SCIENTISTS believe that Chepstow will become submerged under water if Greenland's ice caps continue to melt because of the effects of global warming, writes Alex Cinus.

A recent satellite study of Greenland's ice caps shows that it is melting far faster than scientists had feared.

Twice as much ice is going into the sea than five years ago and the implications for rising sea levels could be dramatic.

Chepstow as well as many other coastal towns would be lost to the sea and Britain could be reduced to a land of hundreds of small islands in the North Sea.

Margaret Davis, a member of Friends of the Earth in Chepstow said: "This is obviously worrying news for Chepstow because we are so close to the coast.

"We would lose the bottom half of the town which would be terrible. "The risk of this happening is high if we continue to ignore global warming, so we must take some steps to stop this happening.

"What we need to do is cut our emissions, use low energy light bulbs, turn off our TVs and not leave them on stand-by.

"It is important to be as economical as we can. Co2 levels have actually increased recently rather than go down and we are not going to meet our emissions levels set by the Kyoto agreement."

Jim Hansen a Nasa climate scientist recently said: "Greenland seems to be losing at least 200 cubic kilometres of ice a year.

"Hundreds of cubic kilometres sounds like a lot of ice, but this is only the beginning.

"The summer of 2005 broke all records for melting in Greenland."

The Greenland ice sheet covers an area of 1.7 million sq km which is about the size of Mexico and in places is up to 3km thick.