A leading geologist says dramatically rising sea levels will ravage the coastlines of America in the coming decades.
"The rate of sea level rise is currently doubling every seven years, and if it were to continue in this manner, Ponzi scheme style, we would have 205 feet of sea level rise by 2095," says Harold Wanless, chair of the University of Miami geology department.
Wanless - quoted in Elizabeth Rush's new book "Rising: Dispatches from the New American Shore," which is excerpted in Tuesday's Guardian newspaper - says it's because the heat from 93 percent of the world's greenhouse gases is trapped in the ocean.
"That heat is expanding the ocean, which is contributing to sea level rise, and it is also, more importantly, creating the setting for something we really don't want to have happen: rapid melt of ice," Wanless says.
"The big story in Greenland and Antarctica is that the warming ocean is working its way in, deep under the ice sheets, causing the ice to collapse faster than anyone predicted, which in turn will cause sea levels to rise faster than anyone predicted.
"Greenland is currently calving chunks of ice so massive they produce earthquakes up to six and seven on the Richter scale. There was not much noticeable ice melt before the nineties. But now it accelerates every year, exceeding all predictions."
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