The Water Is Getting Higher

More data on the dangers posed by climate change:

Their study looked at modern tide gauges and soil sediment samples from old and ancient salt marshes, and factored in soil subsidence to document historic sea rise. Melting glaciers more than 6000 years ago prompted rapid sea level rise– as much as 16 inches a year. But in man’s modern history, the seas grew at a modest two-tenths inch per year, until the industrial age began spewing carbon dioxide into the atmosphere about 1880. Since then, the rate has increased sharply, and the acceleration is “poorly constrained,” the report says. In layman’s terms, that means a runaway train going downhill with no brakes.

The study predicts a sea-level rise in mid-Atlantic locations by 2050 ranging from 11 inches to 26 inches, accelerating by 2100 to a range of 26 inches to 66 inches. This is significantly higher than predictions of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which have been criticized as too conservative and did not, according to the authors of the study, contemplate accelerating melting in Greenland and the Antarctic.

Lots more floods on the coasts.  May be time to get to higher ground.

By: Stuart Shapiro

Stuart is a professor and the Director of the Public Policy
program at the Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy at Rutgers
University. He teaches economics and cost-benefit analysis and studies
regulation in the United States at both the federal and state levels.
Prior to coming to Rutgers, Stuart worked for five years at the Office
of Management and Budget in Washington under Presidents Clinton and
George W. Bush.