Rising seas: 'Florida is about to be wiped off the map'

[turbinetree]

Sea level rises are not some distant threat; for many Americans they are very real. In an extract from her chilling new book, Rising, Elizabeth Rush details how the US coastline will be radically transformed in the coming years

Elizabeth Rush

Tue 26 Jun 2018 07.37 EDT Last modified on Tue 26 Jun 2018 19.52 EDT

Take the six million people who live in south Florida today and divide them into two groups: those who live less than six and a half feet above the current high tide line, and everybody else.

In 1890, just over six thousand people lived in the damp lowlands of south Florida. Since then the wetlands that covered half the state have been largely drained, strip malls have replaced Seminole camps, and the population has increased a thousandfold. Over roughly the same amount of time the number of black college degree holders in the United States also increased a thousandfold, as did the speed at which we fly, the combined carbon emissions of the Middle East, and the entire population of Thailand.

About 60 of the region’s more than 6 million residents have gathered in the Cox Science Building at the University of Miami on a sunny Saturday morning in 2016 to hear Harold Wanless, or Hal, chair of the geology department, speak about sea level rise. “Only 7% of the heat being trapped by greenhouse gases is stored in the atmosphere,” Hal begins. “Do you know where the other 93% lives?”

A teenager, wrists lined in aquamarine beaded bracelets, rubs sleep from her eyes. Returns her head to its resting position in her palm. The man seated behind me roots around in his briefcase for a breakfast bar. No one raises a hand.


https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/jun/26/rising-seas-florida-climate-change-elizabeth-rush

[NCTraveler]

1. Quotes like that are great for the cause!

[turbinetree]

2. Or six and half feet..................

[Achilleaze]

3. Dirty Donny says republicans will stick with their lies about climate change

"Lies are the republican WAY, so we aren't about to let a planetary disaster spoil our game plan. We can make a bundle in the meantime, drool."

- Comrade Dirty Donny, the republican Draft-Dodger-in-Chief & republican "family-values" role model.

[ProfessorGAC]

4. Huh?

The snip says "as did the speed at which we fly..."

The speed at which we fly has increased a thousandfold?

First nobody was flying in 1890, except for maybe floating in a balloon relying on wind. Secondly, the fastest jets are going around 4000 miles an hour. We had airplanes that could get off the ground at 4 mph?

The rest is darned interesting, but there is something off about that analogy.

[Javaman]

5. I hadn't about this before...

“Greenland is currently calving chunks of ice so massive they produce earthquakes up to six and seven on the Richter scale"

holy shit!

[Javaman]

6. my god...

"From 1900 to 2000 the glacier on the screen retreated inward eight miles. From 2001 to 2010 it pulled back nine more; over a single decade the Jakobshavn glacier lost more ice than it had during the previous century."