FYI, 28 centuries is 2800 (28 x 100) years:
The worsening of tidal flooding in American coastal communities is largely a consequence of greenhouse gases from human activity, and the problem will grow far worse in coming decades, scientists reported Monday.
Those emissions, primarily from the burning of fossil fuels, are causing the ocean to rise at the fastest rate since at least the founding of ancient Rome, the scientists said. They added that in the absence of human emissions, the ocean surface would be rising less rapidly and might even be falling.
The increasingly routine tidal flooding is making life miserable in places like Miami Beach; Charleston, S.C.; and Norfolk, Va., even on sunny days.
Though these types of floods often produce only a foot or two of standing saltwater, they are straining life in many towns by killing lawns and trees, blocking neighborhood streets and clogging storm drains, polluting supplies of freshwater and sometimes stranding entire island communities for hours by overtopping the roads that tie them to the mainland.
Such events are just an early harbinger of the coming damage, the new research suggests. ...
In the second study, scientists reconstructed the level of the sea over time and confirmed that it is most likely rising faster than at any point in 28 centuries, with the rate of increase growing sharply over the past century — largely, they found, because of the warming that scientists have said is almost certainly caused by human emissions.
They also confirmed previous forecasts that if emissions were to continue at a high rate over the next few decades, the ocean could rise as much as three or four feet by 2100. ...
“I think we can definitely be confident that sea-level rise is going to continue to accelerate if there’s further warming, which inevitably there will be,” said Stefan Rahmstorf, a professor of ocean physics at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, in Germany, and co-author of one of the papers, published online Monday by an American journal, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. ...
via www.nytimes.com
As a sidenote, this:
The rise in the sea level contributes only in a limited degree to the huge, disastrous storm surges accompanying hurricanes like Katrina and Sandy. Proportionally, it has a bigger effect on the nuisance floods that can accompany what are known as king tides.
I remember testifying before the NC something or other on climate change, discussing benefit transfer methods that could be used to estimate the cost of climate changes. At one point, my friend from the ECU days (and co-author) Stan Riggs got frustrated and started waving some rolled up papers and exclaiming that I was ignoring Hurricane Katrina. I said, "no I'm not." But, it appears we both should have ignored Katrina.
And, here are a few oldie-but-goodie posts on sea-level rise politics in North Carolina:
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May 21, 2014, More on sea-level rise politics in North Carolina
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June 22, 2012, An economist on NC sea-level rise follies
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June 18, 2012, And don't call me Shirley
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March 11, 2008, My contribution to the NCAEP Newsletter
In short, North Carolina politicians are ignoring the scientific evidence (surprise!).
