The Shoreline of the Future: Permanently Temporary
Hundreds of millions of years ago sea level was 600 feet higher than it is today, and at the peak of the last ice age, around 20,000 years ago, sea level was almost 400 feet lower than now. “So,” climate change skeptics say, “sea level goes up. Sea level goes down. It’s a natural cycle so if sea level rises again, we’ve dealt with before so we can deal with it again.”
The skeptics are wrong on both counts. The sea level rise we’re experiencing now is not “natural,” and “we” (civilized humans) have never dealt with rising sea level.