Riak Bol
Professor Scheil
English 102
July 28, 2014
The Rising Seas Global warming and global climate change will have a huge effect on how people live their lives. It will not only make it a few degrees warmer but will also affect the sea levels, weather patterns, and planting seasons. Global warming will be felt the most in cities in coastal areas. Global Warming and the rising sea levels will affect coastal cities sooner and with different effects than originally anticipated. These cities will experience trouble with their fresh water sources and damage to their underground infrastructure long before the seas rise high enough to affect the actual buildings. The rising sea levels will affect the way the people that live in coastal areas live their lives and will do so much earlier than they realize. Global warming, or climate change, is and will in the future affect our everyday lives in many different ways. Jones (2012) writes that if we do not aggressively curb climate change now, the results will likely be disastrous. Many different pollutants are beginning to form a kind of blanket by collecting in the atmosphere and trapping the heat from the sun and therefore warming up the planet (Jones, 2012). Singh (2013) states that while local temperatures fluctuate naturally, the average global temperature has increased at a very fast rate over the last fifty years and that unless something is done to slow down or stop the emissions that cause climate change, the average U.S. temperatures could be 3 to 9 degrees higher by the end of the century. Scientists agree that climate change is occurring and human activities are helping to speed up the process. There are many things that show that climate change is happening such as the instrumental temperature record, rising sea levels, and decreased snow cover in the Northern Hemisphere (Singh, 2013). This research shows that as the temperatures on the Earth warm up, the ice will melt the oceans will expand. People need to understand that they are largely at fault for at least the speeding up of this process and need to help to slow it down. The sea level rise is something that could happen very rapidly. Walsh (2012) states that there are two main factors that have contributed to observed sea level rise. The first factor is called thermal expansion. This means that as the water in the ocean warms up, it expands. The second factor is from the melting of ice around the polar ice caps (Walsh, 2012). Singh (2013) writes that the major store of water on land is found in glaciers and ice sheets and that the emissions that have been let out and collected in the atmosphere have trapped enough heat that there is nothing that can be done to stop this process, but how the public approaches emissions in the years to come can affect the pace of how fast the sea levels will rise in the coming decades. Singh (2013) states that the sea levels will rise another 1.2 to 2.6 feet by 2100 even we were able to have zero emissions by 2016. Singh (2013) also states that scientists project that the global sea levels could rise anywhere from 8 inches to 6.6 feet by 2100 and that this could also easily double if something is not done to curb the rate of emissions currently being put into the atmosphere. The first reason why this is going to become an issue is that the rising sea levels will cause damage to coastal cities’ fresh water supplies. Pearce (2005) writes that the water supplies of many different major coastal cities around the world are going to be affected by the rising sea water causing pollution to the underground water supplies. Many large coastal cities get their water from large underground fresh water sources or store their water in large underground areas. With the rising sea levels, these water supplies could be contaminated by the sea water that is coming in from the ocean. If the ocean water seeps into the cities’ underground drinking water, the water can no