Sea Level Rise Could Flood Many Cities
AP
Posted: 2007-09-22 16:08:13
Filed Under: Nation News, Science News
(Sept. 22) - Ultimately, rising seas will likely swamp the first American settlement in Jamestown, Va., as well as the Florida launch pad that sent the first American into orbit, many climate scientists are predicting. In about a century, some of the places that make America what it is may be slowly erased.
Global warming - through a combination of melting glaciers, disappearing ice sheets and warmer waters expanding - is expected to cause oceans to rise by one meter, or about 39 inches. It will happen regardless of any future actions to curb greenhouse gases, several leading scientists say. And it will reshape the nation.
Rising waters will lap at the foundations of old money Wall Street and the new money towers of Silicon Valley. They will swamp the locations of big city airports and major interstate highways.
Storm surges worsened by sea level rise will flood the waterfront getaways of rich politicians - the Bushes' Kennebunkport and John Edwards' place on the Outer Banks. And gone will be many of the beaches in Texas and Florida favored by budget-conscious students on Spring Break.
That's the troubling outlook projected by coastal maps reviewed by The Associated Press. The maps, created by scientists at the University of Arizona, are based on data from the U.S. Geological Survey.
Few of the more than two dozen climate experts interviewed disagree with the one-meter projection. Some believe it could happen in 50 years, others say 100, and still others say 150.
Sea level rise is "the thing that I'm most concerned about as a scientist," says Benjamin Santer, a climate physicist at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California.
"We're going to get a meter and there's nothing we can do about it," said University of Victoria climatologist Andrew Weaver, a lead author of the February report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in Paris. "It's going to happen no matter what - the question is when."
Sea level rise "has consequences about where people live and what they care about," said Donald Boesch, a University of Maryland scientist who has studied the issue. "We're going to be into this big national debate about what we protect and at what cost."
This week, beginning with a meeting at the United Nations on Monday, world leaders will convene to talk about fighting global warming . At week's end, leaders will gather in Washington with President Bush .
Experts say that protecting America's coastlines would run well into the billions and not all spots could be saved.
And it's not just a rising ocean that is the problem. With it comes an even greater danger of storm surge, from hurricanes, winter storms and regular coastal storms, Boesch said. Sea level rise means higher and more frequent flooding from these extreme events, he said.
All told, one meter of sea level rise in just the lower 48 states would put about 25,000 square miles under water, according to Jonathan Overpeck, director of the Institute for the Study of Planet Earth at the University of Arizona. That's an area the size of West Virginia.
The amount of lost land is even greater when Hawaii and Alaska are included, Overpeck said.
The Environmental Protection Agency's calculation projects a land loss of about 22,000 square miles. The EPA, which studied only the Eastern and Gulf coasts, found that Louisiana, Florida, North Carolina, Texas and South Carolina would lose the most land. But even inland areas like Pennsylvania and the District of Columbia also have slivers of at-risk land, according to the EPA.
This past summer's flooding of subways in New York could become far more regular, even an everyday occurrence, with the projected sea rise, other scientists said. And New Orleans' Katrina experience and the daily loss of Louisiana wetlands - which serve as a barrier that weakens hurricanes - are previews of what's to come there.
Florida faces a serious public health risk from rising salt water tainting drinking water wells, said Joel Scheraga, the EPA's director of global change research. And the farm-rich San Joaquin Delta in California faces serious salt water flooding problems, other experts said.
"Sea level rise is going to have more general impact to the population and the infrastructure than almost anything else that I can think of," said S. Jeffress Williams, a U.S. Geological Survey coastal geologist in Woods Hole, Mass.
John Christy at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, a scientist often quoted by global warming skeptics, said he figures the seas will rise at least 16 inches by the end of the century. But he tells people to prepare for a rise of about three feet just in case.
Williams says it's "not unreasonable at all" to expect that much in 100 years. "We've had a third of a meter in the last century."
The change will be a gradual process, one that is so slow it will be easy to ignore for a while.
"It's like sticking your finger in a pot of water on a burner and you turn the heat on, Williams said. "You kind of get used to it."l
Copyright 2007 The Associated Press. The information contained in the AP news report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or otherwise distributed without the prior written authority of The Associated Press. All active hyperlinks have been inserted by AOL.
2007-09-22 13:01:44
http://news.aol.com/story/_a/sea-level-rise-could-flood-many-cities/20070922130009990001?ncid=NWS00010000000001
Okay, if I read this correctly, the problem is that some of what "we" hold near and dear MIGHT be flooded in ABOUT 100 years. Ever hear of Atlantis? I wonder what the residents of Atlantis thought. There is also a settlement in Port Royal, Jamaica that sank into the Gulf due to seismic activity. Life has gone on on Jamaica. The settlement had/has historic significance there too. OH WELL! http://nautarch.tamu.edu/portroyal/
If some of the sites they are talking about end up under water, it will save the taxpayers money by not trying to rehabilitate old missile sites and will cause new sites to be developed.
Now as to the "old money" people and their mansions. SO WHAT??? They will have the funds to move their estates. They will put pontoons on their mansions and float them away to new locations. This is supposed to make me feel bad or sorry for them? Oh, yeah, I am going to unplug my computer so that the Edwards, Bushs or Kennedys can continue THEIR opulent lifestyles.
Here is a financial tip, BUY PROPERTY IN ARIZONA! Do it now, so that you can join the Edwards, Bushs and Kennedys and be among the rich and ridiculous. Even if you don't live to see it, you can rest comfortable knowing that you left such a rich legacy to your family.
I still cannot believe how naive* the authors of these articles think the public is. They say that airports and highways will be flooded. Do they think that people will not notice and reroute the highways or move the airports. Maybe the highways will be built like some of the bridges in Florida that go between the Keys. They will be tourist attractions. Or cities can be built under the sea.
Some futurists say that undersea cities are the wave of the future (pun intended). Did you see Star Wars and the undersea city that Jar-Jar was from? That looked so very cool! Where there is no vision the people perish (Proverbs 29:18). If people decide to have no vision, they deserve to perish.
Did you notice that one of the BIG concerns is that Spring Break locations will no longer exist? Whaaaat?? Those sites of debauchery, drunkenness and mayhem? Heaven forbid that people in their late adolescence cannot have a week of two of immoral living. [Remember Natalie Holloway?]
What are we coming to?
You may ask if I ever experienced Spring Break. Yes I did, I was WORKING! I was trying to create some of my own old money. I paid my own way through almost 20 years of University. What have the attendees of the normal Spring Break actually done to need a BREAK? I worked full time and attended University full time. I didn't need a drunken orgy to have a break. I needed to finish University studies.
"We" have raised a bunch of wimps!
I know the authors are trying to garner support for their agenda by trying to scare the minds full of mush. There is an agenda that is soooo obvious to those who think. [I will address this later...]
I love it when the Global Warmingists can't get their lie straight. Take for instance this part of the above story:
"We're going to get a meter and there's nothing we can do about it," said University of Victoria climatologist Andrew Weaver, a lead author of the February report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in Paris. "It's going to happen no matter what - the question is when."
Now if you look at the letter sent out by Dane and Emily, you will see that "we" are supposed to do things to stop or at least slow down Global Warming. Here the "lead author" of some report (and it was a BIG report too) says that, "...there is nothing we can do about it."
Did you get that? An Expert says, "...there is nothing we can do about it." So what is all of the Inconvenient Truth all about? Or is the REAL Inconvenient Truth that these people don't know what they are talking about?
Yup, that is my vote. They don't know what they are talking about. They have an agenda and it is NOT to save the planet.
It is all about controlling you. Yes, it is about control.
It is about getting funds through the Government to conduct more studies. This lets them keep their jobs.
It is NOT about saving the planet.
They really don't care about the planet.
They care about money and CONTROL.
Oooops, I said I wasn't going to talk about it yet. Well, consider this a little tease of what is to come.
I have one further thought. Why don't we start serious work on desalination? We could use the clean water and it would help to keep the sea level lower. We could bottle MILLIONS of gallons of desal water and save the planet that way.
I wonder why no one is talking about the whole picture? Oh yeah, it isn't about saving the planet. It is about power and control.
*Naive
na·ive
(comparative na·iv·er, superlative na·iv·est) or na·ïve <BR>(comparative na·ïv·er, superlative na·ïv·est) or na·ïf
(comparative na·ïf·er, superlative na·ïf·est) adj
>
2. not shrewd or sophisticated: showing a lack of sophistication and subtlety or of critical judgment and analysis a politically naive statement
3. artless: admirably straightforward and uncomplicated or refreshingly innocent and unaffected
4. arts rejecting sophisticated techniques in art: not using the conventional styles and techniques of trained artists, for example, in the treatment of perspective or light and shade
5. science not previously experimented on: not previously used in any scientific tests or experiments or not having previously used a particular drug naive laboratory mice
[Mid-17th century. From French naïve , feminine of naïf , from Latin nativus “born” (source of English native). The underlying idea is of the innocence or gullibility of the newborn.]
-na·ive·ly, adv
-na·ive·ness, n <BR>
Encarta ® World English Dictionary © & (P) 1998-2004 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.
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