Federal Report Warns Of Rising Sea Levels

From the New York Times:

i-497ffe7470995f21776b13dedfb10810-coast sea level rise.png

Sea level rise fueled by global warming threatens the barrier islands and coastal wetlands of the Middle Atlantic States, a federal report warned on Friday.

The report, issued by the Environmental Protection Agency, the United States Geological Survey and other agencies, is one of a series examining the potential effects of a rising sea level on the nation's coasts.

The rise in sea level is accelerating, the report said, because warmer water occupies more space and because of runoff from melting inland glaciers and ice sheets. The Middle Atlantic States are particularly vulnerable because the rates of rise are "moderately high" there, the region is subject to storms, it is densely populated and much of its infrastructure is in low-lying areas.

Read the full report at climatescience.gov.

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Sheril and Chris,
Thanks for your continuous posting of key information. None of us can catch it all as there is just too much happening, few of us leave comments, but be assured that we use it.

Many thanks to the Environmental Reporting Team of the NYTimes for speaking out loudly, clearly and often. Millions of voices are needed now more than ever before to support your efforts.

A jeremiad follows concerning wasting time and keeping silent while woefully inadequate leaders of the human community promulgate policies and initiate large-scale corporate activities that recklessly overheat and relentlessly ravage Earth and its environs.

My not-so-great generation of elders will likely be remembered as the perpetrators of the most perverse, self-serving silence in human history. No other generation has taken so much from this good Earth, threatened the very future of its own children and given so little of themselves to preserve life for coming generations. Photographs of us will disclose both our corpulence and hollowness.

Although the disclosure of truth is unsettling, hiding the truth from the human community could be a monstrous example of human-driven foolery, one that could soon lead to a colossal ecological wreckage.

To suppress the truth by conscientiously substituting whatsoever could somehow be true with willful silence is tantamount to the commission of a pernicious lie.

A widely shared and consensually validated determination among people with knowledge to maintain their silence, when remaining silent betrays intellectual honesty, conceals the truth and thwarts courageous action, is the most dangerous of all global threats to the family of humanity, life as we know it and the preservation of Earth as a fit place for human habitation.

From this perspective, perhaps we can begin to apprehend the actual, most formidable enemy of future human wellbeing and environmental health.

Steven Earl Salmony
AWAREness Campaign on the Human Population,
established 2001
http://sustainabilityscience.org/content.html?contentid=1176
http://sustainabilitysoutheast.org/index.php
www.panearth.org