[tshiggins]

Originally Posted by Astromancer

Oh well. A realistic( for a given value of realistic) jump in sea level from the collapse of Western Antarctica still creates worldwide crisis. Half the population of Eygpt and nine tenths of Bangladesh are flooded out. Huge Chinese populations are on the move too. The floods of refugees within Europe and coming to Europe from nearby (it is easier for tens of millions of refugees to get to Europe than for even a million to get to the USA) would create the worst crisis since the late 1940s.

If you want to make things worse, have the New Madrid Fault kick off a Richter 9.5 earthquake as the sea level rise hits its designated peak.

That would devastate the Midwest and force refugees from conservative communities where their families have lived for at least a century into the more liberal urban regions.

It would also trigger a global recession as U.S. investment money got pulled back to fund the reconstruction at home. Moreover, the investors would simply decline to fund reconstruction of many poor rural town, making displacement permanent for a demographic already inclined toward apocalyptic world-views.