It turned out that Jakarta will be significantly more affected than Singapore if the sea level rises. I found this web site that overlays Google Maps with the new sea levels in case it rises. You can browse for your favorite places and set it to display what happens if the sea level rises – with a choice of between 0 to 14 meters in 1 meter increments. I’ve lookup Wikipedia and found out that the worst case sea level rise is .77 meters by 2100. Yes folks, it’s not even one meter. So I’d figure that a one meter increase is a very worst case estimate. I’ve plugged in that figure and here is what I found.

(view source)

A significant portion of northern Jakarta will be partially flooded. This include areas around Kali Sunter in which my girlfriend’s parents lives. From the looks of it seems that she or her younger brothers will need to sell the house and not stay in there if they inherit it.

(click for sourc

Interestingly Singapore is almost unaffected apart from really small areas in the airport.

(click for source)

So conclusions are:

• Sea level rise is a bit too overrated – some “experts” are using it to scare people in order to buy their anti-global warming products. Whereas I do believe that climate change is an important issue, I don’t believe scaring people disproportionately is the way to handle it. Just look at what the Bush Wars (i.e. Afghanistan and Iraq) that used disproportionate fear to gain it’s initial authorization and funding. Now look at what the current president had to do to cleanup the mess.
• Singapore is a is very… very lucky little island that should “escape” sea level rise in the next century barely scratched. That is if there isn’t any son (or daughter for that matter) of a dictator decide to use the island as ballistic missile target practice ^_^