Antarctica’s potential collapse could damage coastal cities across the globe
In the late 70's, I can remember a rash of stories on the nightly news, telling us that scientists were predicting that half of Florida was going to be underwater by the 2000's. Perhaps, even as a kid, I was sensitized to reporting on science, since my 4th-grade science text book was also predicting we'd be in a mini ice age in the 80's, and completely out of oil by 2000. And, dang it, I was looking forward to driving.<p>It's forty years later, and the only land that I've read about that we've lost to global ocean level rise is some "islands" in the South Pacific that were only a couple millimeters above sea level anyway. Can someone here point me to actual, significant, usable land loss due to rising sea level? I'm not saying it hasn't happened, but I figure, if it had, it would be something that gets trotted out at every one of these discussions.<p>Now we're getting a beautifully-rendered Times article where some NASA climatologist says that, in another 10 years, we could have some "significant retreat." After half a lifetime of  hearing this, and not seeing anything like the kind of change that would threaten man's survival, I'm sorry, but I'm skeptical.