The Coming Inundation !

There is a strange complacency about rising sea levels.  Science has been telling us for quite some time that the great ice sheets in Greenland are melting and we know that sea ice has retreated in the arctic  but all the talk has been on what will happen by two thousand one hundred !   It was predicted that by that time the world sea level will have risen by about one metre.

Eighty-three years from now - most of the people on planet Earth at present will be dead !   Perhaps that is why the inundation of where we live is being treated with a shrug of the shoulders.  We think of it as someone else's problem  !

The warnings are becoming more obvious.  The US Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration ( NOAA ) suggests the ice melt has speeded up and the sea rise by 2100 will more likely be by 2.7 metres. By that time, the airports at Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane will be underwater and the inner cities will be reduced to a number of islands.

Few seem to remember an event that happened here a couple of years ago.  An intense low formed off the New South Wales coast and this combined with a " King tide " to send giant waves crashing onto our beaches.  Sand was washed away and sea walls eroded.  Beachside homes and high rise apartments had their foundations washed away. They were in danger of collapse and residents were compulsorily evacuated.

From there it was sheer bedlam.  Some councils rushed to dumpy rocks and concrete to create protective sea walls.  Other councils began to prosecute residents who used their own resources to achieve that result.   The insurance industry was in turmoil. Various forms of legislation threatened but other interests claimed the headlines and the rising seas issue remained unresolved.

The latest studies indicate that a two metre rise by 2100 would be a " conservative outcome ".   We have just had a summer that repeatedly broke long established heat records and that should serve as a warning.  A lot of low laying parts of the city will eventually have to be abandoned.   We would be wise to stake out the high ground where our population will be safe from encroaching seas.

Perhaps the saddest irony of the present housing price boom is the impossible mortgage many young couples are committing to in the hope of achieving home security.   So many of our suburbs give the impression of being secure, and yet long before the witching hour of 2100 an extreme weather event is likely to send the oceans surging inland - and replace myth with reality.

We are ignoring a very clear warning of what the future holds.   Reality could be as close as the arrival of the next super storm.