Original subtitles

ROBERT BALLARD: I've dedicated my life to exploring the unknown.

I've been places no one else has ever gone.

I've seen life no human eye has ever seen.

It's my passion.

I found the Titanic.

God damn!

I've survived crushing depths

and a rogue wave.

But even after 50 years at sea,

I'm as fascinated with the deep as I was on my very first expedition.

You want to know my most important discovery?

Well, it's the one I'm about to make.

I'm Dr. Robert Ballard.

Come with me into the alien deep.

NARRATOR: Everywhere we look

it seems the oceans are unleashing their fury.

These could be flukes, part of a natural cycle,

or signs of dangerous global change.

BALLARD: Man has always been challenged by the sea,

and just when we think we've conquered its violent moods,

the planet seems to be upping the ante.

But is that really the case?

And if so, why?

So that's what I'm trying to find out.

NARRATOR: To most of us, this is the ocean.

But when Dr. Robert Ballard looks at the water,

he sees something very different...

Something straight out of a horror movie.

[thunder cracks]

Stronger storms, higher seas,

and lurking in the deep,

monsters with the power to eat ships whole.

Few have met up with rogue waves like these and survived.

Ballard is one of the lucky ones.

BALLARD: Yeah, my first introduction to a rogue wave,

ironically, was on the first time I went to sea,

on my first oceanographic expedition.

I was 17 years old,

and we were in a tremendous storm

in the North Pacific Ocean.

We were in 45-foot swells, 15-meter waves were coming at us.

It was like a roller coaster ride.

And I was up on the bridge,

and all of a sudden this monstrous wave

just comes looming out of the sea right in front of us.

Smashes right into the bridge, destroys the bridge,

all the windows were knocked out, blew out the portholes,

took away the mast, and we almost sank.

And I was hooked for life.

What a, what a wave.

I was too young to be afraid.

I was in awe.

NARRATOR: Mariners have been telling tales of rogue waves for centuries.

Massive walls of water that tower over the seas around them.

1981.

A huge wave blasts an oil rig off the Atlantic coast of Canada,

killing all 84 people on board.

1995.

Another rogue breaks over a luxury liner's bow

and carries off a forward mast.

BALLARD: Lots of ships that just vanish without a trace

are hit by rogue waves, because you have absolutely no time.

It just happens, you don't see it coming.

So you have no chance to get off a message.

You just disappear.

NARRATOR: Which is why actual measurements of these giants

were so hard to come by...

until one day in January 1995.

Hurricane force winds blast a Norwegian oil rig.

Workers evacuate the deck.

But just below, pointing straight down at the oncoming seas,

a laser range finder detects one giant wave after another.

25 feet.

30 feet.

28 feet.

Then, at 3:20 PM,

the instrument spikes.

A 75-foot monster hammers the rig.

The platform survives

and the world gets its first incontrovertible proof

of just how big rogue waves can be.

BALLARD: What you get is you get

two different wave patterns that intersect.

And normally they cancel one another out,

but if you do it just right,

you can get them to add up and then...

have them shoot like that.

And that's a rogue wave.

And you don't want to be there when that happens.

NARRATOR: If, as Ballard suspects,

these waves, and the storms that spawn them,

are getting bigger,

we're in for a rough ride.

Already, one large ship goes down on the high seas every month.

Not to mention hundreds of smaller vessels.

BALLARD: A ship a month.

Think about that.

And if the seas are getting rougher,

that number's only going up.

NARRATOR: As a longtime mariner,

Ballard can guess where the hotspots are likely to be.

The Cape of Good Hope is also known as the "Cape of Storms."

JEAN PIERRE ARABONIS: It is at the moment

the choke of shipping in the world.

No one really wants to go through the Suez Canal anymore,

because you've got to run the gauntlet of the pirates.

Pirates are not predictable.

So take your chances with the storms.

NARRATOR: Tucked away in a remote field office

high above the Cape,

oceanographer Jean Pierre Arabonis has made a career

out of predicting dangerous seas and rogue waves.

His forecasts can mean life or death for hundreds of sailors.

ARABONIS: I kind of built my business around this.

I think I've got a bit of a feel

as to where these things are going to occur

a bit more often than anywhere else.

But it's a mixture of science and intuition.

NARRATOR: Arabonis sounds the alarm

when storms kick up swells from the southwest.

Instead of just creating chop,

the waves barrel into a driving current from the northeast,

which stacks them up into immense walls of water.

ARABONIS: And that's where you really don't want to be,

certainly when there's a storm,

when there's strong southwesterly winds.

This whole area can become completely unpredictable.

And if we can't predict, you don't want to be there.

BALLARD: The captains, often they have no choice.

Riding the current saves time, and time is money,

so usually they'll take the risk and plow right through it.

ARABONIS: It's very difficult when you take a look at a ship

and it's 20,000 tons and it's 200 meters long.

You think it's not vulnerable.

But it is.

In the right conditions, that ship can fill up with water

and be gone in minutes.

BALLARD: That's a terrible way to go,

and if storms continue to increase in intensity,

it's gonna be a problem all over the world.

Not just in South Africa, but everywhere.

NARRATOR: If Ballard wants to know about angry oceans,

there's one place to look.

And it's not out on the water.

This is Lloyd's of London,

one of the most important insurance providers in the world.

BALLARD: Lloyd's really dominates the insurance market

for maritime insurance.

I, myself, have insurance from Lloyd's.

It just went up.

[chuckles]

NARRATOR: The firm has kept records of shipwrecks

for more than 300 years.

BALLARD: Sunk in deep water.

Broke in two.

Cape Town Rescue Centre.

Bulk carrier out of Malta.

This is the log of the ships that Lloyd's of London insured

that were lost at sea.

NARRATOR: 100 years ago,

most of the losses were due to poor navigation.

This year, piracy is also taking its toll.

But in the future,

Lloyd's anticipates that bigger storms and stronger waves

will grow as risk factors for ocean disasters.

It's confirmation of what Ballard and others

think they're seeing out on the water.

BALLARD: Every attempt is made

to limit a ship's probability of sinking.

And Lloyd's is very keenly interested

in making sure that that occurs.

But then there's just acts of God,

acts of Mother Nature, acts of the earth.

And they are starting to see trends

that the ocean's getting angrier.

NARRATOR: If the trends continue, the results could be devastating.

90% of traded merchandise travels across the high seas,

carrying some $13.5 trillion worth of goods.

Nowhere are the stakes higher than off the coast of Oregon,

where the raging Columbia River meets the howling North Pacific.

Ballard has come to meet the men who ply these dangerous waters.

Dan Jordan is one of these boat pilots on the front lines.

If anyone were to notice changes on the ocean,

it would be Dan.

His job- steer massive cargo ships safely

through the roiling waters and ever-shifting channel-

one of the most treacherous stretches of water in North America.

BALLARD: They call it the "Graveyard of the Pacific" for a reason.

Some 2,000 ships have gone down here.

And these guys are out in it 365 days a year.

NARRATOR: The channel is the gateway to the Pacific Northwest.

Thousands of ships and billions of dollars' worth of goods

pass through here every year.

BALLARD: I think very few people realize

how much of America's economy, going in or going out,

is by sea.

You don't load wheat on airplanes,

and there's no trains.

It stops here

and there's only one way to get across the Pacific,

whether you're going east or west,

and it's by ships.

NARRATOR: To guide the ships through the channel,

the pilots first have to get on board.

Option one is a vomit-inducing jet boat.

Even on a calm day, it can be lethal.

The team recently lost a pilot

when he fell from a ladder in big waves

and the current dragged him out to sea.

BALLARD: So, typical day at the office for you?

DAN JORDAN: Typical day.

NARRATOR: Option two, the safe option,

is dangling from a helicopter.

But with high winds, rough seas,

and a six-story supertanker rocking and rolling below,

it doesn't seem all that safe to Ballard.

MAN ON RADIO: Man's going out the cabin door,

going out the cabin door.

Man is at the cabin door.

Man's going down, man's going down.

NARRATOR: The seasoned explorer has boarded lots of ships

in his 50 years at sea,

but never quite like this.

Once on board, Ballard and the pilots

quickly find their way to the bridge.

The pilots take command of the ship

for the final leg into port.

BALLARD: You know, you can steer your ship

all the way around the world,

but you need a pilot for the last stretch.

The currents change, they're changing all the time.

And only the pilot knows which route to take on any given day.

JORDAN: Well, you're always on edge.

Your senses are always alert to what's happening,

but you also try and keep it calm.

So even if it is a rough, tense situation-

big seas or something of that nature-

it's real important to keep things calm.

NARRATOR: But even then, bad things can happen.

Waves stall engines,

the wind pushes ships toward the shoals.

In bad weather, the three-mile transit can take hours.

Dan knows these waters as well as anyone.

And lately, he's seeing a disturbing change.

BALLARD: Weather patterns are,

I mean, obviously changing dramatically,

and that there's actually increased height in the swells?

JORDAN: Yeah, we've been watching that for a few years now,

probably three or four years in particular.

The scientists are all saying that wave heights are increasing

and storm intensity's increasing.

And we are seeing some evidence of that.

NARRATOR: According to one study,

the biggest waves in this region

have risen 10 feet since the mid 1970s,

and models project that they may rise

as much as 50 feet over the next 100 years.

That's the difference between a three- and five-story building.

These increases, as well as the bigger storms behind them,

cause Dan and his team to shut down the port

several times every year.

BALLARD: Now that's something they don't do lightly,

because if the port closes, it backs up the whole country.

You've got cargo trains and trucks grounded in their depots.

Your new cars don't get to their lots.

Farmers in the Midwest are sitting on their wheat.

It's surprising how fast that can all happen.

I imagine it gets sort of tense at times?

JORDAN: Yeah, there's always a lot of pressure

to get things moving, and that's part of our job.

BALLARD: It's a constant battle.

It's man against nature,

and maybe nature may be winning.

NARRATOR: One group, though, is not overly concerned.

For them, the bigger the wave, the better.

This is Teahupoo,

Tahitian for "broken skulls."”

One of the baddest, heaviest waves on the planet.

Surfers descend on Tahiti from far and wide

to challenge its power.

BALLARD: These guys are nuts.

They track conditions all over the world.

They have a better idea of what's happening

than most meteorologists.

In fact, if changes are happening,

these are the folks who are probably gonna notice them first.

NARRATOR: The master of wave forecasting is Sean Collins.

SEAN COLLINS: I surf,

and I found a way to avoid getting a real job

by starting a surf company.

NARRATOR: Once upon a time, surfers were beach bums,

hanging out on the sand waiting for waves.

Collins used science

and his almost innate knowledge of storms and waves

to change that culture.

40 years ago, he launched Surfline,

which incorporates satellites, wave buoys and supercomputers

to predict the best surf waves around the world.

Close to two million users access Surfline each month.

COLLINS: I guess you could say

that we help supply the drugs, so to speak,

to, you know, keep people on their high of surfing.

NARRATOR: Tahitian pro Raimana Van Bastolaer

is a self-confessed addict.

RAIMANA VAN BASTOLAER: Some people have other things,

and me, my drug is the ocean, you know?

That's what, that's what we all live for.

NARRATOR: Thanks to Sean's forecasts,

Raimana can start preparing for a wave

up to three weeks before it arrives.

VAN BASTOLAER: Tuesday and Wednesday

we're gonna get some good swell coming.

COLLINS: We're forecasting this swell,

you know, to arrive in Tahiti

before the storm that generated the swell even happened,

you know, so we're, you know, about three steps ahead.

NARRATOR: The key is wind.

A wave here in Tahiti begins where all waves do-

far out in the ocean where wind blows continuously

over open water.

It starts as a ripple.

Pushed by the wind, it travels and grows,

often combining with other swells.

Add a big storm and it can turn into a monster.

COLLINS: And then taking all these wind speeds,

we're able to calculate waves around the earth,

around the entire globe.

The ideal situation for Tahiti,

is when the storms start in this area underneath Australia here.

NARRATOR: Across 5,000 miles of open windblown ocean,

the wave can get big.

COLLINS: And it eventually gets up to, you know, over 50 feet.

Obviously, if you're in a ship,

you do not want to be in this area,

but us as surfers, you know, we're looking this,

and we're all excited.

Everybody's making their reservations to go to Teahupoo.

Raimana is on the phone,

"Hey, Brother Sean, how's the swell looking?" You know.

And, you know, we're, we're going to go chase it.

NARRATOR: Accurate wind speed measurements

are critical to the forecast.

A three-mile-per-hour miscalculation in a storm off New Zealand

can mean a four-foot difference in swell height

by the time it reaches Tahiti.

And it could arrive one day early or late.

COLLINS: And you know, as our customers are surfers,

if we're telling them there's going to be a swell tomorrow

and it doesn't show up till the day after tomorrow,

believe me, they're going to hate us.

NARRATOR: Good thing for Sean and Raimana.

Sean claims Surfline's forecasts are 95% accurate.

Today, Raimana's got word that big rollers are on their way in.

As it approaches Tahiti,

the wave is still mostly underwater,

only feeling the bottom when it gets shallow,

about a half mile offshore.

That's when Raimana catches his first glimpse.

A dark, gray bump on the horizon.

As the wave barrels toward shore

at speeds of up to 60 miles per hour,

the reef shapes it from below.

COLLINS: All of a sudden, they just,

they just hit a wall underneath the ocean that kind of stops them.

And all that inertia just goes whoo, you know,

just throws all that energy straight up.

NARRATOR: It's the moment Raimana's been waiting for.

VAN BASTOLAER: When she breaks, you have the sound of it,

you know, how it goes on the reef,

how it breaks, boom, boom, boom,

and you're like [inhales] ah, ¢'mon, you know.

NARRATOR: Millions of tons of force

breaking in three feet of water, over a razor-sharp reef.

VAN BASTOLAER: I'm going into that wave,

and then the whole thing cover me.

And the next thing you know,

there's this spit, we call it the spit,

you get sucked like this [sucking sound]

And the whole thing, my hair goes,

and my whole thing goes, like, behind like this.

I'm like, "Come on, come on, just let me, let me out."

And next thing you know, it goes [blows].

And then somehow she let me go and let me out.

You take it inside, you know,

you're just holding for yourself.

You've got it, you made it, and it's so stoked,

you're just letting everything out over there.

[cheering, applause]

And then you go, let's go again,

and then we're back again out, you know?

NARRATOR: For surf waves, the forecasting is working.

But predicting global changes in the ocean and climate

is a lot tougher to do.

BALLARD: If we're really seeing the oceans getting more violent,

can we figure out why,

and whether there is anything we can do about it?

That's the real challenge.

NARRATOR: To predict if the oceans really are getting angrier,

scientists need to look beyond anecdotal evidence.

They need to understand how energy moves around the planet.

Ocean currents are key.

That's why oceanographer Bob Pickart and his team

are out here in the frigid North Atlantic.

They're searching for a new arm of the Global Conveyor-

one of the world's most powerful current systems.

Climate models suggest that the current

lies a few hundred miles to the west,

off the coast of Greenland.

But Pickart is hearing reports that it's also been spotted

way out here near Iceland.

BOB PICKART: We thought we sort of had it figured out at this point,

and then, 10 and behold, my Icelandic colleagues

a few years back went out

and accidentally discovered another deep current

off the continental slope of Iceland,

which is sort of, you know,

turned the community on its ear a little bit.

NARRATOR: The Global Conveyor is one of the most important features

on the planet.

It transfers heat around the globe

and helps keep our climate stable.

If Pickart can prove his Icelandic colleagues right,

he'd force a rethink of how the system works.

BALLARD: You know, it's truly amazing.

We know the ocean currents have a direct impact on our climate,

yet we don't know exactly where all those currents are.

Despite our efforts to model the climate,

it's just a prediction.

NARRATOR: As Ballard knows from decades on the ocean,

it's an immensely complex system.

BALLARD: The ocean is anything but static.

If you were a water molecule

and wanted to travel around the planet,

it would be like getting in this roller coaster.

Lots of ups, lots of downs,

and it's a massive amount of water that's moving.

NARRATOR: The ride begins north of Iceland,

where cooling water sinks.

The drop is slow at first, but as the current builds,

it gains momentum.

Through ridges and trenches, over lava fields and endless plains...

the water hurtles southward across the Equator...

...down the coast of South America like a giant deep-sea river.

BALLARD: By the time this current reaches the southern ocean,

it gets massive.

There's no landmass to block it.

So it builds and builds,

and ultimately flows with the volume of 100 Amazon Rivers.

NARRATOR;: At the bottom of the world,

the southern ocean acts like a giant blender,

mixing the world's seawater.

BALLARD: Then it comes back north again,

and when it gets to the tropics,

it starts to warm up and begins to rise to the surface.

It becomes the Gulf Stream now and starts heading back home.

The whole circuit takes 1,000 years.

NARRATOR: 1,000 years!

And yet the continual cycling of all that heat and energy

affects everything from long-term climate change

to daily weather forecasts.

BALLARD: We've got water rising, falling, spinning,

circulating, bumping into things.

And we try to take all of those complex factors,

put them into a global model,

and come up with a circulation system.

Our best shot.

NARRATOR: Of course, models are only as good

as the information they're based on.

And back in the North Atlantic,

Pickart is discovering that we do, indeed,

have a new arm of the current to worry about.

To find out what impact it has, he now has to calculate

how much water it adds to the Global Conveyor.

BALLARD: We're now hearing that rising atmospheric temperatures

are going to alter the ocean's circulation pattern.

And ironically, Europe, for example,

will get colder and colder.

But we're not really going to know until we better understand

how the entire system works.

NARRATOR: Pickart's work is a step in the right direction.

PICKART: We're predicting that about half of the dense water

is actually flowing in this current that we just discovered.

So if that's the case,

we need to learn more about where it comes from,

how it was formed, because it's crucially important.

NARRATOR: While scientists like Pickart race to understand

long-term changes to the Global Conveyor,

others are already feeling their impact.

In the deadly waters off South Africa,

generations of fishermen like lan Cooke

have fished a segment of the Global Conveyor

called the Aghulas Current,

which hugs the South African coastline.

That's where the tuna are.

IAN COOKE: The fish sort of live on the edges of the currents.

If we don't get the current, we won't get the fish.

Just how it works.

Right weather, right water, that's it.

NARRATOR: Problem is, recent climate patterns

seem to have forced the current-and the fish-

further offshore.

COOKE: Very unusual.

It's almost like the current's missing us, you know,

instead of the water pushing in by us,

it's forcing us west.

And that makes it difficult.

NARRATOR: The shifting current means more days at sea,

higher fuel costs, and rougher water.

COOKE: Nine out of ten times, when the weather's the worst,

that's the best fishing.

So, you know, we sort of fish, like, on the limit of the fronts, you know?

On the leading edges of it, so we try not to be there.

But, I mean, the weather changes hourly here, so,

you get caught, you get caught, you know?

NARRATOR: It's a risk all fishermen take.

But the further out they go to chase fish,

the greater the danger.

COOKE: We're adapting as we speak.

I mean, that's what's happening now.

We're adapting to the weather conditions,

the ocean conditions.

If you don't adapt, you're going to drop out.

NARRATOR: And currents are only part of the equation.

To truly understand how the oceans are changing,

we have to look at all the ways

the ocean water gets circulated and mixed.

For over a century, scientists thought currents, winds and tides

did all the mixing-

not only churning the roller coaster,

but also moving vast amounts of heat, gases and nutrients.

BALLARD: All that mixing is what keeps the oceans alive and fresh.

The problem is, when you add it all up,

the energy needed to do it,

there's just no way currents, tides and wind can do it all.

So clearly, there's got to be some other input.

NARRATOR: Bioengineer Kakani Katija

thinks she's homing in on just that missing link.

KAKANI KATIJA: It's, you know, kind of the human tendency

to study things that are, you know, easily observable, right?

So, all of us can see at the surface of the ocean,

you know, atmospheric winds, winds create waves.

And what we don't see is what's happening

in the mid layers of the ocean.

What is happening deeper?

May I hand this to you?

NARRATOR: No matter how turbulent surface waves and tides may be,

some estimate that only about 10% of their energy

trickles down to deeper depths.

Not enough to churn much ocean.

KATIJA: And that's where, you know, potentially,

animals could be involved.

We're finding that swimming animals

have the potential to mix the ocean.

NARRATOR: Animals!

Everything from jellies and sardines

right on up to tuna and whales,

all moving vast amounts of water as they swim.

Kakani wants to measure just how much.

It's called the butterfly effect.

When something small like this...

...ultimately gives rise to something big...

...like this.

It's an effect nearly impossible to measure,

let alone incorporate into climate models

that tell us if the oceans are getting angrier.

And yet here in these remote waters of Panama,

Kakani Katija is trying to do just that...

if she can get past the venomous snakes.

KATIJA: There's one right there.

Don't come towards me.

So here in Panama,

one of the things that we deal with here

are sea snakes in the water,

and as you can see right now,

they are hunting around our boat.

So just a part of the day job.

NARRATOR: Tonight, Kakani is investigating

gelatinous creatures called salps,

which band together in long chains.

Her plan?

Light up the water column with a high-powered laser,

record the salps' motion,

and measure how much water they disturb.

KATIJA: There is so much ambient stuff in the water, you know-

it could be sand, silt, detritus, name it-

they're illuminated by the laser.

NARRATOR: By watching how these particles move

as animals swim through them,

the team can calculate how much water is being mixed.

When they first started their research,

Kakani and her team were startled

by the amount the creatures could move,

both by swirling it up as they passed,

and by dragging it along behind them.

KATIJA: This is a mechanism that allows smaller animals

to achieve appreciable mixing that was completely neglected.

NARRATOR: With every stroke,

they transfer energy into the sea and mix it up,

as Kakani demonstrates using a special fluorescent dye.

How much energy, though, isn't intuitive.

KATIJA: The original thought was only large animals

will be able to mix the water around them substantially.

But what we're able to show with some of our field measurements,

as well as some work in the lab,

is that smaller animals are actually also able

to generate mixing at those same scales.

BALLARD: That may seem far-fetched,

but when you sit down and do the math, you know,

there are billions and billions of tiny animals

moving around in the ocean all the time,

and, you know, that could add up to a lot of water being churned.

NARRATOR: At the surface,

this energy gets swamped by more dramatic forces,

like waves and tides.

But dip just 300 feet deeper

and you'll find a different, calmer world.

Down here, it's easy to imagine how even one small animal,

not to mention countless millions,

can have butterfly-like effects.

KATIJA: If we can show that

the vast majority of organisms in the ocean

are able to achieve appreciable mixing,

I think it would be hard to ignore that input.

NARRATOR: An input that's hardly been considered,

let alone worked into existing ocean and climate models.

Once she knows how much energy each tiny critter can exert,

Kakani can scale up her findings

to measure the overall impact these animals have...

the hurricane side of the butterfly effect.

KATIJA: We're talking about the ocean.

[laughs] I mean, it's huge, right?

I mean, the majority of Earth is ocean.

If indeed we are missing a huge input of power,

because we've ignored the impact that swimming animals have,

our view of the ocean may be totally altered.

NARRATOR; Whether it's wind, tides, currents,

or the collective swishing of billions of fish tails,

understanding the forces that keep the ocean in motion

is crucial to predicting how it's likely to change.

And the picture that's emerging

is one of a hotter, more energetic planet

and bigger, angrier seas.

The oceans have always been a dangerous place for us humans,

and from what Dr. Robert Ballard has seen

on his journey around the world,

things are only getting worse.

BALLARD: The earth is undergoing tremendous change right now,

change that we haven't experienced in the past.

NARRATOR: We've got a lot to learn about how it all works.

But there is one common thread.

BALLARD: The world's getting hotter,

and that's putting more energy into the system.

So from there, you just have to follow the trail,

and that leads you to more violent storms and bigger waves.

NARRATOR: We know the world is heating up.

We know heat energizes the ocean and atmosphere,

powering more intense storms.

Bigger storms create higher winds,

which in turn churn up higher seas.

BALLARD: So whether you like it or not,

global warming is happening.

And we know that humans are behind at least some of this heat,

and maybe a lot of it.

We're burning oil, we're burning coal,

and that all traps heat.

We know this.

We're seeing the effects.

NARRATOR: These effects will impact everyone-

even people who crave the big waves.

VAN BASTOLAER: You want it and you don't want it, you know?

And you want it because that's your job,

that's what I live for, that's what I love it, too.

But you don't want it because my house is next to the ocean,

and I don't want to lose my house.

NARRATOR: Neither do the 100 million others

who live near the sea.

If storms get more severe,

wave heights grow, and sea levels rise as predicted,

those people could be forced from their homes.

Damage to ships and coastlines could cost trillions of dollars.

And that's just by the middle of the century.

KATIJA: There's a lot of questions that, honestly,

I thought have already been answered

that we're nowhere near understanding yet.

But it's clear, at least in some of these instances,

that we are having effect on the ocean,

and, you know, there are some things that we can do now.

BALLARD: So really, we have two choices.

We can move to higher ground,

design stronger ships, and build higher seawalls.

Or, we face the facts and stop adding more heat to the system.

The way I see it,

we have no choice.