From: Charles Hixson (charleshixsn@earthlink.net)
Date: Thu Jul 25 2002 - 09:33:41 MDT
spike66 wrote:
> ...
> Scientists seem to agree on at least one aspect of global warming: any
> sea level change will be gradual. No single person will notice much sea
> level rise in their natural lifetimes. If this phenomenon is presented as
> ...
Unfortunately, I don't believe that there is the kind of unanimity that you are predicting. And I don't believe that it would be warranted. Geologists tend, by and large, to not consider that extensive changes could happen rapidly. This probably dates back to the Theory of Uniformity (Lyle). But that's not what the evidence looks like. Changes, like earthquakes, happen at a fractal level. Most of them are too small to worry about, but sometimes a big one will come by quickly. If the temperature went up ? 5 degrees? (I think in Farenheit, so you could translate that to 2.5 degrees) the ice sheets on land would melt rather quickly. I would expect the sea level to increase an amount measured in feet in a time measured in decades. Of course, for the temperature to go up 5 degrees, the thermal ballast would already need to have been warmed a good deal. But it has been. Glaciers in Alaska are currently retreating rapidly.
Now a foot or two isn't so much that a dike couldn't keep it out, but that's expensive, and it would take a BIG dike (or a series of them). I suppose we could ask the people of the Netherlands what to expect it to cost, and what the liabilities were. But it wouldn't be trivial. And I don't really see the timing as being predictable. (Well, in theory. But I don't feel that we know enough to build a good model.)
-- -- Charles Hixson Gnu software that is free, The best is yet to be.
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