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Greenhouse Effect and Sea Level Rise: America Starts to Prepare

Studies by the folks who first got coastal residents thinking about how to live with a rising sea on a warmer planet.

In the last few years, Americans have come to recognize that humanity is changing the earth's atmosphere in ways that we will not be able to reverse over the next century. Some say we should immediately reduce our emissions, while others say we should wait.

This web page is devoted to a third, middle view, which is often overlooked: We must prepare now for rising sea level and other consequences of changing climate. Like many middle views, this "adaptationist" perspective dodges the fundamental emissions issue and instead focuses on ideas that all sides should agree on. Environmentalists concerned about the coastal environment and energy producers who oppose controlling emissions should both be able to agree that society should take measures to make our coastal development and ecosystems less vulnerable to a rise in sea level. On Wall Street, this would be known as a "profitable hedge" for all sides of the issue.

These papers demonstrate that there are numerous low-cost measures that, if implemented, would make the United States (and other nations) less vulnerable to rising sea level. The lack of awareness, not the difficulty of implementation, appears to be impeding the speed at which these measures are adopted. Our original intent was to post as many papers on rising sea level as we can--but then EPA developed a global warming web page, and posted these and other reports at Sea Level Rise Reports . So now our plan is to post sea level rise information that you will not find on government web sites, either because it's just not the kind of thing you will ever find on a government web site (e.g. songs about global warming), or because it is too informal, too new, too old, includes personal opinions, or was suppressed when timely and moot by the time the veil of suppression was lifted. We'll try to maintain the links page, but we don't visit this site every day--or even every month. We'll keep the reports that were posted before EPA had a web site because we hate to mess up people's links and bookmarks.

Complete Reports

When the North Pole Melts. A concise analysis of three adaptation options for a major consumer-goods manufacturer, in the event of abrupt climate change in the Arctic: reduced output, move factory to the south, or fundamental product change. This was probably the first song about global warming--and certainly the first song about adaptation to global warming--to ever get played on a bunch of FM radio stations. The song was performed by Captain Sea Level and various members of the EPA Chorus at the first international conference by the Climate Institute in Washington, D.C. The 8-meg mp3 is a pretty faithful reproduction--Right-click the picture of Santa Clause and save it to your hard disk before attempting to play it. A smaller file of the same song can be emailed, but the quality is lower. Sheet music for guitar and voice are also available, as well the history of this obscure project, told as a satire of a C-SPAN interview with Brian Lamb.

The Cost of Holding Back the Sea., This article from the 1991 volume of the journal Coastal Management is the source of the widely quoted estimate that a one meter rise in sea level would inundate 7000 square miles (an area the size of Massachusetts), eliminate 50-80 percent of U.S. wetlands, and cost the nation over $100 billion in construction costs (over $200 billion if one includes the value of lost wetlands.) The study was originally part of an EPA Report to Congress on the effects of global climate change. It also includes state-specific estimates for beach-nourishment costs, and regional estimates for the loss of wetlands and dry land, assuming that global sea level rises 50, 100, or 200 cm.

Rising Seas, Coastal Erosion, and the Takings Clause: How to Save Wetlands and Beaches Without Hurting Property Owners A 1990 Article published in the Maryland Law Review which makes legal arguments in favor or rolling easements.

Impact of Sea Level Rise on Barrier Islands A 1990 Article published in the journal "Coastal Management," Volume 18, pages 65-90. The article discusses barrier islands in general and provides an analysis ofhow Long Beach Island, New Jersey could adapt to rising sea level.

The Probability of Sea Level Rise Previous studies of the climate change issue have generally used low, medium, and high scenarios, without indicating what is actually meant by a "high scenario." This 1995 report was the first analysis to estimate probability levels. (The link is at least temporarily pointing to the EPA site.)

The Risk of Sea Level Rise This article from the journal Climatic Change provides a shorter report of the same study (but it still a very long article).

Greenhouse Effect and Coastal Wetland Policy: How Americans Could Abandon An Area the Size of Massachusetts at Minimum Cost. Environmental Management, Volumer 15, Issue 1, pages 39-58 (1991). This articles starts out with a discussion of the impacts of sea level rise on wetlands. It then lays out three fundamental ways by which society might enable wetlands to survive rising sea level: Setbacks, Rolling Easements, and relying on the sea itself to defeat shoreline armoring.. The bulk of the article is devoted to an analysis of the costs, fairness, likeliness of success, political feasibility, and ability to deal with uncertainty of each of the options. The legal implications of this article are explored in the new article in Maryland Law Review, entitled :Rising Seas, Coastal Erosion, and the Takings Clause: How to Save Wetlands and Beaches without Hurting Property Owners."

Strategies for Adapting to the Greenhouse Effect. This 1991 article in the Journal of the American Planning Association may have been the first systematic presentation of specific actions for adapting to global warming. A heavy focus is on identifying measures that can be justified on cost-benefit grounds even with the uncertain and long-term nature of the problem.

Greenhouse Effect, Sea Level Rise, and Salinity in the Delaware Estuary A joint assessment by EPA and the Delaware River Basin Commission which estimates the increased salinity that would result from a 2.4 or 8.2 foot rise in relative sea level, examines the resulting impacts on surface and groundwater supplies, and discusses possible ways of coping.

General Status of Adaptation to Sea Level Rise in the United States during the summer of 1989. This paper is from Changing Climate and the Coast, the proceedings of the IPPC's first conference on sea level rise, held by the IPCC Response Strategies Working Group. This is the only paper that I know, off-hand, that properly recognizes the fact that the Reagan Administration official who first set EPA on a course to deal with global warming was Joe Cannon, Assistant Administrator for Policy, Planning, and Evaluation (later Assitant Administrator for Air, Noise, and Radiation). His right-hand man was John Topping, who later founded the Climate Institute. The key bureaucrat to instigate all of this--and much else--was John S. Hoffman. Scroll down to the bottom for this history. The table on barrier island response feasibility may be unique to this article. Otherwise, this is a typical conference paper--everything else had either already been published or was later published in a peer-reviewed report.

Policy Implications of Sea Level Rise: The Case of the Maldives. This paper is from the Proceedings of the Small States Conference on Sea Level Rise. November 14-18, 1989. Malé, Republic of Maldives. Edited by Hussein Shihab. The conference was a key step in making all small island nations aware of the implications of sea level rise. It issued the "Malé Declaration on Global Warming and Sea Level Rise." The Malé Declaration led to an Action Group among small island states, to co-ordinate a joint approach on the issues of climate change, global warming and sea level rise, and to pursue and follow up on global and regional response strategies. But don't get the idea that my paper had much to do with any of that, although I did help with a speech on sea level rise by President Gayoom to the United Nations.