- Climate change is a fact, so the question of what to
do about it boils down to this: Pay some now or pay a lot more later.
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- Scientists at two special briefings this week warned
that the effects of global warming go beyond the environment and dip into
everyone's pocketbook, but the extent of the economic damage will be determined
by when action is taken.
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- The Arctic sea ice loss since 1979 is greater than the
land area of Texas, California and Maryland combined, and sea levels have
risen between 4 and 8 inches, said Michael Oppenheimer of Princeton University,
one of the scientists who participated at a briefing organized by the American
Association for the Advancement of Science.
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- Sea levels could rise another 40 inches before 2100,
according to the International Panel on Climate Change, pushing high-water
marks 300 feet inland and flooding Florida, Bangladesh and even most of
Manhattan, Oppenheimer said in an interview.
-
- However, that scenario assumes the enormous ice sheets
in Greenland and Antarctica stay put. If the Greenland and Western Antarctica
ice sheets were to melt, sea levels would rise over 40 feet, he said.
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- "That could take hundreds of years, but the processes
involved may be accelerating."
-
- Providing those ice sheets don't melt and global warming
doesn't accelerate, the United States could largely cope, said William
Easterling of Pennsylvania State University, who spoke at a separate briefing
held by the Pew Center on Global Climate Change.
-
- "It won't be easy or cheap, but we have to start
adapting now," he said in an interview.
-
- Reacting to global warming will be even more expensive
than anticipating what's likely to happen and making adjustments to infrastructure
and policy, according to Easterling's report, "Coping with Global
Climate Change."
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- Municipalities have to begin to take climate change into
account in their planning, especially those on the coast, said Eileen Claussen,
president of the Pew Center. "Storm surges are going to be much more
damaging in the future, and that's going to cost everyone in terms of higher
insurance rates, building seawalls and disaster relief, to name only a
few," Claussen said in an interview.
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- "If we wait, the costs will be unbelievable."
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