CLIMATE KEY: Sea-level rise as a result of climate change will likely flood the Florida Keys, and residents are struggling to come up with a climate action plan.
Image: flickr/machbel
BIG PINE KEY, Fla. -- In Chris Bergh's neighborhood, the difference between no man's land and lush forest is a five-minute walk.
At the end of one street, 5 feet above sea level, endangered Key deer and rabbits roam past driveways before darting behind thick pine trees lining both sides of the road. Behind the green walls, they slurp from drinking pools fed by an ample supply of fresh water underneath the ground.
As the road gradually slopes downward toward 1 foot above sea level, the pine trees get sparser and wildlife disappears. The shrubby landscape thrives on salt water that seeped through the ground or came from storms, killing off or driving away much of the freshwater ecosystem.
Bergh stopped at the end of the road, where the landscape turns into a mangrove-filled marsh. The only reminder of the pine tree forest that once grew there is a white stump.
"As the sea rises and the salt water keeps coming in, the rest of the area eventually is going to look like this marsh," said Bergh, a director at the Nature Conservancy. "It's just a matter of time."
The future inundation of Big Pine Key is one of many issues that Bergh said he hopes are addressed as part of Monroe County's first-ever climate action plan, set to be released this fall.
The county is the southernmost in the United States, with acreage that is 73 percent water over its 3,737 square miles. It covers portions of the Florida Everglades and the Big Cypress National Preserve, but most of its population of 74,000 resides in the Keys, which are connected by a single highway. Climate change models predict that much of the area could be underwater eventually because of sea-level rise, a process fueled by rising temperatures.
Bergh is the vice chairman of a 11-person advisory committee of city officials, county representatives, environmentalists and other appointed members tasked with providing recommendations on climate change to Monroe's Board of County Commissioners, the Keys' governing body. The commissioners can in turn implement the document in the entire county -- if they approve it -- via their control over agency staff and spending.
Putting the plan together involves hours of meetings, as the committee considers everything from controlling garbage emissions to encouraging planting of native flowers. Florida's "sunshine laws" force them to try to maximize their time, as they are allowed to communicate on the details only in publicly advertised forums.
The draft plan is not meant to be a regulatory framework far in the weeds or a legal mandate. Instead, it makes broad suggestions, such as "provide support to implement water conservation measures."
Will a climate action plan survive?
Even so, officials here say the climate action plan could make a big difference in whether the Florida Keys sit completely vulnerable to the impacts of rising temperatures. Among other things, the county controls zoning regulations, and any changes on how high things are built, and where they are built, likely will have roots in the final document.
"The plan is absolutely critical for keeping climate change on the county agenda," said Michael Roberts, an official in the county Growth Management Division.
At a meeting of the climate change advisory committee in June, officials explained how the action plan meetings -- which have occurred for the past year -- are already driving policy.
Alison Higgins, sustainability coordinator for Key West, said the process prompted her to add climate change considerations to the city's 10-year review of its comprehensive plan, which governs land regulations. The framework will be voted on in October. The seemingly small language changes could determine whether everything from shopping malls to roads consider sea-level rise when undergoing construction.
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20 Comments
Add CommentI don't see the problem. Just get Republican Governor Rick Scott to say global warming is a lie.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhen the sea hears that, it'll just go away.
What a ridiculous article. This wasn't about mitigating the effects of global warming, it was all about ridiculous politicians and how they are in their own way in the politicians never ending quest for power and money. Controlled burning to make trees more resilient to salt water? Yeah that makes sense, lets try to reduce global warming by burning trees and releasing not only all kinds of pollution into the air but heat as well. And we have all seen what can happen with "controlled" burning if the Los Alamos area is any kind of example. Yet another example as to why politicians and the scientists they pay should not be making any sort of recommendations.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAll this article proves is the reason politicians and some scientists want to claim humans are the one and only cause of global warming is because they want yet another excuse to pillage money from everyone else.
The planet appears to be warming and it is natural. The fact that it is natural is still no excuse for humans to just pollute. However, the mistake that will be made is attempting to save everything, even when it cant be. If the islands do go underwater, that is about it and attempting to save freshwater forests will be a total waste of money and time better spent on mitigation efforts that will have an effect. That said, spending massive amounts of money and time based on warmist rigged computer models spelling out certain doom for all when in fact all of the so called calamities prophesied by these models may not occur or be as drastic as they have rigged the models to predict. That is the problem with theories proven entirely by statistical models where nearly every bit of data is an average of an average of an average. They really have no idea what will happen and the same exact data could statistically prove nothing at all will happen in the keys or anywhere else.
People, billions of us, help speed change. Unfortunately, the end result is often lethal.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSince you are accusing climate scientists of "rigging" computer models (a very serious accusation), do you have any evidence of said rigging?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thispriddseren,
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt was a herculean task, but I think you were able to introduce a factual error in every single sentence of your rant (a 2 in some!). Quite entertaining.
This would be a great topic for discussion by the Presidential candidates when they visit "swing-state" Florida. Let's hope that the Florida media and the residents are concerned enough to ask about the potential disaster.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWell said lampora.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIsn't he the one recently saying how Fla wasn't losing land to GW? Even if not when towns have to deal with the effects that have already happened and from that knowledge plan for the future, he just rants lies because his cult of deniers is being proved wrong every day.
Can Priddseren spell Troll? Can't handle the facts so just insults.
Stepping outside and arguing with a fencepost is a more productive use of time than arguing with a global warming denier. While the foremost liar, Richard Muller, has finally admitted the primary facts of global warming and its human cause, the strategy has shifted to stalling action.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIf you want to stall necessary action on any problem in the world there is no more effective strategy than normalizing stupidity.
All global warming deniers are shills that spew illogical nonsense. The purpose of a shill is make a crackpot idea seem plausible by agreeing with it. You see this in television ads where some worthless piece of garbage or complete waste of time is sold by a huckster with a shill acting as a happy customer that is jumping with joy.
It's no different in the case of global warming denial to protect the profits of old energy systems at the expense of new energy systems and those who live on coastal plains and islands that will be inundated when the glaciers melt.
From the beginning, more thoughtful persons have seen themselves as too dignified to be involved with politics or to actively oppose the destruction of their world. Our punishment for our failure to step up and fight is to be ruled by the stupid and to witness the consequences of our dereliction of duty.
Look we need to face reality. IT IS TOO LATE. Nothing we can do will slow or reverse the warming that will happen over the next 100 years.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisEven if we adopted every single measure designed to mitigate what we've done, and did so perfectly, we would NOT see any impact until next century.
If you don't believe that, then google it. I know I did many times, and the story is always the same from climatologists.
What we should do is try to prepare as best as we can for the changes we have caused.
<b>To that end, the state of Florida is going to make a fine and dandy Atlantic Ocean version of the Great Barrier Reef, and I don't see anything wrong with that.
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Instead of trying to protect the Keys, we should be trying to find ways to make them disappear sooner!
[b]the state of Florida is going to make a fine and dandy Atlantic Ocean version of the Great Barrier Reef, and I don't see anything wrong with that.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThat's stupid. It's a prime example of what I'm talking about. Being a defeatist because you're too lazy to get up, go out, meet with people, and do something is stupid.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this20 million people live where a few thousand used to and folks claim to care about the environment?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisFlorida from north to south is an environmnental disaster zone
Jonathanseer says that since we can't immediately undo what we have done, we should just continue to do it. We should in fact make it worse, almost inconceivably worse, while devoting all our time to fighting the mess we have made. Until the mess is so big it destroys our civilization. Good plan.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisan aside:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"The county is the southernmost in the United States'
I'm not an American but wasn't that U.S. Customs I went through when I went to Maui in March?
The county is the southernmost in the United States, with acreage that is 73 percent water over its 3,737 square miles.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisZZZZZZT...Guess again. Try about 7,000 miles away in the middle of the Pacific. Southpoint USA is on the Big Island of Hawaii. In fact it's the only county in the country that is below the 20th parallel and actually in the tropics.
At any rate, if the rich snobs down in the Keys want to spend their money on greening up the place I'm all for it, but why stop there? They need to clean up the rest of that dump they call a paradise state.
Thanks singing flea...i had to get a permit for one of the campgrounds in Maui and I was pretty sure it was at the 'county' building. Not quite as far south as the Big Island but right next door.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt's what they did in North Carolina...passed a law making it illegal to talk about climate change along the coast.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMartin
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSo exactly what is a denier? Do you prejudicially group people by race when you are not doing so on climate change?
Most who have studied the issue agree that more CO2 will lead to some warming in all other things remain the same. In the actual earth system things do not remain the same and are considered additional forcings. Some are positive and some are negative.
The bottom line is that there continues to be a large uncertainty regarding the rate of warming associated with more CO2. It could be anywhere from 1C to over 3C for a doubling of CO2. No scientist will tell you today that they know what the number is plus or minus .5C.
There is the 2nd huge issue of what will happen to the lives of people around the world if it does get warmer. Will it rain more or less where people live? Again, nobody can answer this question reliably today. There are simply no reliable models that can predict future conditions with sufficient accuracy to be relied upon for making policy decisions.
Please try to keep learning and try to stop being prejudiced with those who may disagree with your preconceived ideas.
This is just the latest flavor of denialism. Aka lying about science due to commercial interests.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisClimate sensitivity has been calculated as about 3.5C for a doubling of CO2 in the 70s and that number has not changed since.
I don't see a real response to pumping CO2 into the atmosphere until storm surge makes low lying real estate nonviable and 100 year storms such as the one that devastated Oklahoma City become commonplace. After one "act of God" after another convinces people "that God helps those who help themselves" by sending scientifically literate people to Congress. Hopefully, by then India and China will have got the message.
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