Global Warming May Wipe Out U.S. Landmarks

This is very bad news for future generations of souvenir salesmen, not to mention the rest of America. Climate scientists are predicting that in a century or so, rising sea levels caused by global warming will inundate scores of U.S. landmarks. By 2100, the historic Jamestown settlement in Virginia may be underwater, while in New York,  waves may be lapping at the base of the Freedom Tower that will be erected at the site of the World Trade Center attacks. In New Orleans, the French Quarter may be one of the only parts of the fabled city still on dry land, while in San Francisco, Fisherman’s Wharf will be underwater.

Here’s an Associated Press article detailing the grim forecast. The projections are based upon coastal maps created by scientists at the University of Arizona, who relied on data from the U.S. Geological Survey. Many scientists say sea rise of 1 meter is likely to happen within 100 years. In the lower 48 states, that would put about 25,000 square miles underwater, according to Jonathan Overpeck, director of the Institute for the Study of Planet Earth at the University of Arizona. That's an area the size of West Virginia.

The USGS’s National Assessment of Coastal Vulnerability to Sea-Level Rise includes a map showing the parts of the shoreline most likely to be altered by global warming. From the University of Arizona, here’s a page with an interactive map, depicting the effects of sea-level increases ranging from 1 to 6 meters. Finally, from the National Environmental Trust, here is an animated depiction of how New York, Miami, Washington D.C., and Boston will look as the waters rise. (Check it out — it’s definitely a disturbing sight.)

Climate scientists interviewed by the Associated Press seem uniformly resigned to drastic changes in the U.S. coastline. Sea-level rise is "the thing that I'm most concerned about as a scientist," says Benjamin Santer, a climate physicist at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California.

"We're going to get a meter, and there's nothing we can do about it," adds University of Victoria climatologist Andrew Weaver, a lead author of the February report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in Paris. "It's going to happen no matter what — the question is when."

Sea-level rise "has consequences about where people live and what they care about," says Donald Boesch, president of the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science. "We're going to be into this big national debate about what we protect and at what cost."

Is it possible to stave off the rising tides? Here’s a Wikipedia article on mitigating climate change, complete with detailed analysis of various proposed methods for reducing greenhouse-gas emissions. Others, in contrast, suggest that it might be better simply to put up with global warming’s effects. Here’s a paper entitled “Living with Global Warming,” by the conservative National Center for Policy Analysis.