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Rising Sea Levels Essay

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"On a recent afternoon, Scott McKenzie watched torrential rains and a murky tide swallow the street outside his dog-grooming salon. Within minutes, much of this stretch of chic South Beach was flooded ankle-deep in a fetid mix of rain and sea.

“Welcome to the new Venice,” McKenzie joked as salt water surged from the sewers." ----- Michael J. Mishak, Associated Press June 7, 2014 at 4:24 PM EDT

In a world divided by war, it is easy to overlook problems that affect all of mankind. The dramatic rise in ocean levels worldwide constitutes just that sort of problem. Although the fundamental problem of global warming has been given airtime and plenty of written-media coverage, the problem of rising sea levels seems to have met a …show more content…

For a 10-centimeter rise in the ocean level, the boundary between saltwater and freshwater at the mouths of rivers [will] advance 1 kilometer into the river, and saltwater [will] similarly advance into underground deposits of freshwater” (Monastersky). Obviously, if this early study proves accurate, there would be countless ramifications. These are effects that seem very real, and very threatening.

In the following years, the original worries were being proved correct. An article published in a 1996 issue of Earth Island Journal reported that “rising sea levels… are about to swallow up Pate and Ndau, two small islands near the Indian Ocean resort island of Lamu. The Kenyan government has announced emergency plans to spend $517,000 to build walls around the islands to protect them from annihilation” (E.I. Journal). The article took a shot at the U.S. when it advised that “perhaps Kenya should consider an appeal to the World Court to require the industrialized nations of the North to pay for building the sea walls” (E.I. Journal). Obviously, the writers of Earth Island Magazine believe that industrialized nations such as the United States, Canada, Russia, and China are at least partially responsible for the rising oceans.

This sort of criticism of industry-minded “nations of the North” (E.I. Journal) is linked to the huge amount of carbon dioxide

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