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Sarasota News Leader March 29, 2013 Page 9 The third factor causing water to rise is the "delivery of ice directly into the ocean," Pollack said. Large chunks of Greenland and Antarctica breaking away bring the ocean level up like ice cubes in a glass of water. between 20 and 48 inches by the year 2100. He called the numbers put out by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (for which both Pollack and Vellinga have written) a "lowest-common-denominator assessment" Pollack showed a map of the Eastern Sea- because of the bureaucracy involved, but even board, with two lines drawn. One, way out in that organization's conservative estimates the Atlantic, showed where the coast would range upward to almost 1 meter. be if a new ice age occurred. Another, which Pollack brought the discussion home with a cut off New York City, half of New Jersey series of slides prepared by Sarasota's Shafer and all of Delaware, showed where the coast Consulting, one of the two major sponsors might be in "a world without ice," the title of of the talk. They showed how sea level rise a 2010 Pollack book. Scary stuff. might affect Sarasota. At 1 meter, St. Armands But how much will the oceans rise? Pollack would be inundated, and the bay would reach showed a variety of projections, with what he all the way to the very lip of the fountain at called the "most probable" estimates ranging Island Park. The 150 or so attendees gasped. The City of Venice, Italy, is building expensive panels that could be raised to keep the water in its canals from rising too high. Image courtesy Nino Barbieri via Wikimedia Commons