Introducing the Petrofuture map series. These are similar to the Retrofuture series, but I’m adding 66 meters of sea level rise to vintage oil corporation road maps.
The concept of combining sea level rise with the vintage gas station road maps has been with me for a while. I first wrote it down shortly after starting on the Retrofuture series. The juxtaposition of the corporate logo with the extreme ocean level always seemed like it would be *chef’s kiss*.
Thank you to the Rumsey Map Center, where I found the base Shell Oil map. The sea level rise is 66 meters, the highest estimated by the IPCC if all the ice caps melt. The oceans were modeled from GEBCO data.
Like the Retrofuture Series, the Petrofuture is a time machine–the maps combine elements of the past and the future. I’m not adding hillshade to the maps in this series…I want them to be seen in their original format, but with a little extra added.
The base maps are rooted in the past–vintage and antique maps that show places very different from our current world.
The hillshade effects are contemporary, and the modern world can be seen shadowing the old maps–freeway embankments, dams and reservoirs, and a variety of earthworks.
The 66 meters of sea level rise…when all the world’s ice sheets have melted, this is what our world will look like–flooded coastal cities, valleys, and plains. This is a world thousands of years in the future, that none of us will live to experience.
All sea level rise depicted in these maps is based on estimates by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
