ohn Englander, a Boca resident and renowned speaker on sea level, spoke to Boca Raton in our July-August issue. Here are a few of the outtakes from our conversation.
Boca Magazine: Predictions of how high sea level is going to rise in Florida range from about two feet by 2060 up to six or more feet roughly 40 years later. If the worst-case scenario happens, we would lose most of Miami and all of the Keys by the end of the century. Do these numbers square with your findings?
John Englander: Yes, that’s the present consensus. But those numbers could shift if the heating continues on course and Antarctica further destabilizes. And yes, six feet of rise would inundate most of Miami.
BM: Is what came out of the Paris Climate Change Conference last fall a rational path for slowing warming, or are critics right who say it was a waste of time?
JE: I wrote a blog (about the conference) called “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.” Simply, the Good is that 196 nations agreed on a goal and that’s wonderful. The Bad is that it’s a daunting goal to achieve, and they couldn’t even agree on how to go about doing that. They gave themselves five years to figure out how to achieve the goal. The Ugly is, even if they could achieve the goal of keeping global warming to 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees F—Ed.) from pre-industrial levels, that’s double what we have already. That (guarantees) more melting Antarctic ice and more sea level rise, and for years to come.
BM: You argued in your book that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change—which is the world’s official word on the subject—is too conservative in its predictions. What about their latest numbers released in 2014?
JE: I think they are still too conservative. Their most severe (forecast) calls for (a rise of) up to 90 centimeters (3.6 feet—Ed.) by 2100. But if you read the fine print, that calculation (essentially) excludes Antarctica which (is contributing to so much) sea level rise. It’s hard to put a number on Antarctica, so they tend to leave it out. It becomes a footnote, even though it’s potentially disastrous.
