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Sea Level Is Rising
Due to Climate Change, Ask Hurricanes Harvey, Irma, and Maria, if
You're in Doubt
By Ben
Tanosborn
Al-Jazeerah, CCUN,
September 25, 2017
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Hurricane Irma devastation of Saint Martin, September 6, 2017 |
Hurricane Irma devastation of Barbuda, September 6, 2017 |
Adopting Change Implies Adapting to Change… or Else!
As we have it in today’s world, faith and reason are forced to
cohabitate, procreating in their union sets of hetero-twins
appropriately named Ignorance and Wisdom. Scientific consensus no
matter if derived from rigorous objectivity can conveniently be cast
aside, if and when it suits the needs of those who hold the reins of
power. Yet, it’s difficult to comprehend how in a developed nation such
as the United States over 40 percent of its population believe in
creationism – contracting the existence of mankind to a measly 10
millennia – and a similar percentage also believe climate change is a
hoax. What results from these polls, however, fail to tell us whether
both creationists and climate change deniers are all housed in the
temple of faith; that is, whether these two groups might turn out to be
one and the same. Perhaps it is best that any correlation
involving religion not be made; we, Americans, are already living under
an international reputation that we are an anti-science breed… no need
to remind anyone, writing it in bold letters and underlining it.
Recent media coverage of hurricane
Harvey, the devastation it has left behind, and the
menacing escort-duet of Irma
and Maria following
on its path, made me revisit this weekend a research article I had read
almost two years before motivated by all things oceanographic… as my
grand-daughter, non-hurricane Maria, had entered a doctoral program in
ocean studies at the University of California at Santa Cruz.
The article, “Future Coastal Population Growth and Exposure to Sea-Level
Rise and Coastal Flooding – A Global Assessment,” was published by PLOS
(San Francisco, CA). This comprehensive paper, basically restricted to
LECZ (low-elevation coastal zone – along the coast and below 10 meters
of elevation), does not explicitly consider possible displacement
(out-migration) due to sea-level rise. And that to me, it’s taking out
of the equation the most important causal variable of all,
sea-level rise due to climate change,
most particularly when extending the projections to 2030 and 2060.
Perhaps even as important as the sea-level rise, and more so for nations
such as the United States, is the significance of per capita investment
in both job creation and new infrastructure in those LECZ areas. The
population exposure is intimately related to the resource exposure in
quantitative as well as qualitative ways. The migration of people from
Dhaka to Coastal Bangladesh is not likely to follow, in most cases, the
same reason that New Yorkers have for seeking a home in Florida.
As questionable as the study’s methodology may appear in the authors’
choice of both intervening and causal variables, I find the most blatant
error, given the extreme level of uncertainty in quantifying the
sea-level rise due to climate change, in forecasting future coastal
population growth all the way to 2060. Any forecast extending beyond
2030-2040 seems to me as randomness cloaked in science given what we
know today. A table (7) in the study places the United States as
8th among the top 25 nations with the highest LECZ population and people
in the 100-year flood plain; retaining the same 8th position all the way
to 2060. By that year, 10.4 percent of the US population will be in
LECZ, compared to China’s 16.7%, India’s 9.8% and the Russian
Federation’s 2.9%; a high percentage for the US given its low
population density, 79 per square mile, relative to China’s 357 or
India’s 911. For those of us who believe climate-change is real
– the sea level now rising beyond
arithmetic progression, we see the need for a federal
plan for coastal growth, or de-growth, long in the making. And a
“stupidity watch,” better still… an alert, should be immediately sounded
for coastal communities south of the 32 parallel; which basically covers
the entire Gulf Coast, all of Florida, and Coastal Georgia. The Corps
of Engineers should not be put in charge of futile construction-ICU. As
much as we love the Big Easy, we know that New Orleans will eventually
become a tourist attraction, a junior sister to Venice; and so will much
of Florida. The planet has already passed the point of no return
thanks to a poisoned atmosphere, but we still have time to regroup and
adapt to the changes already occurring and those which are to come.
Neither levees, nor seawalls will become reliable answers to cope with
LECZ flooding… just as Trump’s mythical southern wall won’t solve an
immigration problem that Congress has refused to tackle and solve for
countless decades.
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