Wall Wharf

We ignore science at our peril.

Somewhere on the order of 30 years ago, as I recall, a study of ocean floor cores and the glacial till from icebergs in the northern Atlantic revealed that glaciers can melt very, very quickly. So quickly, in fact, that some researchers involved in the project felt the pulses of melting that produced the debris on the ocean floor must have taken place in a matter of decades, where huge ice sheets simply disappeared. At the time, some researchers who heard about their hypothesis were incredulous.

Less so now.

It's not unreasonable to presume that a tipping point of the kind we are at could produce a situation where the oceans don't rise a few feet per century, but a few feet per year. The total amount of additional solar energy being absorbed by the water in the northern part of the planet as a result of ice loss—something that is now actually taking place, regardless of what one wants to argue the reason is— is simply enormous, so large that it probably can't be calculated with any ease. One thing is certain: the more ice that melts, the more ice can melt. Perhaps we should call it the un-snowball effect.

Anyone who presumes that we are going to be looking at business as usual in weather and ocean levels going forward is simply naïve. Things are already changing in a very big way, and much faster than anyone- even the worst pessimists- thought they would or could. And no one can deny that ocean levels have, at times in the geologic past, been much, much higher than they are today. The evidence is incontrovertible. 

It's highly unlikely, in my opinion, that any change in human carbon emissions will have an affect on this trend. Such a change, first of all, seems basically unimaginable at present, and in the second place, the current warming trend is already well-established, and will probably take some centuries to reverse.

The question is what mankind is going to do about large portions of its current coastlines disappearing under 10,  20, or even 50 or 100 feet of water. This coastline currently contains a great deal of the most valuable real estate on earth, and represents a net loss of hundreds of trillions of dollars to economies and nations.

Every problem this change creates will be a huge economic problem, as well as a social and political problem. Yet not a single world leader talks seriously about it.

I guess we will get to see what Wall Street thinks of it once the water starts lapping at the feet of the buildings in lower Manhattan. 

Maybe we'll rename it Wall Wharf.