Coasts won't be safe from flooding if sea level rises

Editor,

I'd like to clear some of the "basic research" brought up by Dennis Kinzler's letter published in Monday's Daily Lobo. Kinzler tries to use a scientific principle called isostasy to prove that coastal communities have nothing to fear from global warming.

Unfortunately, Kinzler really does not understand the way isostasy applies to the crust of our planet, specifically continental crust. Isostasy is really just a fancy word scientists use for floating, specifically how high or low objects float in a liquid. To use Kinzler's example, isostasy equations can be used to determine how high a block of wood will float in water. Geologists and geophysicists use the same equations to figure out how high continents float.

In this case, the continental crust is similar to the block of wood. But Kinzler is wrong to suggest the continents will float higher as more water is added to the ocean because the continental crust is actually floating on the Earth's mantle. Continents are not floating on the ocean. To recap, the crust can be thought of as a block of wood floating on the mantle, not the oceans. If sea level rises, the continents will not change elevation and the coasts will be flooded.

The scientific community welcomes well-reasoned arguments. If Kinzler wants to talk about whether global warming is natural, then he should spend some time learning the science behind paleoclimate studies. A great place to start is right here on campus by taking Earth and Planetary Sciences 101, which covers many topics in Earth science, including isostasy.

Travis Naibert

UNM student