Word: levelness
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Heat waves, droughts and mass extinctions are all potential threats from climate change. But the scariest risk has always been that of rapid sea-level rise caused by the collapse of the massive ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica. There is enough water locked on Greenland alone to raise global sea levels by 23 ft. (7 m) if it melted, which would swamp coastal cities like London and Shanghai and all but wipe away small island states like the Maldives and Tuvalu. We can likely adapt, expensively, to higher temperatures and changing precipitation patterns, but it's difficult to imagine...
...While the geologic record shows the earth has experienced rapid sea-level rise in the past, during the sharp warm-ups that follow the end of ice ages, those big melts have occurred when the world had much less ice than it does now. Scientists are unsure of how quickly rising temperatures from global warming could destabilize and melt our existing sheets - the working assumption has been that such major melting and subsequent sea-level rise would take centuries, if not longer, even in a warmer world. (See TIME's special report on the environment...
...issue of Nature argues that our ice sheets may be far more vulnerable than we believe, and that it may be a matter of decades before cities like New York are turned into swampland. Scientists led by Paul Blanchon of the National Autonomous University of Mexico examined sea-level fluctuations during the planet's last inter-ice age warm period, about 121,000 years ago, and found that the water rose as much as 10 ft. (3 m) in a matter of decades thanks to melting ice sheets. That conclusion indicates that, in the current interglacial period, we could well...
...elevations by comparing them to similar reefs in the Bahamas, and determined that the seas might have risen by 6.5 to 10 ft. (2 to 3 m) over the course of 50 to 100 years - far faster than scientists had assumed. Only rapidly melting ice sheets could explain sea-level rise occurring that swiftly, which would indicate that the ice locked away in Greenland and Antarctica today might not be as safe as we had thought...
...Despite the small attendance, those who did participate said that they found it enlightening and enjoyable. Susan B. Marine, director of the Harvard College Women’s Center, said that she especially appreciated the contributions of the audience members. “I was really impressed with the level of honesty, and that people were willing to share,” said Marine. “This is a complex subject, and it’s difficult to talk about sometimes. [It’s] fraught with a lot of silence, hesitation, and ambivalence, especially by white people...