Sustainable Transport and the Environment Guide - Unite the Union

The reports are not the first to point out that rising seas, inevitable in a warming
world, are a major threat. For example, in a report last September, the Miami-Dade
County Climate Change Task Force noted that a rise of two feet, or a little over half a
meter, by the year 2100 as predicted by the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel
on Climate Change "would make life in South Florida very difficult for everyone."
But the new reports offer detailed assessments of vulnerability in the relatively near
term. Both note that coastal areas are densely populated, economically important and
gaining people and investment by the day, even as scientific knowledge of the risks
they face increases. Use of this knowledge by policy makers and planners is
"inadequate," the academy panel said.
"It's time for the transportation people to put these things into their thought
processes," Henry Schwartz Jr., the chairman of the research council panel, said in an
interview.
Rising sea levels caused by global warming will threaten the future of ports and portside
communities not only in the UK but worldwide. 3.2billion people currently live
in sea level communities that could be threatened by rising sea levels and more at risk
of tsunami type events, with the UN estimating that over a billion people will be
vulnerable to flooding by 2050 if we don’t dramatically reduce our climate change
impact now.
Scientists at a international conference on climate change in Copenhagen in March
heard that predictions from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the body
of climate experts convened by the UN, had underestimated the extent of sea level
rises.
Sea levels are rising faster than predicted, and are likely to surge by 50cm-1m by the
end of the century owing to climate change. Such levels would cause serious harm to
coastal areas, said researchers, and affect at least 10 per cent of the world's
population 47 .
4.3: Greenhouse Gas Emissions
The total greenhouse gas emissions from Water Transport 48 in 2006 were 19.4 million
tonnes, which was 2.7 per cent of the total greenhouse emission of the 93 economic
sectors in the UK.
Water transport accounts for 21 per cent of the total greenhouse gas emissions in the
transport sector in 2006. This was the second largest emissions for the transport
sector, and was followed by freight transported by road. However, the freight
transported by road does not include the activities of other companies which operate
47 Seas rise faster than expected By Fiona Harvey Financial Times March 11 2009 02:00 | Last
updated: March 11 2009
48 Sea and coastal water transport including; Passenger sea and coastal water transport; Freight sea and
coastal water transport; Inland water transport;
49