Date Posted:12:48:45 04/08/04 Thu Author: BV Subject: Californian beach houses
If current global warming trends continue, Greenland's ice sheet --
the world's second largest, after Antarctica's -- will begin melting
by the end of the century, and over the course of 1,000 years will
melt entirely, raising worldwide ocean levels by some 23 feet and
totally screwing up real estate prices in Orange County, Calif. A
new study in the journal Nature used computer models to forecast
various levels of carbon-dioxide increase in the atmosphere. In most
models, the crucial point at which melting exceeds snowfall happens
around 2100. "We conclude that the Greenland ice sheet is likely to
be eliminated by anthropogenic climate change unless much more
substantial emission reductions are made than those envisaged by the
[Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change]," say the authors. Time
to sign the kids up for swimming lessons!
