... be sure to check your under-seat cushion, which can be used as a flotation device in the entirely likely event of a water landing.

All right, not all than entirely likely, at least not this week. But almost entirely likely this century, and I don't mean just the last few years thereof.

According to a presentation at this week's "4 degrees and beyond" conference at the University of Oxford, a fair amount of real estate around the San Francisco Bay, including the area which includes SFO, is highly likely to disappear due to rises in ocean (or, in this case, bay) level.

And SFO won't be the only victim. I could well have titled this "A rebuilt New Orleans -- the world's most expensive artificial reef", or "DelMarVa deluged" or "Arrivederci Rhode Island". And if you own an oceanfront timeshare in the Southeast (like Virginia, the Carolinas, Georgia or the eastern coast of Florida), you might want to put it on the market as soon as the Dow tops 10,000 again.

The presentation was prepared by a team at the Met Office's Hadley Centre. It's just one of a number of presentations from the two-day conference, slides and audio from which are freely available here. I expect to spend a fair amount of time this evening (and maybe tomorrow evening, as well) looking, listening, learning, and being glad that I didn't have to rack up a lot of air miles to visit not only the UK, but also the future.