Proof:
Warnings
Green House Effect
Effects:
Heat
Ice
Sea Level
Climate
Nature
Animals
Bibliography:
Works Cited
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Global warming could cause a 1ft. rise in sea level could occur by just 2025. It is expected by the EPA and IPCC that by the end of the century that the sea level could rise anywhere from 3ft. or even past 13ft., if all the major ice sheets stay intact. But in the past 50 years, temperatures on the east side of Antarctica’s peninsula had risen an average 3.6° to 7.2°F and has cause melting everywhere, and recently a 1,200 square mile shelf of floating sea ice called Larsen B suddenly collapsed and drifted out to sea. Without it land-bound glaciers on the peninsula have since slid rapidly toward the coast. In West Antarctica there’s an ice sheet that is 750,000 cubic miles of ice and it is bound to the sea floor not to land. In the future if melted, the ice sheet would raise sea levels more than 16ft., enough to drown southern Florida. Its bottom is below sea level and the seawater flowing underneath the ice sheet turning it into a floating ice shelf that is vulnerable to collapse (Kunzig 28). In Addition there is also evidence of melt water below the Greenland ice sheet, and if the ice cap melts, sea levels could rise by 21ft (Radford). But sea levels will not only rise through the melting of glaciers but also from thermal expansion, because, above 39°F warm water is less dense than cold water. However just a 20in. rise in sea level could have dramatic effects on coastal cities and island nations around the world. In the U.S. alone a 20in. rise in sea level would put port cities at risk of flooding and erosion, would invade half of the U.S.’s wetlands, infect estuaries, and compromise estuaries. Globally a rise in sea level, without adaptive measures, would directly threaten over 100 million people. The 120 million people in Bangladesh and other lands that are at or close to sea level will need to be taken care of as their land is taken underwater. In the south Pacific, islands could be consumed or exposed annually to flooding with an increase in sea level, and the lower coasts of the Gulf of Mexico would be devastated. Important port cities with low areas including Boston, NYC, Charleston, Miami, and New Orleans in the U.S. alone are at risk and parts of California, Texas, and Louisiana are already below sea level and would be ravished by a rise in sea level. Also In just San Franciso alone (even with its higher coasts) a 3ft. increase in sea level would threaten about $50 billion of property (Threat).
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