Fellow Aquidneck Islander Beth Milham and some friends have set up Cool Aquineck Island, a wiki of climate change prevention events here in Rhode Island. One of their projects is a series of pics of what a three-foot sea level rise would do to downtown Newport. Add three feet to historic high-tides and you're going to get some striking results, which they do.
After cycling through these pics it's worth your time to head over at EPA's link-laden site dedicated to the latest estimates on sea level rise. One study puts climate change impacts in context:
In the last decade, estimates of the global warming likely to occur by the year 2100 have been approximately cut in half. The 1983 reports by EPA and the National Academy of Sciences assumed that the radiative forcing equivalent of a CO2 doubling was likely to occur by 2050. During the mid-1980s, several reports suggested that an effective CO2 doubling could occur by the 2030s (see e.g., Villach 1985). Thus, the EPA reports released in 1983 projected a warming of 3 to 9°C by 2100, with CO2 and other greenhouse gases accounting for equal amounts of warming (Hoffman et al. 1983; Seidel & Keyes 1983). The NAS (1983) report projected a warming of 1 to 5°C from CO2 alone and was thus viewed as being consistent with the EPA results (see e.g., Chafee 1986). EPA’s 1989 Report to Congress (Smith & Tirpak 1989) was based on similar assumptions, as shown in Table 8-2. For the most part, scenarios of sea level rise for the year 2100 were in the 50 to 200 cm range, with 100 cm being the most likely.
As the first sentence notes, estimates are being revised down to put the likely date for 100cm sea rise out to the year 2200 now. If that's true then David Stookey's scenario is less likely. Of course if sea levels reach half the 1980's-calculated 200cm mark by 2100 we're back to David's three feet again, and assuming the Red Parrot's still open for business (great burgers!).
Not passing judgement here. Just wondering if sea level rise estimates will continue to trend down the more we find out what we don't know. As the EPA study authors put it: The processes that determine warming of the circumpolar ocean, the melting of ice shelves, and the speed at which glaciers flow are very poorly understood. For all we know they could be revised up.
For folks blogging this sort of thing there's this great quote: The nuanced characterization of uncertainty that might occur in professional assessment is often mis-translated into the appearance of scientific cacophony in the public arena.
Translation - the biggest task for climate science is not measuring what can be measured, but explaining uncertainty with more certainty. The biggest task for us is acknowledging that uncertainty when it rears its head.
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