Monday, November 23, 2009

Rising sea levels - what is the impact on Singapore's coastline??

The WWF recently released its Final Tipping Points Report, in which it suggested that the global warming was likely to increase beyond 2-3degC. Correspondingly by 2050 (which is not that far away) sea levels could well rise by more than 0.5m threatening many coastal cities.

"Global temperatures have already risen by at least 0.7 degrees Celsius. Global warming above 2-3 degrees in the second half of the century is likely unless strong extremely radical and determined efforts towards deep cuts in emissions are put in place before 2015.

The melting of the Greenland (GIS) and the West Antarctic Ice Shield (WAIS) could lead to a Tipping Point scenario, possibly a sea level rise of up to 0.5 meters by 2050. This is estimated to increase the value of assets at threat in all 136 global port mega-cities by around 25.000 billion USD.

On the North-eastern coast of the USA and due to a localized anomaly, the sea level could rise up to 0.65 meters, increasing the asset exposure from 1.350 to about 7.400 billion USD.
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The gahment should tell us explicitly what they are doing to mitigate the effect of this rising sea level. If they have done any geographical surveys and modelling, they should let us know what the impact is on our coastlines, and the risks of flooding should sea levels rise by 0.5m.

We have a right to know.

2 comments:

TheJurongReaper said...

Everybody wants to protect his own backside. That's Singapore's modus operandi. I have a cousin who was working on an environment project to study how the rate rising sea level was going to affect the Sentosa island, especially the Sentosa Cove residential establishments. Well, guess what? The authorities refused them access to do such a study.

gigamole said...

Hmmm....yeah. Which begs the question, is there something they don't want us to know....? Perhaps they have no solution yet for a possibly 1m rise in sea level.

I feel this is something our MPs should raise in Parliament. We do have a right to know.