« Bernanke Shrugs Off a Potential Decline in the Dollar | Main | Paul Krugman: Letter to the Secretary »

Friday, March 24, 2006

Meltdown

At current levels of greenhouse gases, a lot of coastal property may be "liquidated" as seas rise by as much as twenty feet:

Climate Model Predicts Greater Melting, Submerged Cities, Scientific American: Over the past 30 years, temperatures in the Arctic have been creeping up, rising half a degree Celsius with attendant increases in glacial melting and decreases in sea ice. Experts predict that at current levels of greenhouse gases ... the earth may warm by as much as five degrees Celsius, matching conditions roughly 130,000 years ago. Now a refined climate model is predicting, among other things, sea level rises of as much as 20 feet, according to research results published today in the journal Science...

Such a sea level rise would permanently inundate low-lying lands like New Orleans, southern Florida, Bangladesh and the Netherlands. Already sea level rise has increased to an inch per decade... And evidence that the Arctic is exponentially warming continues to accumulate. ... "We need to start serious measures to reduce greenhouse gases within the next decade," ... "If we don't do something soon, we're committed to [13 to 20 feet] of sea level rise in the future."

    Posted by on Friday, March 24, 2006 at 12:33 AM in Economics, Science | Permalink  TrackBack (0)  Comments (9)

    TrackBack

    TrackBack URL for this entry:
    https://www.typepad.com/services/trackback/6a00d83451b33869e200d8347e8bc453ef

    Listed below are links to weblogs that reference Meltdown:


    Comments

    Feed You can follow this conversation by subscribing to the comment feed for this post.