Earlier,I had blogged about a Research Report by Ambit Capital which discussed the possibility of Mumbai realty prices crashing by 50%
Now comes a study on climate change which discussed the possibility of Mumbai and other coastal cities going underwater in the next few decades:
In what may prove to be a turning point for political action on climate change, a breathtaking new study casts extreme doubt about the near-term stability of global sea levels.
The study—written by James Hansen, NASA’s former lead climate scientist, and 16 co-authors, many of whom are considered among the top in their fields—concludes that glaciers in Greenland and Antarctica will melt 10 times faster than previous consensus estimates, resulting in sea level rise of at least 10 feet in as little as 50 years. The study, which has not yet been peer reviewed, brings new importance to a feedback loop in the ocean near Antarctica that results in cooler freshwater from melting glaciers forcing warmer, saltier water underneath the ice sheets, speeding up the melting rate. Hansen, who is known for being alarmist and also right, acknowledges that his study implies change far beyond previous consensus estimates. In a conference call with reporters, he said he hoped the new findings would be “substantially more persuasive than anything previously published.” I certainly find them to be.
To come to their findings, the authors used a mixture of paleoclimate records, computer models, and observations of current rates of sea level rise, but “the real world is moving somewhat faster than the model,” Hansen says.
Hansen’s study does not attempt to predict the precise timing of the feedback loop, only that it is “likely” to occur this century. The implications are mindboggling: In the study’s likely scenario, New York City—and every other coastal city on the planet—may only have a few more decades of habitability left. That dire prediction, in Hansen’s view, requires “emergency cooperation among nations.”- from Slate
As an aside,I always wondered why our ancestors did not build any coastal cities.Minor ports aside, all the major capitals (Delhi, Pune, Mysore, Hyderabad, Lahore, Murshidabad etc) were miles away from the sea. All our major coastal cities such as Mumbai,Chennai,Kolkata,Karachi etc were built by the British.
Is it possible that our ancestors learnt from the experience of ancient India where cities like Dwarka, Lothal etc perished under the waves?
6 replies on “Can Mumbai realty prices crash by 100%?”
Great writing, thoughts, and collection of articles, complilations. Really appreciate your work.
Development of river cities is more prevalent as it provides fresh water for irrigation. However depending on how rich the kingdom is trade did take place on port cities as this map most likely from 1st century shows. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/ff/Periplous_of_the_Erythraean_Sea.svg
Tx 🙂
People need water to survive. So all humans when they stopped being hunter gatherers and shifted slowly to agriculture they started settling down.
Cities naturally developed along river fronts as that provided water both for consumption as well as for agriculture. Its only later when cross border trade over ships started that coastal cities started coming up. Since ocean water is neither fit for consumption nor agriculture it wasn’t a natural place of choice for settlements to emerge.
And now the fact is that all major cities of the world are either on a river or on the sea. Bangalore is one of the exceptions. Think of it, that’s why it took so long to develop as a major city. No water. No agriculture. No trade. IT & communication etc have opened up trade without the need for ports, and that’s when this city took off.
Its very interesting.. when one thinks about all of these aspects
Just the other day I read an article of how we may be on the edge of another mini ice-age (or maybe even a full one). In about 20 years, scientists are expecting a global cooling based on the Sun’s activity. Regardless of man-made carbon dioxide, the Sun is the prime driver of temperatures on earth. In fact, there has been no observable global temperature rise since the last 17 years. The last of the (Global Warming?!) temperature increases stopped in 1998 and there has been no further sustained rise since then. Unless this NASA study has been conducted before 1998 (in which case it is now outdated), this is clearly a scam intended to scare people on the margin to leave the coastal cities.
People will not leave unless they are wading in knee deep water. And who knows we even might come up with some new technology.