66 Meters: Rising Sea Levels

2019, Environment  -   8 Comments
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Ratings: 7.32/10 from 34 users.

In the Baltic Sea near the coast of Germany, the remnants of an ancient settlement were found fully submerged underwater. Archeologists determined that these artifacts were over 7,000 years old. They were evidence of a civilization that was destroyed by the last catastrophic sea level rise. The documentary 66 Meters: Rising Sea Levels argues that we are quickly approaching the same fate today.

"We cannot engineer ourselves out of sea level rise," says one scientist featured in the film. His sentiments are echoed by additional archeologists and oceanographers as they paint a worst-case scenario portrait of the calamity that might await us.

What are our options if the seas rise to levels that could submerge entire cities? The costs would be immeasurable both in monetary considerations and in the loss of human life. The topography of our planet would be forever altered.

New York City is one such example explored in the film. America's most populous city is particularly vulnerable to this phenomenon based upon its close proximity to the coast and towering infrastructure. With just a modest increase in sea level, their underground subway system might become flooded and uninhabitable in less than an hour.

The film delves into the science behind sea levels and identifies that cities and other bodies of land that are rising above or sinking into the sea at a gradual but steady rate year after year. These estimates are complicated by the consistent melting of ice sheets in regions like Greenland. The rate by which this melting occurs is unpredictable. It can occur incrementally over hundreds of years and escalate to the point of total disintegration in less than ten years. Once the process begins, it's impossible to control.

The dangers are not just a distant possibility. Indonesia is sinking every year. Other cities may flood entirely in a matter of years, which would place the stability of their countries in peril. Engineered barriers and other flood defense efforts might only provide a temporary band-aid to long-term calamity. Future generations will have to abandon their homelands and adapt to a new way of life.

Featuring one alarming revelation after another, 66 Meters: Rising Sea Levels presents is a sobering, but necessary portrait.

Directed by: Alexander Lahl, Max Mönch

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8 Comments / User Reviews

  1. Penny

    What is with the Indonesian subtitles, they are not translating the film at all. It is all about Russia and a nostalgia for the Soviet era. Just curious what that is about.

  2. gerald

    Rising? Really? Then why is the sea level in vulnerable Venice exactly where is was 600 years ago? Climate change is a scam.

  3. Leslie Davis

    The Earth Protector is preparing to produce oxygen and abate many concerns about a warming planet. I will have a summary of our progress in two months.

  4. Richard Moor

    Sea levels rose something like 200 meters when the last ice age ended, and the mile-high glaciers melted. Ice-core records clearly show we are nearing the end of this inter-glacial period and will soon experience rapidly falling temperatures. Sea levels will fall, not rise, as the oceans contract, following cooling.

    1. gerald

      Right on! An intelligent man for a change.

  5. Rock

    Superb documentary on recent research on sea levels and effects on human habitations.
    One puzzle left me from video (Data does not calculate without paradox): Doc has Subtitle of Java, Indonesia…they give the following data in section on the Country & or the capital Jakarta or Island

    Global MEAN (average) Sea Level rise: 3 mm per year
    Indonesia Sea Level increase 8 mm per year

    Indonesia? or Jakarta capital? or Island of Java : LAND Subsidence 11 cm per year

    Then the man with his house for which he has had to raise the floor 3 times and the narration talks about 20 cm per year sea level increase.

    Question: How do these data points fit together?

    One other minor glitch: early in video they mention 1996 (narrator) yet on screen they have '1966' as title (I think).

    Overall keep up such excellent work!

  6. Voluntaryist

    There's no immediate danger "...cities may flood entirely in a matter of years." And it's unstoppable. As for the threat to a country's stability, consider the threat the political/economic system of all nations poses as the world sinks into a worldwide depression. Centralized coercion by an elite causes domestic unrest, as demonstrated by the riots worldwide.
    As continents shift and land sinks & rises, the politics of monopoly violence (govt.) threatens to kill 10s of millions.
    Will people ever wake up and boycott it? Will they choose a voluntary social system based on reason, rights?

  7. M. P. Muraleedharan

    Maximum, TEN YEARS.