Our federal government says doing something about carbon emissions would be bad for the economy. In Britain, Sir Nicholas Stern states in unequivocal terms that not controlling carbon emissions would be incredibly bad for the economy. From five times worse to twenty times worse. The Stern Report has only been out for a few days and I’ve not seen it yet though I’m anxious to do so. But I have a problem with Stern’s estimate of maximum damage. He will necessarily have made assumptions, I don’t know what they were, but I don’t think he included the worst case scenario.

There are two forms of that scenario, one of which is widely assumed, the other scarcely dare not be mentioned. Wikipedia says there are almost 3 cubic kilometers of ice on top of Greenland, 239 cubic kilometers on top of Antarctica. The melting of Greenland’s ice would result in a 7 meter rise in sea levels, Antarctic ice in another 65-70 meters. Converting those numbers to feet yields a range in which 250 feet comfortably sits.

If climate change permits the melting of the ice caps covering Greenland and Antarctica,
then the oceans will rise by approximately 250 feet.

If the seas rise by 250 feet then Portland will be under water. Gresham will survive, but barely. Beaverton to Forest Grove will go, the west hills will survive as an island. Salem and Albany will disappear, Eugene will survive. I-5 northbound will cease to exit. Western Washington cities become places where porpoises play. The Olympic Peninsula becomes an isolated island. I-5 will be there between Eugene and Redding, then soon after disappear again to rise out of the sea for the trip over the Grapevine and survive until somewhere south of the L.A. City Hall. 101 is a lost cause.

Up the Columbia Hood River will largely disappear as will The Dalles. The flood stops only at the John Day dam, which will be salt on one side and fresh on the other – by only 16 feet.

San Francisco Bay will encompass a good bit of California’s Central Valley. San Francisco largely disappears, what’s left will be difficult to access. The other cities on the Bay and most of Contra Costa are gone. Some areas of Los Angeles County survive, some do not. The Imperial Valley, Yuma and Blythe become one with the Sea of Cortez. Forget I-8 and I-10. Use I-15 if you feel a need to flee southern California..

On the east coast, cities from Bangor to Key West drown, virtually everything along Interstate 95 on either side for a good distance. The flood up the Hudson stops somewhere short of Saratoga Springs and Utica, New York but Albany and Troy are gone. Anything from Jacksonville to Houston goes, including all of Florida and much of Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana and east Texas. Up the Mississippi River, Vicksburg goes under, Memphis lives. Ottawa goes, Montreal survives.

In Europe, London, Berlin, Warsaw, Copenhagen, Stockholm, Helsinki and St. Petersburg are gone. The Baltic and White Seas will be joined leaving upland Scandinavia as an island. Moscow, Paris and Madrid survive, as well as the interior countries of Europe. But the Black Sea and Mediterranean will be enormously larger.

In Asia, Sumatra, Bangladesh, and Pakistan largely disappear, as will most of southern Viet Nam and heavily populated eastern China including Beijing. Japan will lose her large coastal cities and an extreme percentage of crop land.

International trade ceases. There are no remaining ports. Of what use is a tanker arriving if there is no place to unload? Highways that survive are of little value without fuel. Our railroad system is diesel and will have a problem. Billions of hungry and penniless refugees will threaten to overwhelm the inland areas. They need food and shelter to survive. They might well be insistent.

That’s a formidable if. How accurate is my assessment? I used water storage figures provided by Wikipedia and melted the ice. Are we doing that? Everywhere in the world, nowhere more dramatically than in the Himalayan glaciers which feed six of the world’s largest rivers and water 40% of the world’s population. Since the beginning of the industrial revolution we have built annual carbon emissions to 7 billion tons. Economists in the U.S. agencies are insisting we will double that to 14 billion tons within a few decades. That’s going to help? I really don’t think so.

How about when it might happen? Slowly, as the glaciers melt back from the edges is one thing and may be sort of manageable for a while if you don’t mind forever rebuilding your infrastructure – the basis I’m sure of Stern’s report. Another possibility exists. Pages 182-183 of the published version of “An Inconvenient Truth” provides a series of space photos of the Larsen-B ice shelf, a permanent feature on the east coast of Antarctica.. The first photo is dated 1/31/02, in which the ice field is intact. The last photo is dated 3/5/02 and there is no ice shelf. None at all. The sudden disappearance of that massive geographic feature astonished scientific observers everywhere Who could have imagined that a permanent geographical feature could simply suddenly disappear? The initial photo displayed numerous pools of melted ice on the surface. The ice caps covering the continent are showing significant numbers of the melt pools that preceded the failure of Larsen-B..

On page 193 is a photo of a moulin, the drainage tube of an melt pool. Not long ago I stood just below the lip of the upper falls of the Merced River in Yosemite Park. It had been a cold and snowy May, followed by a warm June. The High Sierra responded, sending a great torrent over the lip. I have photographs of that torrent, and it looks a lot like what is happening in that moulin. The tube extends from the surface through about 10,000 feet of ice to bedrock, where the water lubricates the connection between ice and rock. Result – we may not have to wait for the ice to actually melt to affect sea levels. The same result is achieved when it slides into the sea. That’s the Tsunami I mentioned last month. The thought of a 100 cubic kilometer ice cube plopping into the sea makes my spit quit.

If those ice caps go, when might they? Scientists can’t tell us. Climate change to this extent is a new phenomenon in human experience. Science cannot compare this occurrence against documented previous experience. In a word, it’s guesswork. Scientists are more able than the rest of us to do the guesswork, but they are trained to not shoot from the hip. Only one has done so to my knowledge. He’s the guy who publicly worried about a major portion of the Antarctic ice cap sliding into the sea.

How soon? Glaciers, and that what Greenland and the Antarctic have, are rapidly retreating or dying worldwide but it’s those melt pools and moulin in the Antarctic that worry me the most. That’s a threat of quite unknown menace. Scientists working in the field were astonished by the disappearance of 4500 square miles of Larsen-B in a matter of five weeks just four years ago. They could well be astonished again.

The best guess of those most qualified to predict the effects of climate change is that we perhaps have two decades to get things turned around. That’s no time at all for getting out of the carbon business, friends. We’ll have to bust our butts to manage a turnaround that quickly Fooling around, waiting for a more convenient answer just isn’t going to answer. Doing nothing means we will unleash a horde of horrors upon ourselves.

What to do, oh Lord, what to do? The average American, a distinction once to be proud of, contributes over five tons of carbon to the atmosphere every year. For your family’s contribution, multiply that by the number of people in your family The automobiles will add tonnage this year estimated at 3-10 tons each depending on make and model. The frequently maligned SUV is, of course, the worst polluter (I’ve not seen figures for a Hummer, but there aren’t all that many in domestic service, and their owners are notably more reluctant to use them nowadays.) Anything you do that is derived from fossil fuels is your contribution to potential disaster, and that includes the hidden carbon emissions inherent in the product. How much carbon does a fresh pineapple represent? It had an airplane ride, and some truck rides, and motorized farm equipment tending it back home. Everything we buy has carbon emissions riding with it.

What can we do? Quit it already. Not entirely right away and much, much smaller contributions later would be tolerable. But we must consider what we’re doing before we start the car. Reducing miles driven is something we can do instantly. Getting a less demanding vehicle is possible. Demanding effective public transportation from elected officials is easy enough, and using the transportation when it’s available is not only virtuous but cost effective.

Let me repeat. The consequences of permitting the loss of ice caps do not reflect, as far as I know, any kind of consensus among scientists. I simply added 250 feet of water to present levels and asked ‘what would it mean’. It is not a prediction, other than as an if-then proposition. But that alone suggests a magnitude of trouble that is remarkably more significant than another attack by Osama Bin Laden or any kind of threat ever offered by Iraq even in the imagination of the administration.

For elevations in Oregon above and below 250 feet I used my copy of TOPO! Oregon, wherein elevations are reported for the spot on which the cursor rests. Otherwise, it’s a tedious matter of asking Google about ‘Elevation City State.”.. I’d love to get my mitts on a world map with the 250 foot topo line on it, but a 600 foot line is the best I’ve found so far. That is in my atlas.

Having run this exercise, I think I know why Sir Nick didn’t evaluate the worst case. Just peeking at it takes one aback. An economic assessment? What economy?

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