Well, If You Will Build Your Capital on Swampland...

Washington, D.C. is sinking into the sea

With Americans’ approval of Congress lingering near record lows and about half the country unsatisfied with the White House, perhaps this will come as good news: Washington, D.C. is sinking into the sea.

Is the big slide some kind of karmic comeuppance? A matter of unchecked climate change? A side effect of excessive groundwater pumping? Nope, not this time, according to the researchers who confirmed Washington’s watery destiny in a new study.

The problem is something called “forebulge collapse,” a wonderfully evocative phrase that refers to the geological ups and downs of the last ice age. Until about 20,000 years ago, there was a mile-high ice sheet that stretched as far south as Long Island. It was so heavy, scholars say, that the land under modern Washington, D.C. bulged up—and eventually we decided to start building a government on it.

“It’s a bit like sitting on one side of a water bed filled with very thick honey,” Ben DeJong, the lead author on the new study, told Science Daily. “The other side goes up. But when you stand, the bulge comes down again.”

This new waterbed-based understanding of Washington, D.C. was produced by geologists from the University of Vermont, the U.S. Geological Survey and other institutions. It was published this week in GSA Today, the magazine of the Geological Society of America.

It projects that Washington will drop by six or more inches in the next century, adding to the problems of sea-level rise, and threatening a mix of military installations and national monuments.  

Whoops.  'Forebulge collapse' in addition to climate-change !  Not that half the country doesn't question or outright deny the latter.

Now as for London...