Environment & Energy
Related: About this forumAdapting to a warmer world: No going back
http://www.nature.com/news/adapting-to-a-warmer-world-no-going-back-1.11906[font size=4]With nations doing little to slow climate change, many people are ramping up plans to adapt to the inevitable.[/font]
Olive Heffernan
28 November 2012
[font size=3]When Superstorm Sandy hit the US coast last month, it blew millions of New Yorkers back into the nineteenth century. The southern part of Manhattan went black after floodwaters shorted out electrical systems. With the subway system disabled, many residents resorted to traversing the island by foot, and water supplies in some areas became contaminated with bacteria and pollutants.
The largest Atlantic hurricane on record, Sandy wreaked US$50 billion in economic losses along the US northeast coast, providing a costly reminder of how ill-prepared even the richest nations are for weather extremes. Some recent weather disasters have now been attributed, at least in part, to human activity, including the 2003 European heatwave and the floods in England in 2000. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), storms, floods and droughts will strike more frequently and with greater strength as the climate warms. And if nations are struggling to cope now, how will they manage in a warmer, harsher future?
Just a decade ago, 'adaptation' was something of a dirty word in the climate arena an insinuation that nations could continue with business as usual and deal with the mess later. But greenhouse-gas emissions are increasing at an unprecedented rate and countries have failed to negotiate a successor to the Kyoto Protocol climate treaty. That stark reality has forced climate researchers and policy-makers to explore ways to weather some of the inevitable changes.
As progress to reduce emissions has slowed in most countries, there has been a turn towards adaptation, says Jon Barnett, a political geographer at the University of Melbourne in Australia.
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kestrel91316
(51,666 posts)function as nature intended them. Restore our coastal wetlands. Stop spending scarce resources to rebuild where it makes no long-term sense.
Hell, make it 100 yards.
tama
(9,137 posts)Hanging fiscal cliffs on cliffhangers still OK.
happyslug
(14,779 posts)On the West Coast that may just mean a few feet given that the Continental Plate is going westward and thus being LIFTED above the Pacific Plate so that the coast line goes through very swift elevation change.
On the other hand, the Atlantic and Gulf Coasts are the product of the Atlantic SPREADING and pushing North America and Europe apart. As a result you can go MILES before you rise 15 to 20 feet in elevation (Especially in Florida).
I use 20 feet, for that is what the sea level can increase when ever the West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS) does collapse (it can be lower). WAIS has been "unstable" for the last 10,000 years and the increase level of warm water hitting it has made it more so. Some spring, March through early April, it will Collapse and world wide sea levels will increase about 20 feet world wide in amount a month (Depending on how long the effective of the increase in displaced water not only takes place BUT spread from the West Antarctic).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Antarctic_Ice_Sheet
From last Spring:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/03/120327134356.htm
http://www.earthtimes.org/climate/west-antarctic-ice-shelf-nudge-push-collapse/1977/
http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/340580/title/Big_Antarctic_ice_sheet_appears_doomed
Nihil
(13,508 posts)And it should be enforced by a blanket ban on rebuilding any destroyed houses/offices/hotels/whatever
(regardless of how long the previous version was there).
There should also be the same criteria for buildings in flood plains.
(*) = "ground" elevation to stop some smart-arse from trying to put a hotel on stilts on a barrier island,
"original" to stop them from destroying the next island in order to ship additional sand across before
the survey to allow planning permission.