Storm barrage essential in Cork city as sea levels rise
By the mid-80s, such doomsday scenarios were discounted by scientists such as Dr WF Budd who claimed temperature rises would be more subtle and such extremes unlikely.
A U-turn started by the 1990s, however, as predictions of sea levels rising by 1.5 metres began to trickle back into scientific journals. Then, two years ago, the Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change predicted rises of up to .5 metre by 2100. Last month, that figure was thrown out by geophysicists at the University of Toronto who demonstrated that, should the West Antarctic Ice Sheet collapse and melt in a warming world — as many scientists are concerned it will — the coastlines of the US and of nations in the southern Indian Ocean will face the greatest threat. New York, Washington DC and parts of the Californian coast could face rising sea levels of up to six metres. It would be a global catastrophe especially as two thirds of the world’s population live within 37 miles of the coast.
