mean ‘a couple years ago’) because there’s lots of low-hanging fruit, but I doubt this will continue to apply much longer.
Clever, yes. However, it also comes with the opening up of relatively low lands that were previously covered by ice. AND, I have read that a significant fraction of sea level rise is due to the ocean water expanding since slightly warmer water is not as dense as slightly cooler water, which would serve to push the atmosphere up.
I think if you totted it all up, you would see a small loss of value in the land area available, but much smaller loss in value than in land area lost. That is, the remaining land would have higher value per hectare on average for a few reasons.
I have read that a significant fraction of sea level rise is due to the ocean water expanding since slightly warmer water is not as dense as slightly cooler water, which would serve to push the atmosphere up.
The air is warming too, and the expansion of the air will make it less dense, which utterly swamps the effect from the expansion of the water.
That is, the remaining land would have higher value per hectare on average for a few reasons.
Really? I see that the other way around.
Beaches are valuable, and it will take a lot of time or money to make them at their new sites.
Estuaries provide a lot of ecological services and are basically flat. Having them be at the wrong depth will screw up those services.
Many cities (concentrated value) are right down on the water, and it will be muy expensive to save them and enough of their outlying areas that they remain convenient (which was a large part of why they were cities in the first place).
So, pulling some numbers out of my rear end, let’s suppose that 5% of the world’s GDP comes from “land-based” activities in some sense, and let’s suppose that losing coastal land is 10% as bad as losing average land (e.g. because most farms aren’t right on the coast or near enough it to be badly affected by this change). Then losing 0.04% of the land would reduce “gross world product” by 0.05 x 0.1 x 0.0004 = 0.000002 = 2 x 10^-6 of its value, or about 2 x 10^-6 x $10^14 ~= $0.2B annually. That’s a lot of money but seems likely to be a lot smaller than, e.g., the impact on agriculture of temperature changes, or the cost of serious mitigation efforts.
(I’d guess that the costs would be relatively much greater for poorer countries, more of whose economic activity is agricultural.)
The economic impact depends mostly on the loss of homes and other buildings, not farmland. A good fraction of the world’s wealth is tied up in buildings, and those tend to be concentrated near coastlines. But levees can be built in many areas, and some buildings in other areas might be worth putting on stilts. So the costs of levees, stilts, and abandoned structures are what you most need to examine, I think, to assess the economic cost of sea-level rise.
What, that’s close to nothing! $0.03 per person per year.
And the effect is even smaller than that. Higher sea level pushes the atmosphere up as well, which means we are improving land at higher elevations by having more air on it. This will reduce the net loss of valuable land.
If the most effective charities can save a life for $2k, that’s enough to save 100k lives/year. But of course there are plenty of other things it’s small in comparison to; I mentioned a couple of relevant ones.
I think this is likely to be a much smaller effect. The great majority of land is no more than ~1000m above sea level.
The most effective charities can save a life for $2k today (where by “today” I mean ‘a couple years ago’) because there’s lots of low-hanging fruit, but I doubt this will continue to apply much longer.
Higher sea level from ice falling into the water results in the air being lowered since the ice became denser in the process.
Clever, yes. However, it also comes with the opening up of relatively low lands that were previously covered by ice. AND, I have read that a significant fraction of sea level rise is due to the ocean water expanding since slightly warmer water is not as dense as slightly cooler water, which would serve to push the atmosphere up.
I think if you totted it all up, you would see a small loss of value in the land area available, but much smaller loss in value than in land area lost. That is, the remaining land would have higher value per hectare on average for a few reasons.
The air is warming too, and the expansion of the air will make it less dense, which utterly swamps the effect from the expansion of the water.
Really? I see that the other way around.
Beaches are valuable, and it will take a lot of time or money to make them at their new sites.
Estuaries provide a lot of ecological services and are basically flat. Having them be at the wrong depth will screw up those services.
Many cities (concentrated value) are right down on the water, and it will be muy expensive to save them and enough of their outlying areas that they remain convenient (which was a large part of why they were cities in the first place).