Global Warming - "Coastal Nibbling"

"Global warming -- through melting glaciers, disappearing ice sheets and warmer waters expanding -- is expected to cause oceans to rise by 1 meter, or about 39 inches.

That's the troubling outlook projected by coastal maps created by scientists at the University of Arizona with data from the U.S. Geological Survey.

Some scientists believe that it will happen in 50 years, others in 100, still others in 150.

But on this they agree: "We're going to get a meter, and there's nothing we can do about it," said University of Victoria climatologist Andrew Weaver, a lead author of the February report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, held in Paris. "The question is when."

How would some of the best-known U.S. places look?

Galveston

Galveston Island survived the 1900 hurricane, which killed 6,000 people and is the worst natural disaster in U.S. history. But a sea level rise of 3 feet could bring a new form of fear to this sturdy little beach city of 57,000.

Water would cut Galveston off from the Texas mainland by submerging Interstate 45, and it would cover large portions of the bay side. In addition to flooding tourist shops and restaurants, water would make a mess of the University of Texas Medical Branch, future home of a U.S. lab for some of the world's most dangerous germs.

New Orleans

If the levees broke again and the nation gave up the fight to save the lowest parts of New Orleans, the Big Easy would be reduced to a sliver of land along the Mississippi River, leaving only the French Quarter and the oldest neighborhoods dry.

"It would be to a large extent the city of the mid-19th century," said Robert Tannen, an urban planner. "The original marsh and cypress groves of the city would perhaps prevail again.""

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