EARTH DAY: Our Goldilocks Planet

My Nono and Nona emigrated from small villages in the province of Trapani in southwestern Sicily in 1898. My wife and I visited the region between Christmas and New Year, 1990-1991. We stayed in a little coastal village called Marinella di Selinunte, overlooking the Sea of Sicily, part of the Mediterranean Sea. I'm glad we went when we did, because the sea is advancing inexorably on Marinella.

We stayed in the Hotel Marimare in Marinella

Just down the road from our hotel were the ruins of Selinunte, a major city-state founded by the Greeks around 650 BC. We walked to the site and made our way along a broad expanse leading to the gigantic ruins of the Acropolis of Selinunte. All along the way we were surrounded by huge columns lying scattered about like a child’s building blocks.

Selinunte was a rich and extensive ancient Greek city of Magna Graecia on the south-western coast of Sicily

In its time, Selinunte had rivaled Athens in its splendor, but like Sicily generally, was subject to the predations of Phoenicians, Greeks, Romans, Byzantines, Arabs, Normans, French, Germans, and Spanish, among others. Today Selinunte is subject to the predations of tourists. Tomorrow, the rising seas, storm surges, and the occasional 'marrobbio' — a major tsunami-like event — will do to Selinunte what time alone could not accomplish — wipe it from history.

We had a wonderful time in Sicily. The weather was sunny, despite it being winter, the scenery was beautiful, the people were friendly, and the food was great; mostly seafood, for which Sicily is rightfully famous.

I particularly remember Rino, our young waiter. He spoke excellent English. His father was born in Sicily, immigrated to the US, and after thirty years decided to return to his homeland, hauling the 13 year-old Rino along. Rino was a tremendous help, since at the that time, relatively few Sicilians spoke English.

Ireland and Italy split apart from the supercontinent of Pangaea about 250 million years ago. My wife and I, fortunately, are still together. My wife is of Irish descent. Her clan, the O'Brien, populates the southwestern part of Ireland in the province of Munster. We visited Ireland in the Summer of 1991.

The province populated by the O'Briens is about 2290 mi from that populated by the Badalamentes, in Sicily. Our first stop in Ireland was Navan. On the way there we stopped at a little cafe to have lunch.  We were seated next to an elderly lady having tea.  She smiled at us, and I struck up a conversation with her, telling her that my wife was of Irish ancestry and had come to Ireland seeking her "roots."  She asked her surname, and I told her it was O'Brien. She said, "Ye should visit the graveyards, you'll find plenty there."

Ireland and Sicily share more than an ancestral interest for me. Both are islands, vulnerable to climate change on many fronts, but especially rising sea levels, storm surges, and ocean acidification.

The Sicilian coast, less than 20% of Ireland's, is great for swimmers, with its smooth sand beaches and hidden coves. The Irish coast is great for geologists, with its sheer cliffs and rocky outcroppings. Unfortunately, both coasts make the countries more vulnerable to climate change, just as Florida in the U.S. is more vulnerable to climate change than, say Missouri.

Cliffs of Moher, Ireland

Ireland's 2023 Climate Change Assessment states that, "Storm surges and extreme waves pose an ever-increasing threat to Ireland as sea levels continue to rise, including for many coastal cities such as Cork, Dublin, Galway and Limerick." The Assessment points out the seeming contradiction that heatwaves and flooding due to heavy precipitation may occur together with storm surges, to create challenging adaptation requirements.

A huge concern for the Irish, just as it is for the Sicilians, is migration of fish species due to warming seas. NOAA reports that the temperature of the water in some Irish seas was as much as four and five degrees Celsius higher in 2022 than between 1991 to 2020. Warm water southern fish, like those in the sea off Sicily's southern coast, are becoming increasingly abundant in northern waters, while northern fish more at home in colder water appear to have shifted further north and to deeper water to escape warming.

Cliff Collapse, Cliffs of Moher

Climate change poses significant challenges to both Ireland and Sicily, impacting coastal communities, economies, ecosystems, and cultural heritage. Adaptation strategies, such as coastal defense measures, sustainable land use planning, and efforts to mitigate climate change, will be crucial for both regions to cope with these challenges effectively.

Climate change is global. Its effects are felt everywhere from our home here in Washington to our ancestral homes, wherever they may be. When we show concern for the Earth, as we do most visibly every year on April 22nd, "Earth Day," we express our concern for everyone, the friendly people that greeted my wife and I when we visited Sicily, and Ireland, our friends and neighbors here, and indeed for all living things. As Rachel Carson wrote, "In nature, nothing exists alone."

Amon Basin, Richland, Washington

In 'Our Fragile Moment,' Michael Mann writes, "We live on a Goldilocks planet. It has water, an oxygen-rich atmosphere, and an ozone layer that protects life from damaging ultraviolet rays. It is neither too cold nor too hot."

 That's our Earth. Celebrate it. Protect and sustain it. Advocate for it. You are the most important factor in ensuring future generations can survive and thrive on our Goldilocks planet.

Hurricanes and Global Warming

Global warming has already doubled the risk of Hurricane Katrina-magnitude storm surges in the U.S., according to a study published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. It estimates that for every 1.8°F increase in global average surface temperatures, there could be a two-fold to seven-fold increase in the risk of Katrina-magnitude surge events. Hurricane Matthew will test that prediction.

Waves driven by Hurricane Matthew pounding a fishing pier on Thursday in Pompano Beach, Fla. 

Credit Gaston De Cardenas/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Hurricane Matthew is churning close to Florida’s east coast after it weakened slightly overnight to a Category 3 storm.  While it is still uncertain whether it will make landfall, the hurricane has already dumped torrential rain and left more than 300,000 Florida residents without power. The National Hurricane Center is forecasting up to 15 inches of rain in some areas and storm surges up to 11 feet from Florida to South Carolina.

More than 339 people have died in Haiti as a result of the hurricane, which has been the longest-lived Category 4-5 hurricane in the eastern Caribbean on record. The number of major hurricanes in the Atlantic basin has doubled since the 1970s -- fueled by warmer waters.

My Republican Friend Worries About the Federal Debt

My friend wrote:

"I heard on the radio that the Congressional Budget Office has issued a dire warning about the USA's debt problem.  Check it out (I don't have the web address). Of course, NO democrats ever mention our fiscal situation."

Dear Republican Friend;

"Dire" is in the eye of the beholder, e.g., I think climate change is a dire situation. You don't. Nor do your Republican Presidential candidates, who feel so strongly about it NOT being "dire" that they've criticized the Pope for addressing climate change in his encyclical. Yet unchecked, global warming will kill us. What the CBO report says, on the other hand, is that ALL THING BEING EQUAL, a growing debt will make us very uncomfortable. Here's the bottom line of the CBO summary:

If current law remained generally unchanged in the future, federal debt held by the public would decline slightly relative to GDP over the next few years, CBO projects. After that, however, growing budget deficits—caused mainly by the aging of the population and rising health care costs—would push debt back to, and then above, its current high level. The deficit would grow from less than 3 percent of GDP this year to more than 6 percent in 2040. At that point, 25 years from now, federal debt held by the public would exceed 100 percent of GDP.

The consequences of this growth in debt are addressed by the CBO as follows:

How long the nation could sustain such growth in federal debt is impossible to predict with any confidence. At some point, investors would begin to doubt the government’s willingness or ability to meet its debt obligations, requiring it to pay much higher interest costs in order to continue borrowing money. Such a fiscal crisis would present policymakers with extremely difficult choices and would probably have a substantial negative impact on the country. Unfortunately, there is no way to predict confidently whether or when such a fiscal crisis might occur in the United States. In particular, as the debt-to-GDP ratio rises, there is no identifiable point indicating that a crisis is likely or imminent. But all else being equal, the larger a government’s debt, the greater the risk of a fiscal crisis.

Now the reason Democrats don't pay more attention to the debt problem is that the problem is easily fixed. Let's start by eliminating the estate tax and reducing corporate taxes, two of the Republicans favorite "fixes." Did you know that the House just voted (along party lines) to repeal the estate tax? Congress’s Joint Committee on Taxation estimated that repealing the estate tax would cost the Treasury $14.6 billion in the 2016 fiscal year and $269 billion over 10 years. John Boehner said $269 billion “is nothing more than a drop in the bucket to the federal government.”

Of course the only reason you'd be interested in the facts about estate taxes is to avoid them, but if you are interested in the larger picture and why the Republican crusade to repeal estate taxes is such a farce, you could read this economic intelligence report, which would tell you that you have nothing to worry about, because the federal tax currently applies to estates worth more than $5.43 million for an individual or $10.86 million for a couple. Only Republican donors of the Sheldon Adelson variety worry about this, and even they aren't too worried, because they can afford good tax lawyers.

But I digress. You will note that at the beginning of this email I capitalized "ALL THINGS BEING EQUAL." There are quite straight-forward things our "leaders" in Congress could do to remedy the fiscal situation (e.g., raise the amount well-off people like you and I have to pay into Medicare). Then again, Congress could simply implement the Simpson-Bowles plan. That would result in the savings shown below. But as you've pointed out, every item has a "constituency." That makes it hard for politicians to tackle, especially those with no integrity.

So that leaves us with the prospect of waiting until the POTENTIAL crisis that CBO forecasts occurs in 2040 and then watching as our "leaders" take stop gap measures to stem the tide. And speaking of stemming the tide, do you know what sea level rise is predicted to be by 2040?

Where is the global warming?

 

As climate change has warmed the Earth, oceans have responded more slowly than land environments. But scientific research is finding that marine ecosystems can be far more sensitive to even the most modest temperature change.

Global warming caused by human activities that emit heat-trapping carbon dioxide has raised the average global temperature by about 1°F (0.6°C) over the past century. In the oceans, this change has only been about 0.18°F (0.1°C). This warming has occurred from the surface to a depth of about 2,300 feet (700 meters), where most marine life thrives.

Perhaps the ocean organism most vulnerable to temperature change is coral. There is evidence that reefs will bleach (eject their symbiotic algae) at even a slight persistent temperature rise. Bleaching slows coral growth, makes them susceptible to disease, and can lead to large-scale reef die-off.

Other organisms affected by temperature change include krill, an extremely important link at the base of the food chain. Research has shown that krill reproduce in significantly smaller numbers when ocean temperatures rise. This can have a cascading effect by disrupting the life cycle of krill eaters, such as penguins and seals—which in turn causes food shortages for higher predators.

Higher Sea Levels

When water heats up, it expands. Thus, the most readily apparent consequence of higher sea temperatures is a rapid rise in sea level. Sea level rise causes inundation of coastal habitats for humans as well as plants and animals, shoreline erosion, and more powerful storm surges that can devastate low-lying areas.

Stronger Storms

Many weather experts say we are already seeing the effects of higher ocean temperatures in the form of stronger and more frequent tropical storms and hurricanes/cyclones. Warmer surface water dissipates more readily into vapor, making it easier for small ocean storms to escalate into larger, more powerful systems.

These stronger storms can increase damage to human structures when they make landfall. They can also harm marine ecosystems like coral reefs and kelp forests. And an increase in storm frequency means less time for these sensitive habitats to recover.

Other Consequences

Warmer sea temperatures are also associated with the spread of invasive species and marine diseases. The evolution of a stable marine habitat is dependent upon myriad factors, including water temperature. If an ecosystem becomes warmer, it can create an opportunity where outside species or bacteria can suddenly thrive where they were once excluded. This can lead to forced migrations and even species extinctions.

Warmer seas also lead to melting from below of polar ice shelves, compromising their structural integrity and leading to spectacular shelf collapses. Scientists also worry that warmer water could interrupt the so-called ocean conveyor belt, the system of global currents that is largely responsible for regulating Earth's temperature. Its collapse could trigger catastrophically rapid climate changes.

Will It Continue?

The only way to reduce ocean temperatures is to dramatically reign in our emission of greenhouse gases. However, even if we immediately dropped carbon dioxide emissions to zero, the gases we've already released would take decades or longer to dissipate.

From: The Ocean, National Geographic

Climate Change Has a High Price

The Wenatchee World, July 17, 2014
by By Steven Ghan and Alex Amonette

Much as we may hate to admit it and don’t want to think about it, our burning of fossil fuels and releasing carbon dioxide into the atmosphere increases the greenhouse effect.
This results in climate change. It costs us. Local costs include the loss of agriculture in the Yakima Valley as less summer snowmelt is available for irrigation because more winter precipitation falls as rain in a warmer climate. National costs include the billions of dollars the U.S. government spends annually on imported oil and subsidies to the fossil fuel industry, and the trillions of dollars of property value that will be lost as sea level rises, subsidized by National Flood Insurance.

The costs keep rising, and are rising with interest. The costs of climate damage are higher than the costs of reducing greenhouse gas emissions. As time marches on, it will only become more and more expensive to pay for these costs and mitigate these effects.

The administration is moving ahead with EPA rules to cut carbon dioxide emissions at power plants and the Supreme Court has already upheld EPA’s authority to regulate carbon dioxide as a pollutant.

Most of the solutions, such as cap and trade, proposed to mitigate global warming involve an economic penalty. As an alternative, a number of conservatives, like former Secretary of State George Shultz, are urging fellow conservatives to support a market-based approach as an insurance policy to solve the problem by using a revenue-neutral carbon tax.

In this system, as proposed by Citizens’ Climate Lobby, a $15 per ton fee is placed on fossil fuels — coal, oil, and gas — at their source — well, mine, port of entry/refinery. There are about 2,000 entities involved at this point on whom the fee is placed. The fee rises $10 per ton per year annually in a predictable manner until we reach a safe level of emissions. Then, 100 percent of the revenue is returned to every American household. Not one dime goes to the government. Administrative costs are miniscule and no new bureaucracy is created. Domestic manufacturers and producers are protected through a border tax adjustment.

The Citizens' Climate Lobby Fee & Dividend Approach

 The American people get a monthly dividend check or automatic deposit in their bank account. This provides cash to pay for any price hike in fuel costs. We will also have more money to spend on food, insulation, a more fuel efficient vehicle, health care, etc.. By 2025, if this system had been implemented in 2015 each household would have $300 a month as a steady dividend.

A study commissioned by CCL showed that the economy would grow, millions of jobs would be created, thousands of lives saved, emissions would be reduced and we would begin the gradual transition off of fossil fuels onto low- or zero-carbon energy sources that will eventually help us stabilize our climate system.

Each of us would have an incentive to reduce emissions because the taxes we pay decrease as we use less carbon energy. Other countries would have an incentive to reduce emissions because the border adjustment depends on whether they tax carbon energy.

In 2008, British Columbia began a carbon tax, with the revenue returned to citizens through lowered income taxes. A new peer-reviewed study reported on British Columbia’s emissions and economy through 2012. The results are impressive. Polls show that public support for the British Columbia carbon tax has grown to 64 percent.

We can do the same in the United States. Because CCL’s carbon fee and dividend is revenue-neutral, it offers the most effective first step for us to both stabilize our climate and stimulate our economy. It beats cap and trade and government regulations.

Please contact our representatives. In the 4th District, Rep. Doc Hastings; In the 5th Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers, in the 8th, Rep. David Reichert. Ask them to enact the Citizens’ Climate Lobby Carbon Fee and Dividend legislative proposal now. We reap what we sow.

Steve Ghan is a climate scientist. Alex Amonette is a trained geologist and chemist. They are volunteers with the Tri-Cities Chapter of Citizens Climate Lobby.

Charleston 2107

Greetings from Charleston's Under Water Future
Lindsay Koob
Charleston City Paper , September 12, 2007

Market Street, Downtown Charleston S.C. in 2012

 Imagine the year is 2107, and you're a tourist in Charleston. But instead of a horse-drawn carriage, you're cruising down what used to be Broad Street in a slow-moving tour boat. The water's nine feet deep, and it's only just past low tide. It's high summer, and the base temperature outside your enclosed, climate-controlled boat is pushing 105 degrees Fahrenheit, not counting the 20-degree heat index. The boat drifts past the ruins of St. Michael's Church, with its gaping, glass-toothed windows and collapsed steeple, as the tour guide drones on about its rich history and the last services held there back in 2053 — the church's 300th anniversary — before the rising waters drove its last parishioners to higher ground. The guide reminds you of the great global climate change exodus that began in earnest that decade, with nearly a billion refugees from coastal regions everywhere on top of untold millions of climate-related deaths.

As historic pre-flood photos flash across your seat's video screen, the guide recounts the city's valiant struggle against the ever-rising tide: all the elevated roads, storm sewers, massive pumping systems, canals, and seawalls. And for awhile, they kept pace, that is until the 2040s, when the burgeoning collapse of polar ice sheets drove sea levels to rise more than half a meter per decade. Then in 2046, mega-hurricane Jonah scored a direct hit, devastating the city. The last state and federal insurance props fizzled out, the tax base withered, support and service infrastructures ground to a halt, and the city's economy collapsed. The mega-bucks needed to wall off the sea simply weren't there. By 2050 Charleston had become a half-drowned ghost town.

Since you embarked on your boat tour of sunken Charleston, you haven't seen a seabird all day, and you ask the guide why. He explains that nobody's seen a pelican or a seagull in 40 years, since the marshes drowned. He reminds you that the seas are practically sterile — too acidic and warm to support most sea life — while most of the world's coral reefs are dead. Even the plankton are nearly gone.

By now, you've turned onto the East Bay Canal, passing by the half-collapsed shell of the old Custom House. The water reaches almost to the top of the front steps. The tour ends, and the boat picks up speed, heading out from the sunken city into open water, under the old Ravenel Bridge — now a bridge to nowhere. At least something around here survived intact. Too bad the beautiful old town didn't.

According to the Clemson Architectural Center, if the sea rises 1 foot, 3.5 percent of the Peninsula will be underwater. A sea level rise of 3 feet will cover 9 percent, while a rise of 6 and 12 feet will cover 34 and 77 percent, respectively.

Sure, it's a chilling scenario — but not as far-fetched as you might imagine. It wouldn't be the first time the Lowcountry's been underwater. Just a few weeks back, they found a primeval sea-turtle fossil in a Summerville ditch, and you can dig up ancient petrified sharks' teeth and other marine fossils everywhere along the coastal plain. If only it was geologic time we were dealing with. But now we are learning that our unchecked energy consumption — led by manufacturing, consumerism, and plain old convenience — has compressed eons of climate change into mere centuries, or perhaps even decades. And the heat is on.

Climate Change – Where We Stand

Fifty years ago, nobody listened to the first warnings about pollution-induced global warming and its consequences. But lately, credible scientific evidence has steadily mounted, and what was once theory — or the sky-is-falling cries of a few environmentally-minded Chicken Littles — is now coming true. The United Nations' four-part Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report on global warming offers the most credible global confluence of scientific findings and opinion to date (www.ipcc.ch). It zeroes straight in on our wasteful consumption of fossil fuels as the certain cause of our woes.

And the world keeps getting hotter, thanks mostly to our cars and power plants and the vast volumes of greenhouse gases they emit. Yet we still continue to stoke the very atmospheric cooker we're now stewing in. And here, in the land of the figuratively free and the home of the Hummer, we're the world's greediest energy gluttons, gobbling up more fossil fuels and farting out more greenhouse gases than any other nation (though China's catching up fast). And greenhouse gases just don't go away either; most of what we spewed out a century ago is still here and will remain with us for centuries to come. At this point, we can only hope to slow it down enough to avoid the worst of the many possible consequences.

Despite the fairly conservative IPCC predictions, some of our leading scientists are telling us that we're teetering on the brink of self-inflicted climate disaster. Unless drastic action to curtail emissions is taken globally — and soon — rapidly rising atmospheric temperatures (like 6 degrees Fahrenheit) are inevitable by 2100. This in turn will increase oceanic evaporation, boosting torrential rains and flooding in many parts of the world. The higher temps will also dry out topsoils worldwide, spreading drought and deforestation and causing more wildfires.

The growing heat will give rise to a chain of vicious cycles, including runaway melting of permafrost in Arctic regions, releasing vast new quantities of greenhouse gases, especially methane, that will trap even more heat. If ocean temperatures rise, frozen methane hydrates at the bottom of the sea could also melt. According to the U.S. Geological Survey, a concentration of methane off the coast of the two Carolinas is composed of "1,300 trillion cubic feet of methane gas, an amount representing more than 70 times the 1989 gas consumption of the United States." Also, as more carbon dioxide dissolves into seawater, the ocean's acidity level rises. That and other factors have already transformed once vibrant, marine-life sustaining coral reefs into dead, skeleton-white graveyards. If the temperatures continue to rise, plankton — the very base of the aquatic food chain — will also be affected, spelling the potential doom of all sea life. Saying, "Sorry, Charlie," just won't cut it.

On land, hotter weather will also mean the disruption of seasonal patterns, destroyed habitats, and ecological imbalances. Native flora and fauna will migrate elsewhere and be replaced by more tropical species. Even worse, mass extinctions, involving untold thousands of species, are possible. Warmer air will also bring warmer oceans, which in turn will spawn stronger, more frequent storms. The disruption of major oceanic currents also threatens major climate shifts. As the oceans heat up, thermal expansion of seawater alone will certainly cause up to 2 feet of sea level rise by century's end.

But the scariest news these days is the increased disintegration and melting of the world's major polar ice sheets, mainly the ones in Greenland and west Antarctica. Based on ongoing satellite studies, scientists like NASA's chief climatologist James Hansen, have lately reported that the volume of ice surging into the seas has roughly doubled every five years since 1995. If this trend continues unchecked, Hansen says we could well see an additional sea level rise of up to four meters (13 feet), or even more, by 2100.

If such dire predictions come true, the world can kiss its low-lying coastal regions goodbye: places like Holland, Bangladesh, Shanghai, and Venice — not to mention Manhattan, New Orleans, parts of San Francisco, a big chunk of Florida, and Charleston.

According to Jeremy Weiss and Jonathan Overpeck at the University of Arizona, As the sea level rises, from 2 to 6 METERs, Waters will overtake the Charleston area.

Prospects for Charleston

Let's consider what all this means for us. Charleston lies about eight feet above sea level. Just think about the heavy street flooding we get whenever torrential rains come on top of high tide. Sooner or later, a Category 6 hurricane (hey, they're talking about rising ocean temps making those come true, too) could score a direct hit, and a massive storm surge could sweep away half the city.
Even the IPCC's best-case sea level rise of less than a meter will move our shorelines back many hundreds of feet. And that spells likely doom for all the lavish beachfront mansions — and the fragile barrier islands they precariously cling to. All will inevitably succumb to the encroaching surf, and coastal property values will plummet.

With these increasing risks comes the certainty that property insurance will become a scarce commodity. Owners of coastal homes and businesses are already finding that insurance costs are spiraling out of control. This summer's 35 percent hike in state-supported "wind pool" premium rates was no real surprise.

Allison Dean Love, director of the S.C. Insurance News Service, says, "High insurance expense is simply one of the prices you have to pay for the privilege of living on the coast." Most coastal homeowners, she adds, will need as many as six or seven different policies before they can consider themselves adequately covered. You simply won't be able to depend on insurance being there anymore, she warns. Scott Richardson, the state's insurance director, just found that out the hard way when the coverage on his Hilton Head home wasn't renewed.

And then there's the matter of our glorious beaches. A rise in sea level will also cause further coastal erosion, and it won't be long before we have to accept the fact that it is futile to keep renourishing our disappearing beaches. DHEC reports that, since 1990, keeping our beaches well-sanded and tourist-friendly has cost us $144 million. Meanwhile, the Environmental Protection Agency estimates that the overall cost of keeping beaches up to par could top $9 billion this century.

"There's a limited amount of suitable sand for renourishment," says Chris Marsh, executive director of the Lowcountry Institute. "We can't expect it to be available 30 to 50 years from now."

A rapid rise in sea level will also drown our surrounding tidal marshes and wetlands faster than they can regenerate inland, especially where development has gone before. You can't grow new marshes on top of flooded roads and parking lots and subdivisions. And don't forget that marshes are both nursery and larder to thousands of species, including shrimp, crabs and oysters, that will disappear along with them.

The National Centers for Coastal Ocean Science's Carol Auer, an oceanographer who works for the organization's Center for Sponsored Coastal Ocean Research, says a rise in sea level poses great risks to our coastal wetlands. She places much of the blame on runaway coastal development, which often pushes right up against tidal creeks and marshlands. Routinely approved construction of docks and protective bulkheads often leaves the marshes no place to go as water levels rise, gradually drowning them. "Bulkheads are one of the worst things people can do to the coastal environment," she says.

Jim Morris, director of the Baruch Institute for Marine and Coastal Science at the University of South Carolina, says Charleston-area marshes seem to be healthier than those around the Georgetown area he regularly studies, due in part to the relatively large volumes of sediment deposited by the Cooper River watershed. He adds that while it's an off-and-on process, South Carolina's marshes seem to be keeping up with the rising sea levels for the time being. He believes that they could "probably handle a rate of sea level rising somewhat less than 1 centimeter per year" — at least for awhile, and in areas where marsh expansion isn't blocked by heavy development.

Despite what some straw-grasping skeptics would have us believe, there is no real good news to report about global warming. Ben Moore, climate and energy project manager of the Coastal Conservation League, says, "After a certain point, there are simply no positive aspects to global warming."

Bottom line: How can we defend ourselves from 6 feet of standing water in our streets? Not many of the folks I've talked to foresee the kind of political will and thus the funds to build the kind of massive, Netherlands-style dikes and pumping systems that will be necessary to stem the tide. That's because the rise in the sea level isn't likely to stop at just a few feet; barriers and pumping systems will have to be continually expanded and strengthened.

That said, something must be done.

Michael Maher and the folks at the Charleston Civic Design Center, a municipal planning agency, have begun developing programs and projects they think will help us cope with global climate changes. These include the Charleston Green Initiative, which promotes a more resource-efficient approach to municipal operations. "Charleston's a canary in the coal mine of global warming," Maher says. He hopes that gives us the chance to "lead the fight against it."

Then there's architect Robert Miller, director of the Clemson Architectural Center in Charleston. He and his students recently completed a truly impressive project that looks at peninsular Charleston at various levels of future sea level rise: 1, 3, 6, and 12 feet. (The project will be unveiled at the College of Charleston library sometime after the new year.) Various measures designed to deal with each of these successive water levels are then explored. These include fairly simple measures at the low end, like marsh expansion along the city's western shore, and the creation of water retention parks where storm runoff and tidal flooding can be contained until it can be pumped away.

Then, as projected sea levels rise, so does the sophistication, and expense, of the proposed fixes. The construction of elevated roadways, water-absorbing pervious pavement, seawalls, and canals are all explored by Miller and his crew. The ultimate fixes occur once the sea hits the 12-foot level: if that happens, either a walled-city approach that protects only the peninsula or a massive harbor-front levee that will also save surrounding areas like West Ashley and Mt. Pleasant, complete with a system of locks that will permit continued shipping traffic. "At that point," Miller says, "Charleston will be like another New Orleans: an entire metropolitan area lying well below sea level." But who will pick up the mega-billion price tag?

Sure enough, there remain far more questions than answers at this point. And since we, the people, don't yet take the global warming threat seriously, most related research programs remain seriously underfunded, and therefore ineffective. And we're not likely to wake up until after we suffer several painful black eyes at the hands of poor, abused Mother Nature — or a mortal blow to our pocketbooks. Major policy change is seldom inspired by altruism.
______________________________________________
In the seven years since this article was written, CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere have exceeded 400 ppm -- levels unprecedented in recorded human history. China has already overtaken the U.S. in emissions, and the West Antarctic Ice Sheet has started a now unstoppable collapse, with an estimated sea level impact of 12 ft by 2100. Meanwhile, Republicans in Congress are holding hearings to stop the EPA from issuing new regulations on greenhouse gas emissions.

Greenland is Not a Museum

Global warming, due to our burning of fossil fuel, is causing the Greenland ice sheet to shed massive amounts of ice. In effect, Greenland is melting. As it does so, the white ice that reflected sunlight is being replaced by blue water that absorbs it, thus accelerating warming and further melting. This is what's called "positive feedback," and it's one of the most alarming aspects of global warming.

Northeast Greenland ice was considered stable until 2003, when summer temperatures spiked. Within a few years, the main outlet glacier draining the region -- Zachariae Isstrom -- retreated about 20 kilometers, and regional ice mass loss jumped from zero to roughly 10 metric gigatons a year. Today, ice mass loss from northeast Greenland into the Fram Strait abutting the Arctic Ocean is now closer to 15 to 20 metric gigatons a year and is still increasing.

A cubic meter of water weighs one metric ton (2,200 lbs). "Giga" is the prefix for billion.

We also learned recently that the West Antarctic Ice Sheet is collapsing and its disintegration is unstoppable. Combined with what we've discovered about the Greenland Ice Sheet, the estimates of sea level rise in the latest (5th) Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report -- between one and three feet this century -- appear extremely conservative.

If we don't reduce CO2 emissions immediately to near zero -- that's right, ZERO -- sea level rise between now and say 2200 could result in this (visualizations by Nickolay Lamm. Data: Climate Central).

AT&T Park, San Francisco

or this

Back Bay, Boston

 or this

Jefferson Memorial

So, how are we addressing the devastating impact of anthropogenic global warming (AGW) on the Greenland Ice Sheet? The government of Greenland has opened up oil exploration in the Greenland Sea, and already awarded leases to a conglomeration of companies from around the world. When questioned about the decision by environmental organizations concerned with AGW, Greenland officials, who are already planning on how to dole out the proceeds from the leases, stated, "Greenland is not a museum."

For more on the opening up of Greenland to exploration/exploitation, see: The Grab for Greenland, by Phillip Stephens.