Posted on 02/06/2004 8:21:05 AM PST by blam
Shanghai may slip under the sea
February 06 2004 at 06:09AM
Shanghai - Rising sea levels due to global warming mean the gleaming skyscrapers of China's financial hub Shanghai could be entirely submerged in 600 years, a state newspaper said on Friday.
Academics worry that Shanghai, which state media report sank as much as 2.63m between 1921 and 1965 due to the overpumping of underground water, may descend further under the weight of a construction frenzy of the past decade.
The sea had risen 20mm since 2000 and should keep climbing over the next decade, the Shanghai Daily said, citing a report from the State Ocean Administration.
"Shanghai and a number of other coastal cities have been drawing heavily on groundwater for a couple of decades, depleting it and causing (the cities) to sink," said one US-based researcher.
Excessive construction of tall buildings was to blame for 30 percent of Shanghai's subsidence since 1990, Xinhua said, when the city embarked on a whirlwind of construction that has dotted its skyline with often bizarre, futuristic towers.
Lujiazui, the financial district where Japan's Mori Building Co is erecting a 101-storey skyscraper that could be the world's tallest, is sinking 12 to 15 millimetres a year, Xinhua said.
The area is home to the country's main stock exchange and a host of multinationals that have chosen to make Shanghai the focus of a push into the Chinese market. The city government is now considering limiting the number of high rises.
"This is apparently not a serious enough problem to stop the building of the world's tallest building," said one locally based foreign diplomat.
Oh, I forgot about that! Maybe I'll write a novel where Dick Cheney becomes President and has all the leftists shipped to the moon, with nothing but a Swiss army knife, some Scuba tanks, and the Collected Works of Al Gore ...
I look forward to being dead long before any of this happens, anyway :-).
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.