The EPA has just released a report titled, "Coastal Sensitivity to Sea-level Rise: A Focus on the Mid-Atlantic Region." The report details some of the trouble that our state faces. If you're really short on time, open the full report and scroll for the maps on p. 26, 122, 124, 214, 221 (plus numerous NJ photos later on) and the diagram on p. 192.

Hopefully you don't still think of sea level rise as moving the ocean a bit closer to your favorite beach motel. Instead think of it as harming beaches, wetlands, populated areas surrounding wetlands, paths of rivers in populated areas, and anything that remains of a balance between pest species and predators.

The new EPA report frets that sea-level rise is accelerating. This is in accordance with wave-after-wave of scientific report saying that a positive-feedback loop -- ranging from the melting polar ice caps to the thawing Siberian peat bogs to the thinning NJ soil layer -- is beginning to vastly accelerate the rate of global warming.

I can't help but think that most people have a bias toward "linear thinking" that has served our species well through our evolution, but which has failed to prepare us for exponentially-accelerating events. (Hat tip Ray Kurzweil, and Thomas Friedman in Hot, Flat & Crowded for putting simple words to the concept.) Just as we lay 2006, in naivete, on the cusp of a financial melt-down that would soon shock all but the most radical alarmists (or so they seemed "alarmist" then), so we still engage in something darn-near "business as usual" today.

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