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Fire Island and Global Warming

Now even the U.S. government has has officially admitted it: Global warming is for real and largely man-made, and that low-lying coastal areas are in danger. See Washington's submission to the UN. The report says that "barrier islands are likely to disappear entirely in some areas." Unfortunately, President George W. Bush dismissed it as a "report put out by the bureaucracy." Bush's approach (as reported in a New York Times account) is to do nothing pending more than ten years of study.

The "good" news is that by the year 2100 sea level is expected to rise only somewhere between 30 centimeters and one meter. (More dire estimates put the rise at fifteen feet--more than four meters--within a century or two). The bad news is that extreme meteorological incidents will be horrendous. What have traditionally been catastrophic "hundred-year floods" will occur much more frequently--somewhere between every four and forty years (according to Columbia University's Goddard Space Center.) These could devastate Fire Island.

More on implications for coastal zones. | Cost of trying to hold back the sea.

All this should not be news. We've always said, in the long run barrier islands face one ecological threat that dwarfs all others: global warming. In recent years, the earth's surface temperature has reached record highs. Although during the next year or two we might get a respite, Fire Islanders should still be concerned about the long-term outlook. The warmth has been causing the northern polar ice cap to melt, which will raise sea levels, thus submerging low-lying land. What is happening to the Antarctic ice cap is not so clear, but on October 26, 1999, the New York Times noted the possibility that "some of [Antarctica's] gigantic icecap, which contains about 90 percent of the world's ice, could slide into the sea. If just part of the icecap - the West Antarctic Ice Sheet - should do this, the global sea level would swiftly rise about 17 feet, inundating regions everywhere with catastrophic consequences for humanity." Worse news came that December, when the Times surveyed the grim news for 1999. But since then the word is that Antarctic melting is not such a problem.

Indeed, some people (until recently including the Bush administration) have argued that all this is not a serious concern. If we're lucky it won't be for the next few decades. Ultimately, however, if the international community does not do a better job of controlling fossil fuel emissions, in all likelihood Fire Island as we know it will no longer exist.

In 1992 at Rio de Janeiro the international community agreed to a treaty to control global warming, and the United States ratified it during the elder Bush administration. The subsequent Kyoto conference tried to take stronger measures than the Rio treaty spelled out. This was signed by the United States on Nov. 12, 1998, but it is still opposed by the current Bush administration, and is unlikely to be ratified by the Senate within the foreseeable future. Alas, if the United States (the world's greatest emitter of carbin dioxide) does not take the lead, there is little hope of stemming global warming.

The science of all this is tremendously complicated. For a well-balanced exploration of the subject, read S. George Philander, The Uncertain Science of Global Warming (Princeton University Press).

And for more information, you can leave FIE and check out: Solcom, World Resources Institute, the EPA 's global-warming site, and Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Japan has overcome strong domestic opposition and ratified the treaty. Russia is dragging its feet, but may eventually ratify. Let us hope that the Bush administration's reversal on the facts on this subject will lead to action of some sort. But even if the U.S. does not ratify, the treaty may well become international law anyway. (It needs 55 ratifiers, which must included countries that emitted 55 percent of carbon dioxide emissions in 1990).

Updated 1 May 2003