Steven D. Levitt Quote
Rising sea levels, for instance, aren’t being driven primarily by glaciers melting, Wood says, no matter how useful that image may be for environmental activists. The truth is far less sexy. It is driven mostly by water-warming—literally, the thermal expansion of ocean water as it warms up. Sea levels are rising, Wood says—and have been for roughly twelve thousand years, since the end of the last ice age. The oceans are about 425 feet higher today, but the bulk of that rise occurred in the first thousand years. In the past century, the seas have risen less than eight inches. As to the future: rather than the catastrophic thirty-foot rise some people have predicted over the next century—good-bye, Florida!—Wood notes that the most authoritative literature on the subject suggests a rise of about one and a half feet by 2100. That’s much less than the twice-daily tidal variation in most coastal locations. So it’s a little bit difficult, he says, to understand what the purported crisis is about.
Rising sea levels, for instance, aren’t being driven primarily by glaciers melting, Wood says, no matter how useful that image may be for environmental activists. The truth is far less sexy. It is driven mostly by water-warming—literally, the thermal expansion of ocean water as it warms up. Sea levels are rising, Wood says—and have been for roughly twelve thousand years, since the end of the last ice age. The oceans are about 425 feet higher today, but the bulk of that rise occurred in the first thousand years. In the past century, the seas have risen less than eight inches. As to the future: rather than the catastrophic thirty-foot rise some people have predicted over the next century—good-bye, Florida!—Wood notes that the most authoritative literature on the subject suggests a rise of about one and a half feet by 2100. That’s much less than the twice-daily tidal variation in most coastal locations. So it’s a little bit difficult, he says, to understand what the purported crisis is about.
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