Bruce Henderson in the Charlotte Observer (North Carolina): The sea that sculpted North Carolina's coast, from its arc of barrier islands to the vast, nurturing sounds, is reshaping it once again. Water is rising three times faster on the N.C. coast than it did a century ago as warming oceans expand and land ice melts, recent research has found. It's the beginning of what a N.C. science panel expects will be a 1-meter increase by 2100.Rising sea level is the clearest signal of climate change in North Carolina. Few places in the United States stand to be more transformed. About 2,000 square miles of our low, flat coast, an area nearly four times the size of Mecklenburg County, is 1 meter (about 39 inches) or less above water.
At risk are more than 30,500 homes and other buildings, including some of the state's most expensive real estate. Economists say $6.9 billion in property, in just the four counties they studied, will be at risk from rising seas by late this century. Climate models predict intensifying storms that could add billions of dollars more in losses to tourism, farming and other businesses.
While polls show growing public skepticism of global warming, the people paid to worry about the future - engineers, planners, insurance companies - are already bracing for a wetter world. "Sea-level rise is happening now. This is not a projection of something that will happen in the future if climate continues to change," said geologist Rob Young of Western Carolina University, who studies developed shorelines….
The Cape Hatteras lighthouse
No comments:
Post a Comment