1/ This is a follow-up story to the Rolling Stone article "Goodbye Miami" in Nation Of Change.......if you didn't read the original story, this is a pretty good summary.
Jeff Goodell has a must-read piece in Rolling Stone, “Goodbye, Miami: By century’s end, rising sea levels will turn the nation’s urban fantasyland into an American Atlantis. But long before the city is completely underwater, chaos will begin.”
Goodell has talked to many of the leading experts on Miami including Harold Wanless, chair of University of Miami’s geological sciences, department, source of the headline quote. The reason climate change dooms Miami is a combination of sea level rise, the inevitability of ever more severe storms and storm surges — and its fateful, fatal geology and topology, which puts “more than $416 billion in assets at risk to storm-related flooding and sea-level rise:”
South Florida has two big problems. The first is its remarkably flat topography. Half the area that surrounds Miami is less than five feet above sea level. Its highest natural elevation, a limestone ridge that runs from Palm Beach to just south of the city, averages a scant 12 feet. With just three feet of sea-level rise, more than a third of southern Florida will vanish; at six feet, more than half will be gone; if the seas rise 12 feet, South Florida will be little more than an isolated archipelago surrounded by abandoned buildings and crumbling overpasses. And the waters won’t just come in from the east – because the region is so flat, rising seas will come in nearly as fast from the west too, through the Everglades.
Even worse, South Florida sits above a vast and porous limestone plateau. “Imagine Swiss cheese, and you’ll have a pretty good idea what the rock under southern Florida looks like,” says Glenn Landers, a senior engineer at the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. This means water moves around easily – it seeps into yards at high tide, bubbles up on golf courses, flows through underground caverns, corrodes building foundations from below. “Conventional sea walls and barriers are not effective here,” says Robert Daoust, an ecologist at ARCADIS, a Dutch firm that specializes in engineering solutions to rising seas.
The latest research “suggests that sea level could rise more than six feet by the end of the century,” as Goodell notes, and “Wanless believes that it could continue rising a foot each decade after that.”
2/ Here is the link to the full article in Rolling Stone again in case you didn't get to it......one of our alert readers pointed out the opening is a little "floridly" written - it would be impossible to have a manatee in a swimming pool in Miami Beach because they are fresh water creatures, and it would be a crocodile not a gator nesting in the Perez Museum......
True.....so I read the story again just to make sure I wasn't overreacting.....and no, I am not.
The article is science based, and anyone who has lived in SFla knows his conclusions are reasonable and will be coming true eventually. The political commentary is spot on, and if he could be accused of exaggerating anything it could be his observations about the nuclear power station Turkey Point, which will probably be OK.....
The timing of the hypothetical "Hurricane Milo" and the consequential damage is the issue, but since climate change is accelerating generating better conditions for windstorms it will probably be sooner, i.e. decades.........
3/ You would expect the South Florida media to be all over this story, but you would be wrong.
The Miami Herald, to it's credit, took notice on June 20th.....but it's in the Miami Beach local news section, not the main paper.........
RISING SEAS
Rolling Stone warns that Miami will be under water
BY DAVID SMILEY
DSMILEY@MIAMIHERALD.COM
On a day when President Obama’s top environmental advisor was in South Florida to express the administration’s commitment to fighting global warming, Rolling Stone published an article that predicted rising seas will turn Miami into an “American Atlantis.”
Goodbye, Miami, which begins with a fictional 2030 hurricane named Milo wiping out South Beach and the Fontainebleau hotel, was posted online Thursday. It paints an apocalyptic picture of South Florida, where coastlines disappear under encroaching water, potable water supply shrinks, and the nuclear power plant at Turkey Point teeters on a meltdown.
Banks stop issuing mortgages. Insurers raise rates. Turf wars erupt on high ground.
“It may be another century before the city is completely underwater (though some more pessimistic scientists predict it could be much sooner),” writes contributing editor Jeff Goodell in the piece, to run in the July 4 issue. “But life in the vibrant metropolis of 5.5 million people will begin to dissolve much quicker, most likely within a few decades. The rising waters will destroy Miami slowly, by seeping into wiring, roads, building foundations and drinking-water supplies — and quickly, by increasing the destructive power of hurricanes.”
Concerns of sea-level rise are not new, nor is the threat news to many South Floridians. But Goodell’s warnings of a watery Armageddon enabled by political ineptitude at the state and federal level generated a buzz Thursday — both supportive and cynical.
4/ Miami Herald columnist Fred Grimm had an excellent piece on Saturday June 22nd quoting the Rolling Stone article, and spelling out why there is no political will to do anything about climate change - when the effects really kick in all of the politicians in power now will be dead.....
IN MY OPINION
Fred Grimm: Rising seas? Geezer pols will be dead by then
BY FRED GRIMM
FGRIMM@MIAMIHERALD.COM
Because I’ll be dead.
Not the most forward looking credo, kicking the coffin down the road, but it’s the unspoken subtext when politicians refuse to acknowledge a disastrous inevitability. Last week, when U.S. House Speaker John Boehner called White House initiatives to curb carbon dioxide emissions “absolutely crazy,” he was really saying that short-term sacrifices to stave off global warming aren’t worth contemplating for a political strategist looking no further than the next election. Because he and his climate-denying colleagues, most of them of a certain crotchety generation, will be dead before their progeny face the consequences.
When Rick Scott said, “I’ve not been convinced that there’s any man-made climate change. Nothing’s convinced me that there is,” the 60-year-old Florida governor was really just suggesting he can muddle through the next few years as a climate denier pol because by the time South Florida is inundated by rising seas, he’ll be buried and forgotten.
But maybe not. The current issue of Rolling Stone, in an article entitled, "Goodbye Miami," suggests that the ruinous effects of sea level changes will be plenty obvious by the time Scott turns 75.
The article draws on a number of recent studies warning that the thermal expansion of the oceans, together with the melting of glaciers and polar ice sheets, will bring havoc to Miami and environs much sooner than climate scientists thought just five years ago.
The latest dismal report came from the federal government’s own National Climate Assessment in January, which warned that the soaring heat index in the southeast U.S. (2012 was the warmest year on record) would saddle the likes of South Florida with salt-water intrusion, disappearing cropland, increased ground-level ozone with accompanying respiratory illnesses, more mosquitoes and tropical diseases, more extreme weather. And, of course, an impinging ocean.
5/ The Ft. Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel, perhaps not wanting to upset the Koch Brothers who will soon be buying the paper, had this very small story in the online blog section today June 26th......I couldn't find any other mention.
This is the story in it's entirety, and if you open it and click an answer on their 'BuzzPoll' there are five responses, including mine......
It looks like President Obama is getting serious about climate change.
It’s about time.
Unless you have been living in a cave – and an air conditioned cave at that – you know that climate change is no longer the purview of just pointy-headed academics and liberals and environmentalists.
This is serious stuff. When experts say South Florida could look like Atlantis by the middle of the century, it is something to be concerned about.
Obama’s plan, in part, is to reduce carbon pollution by limiting greenhouse gas emissions from existing power plants.
The right wing can say climate change is in the mind, and it’s just the natural way things are, and we don’t need to do anything about it.
As usual, the right wing is wrong.
6/ A fascinating take on rising sea levels from the Palm Beach Post - "not our issue, it's south of us in Broward and Miami-Dade". They don't mention the Rolling Stone article, but the timing [ June 21st] is pretty obvious......
Talk about NIMBY [not in my back yard]........
Rising seas will inundate Miami-Dade, Broward before Palm Beach County, scientists say
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Palm Beach Post Staff Writer
BOCA RATON —
If you’re worried about rising sea levels but you still want to live in Florida, Palm Beach County is a relatively safe place to own property.
If oceans continue to rise in the coming decades, the first areas to be submerged are Monroe, Miami-Dade, Broward, Lee and Pinellas counties, said scientists who gathered here Thursday for Florida Atlantic University’s Sea Level Rise Summit.
Palm Beach County benefits from elevations that are about two feet above those lower-lying areas, said Jayantha Obeysekera, director of modeling at the South Florida Water Management District.
“Palm Beach is a little higher,” Obeysekera said.
Palm Beach County has about 23,000 people living less than four feet above the high-tide line, an elevation that leaves properties vulnerable to flooding, said Ben Strauss, chief operating officer of Climate Central in Princeton, N.J. That total ranks 12th among Florida counties and 35th nationally
South Florida stands to sustain significant damage from rising sea levels. Florida is home to nearly half of the 4.9 million Americans who live at elevations less than four feet above the high-tide line, Strauss said.
7/ And finally a great story from the Daily Beast by Megan McArdle that takes a sober look at the overall global strategy of how we humans are going to deal with the climate change issue.....and she concludes we aren't going to do much at all. It's a sobering article, realistic and bullshit-free, and her conclusions won't give you much comfort.
I suggest you read and digest this one......it's excellent, and depressing.
What Are We Going to Do About Carbon?
by Megan McArdle Jun 25, 2013 10:34 AM EDTDespite the president's big speech, the answer remains "not much"
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At 1:30 today, the president will make a big speech outlining his plans for carbon control. It involves using the EPA's regulatory power to slap emissions controls on power plants, and minor additional subsidies for renewables, and speeding up permitting for clean energy projects. Conservatives are predictably huffing about lost jobs, while liberals are blaming Congressional Republicans for not signing onto a bolder but more economically efficient plan, such as a carbon trading scheme. My take is somewhat more laconic: this just doesn't matter much. It's a way for Obama to please environmentalists in his base, and maybe get a footnote in the history books for doing something about global warming. But the odds that this initiative will noticeably slow global warming are pretty slim.
My basic take on global warming is that on the science, liberals are the realists, while the right has spent too long in denial. (Yes, I'm familiar with the skeptics' arguments, and I agree that folks like Michael Mann and Peter Gleick have behaved very badly, but let's be honest: most Republican politicians are not having arcane debates about modeling assumptions, decisions under uncertainty, and the philosophy of science. They are ignoring a fairly compelling body of science because they don't want to even talk about doing something.)
But on the policy side, the conservatives are the realists and the liberals generally let wishful thinking drive their pronouncements. Kyoto goals were met, but mostly thanks to three factors we probably can't repeat: the exhaustion of Britain's coal deposits, the collapse of the Soviet Union and the shuttering of Eastern Europe's vilely inefficient industrial base, and the 2008 financial crisis. (Just in case you're tempted to argue "But without Kyoto, they would have risen!" let me point out that the United States, which didn't sign Kyoto, is also enjoying carbon emissions below their 1997 level)
8/ Editorial
The story directly above summarises the global problems, and highlights the political paralysis we are in. The reality is nothing is going to happen unless the giant energy corporations want it to, and although the [presumably] intelligent leaders of companies like Exxon are fully aware that their business model is destroying the planet, they just don't care. Maybe it's because they are in their 60's and are punting the problem down the road while not taking any action that will affect the share price, or maybe they are sociopaths.....who knows. All WE can do is try to prepare as best we can for the changes coming.
This is why the "Goodbye Miami" story is significant - it's a warning, and a prophecy, for you. You see how the South Florida media has treated the article.....from minimal to ignoring it, just as predicted. Perhaps some of our alert readers can tell me if it made the TV News, but I doubt it.
It's hard to know who to talk to either - half the people you know are conservative, so probably don't believe in climate change. Many of your other acquaintances could be in industries related to property, or based in SFla like cruise lines, and they don't want anything that will affect their jobs or their company. So it's up to you to reason this through.......
If you live and work in South Florida, you may want to start thinking about selling your home and moving into a rental.
If you are getting close to retirement, perhaps you should look for somewhere "higher" to move to......remember the Florida foothills start at Orlando, and Mount Dora is the third highest city in Florida. Yeay!
But seriously - it's really difficult for normal people like us to deal with these kinds of issues - our natural reaction is denial, denial and more denial, especially when the news we watch and read doesn't mention the problem. We all hate change, especially things we can't control, but the messages and the consequences coming are very clear.
However for the average person it will take an immediate lesson like a hurricane flooding their house to take action. The problem for South Florida is there hasn't been a major storm since Wilma in 05, so coastal flooding is on your mental back burner. NOAA is predicting above average windstorms this year, but they have done that every year and nothing has happened - ho hum.
When I lived in Miami we were on a drainage canal same as he mentions in the article, and during Wilma the winds and rain flooded our canal at least 3/4 feet above over the seawall - I remember Miami Shores Golf Club, which was on the same canal but seaside of the salt water intrusion dam, had major flooding of all of the water holes....it was closed for a week.
That was 8 years ago.
When the big one comes this year, or the next, or the next and you decide "it's time to take some action" it will be too late, as everyone else will have come to the same conclusion, or at least [say] 10%. But even if 10% of the people living in Miami decide to sell and move, it would be enough to flood the market and drop the value of all homes.
So as they say on a famous news network - "we report, you decide", but whatever you do good luck to you and your family.
Off the soapbox, and back to normal.......here are a few jokes and videos......
9/ A lifestyle tip.
Just when you thought you had seen it all, something new comes along. Mary and I were amazed how well this works......
Fold a T-shirt in 2 seconds......
10/ "Pacific Rim" is coming mid-July, and it looks like a doozey of a monster vs monster movie so it will be for special effects geeks only...... except it's directed by Guillermo Del Toro, so this gives it some cred.......check out the trailer......ahooooggah.....
11/ John Oliver on the Daily Show with some commentary on the Paula Deen story "Fried and Prejudice", which has been all over the news....
A very amusing five minutes.......
He is a pretty good fill-in for Jon Stewart - different, but almost as good.......
Todays video - "Every Sperm Is Sacred" from Monty Python.......
Todays little girl joke
A young family moved into a house next door to an empty plot. One
day a gang of workers showed up to start building on the plot.
The young family's 5-year-old daughter naturally took an interest in all the activity going on next door and
started talking with the workers.
She hung around and eventually the builders, all with hearts of gold, more or less adopted the little girl as a sort
of project mascot. They chatted with her, let her sit with them while they had tea and lunch breaks, and gave
her little jobs to do here and there to make her feel important.
They even gave the child her very own hard hat and gloves, which thrilled her immensely.
At the end of the first week, the smiling builders presented her with a pay envelope - containing two pounds in
10p coins. The little girl took her 'pay' home to her mother who suggested that they take the money to the bank
the next day to open a savings account.
At the bank, the female cashier was tickled pink listening to the little girl telling her about her 'work' on the
building site and the fact she had a 'pay packet'.
'You must have worked very hard to earn all this', said the cashier.
The little girl proudly replied, 'Yes, I worked every day with Steve and Wayne and Mike. We're building a big
house.'
'My goodness gracious,' said the cashier, 'And will you be working on the house again next week?'
The child thought for a moment. Then she said seriously:
'I think so. Provided those motherfuckers at Home Depot deliver the goddamn bricks on time.'
'I think so. Provided those motherfuckers at Home Depot deliver the goddamn bricks on time.'
Todays fitness joke
Who the hell runs 8 miles in 15 seconds?
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