Soggy Shorelines | Green Energy News

November 7, 2004 – Vol.9 No.33

SOGGY SHORELINES.

In this editor’s boating trips along the shoreline of the Chesapeake Bay, as well as creeks leading into it, I’ve seen dozens, if not more than 100 homes that would be perilously close to the water’s edge if water levels in the bay were, on average, a foot higher.

If the Bay was two feet higher many of these homes would be surrounded by water.

Three feet higher and those houses would have to be abandoned or moved to higher ground.

If the Arctic Climate Impact Assessment (ACIA) report from the Arctic Council is correct, meltwater from Greenland’s glaciers could cause the world’s oceans to rise to those home-abandonment levels in 100 years.

Current homeowners might not be the ones running for higher ground, but their children might. Much would depend on whether the rate of sea level rise is linear over the remainder of this century, or the great melt starts decades from now.

The report written with the input of 300 scientists for the Arctic Council - which has eight member countries (including the U.S.) and six indigenous groups - considers only the Arctic regions, not the other end of the globe, the Antarctic. Nor does the report consider melting mountain glaciers around the world which will also contribute to sea level rise.

Eventually, unless drastic steps are taken to mitigate climate change, all of Greenland could melt, leaving the world’s oceans 23 feet deeper. An Antarctic meltdown would add hundreds of feet to the depth of the oceans. (My home in central Maryland could be ocean-front property.)

The houses I’ve seen along the Bay - cumulatively valued in tens of millions of dollars - are only a few dozen miles from the White House. And, they are only a small sample of housing built in low-lying areas around the world. All of them subject to the rising waters of global warming.

Mr. President, care to go for a boat ride?

(Note: While the Arctic Climate Impact Assessment deals with the kind of macro changes expected with rising temperatures in Arctic regions around the planet, another report, also issued this week - Observed Impacts of Global Climate Change in the U.S, from the Pew Center on Global Climate Change - studied many smaller changes already taking place within U.S. borders.

Visit the Arctic Council at http://www.arctic-council.org/ , the Arctic Climate Impact Assessment (ACIA) report at http://www.amap.no/acia/index.html and the Pew Center on Global Climate Change at http://www.pewclimate.org/ )