Editor, Gazette-Journal:

If you ignore science, as Kenneth Haapala, MS Economics, and Charles Battig, MD, advised readers in the Dec. 1 Readers’ Write, you could use their 400 feet in 18,000 years as "modestly rising" sea level (Mr. Haapala does not clarify that more than 350 of his 400 feet of rise were at 1 foot per 35 years for the first 12,000 years, leaving less than 50 feet of sea level rise over the last 6,000 years, or 1 foot in 120 years).

This "modestly rising" straight-line model of 1 foot in 45 years does match local relative sea level rise in recent times (see http://tinyurl.com/CBBT-SLR for an example). At this rate, much of Jamestown Island, part of the recent Jamestown 400th Year Anniversary celebration, will be an intertidal marsh before our neighbors can celebrate a "Jamestown 600." Similarly, the monument near the old Achilles Store, surveyed at 3.62’ above NAVD88 in 1992, will be awash well before then. If climate expe...