Sweden’s state and society have made a sharp turn in their defense policy following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The Scandinavian country’s 200-year tradition of neutrality is now a thing of the past, and Sweden has begun to seriously focus on defense, recognizing that its weakest point is its largest island, Gotland.
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Due to their excellent history, I totally trust all ‘unsinkable’ things
It’s an island …
It’d be incredibly funny if Gotland would be swallowed by the sea after being called “unsinkable”. It’s not entirely unthinkable, since sea level rise caused by climate change already threatens coast lines at the baltic sea.
It’s highest point is like 80m above sea level, melting all the ice on the planet would only raise sea levels by about 60m. So quite unlikely.
The sea isn’t going to rise much because of the ice melting, but because warm water has more volume than cold water.
Sea level at geological time scale is wild. Hundreds of metres.
I find it fascinating since we live during such a short period on the geological time scale.
Driven mostly by glaciation effects, but thermal expansion of sea water is also significant. These effects can be partially offset in places by isostatic rebound (plates are floating, so reducing ice mass on continents allows them to rebound or rise, lowering apparent sea level, relative to the land).
There’s a lot less ice left, since the sea level has already risen >110m since the last glacial maximum (~20000 years ago), and has been quite stable for the past ~6500 years. This stability has been influential in the placement of human settlements along coastlines and river deltas.
Its fun that ice shelf melt doesn’t change sea level, the same way the melting ice cube in a glass of water doesn’t, but ice on land does. This is why the focus is generally on Antarctic and Greenland.
Together, the Antarctic & Greenland ice sheet could cause almost 68m of sea level rise, converting this unsinkable aircraft carrier to more of a stationary submarine?
Life finds a way
For now…
It’s an island five hundred kilometers from the Russian border. That’s not really a safe place to put your aircraft in the drone age. Your supply ships will have to deal with some seababy type of naval drones and your airfield is vulnerable to all those shaed drones and rockets.
On the other hand also the Russian aircraft and drones are only 500 km away, it work both ways.