Plan B Forum

This new mapping technology will show whether global warming could drown your town

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By Lori Montgomery June 27

A Lidar map of New Bern, N.C. shows potential flooding from a 16-foot storm surge. The image is from a Power Point delivered last year by the director of the North Carolina office of Geospatial and Technology Management.

While I was reporting this story on sea-level rise on the Outer Banks, it quickly became clear that coastal residents were upset less by the raw forecast (39 inches by 2100) than by North Carolina's decision to take that inherently uncertain projection and map its impact. So even though nobody knows whether the seas will actually rise 39 inches over the next century, North Carolina was producing maps and databases that, with great precision, seemed to declare specific addresses doomed.

This was understandably alarming to property owners. To those who doubt the existence of global warming, it probably felt a little like the government condemning the family homestead because a meteor might strike.

Other maps of sea-level rise are also proliferating, and you can do a rough take yourself at the Tumblr site DrownYourTown. Experts on climate change say that as the maps become more broadly available, anxiety about the potential economic effects of global warming could become far more widespread.

"You will probably see a bit more of the conservative backlash as the situation comes clearer and more specifics are proposed," said Duke University marine policy professor Michael Orbach. "That will probably go on for a decade or so. And then people will say, 'Oh, jeez, you're right. We really do have to do something about this.'"