Quick, move to Denver

Back in the day (last century) when it became fashionable to promote some form of agenda in Washington, a group of experts would trot out some data and present it at a congressional hearing. The thrust was ... "by the year 2000 ...."

The thinking was, in the 1980s, that "the year 2000" was far enough in the future that speculation on life would be connected to "an estimated 5 million Americans will suffer from ...."

Once a week, "by the year 2000, we'll have (a.) no trees (b.) no fresh water or (c.) lots more people with an illness, poverty or too many kids."

Sadly for these experts, they all died without having to prove anything and, worse, 2000 came and went.

Now what's the "landmark" date for "by the year .... 2010?"

Been there, done that. Usually these milestone dates that Congress gets to ponder are in mathematical integers or 10, 15 or 25.

Now, we just skip over it and go straight to 2100. Wow, really?

Here's what's going to happen that year, the experts will tell us, knowing full well that if they are wrong, they'll just move the date up another 15 years.

AP, out of Washington:

By the year 2100 ... nearly 4 million people across the United States, from Los Angeles to much of the East Coast, live in homes more prone to flooding from rising seas fueled by global warming, according to a new method of looking at flood risk published in two scientific papers.

The cities that have the most people living within three feet of high tide — the projected sea level rise by the year 2100 made by many scientists and computer models — are in Florida, Louisiana, and New York.

The problem with this sort of research is that it's urging Congress to act in advance of something that might not happen but probably will. Exactly which fixes are to be made are unclear, other than if we don't fix it, we're screwed.
How do we know this?

Because ....

Sea level rise experts at the U.S. Geological Survey and the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration who weren't part of the studies said the results make sense and were done by experts in the field.

It's nice to know we have sea level rise experts who are pretty clear that if the water rises, people who live near it -- Florida, New York, Louisiana -- might need to move.

What made this a really exciting study was that previous studies just didn't think the Big Apple was in peril. Now, they say NYC is screwed -- in 2100, that is. Not before. I'd never have guessed Louisiana was at risk. Not in a billion years. Mississippi might be, though not until 2121.

Seems pretty easy to deal with this. The Rocky Mountains.

Go there.

Before 2100.

After that, all bets are off.