Miami, the great world city, is drowning while the powers that be look away

[lostinblue 1,989]

[Trumplestiltskin 5,791]

What if I told you that posting an annotated image is proof of nothing at all.

Edited July 14, 2014 by Hail Ming!

[SMOKE 1,426]

So, you get to be an idiot and I get to pay for your stupidity? That seems fair.

isn't that the lefts position on just about everything?

[Mr. Big Dog 10,747]

Low-lying south Florida, at the front line of climate change in the US, will be swallowed as sea levels rise. Astonishingly, the population is growing, house prices are rising and building goes on. The problem is the city is run by climate change deniers

A drive through the sticky Florida heat into Alton Road in Miami Beach can be an unexpectedly awkward business. Most of the boulevard, which runs north through the heart of the resort's most opulent palm-fringed real estate, has been reduced to a single lane that is hemmed in by bollards, road-closed signs, diggers, trucks, workmen, stacks of giant concrete cylinders and mounds of grey, foul-smelling earth.

It is an unedifying experience but an illuminating one – for this once glamorous thoroughfare, a few blocks from Miami Beach's art deco waterfront and its white beaches, has taken on an unexpected role. It now lies on the front line of America's battle against climate change and the rise in sea levels that it has triggered.

"Climate change is no longer viewed as a future threat round here," says atmosphere expert Professor Ben Kirtman, of the University of Miami. "It is something that we are having to deal with today."

Every year, with the coming of high spring and autumn tides, the sea surges up the Florida coast and hits the west side of Miami Beach, which lies on a long, thin island that runs north and south across the water from the city of Miami. The problem is particularly severe in autumn when winds often reach hurricane levels. Tidal surges are turned into walls of seawater that batter Miami Beach's west coast and sweep into the resort's storm drains, reversing the flow of water that normally comes down from the streets above. Instead seawater floods up into the gutters of Alton Road, the first main thoroughfare on the western side of Miami Beach, and pours into the street. Then the water surges across the rest of the island.

The effect is calamitous. Shops and houses are inundated; city life is paralysed; cars are ruined by the corrosive seawater that immerses them. During one recent high spring tide, laundromat owner Eliseo Toussaint watched as slimy green saltwater bubbled up from the gutters. It rapidly filled the street and then blocked his front door. "This never used to happen," Toussaint told reporters. "I've owned this place eight years and now it's all the time."

Today, shop owners keep plastic bags and rubber bands handy to wrap around their feet when they have to get to their cars through rising waters, while householders have found that ground-floor spaces in garages are no longer safe to keep their cars. Only those on higher floors can hope to protect their cars from surging sea waters that corrode and rot the innards of their vehicles.

Hence the construction work at Alton Road, where $400m is now being spent in an attempt to halt these devastating floods – by improving Miami Beach's stricken system of drains and sewers. In total, around $1.5bn is to be invested in projects aimed at holding back the rising waters. Few scientists believe the works will have a long-term effect...

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jul/11/miami-drowning-climate-change-deniers-sea-levels-rising

Whatever the cause, can they really deny the rise of sea levels and ignore it? That's a tad mad, if true.

Oh yes, they can.

[Póg mo 1,749]

Yep, that's the way the government works.

Why don't you live someplace which doesn't have a government for a while, then let us all know if it lives up to your personal utopian ideals.

[Póg mo 1,749]

I'd say okay, let's see your data.

[Neonred 3,562]

You are saying that the insurance companies are wrong then? Who will rebuild your house if it gets flooded? You? Or, your more prudent fellow Floridians who have moved further inland, should they pay for your myopia?

So, just out of curiosity, what are you suggesting? All those people in Miami should be relocated inland? Force all the people that live in the Keys to move out? What about New Orleans, because of course they already live below sea level? Move all the people that live near the coast?

[Peikko 1,575]

So, just out of curiosity, what are you suggesting? All those people in Miami should be relocated inland? Force all the people that live in the Keys to move out? What about New Orleans, because of course they already live below sea level? Move all the people that live near the coast?

Suggesting? I am suggesting that Americans who live in low lying coastal regions would do better if those in authority admitted that rising sea levels are going to impact these communities and implement whatever measures are necessary to minimise the negative Impacts and thus save both money and potentially lives in endless crisis management. That would seem to me the least that these communities could and should expect.

Edited July 15, 2014 by Peikko

[Neonred 3,562]

Suggesting? I am suggesting that Americans who live in low lying coastal regions would do better if those in authority admitted that rising sea levels are going to impact these communities and implement whatever measures are necessary to minimise the negative Impacts and thus save both money and potentially lives in endless crisis management. That would seem to me the least that these communities could and should expect.

Seems that is what they are doing in Miami, right? No one is denying rising sea level. They are fixing the drainage problem.

[rlogan 2,036]

Climate change.

News at 11.

I don't quite understand how it is that climate change groupies think they have discovered something new about man's environment. Lord knows what happens when they discover tectonic plate movement, volcanos, depletion of underground water aquifers or historical asteroid calamities.

We've had huge population migrations from all manner of things from dust bowl drought to discoveries of gold to economic collapse of base industries. The climate change groupies don't seem to understand that even a worm has enough brains to climb up out of his hole when the water comes in.

The Netherlands currently has 17% of its land mass created out of land below sea level that has been reclaimed since the 16th century. They are called polders and some of them are more than 15 feet below sea level. Mankind has been dealing effectively with this problem for millennia. The fact you discovered the problem yesterday and are freaking out about it doesn't make it any more serious for people who need to busy themselves with more pressing immediate problems.

[Trumplestiltskin 5,791]

Interestingly, the dust bowl was a man made disaster. Did anyone know this?

[lostinblue 1,989]

Interestingly, the dust bowl was a man made disaster. Did anyone know this?

Droughts of great magnitude afflicted vast regions of the Americas during the Medieval period. Tree-ring and sediment cores show the Canadian plains endured 300 year period of drought between 500-800 AD. North Dakota was gripped by drought between 700–850 AD. California's Sierra Nevada experienced extremely severe drought conditions for more than two centuries between 892–1112 AD.

https://sites.google.com/site/medievalwarmperiod/Home/drought-and-the-collapse-of-mayan-civilisation

Drought is part of the natural cycle of the earth.

[DavenRoxy 1,073]

Oh yes, they can.

So are you one of those people saying the ocean is going to rise by large enough values to impact life on earth in our lifetime? That we are doomed because of global warming?

Edited July 15, 2014 by DavenRoxy

[eieio 1,594]

Interestingly, the dust bowl was a man made disaster. Did anyone know this?

So you are implying the severe multi year long drought was caused by man?

[DavenRoxy 1,073]

So you are implying the severe multi year long drought was caused by man?

No. He stated it, did not imply it. Having less long-rooted grasses would have had zero impact if the rains had come as normal, but don't think for a second you will be able to rationalize that with him.

I wonder what ocean levels were back in the 30's? Hmmmmm...