Climate change, sea level are focus of USF education grant

Posted Sep 16, 2010 by Lindsay Peterson

Updated Sep 17, 2010 at 03:29 PM

USF geology professor Jeffrey Ryan knows that talking to the public about climate change is a challenge.

The people who don’t believe it are certainly committed.

That’s clear from the comments to our story about a National Science Foundation grant Ryan has received to create a public education program about climate change, in particular sea level rise in Florida.

And it is hard to get excited when the oceans are going up only one inch every decade, which is what the USF oceanographers in St. Petersburg are finding.

But the most conservative estimates say that one inch of sea rise will eat up 50-100 feet of land.

Other forecasts are more alarming.

The economist Frank Ackerman, of the Stockholm Institute at Tufts University, predicts a 27 inch rise in Florida in the next 50 years.

The result? Nine percent of the state’s land area, including the homes of 1.5 million people would be underwater, he told the U.S. House energy committee last year. Monroe and Dade counties would nearly disappear along with two nuclear reactors, 74 airports and 334 public schools across the state.

He may be wrong, but Ryan thinks it’s worth getting folks together to look at the predictions and make up their own minds about what to do.

A lot of us won’t be around to worry about it. But our grandchildren will.

We say we don’t want to leave them saddled with a huge budget deficit. They probably don’t want a soggy, shrunken Florida either.