Dan's Papers - September 5, 2008 - Ice Melts, Water Rises

Sometimes, at the end of a difficult workday, I will drive home to my house in East Hampton, put some ice in a glass, pour in some orange juice and vodka, sit in an easy chair in my living room, and look out over Three Mile Harbor.

It's a splendid view. The sun sets over the far shore. The boats rock in the slips. Overhead, the birds circle hungrily. And occasionally, something spectacular happens. Last week, the fish began leaping out of the water in great splashes for a while. The birds enjoyed that very much.

I can judge whether the tide is high or not by either looking at a tide clock I have on the wall above the sliders, or by observing the amount of beach that is exposed on a peninsula of land that juts out into the harbor from the north at low tide. As the level of the water in the harbor gets higher, more of the inland beach grass on the peninsula dies from the salt water. Thus, when the tide goes out, there is more beach.

Last year, I read about a giant slab of Antarctica the size of Connecticut that has cracked off from the mainland there, and is just about ready to drift off into the Indian Ocean. It is being held on by a thread, the account says, which certainly is just a turn of phrase. There are no threads holding ice together.

I twirled the ice cubes in my glass for a moment contemplating this, and pondered the situation. Surely, the water is higher in the harbor. Right?

I have been carefully monitoring this situation for all of the 33 years I have lived here, which is just about the number of years we've been warned about global warming. Four years ago, something called the Larsen Shelf, an ice sheet the size of Rhode Island, broke off from Antarctica and floated off into the Indian Ocean where, in a warmer climate, it melted away.

Last week, however, it dawned on me that I have been looking for the wrong thing. At high tide, there is no difference in the maximum width of the beach at all. Both low- and high-tide levels remain at the same interval, but just more inland. Barring some new catastrophe involving a confluence of moon, wind and earth tilt, what I should be looking for is the shrinking of the peninsula. I've been looking at the wrong benchmark for years, apparently.

On the wall in my study are several framed photographs of this scene taken years apart. I walk in there and have a look. But the pictures don't look much different, one from the other. I go back out to the chair in the living room.

There was a time, some years ago, when a high-tide warning was in effect, which meant that at high tide, the harbor climbed over the bulkhead in front of my house. It was a bizarre sight. The water flooded the sidewalk that runs along the seawall. It stayed flooded for about six hours, with the boats rising in the slips so high it was almost impossible for anyone to climb up into them. It never got high enough for them to climb up onto the sidewalk, however. Come to think of it, that happened about five times in the last 33 years. It has not happened in the last 10.

What do they say? The sea level around the world has risen two inches in 50 years? That's it? So why did my insurance company, terrified, cancel my flood coverage two years ago, requiring that I find a lesser-known company to provide that coverage at greater cost?

How long before the house goes, anyway? The level of the first floor of my house is 17 feet above sea level. I suppose that gives me, um, one foot higher in 300 years times 17 feet...

No worries, for me, anyway, in the immediate future, unless things suddenly melt much faster.

And maybe they could. Four years ago it was Rhode Island. Last year it was Connecticut. Three years from now it could be Pennsylvania. And three years after that it could be Texas.

I continue to swirl the contents of my glass around. Almost all the ice is gone. They say that if all the ice in the world melts, sea levels will rise 210 feet. I think I'll get another drink. Freshen things up a bit.