Ireland Shrinking, London Sinking

Ireland is shrinking warns Andrew Cooper, director of the Coastal Research Group at the University of Ulster. He says the sea is swallowing up about 750 acres of Ireland each year, and warns that the process would quicken.

He says global warming will subject Ireland?s shores, particularly along the northern and western Atlantic coasts, to more frequent and powerful storms, but the governments of Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic are doing little to erect coastline defenses.

Tourism officials have been forced to close some of the Irish coast?s cliffside hiking trails because of a growing risk of collapse. Cooper says, ?The growing demands on the coast mean that urgent action is needed.?

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Two parts of London are sinking, according to satellite pictures. The subsidence appears to follow the route between London Bridge and Westminster, as well as a recent London Electricity tunnel from Battersea to Putney.

Experts say the sinking could have been caused by construction work or by the recent drier summers and wetter winters. One area goes underneath property worth billions of dollars, including the Houses of Parliament.

The images were collected by an instrument on a European Space Agency satellite between 1996 and 2000. The instrument was designed to measure fluctuations in sea level by directing energy at the earth?s surface and recording how long it took for the pulses to bounce back.

Ren Capes, head of the team who analyzed the satellite images, says, ?In Britain, subsidence causes [millions of dollars] a year in damage. But before now, there hasn?t been a way of measuring it with accuracy?The subsidence will have caused structural damage to buildings, but we do not know the scale of the harm, and people now need to investigate on the ground.?

To find out what other places will be shrinking and sinking, read ?The Coming Global Superstorm? by Whitley Strieber and Art Bell, now only $9.95 for an autographed hardcover, click here.

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