DON'T PANIC: MOST COAST CITIES WILL BE FLOODED IF ICE CAPS KEEP MELTING

It makes you wonder: Do you think there was anyone around 20,000 years or so ago when glaciers covered much of the Northern Hemisphere who worried about rising sea levels as the ice receded?

Perhaps some good soul with a knack for solstices and lunar eclipses figured out that all that ice would turn into a lot of sea water and possibly drown everyone near the ocean. Maybe that scientific genius lived long enough to see the ice bridge disappear between the island now known as Britain and the French mainland, cutting off access until seafarers made boats suitable for a channel crossing.

Today there are descendants of these same forecasters who see rising tides ahead with the melting of the Greenland ice cap -- a rise in sea levels of about 0.005 inch a year. At that rate, much of the North American coastline will be underwater in a million years or so.

Provided, of course, that we don't have another Ice Age in the meantime.