Global Warming, West Antartic, and ...

A couple of weeks ago a front page story in The Argus reported the intervention of the Environment Agency (EA), advising against approval of a planning application to build a house in Ormonde Way on Shoreham Beach. In fact, Ormonde Way is just beside the Adur bridge at the landward end of Shoreham Beach.

Shoreham Beach is just that: a beach, a shingle spit, but it is also a large housing estate. The area is now designated a high-flood-risk zone. The EA says the existing flood defences provide protection to a height of 4.2 metres. It fears that rising sea levels, caused by climate change, and the statistical likelihood of a major storm surge at some undefined point in the future, would have / will have devastating effects on coastal communities. More than 35,000 homes across Sussex would be flooded.

But then comes the news of the climate change conference this week in London, Avoiding Dangerous Climate Change, and in the book of the same name the well-grounded fear that the West Antartic icesheet is now melting. Should it happen, scientists believe sea levels would rise by 5m (16ft) - three times greater than Shoreham's flood defences, and that's without the storm surge caused by what we call in Britain, A Great Storm.

Think how the coastline of Sussex, including that of Brighton & Hove, would be redrawn!