California … the Petrofuture map.
At 218’ of sea level rise, California’s Central Valley will become a vast inland bay.
The Sea of Cortes will have inundated the Coachella and Imperial valleys. The expanded sea will reach nearly to Palm Springs, and well up the Colorado River.
Los Angeles and Orange County will be flooded, with only their surrounding mountain ranges rising up out of the newly formed Bay of LA.
This shows a vintage Shell Oil gas station map base with 66m of sea level rise. ..the highest level of sea rise estimated by the IPCC.
1956 map of Oregon from @david_rumsey_maps
Gas station road maps are one of my favorite bits of ephemeral Americana. As a kid, I would often spend hours tracing out imagined road trips, or reviewing trips already taken.
So in a way, it’s both sad and satisfying to use these maps to show the ultimate effects of the use of fossil fuels.
