The Gazette recently ran a front page story by Associated Press journalist Michelle R. Smith, “Sea level rise threatens US historic sites.” She dramatically pictured what would happen to the Statue of Liberty; historic Boston; colonial Newport, Rhode Island; Annapolis, Maryland; Jamestown, Virginia, and various international cities.
However, she greatly lowballed the extent to which the seas will rise, according to the world’s authoritative climate scientists. Smith opens saying sea levels by 2100 will be “several inches to several feet” higher. But the most accurate forecast we have is somewhere between 2 feet and 30 feet. Isn’t 2 feet a lot more arresting than several inches?
Three scientific groups reported in 2014 that the seas would rise from 0.57 to 1.5 meters (2 to 5 feet), making a more accurate prediction greater by 40 percent than the most recent 2013 UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climage Change’s range. However, James Hansen, an authoritative of climatologist, wrote an innovative paper in 2015 giving the sea level rise by 2100 as 5 to 9 meters (16 to 30 feet). The reason for Hansen’s much greater rise is that his team took into account a newly-discovered mechanism: the way that ice melts in Antarctica. I investigated the most recent scientific literature on the rate of sea level rise for the column “In Close Proximity” in the Gazette last summer.
We in the Amherst-Northampton-Hadley area are at elevation 270-290 feet, so world humanity might turn back the sea before it gets to us. But our friends and families in Boston will not be so lucky. By Hansen’s rise, Fenway Park and Logan Airport, both at 20 feet elevation, will be underwater by about 2060.
LARRY ELY
Amherst