Packing up because of climate change

Miami Beach, Florida (CNN)

Dan Kipnis — a retired fishing captain on Miami Beach — has a home office so cluttered with sea creatures that it feels like a drained aquarium.

There’s a dead salmon stuck to the wall, a marlin above the bookshelf.

A taxidermic bat ray dangles from a string.

There was something freakishly ironic about sitting in this environment — an ocean waiting for water — while Kipnis told me how scientists expect his home to flood.

Kipnis pulled up a map of South Florida on his computer and clicked a button to show what happens if the seas rise by two feet, which is just a third of what the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration says could happen by the end of the century.

“Look at Miami Beach! Right here!” he said, pointing at the screen.

“It’s underwater!”

The green land had been displaced with blue.

That should shock exactly no one. Scientists have known for years that humans are warming the Earth by pumping carbon out of the ground and into the atmosphere — and they’ve long known that one dramatic consequence of this is that sea levels are going up and up.