For the past two to three years, the scientific concensus has been that global warming is a real; and now the journalistic community is accepting it as real, and is reporting it as fact.

It is anticipated that sea levels will rise 1 to 3 feet within 50 years. How will this affect sailing on the coasts? If it rises this much where you sail, what will the affect be to you? Will it make that much difference? Will it be easy for the sailing community to adapt?

Well? Dutch people? Will the sailing community in Holland be able to adapt to living underwater, or in Germany?

I never had a doubt that global warming was real.

I'm just not convinced that we, as human beings, have anything to do with it.

I'm just glad your question wasn't...



..because that would really really suck.

I'm looking forward to storing my boat on the lanai of a second story suite in the Westin Ka'anapali Ocean Resort timeshares.

I'm looking forward to being able to launch from my driveway. Oh, and not having to wear a wetsuit or drysuit to go sailing!

Well other then that our country will be reduced to about 1/3 off it's current size.. no problemos.....

serious, the govermental body who is resposable for keeping our feet dry is studing variuos option for the future.

general ideas currently: artificial reef to block the waves [waves "sucks" the beach away] raising the dikes [again.., we just finished raising to sc "deltahight" which was determent after a flooding in 1953!!!!] and a project which involves claiming land in front of the coast to use as a sort of overflow area.

anyway serious issue here below sealevel

some sites:
http://www.deltawerken.com/Deltaworks/23.html
http://www.zeeuwsarchief.nl/strijdtegenhetwater/fotocore.htm

you see--serious bussines here

Totally serious business, and I felt guilty making a joke out of it. At least you're not as screwed as the Maldives, though, right?

I find just as troubling the theory that one of the results will be to "supersize" the weather ... bigger hurricanes, etc.

ahh, Alex, you should not feel guilty, I hope it at least warms up the water as well, no wetsuits anymore!!!!!

And then the Gulf Stream suddenly shuts down because of a lack of differential water temperature and we're quickly thrown into a mini-ice age...such as they suspect happened in the middle ages sometime around the time Europe was grappling with the Black Plague (and the sustained cold may have had a large influence on the Plague).

Right Jake, that sort of thing. No Gulf Stream means no agriculture in Northern Europe.

Personally (despite my love of sailing) I am ready for the ice age. My family is from Quebec. I'll be out there spearing seals and shuffling around on skis with a big grin on my face.

"**** and bull stories of impending doom. It proves nothing more than there is money to be made promoting fear thru outlandish theories based on questionable data. The journalistic community accepting or promoting these theories has little to do with proving them true or false.

Regards,
Bob

You just love bad jokes dontya...

I take a slightly relaxed view to this

1/3rd of the Netherlands is already living between 0 and 5 mtr under sea level. I don't think an additional 1 or 2 feet will matter much in this scheme of things. Same approach as we have been doing for centuries, just 3 feet higher then before. Besides we are a wealthy nation and we can pay the additional costs associated to this.

Wouter

For anyone interested in reading more on the subject, there's a pretty decent EPA report on Sea Level Rise here:

http://yosemite.epa.gov/OAR/globalw...CenterPublicationsSeaLevelRiseIndex.html

And look who's sitting out in the middle of the North Atlantic, with only the Gulf Stream to warm our toes.
We're further north than Holland - their canals freeze in winter. The Gulf Stream is the only reason we have our (almost) mild winters and don't freeze.
Please don't take it away from us - All you gas guzzling.........

Canada thinks its a great idea! 9,976,140 SQ KM of land available to settle.

Jake mentioned the Gulf Stream shutdown theory, but another Really Bad Thing that could happen with a 3 ft ocean rise is the collapse of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet. Estimates of the seven million cubic miles of ice floating off into the ocean are for a 16 to 50 ft rise.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Antarctic_Ice_Sheet


Or make this your home page so you can keep a close eye on it.
http://igloo.gsfc.nasa.gov/wais/index.html

That's what really bothers me about the cavalier attitude that some people have about what, if any, effect we might or might not be having on global warming. It's not necessarily a linear relationship between global temperature rise and global sea levels. It can reach a point where there is a step function, a tipping point or a complete change of state of the system.

Fortunately, the deck off my bedroom is 26 ft above sea level, so mooring the boat won't be a problem. Trailer parking will be a few miles away, however.

Funnily enough, my parents actually own mountainous waterfront property in northern Quebec! Now if you'll excuse me - my Hummer is low on gas.

Time magazine had a pretty good series of articles on global warming a few issues ago. One point they brought up is we may have reached a tipping point where glacier melting, among other things, is increasing due to more ground being exposed. It sounds pretty logical.

On NOVA lastnight they were discussing how air-borne pollution in the atmosphere is dimming the sunlight and having a measurable affect on the amount of heat reaching us from the sun. Some were of the opinion this was good because is counters global warming...but one leading researcher has a theory that it has made us underestimate how sensitive the planet is to CO2 & other greenhouse gases. We have been measuring the net rate of global temp changes, not the amount from greenhouse gases by themselves. As CO2 levels continue to rise as sunlight blocking pollutants level off, there could then be a sudden increase in global temps, resulting in not 1-3 ft ocean level increases, but more like 10-25 meter rises in the next 50 years. At a certain global average temp, the polar permafrost will thaw and decay, releasing extremely large quantities of CO2. As ocean temps rise, there will be a point where vast amounts of methane will be relesed from the sea floor...methane is much more potent at trapping infrared.

The real question is: are we approaching, at or past the tipping point...?