SEATTLE — Neah Bay won’t be the North Olympic Peninsula’s answer to Mount Ararat after all, it turns out.
A Peninsula Daily News error that reported in feet what should have been inches had the country’s northwesternmost point rising 7 feet in the next 43 years, 15 feet by the end of the century.
The mistake appeared in a report on Pages A1 and A7 in Sunday’s PDN.
The actual upthrust — produced by sliding tectonic plates below the Earth’s surface — will be about 7 inches and 15 inches, respectively.
There’s still comfort in the phenomenon, though:
The rising land, according to scientists at the University of Washington and others, is likely to outpace the rising sea level due to melting ice caps and warming oceans — 6 inches by 2050, 14 inches by 2100.
It’s all a matter of speculation in any case.
The report, “Sea Level Rise in the Coastal Waters of Washington State,” is intended to help planners who issue permits for buildings along marine shorelines.
