If you’re planning a trip to Miami or the Florida Keys, you might want to expedite the bookings. Experts are warning that if climate change continues like this, most of Florida’s southern coast will be underwater in just a few decades.
“The tide is coming in and eventually it’s not going to go back out,” Harold Wanless, a University of Miami geologist and professor of geography and sustainable development told CBS News. Menacing!
“Climate change is real,” he continued. “This isn’t something that might happen.”
The place has seen floods and other drastic conditions. People everywhere have felt the deadly effects, but the US’ southern coasts face the threat of being engulfed by the ocean.
Speaking of doomsday glaciers, Wanless explained to CBS that those melting oceanic ice mountains are a major part of South Florida’s issue.
“The problem is, sea level is rising at an accelerating rate now because of ice melting in Greenland and Antarctica,” the geologist added. “So, for now what is just a high tide — a rare high tide… is going to become a frequent high tide.”
Of course, those glaciers didn’t just decide to melt on their own. Glaciers melt and the sea level rise. This is the result of our warming oceans, which in turn have been wrought by the overproduction of manmade greenhouse gases.
“Over 90 percent of the extra heat we’ve created,” Wanless told the outlet, “is transferred to the ocean.”
As far as scale? According to Wanless, nearly 60 percent of Miami-Dade County will be underwater by 2060. That includes homes, businesses, and habitats.
This CBS report comes on the heels of another, and equally troubling, land loss analysis by research nonprofit Climate Central. Based on current emissions levels, it found that by 2050, the US will have lost roughly 4.4 million acres of land and 650,000 individual properties to sea level rise by 2050.
We do still have time to mitigate at least some of the climate crises that humankind is currently barreling toward. But that’s only if we actually take action.
