SEA LEVEL RISE: Local officials in southeast Florida are considering plans to cope with coming sea-level rise and would like to know what both candidates for president might do to address the issue.
Image: Flickr/mosaic_photo
More than 120 Florida officials and scientists sent a letter to the campaigns of President Obama and Mitt Romney last week, urging the candidates to address sea-level rise in their final debate and during tours of the state.
The action comes at a time when four counties in southeast Florida are weighing passage of a regional climate plan, completed this month, that sets broad goals on how to alter Florida infrastructure for rising seas and warming temperatures. Broward County, which includes Fort Lauderdale, is set to consider the plan as early as this month, as well as incorporate some of its recommendations by early January in the county's comprehensive plan, which governs long-term land use.
In the letter, which was delivered to both the state and national campaign headquarters of the Romney and Obama campaigns, the officials and scientists note that tide gauges in Florida documented an 8-inch rise in sea level in the 20th century.
"This rise in sea level is now resulting in the flooding of city streets and parking areas at seasonal high tides, the abandonment of drinking water wells in coastal communities due to salt water intrusion, and the failure of flood control structures to operate during high tides," states the letter.
Florida mayors, county commissioners, engineers, economists and scientists signed the letter, which was released by the Union of Concerned Scientists. They posed three questions for Obama and Romney to address during Florida stops and at an Oct. 22 debate in Boca Raton, including "What will be the federal government's planning and policy priorities in order to reduce the risks of sea level rise?"
Obama mentions climate change in Miami
The Obama and Romney campaigns did not respond to a request for comment. The Union of Concerned Scientists released an email from Katherine Archuleta, national political director for the Obama campaign, stating that she would forward the letter to the "policy team."
Obama is under pressure from environmental groups and some wealthy donors to discuss the impacts of climate change on the campaign trail. They believe that its near-omission from the high-profile race is disproportionate to the consequences of rising temperatures. He may be hearing them.
Obama mentioned climate change several times in campaign speeches last week, including in Ohio, California and Florida.
On Thursday, the president told a Miami crowd that he will advance the clean energy sector if he is re-elected.
"And it will be good for our environment," Obama said. "It will do something about carbon in our atmosphere -- and that is not a joke. That is not a hoax. That's our children's future. And folks here in Miami understand that better than anybody, because the impact of climate change will be significant on our kids and our grandkids unless we take those steps. We can't just deny our way out of these things. It's a threat to our children's future."
Romney has said that greenhouse gas regulations threaten the coal industry and the economy.
"The regulatory burden under this administration has just gone crazy," Romney said last week. "They, of course, want to regulate dust."
There also has been some push-back in Florida. During hearings on Broward's plan, some residents told commissioners that they believed climate change was a hoax and members of the real estate industry urged caution on the idea of altering building codes, according to the south Florida Sun-Sentinel.
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18 Comments
Add CommentI have a plan if you don't like being flooded you move. Done,no government involvement needed.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisdrafter, I am sure your advice will be appreciated by the 634 million people world-wide who live less than 30 feet above sea level. I can't imagine any problems with moving that many people around over the next century. (Note that you don't have to be underwater to have to move - 30 feet accounts for seasonal flooding, tides, storms, etc.)
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOr, nearer term, the 7-10 million people just in Bangladesh who will be displaced if the sea level rises just 400 mm. They will be pleased to hear your advice, which no one in the world had thought of before. After all, we know the Bangladeshi have plenty of reserve funds to care for them, as well as lots of land to which they can move.
They might as well send a letter to King Canute, as no governments anywhere have the balls to do do what has to be done, as it will upset the fatcats running the government and the voters...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis includes population control measures...
Oh, well, I'm sure libertarians like drafter would LOVE the next thing all those people would do, which is SUE THEM for causing climate change. Oh, they wouldn't like that, but I thought that was the whole libertarian answer to everything to do with environmental issues, "its a tort, sue someone"...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this@Prideseren,
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisA few points:
1. I am not at all surprised that you have swallowed the Murdoch's lies from the Daily Mail with a a ton of credulity and not a ounce of skepticism.
2. The U.K Met Office has issued a correction of the erroneous Daily Mail article:
http://metofficenews.wordpress.com/2012/10/14/met-office-in-the-media-14-october-2012/
Here are a few excerpts for you:
"Q.1 “First, please confirm that they do indeed reveal no warming trend since 1997.”
The linear trend from August 1997 (in the middle of an exceptionally strong El Nino) to August 2012 (coming at the tail end of a double-dip La Nina) is about 0.03°C/decade, amounting to a temperature increase of 0.05°C over that period, but equally we could calculate the linear trend from 1999, during the subsequent La Nina, and show a more substantial warming.
As we’ve stressed before, choosing a starting or end point on short-term scales can be very misleading. Climate change can only be detected from multi-decadal timescales due to the inherent variability in the climate system. If you use a longer period from HadCRUT4 the trend looks very different. For example, 1979 to 2011 shows 0.16°C/decade (or 0.15°C/decade in the NCDC dataset, 0.16°C/decade in GISS). Looking at successive decades over this period, each decade was warmer than the previous – so the 1990s were warmer than the 1980s, and the 2000s were warmer than both. Eight of the top ten warmest years have occurred in the last decade.
Over the last 140 years global surface temperatures have risen by about 0.8ºC. However, within this record there have been several periods lasting a decade or more during which temperatures have risen very slowly or cooled. The current period of reduced warming is not unprecedented and 15 year long periods are not unusual."
Funny how reality bears no reality to your lies, eh?
Priddseren is a troll here who isn't worth mentioning other than pointing out he is a troll.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAs one who lives in Fla I find it amazing our pols, mostly repub deniers would admit sea rise even though it's obvious from the problems we have with low lying areas. Much beach, islands have disappeared over the last 30-45 yrs I've been watching them.
Plus much of the western Everglades has chaged from fresh to salt completely changing it's ecosystem at least the parts that haven't completely gone.
Myself I'm moving back on my solar powered/cooled trimaram as even if the changes needed are done, it'll be decades before the rising stops if ever because we are likely past the tipping point for it.
Though we still need to cut fossil fuels for pollution and CO2 from acidfying the oceans making them a vast wasteland.
And it's not hard, in fact cheaper to go RE as FF prices rise and RE is falling fast. I'm building a small cabin, 144sq' that has offgrid solar power that can do all power needed including A/C. Yet I'll make a good profit selling them for $15k!! For low cost PV, around $1/wt
sunelec.com is a source among others.
My EV's cost 25% of similar ICEs to run because fuel costs are so low and EV eff is so high. And we are finally getting Ethanol here so it's rarely used unlimited range generator can be RE fueled.
The tech is here and has been for decades if not a century in most cases. RE machines are more simple than a moped and no reason they should cost over $2k/kw which is lower than utility power.
"1. drafter
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this11:07 AM 10/15/12
I have a plan if you don't like being flooded you move. Done,no government involvement needed."
I am sure the millions of people who will lose their homes will appreciate you allowing them to move in with you.
Trent1492 rejoins the fight. His Mom must be airing out the cushions from her basement couch so he had to move to the computer.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis sea-level thing has been thoroughly discredited. As to Trent1492 regurgitation of Alarmist Propaganda, even the British Meteoirlogical Office is now stating that there has been no global warming since 1997.
Asking Obama or Romney to comment on it is like asking them to comment on phrenology.
Maybe ask Darryl (I'm a Mermaid, so I know all about sea level rise) Hannah or James (My CO2 Footprint is Bigger than Yours) Cameron.
Or better yet, Call Al (I'm Too Sexy for my Subsidies)Gore.
@Shoshin,
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIf it is not the Star Trek geologist! How is the mining for those fictive dilithium crystals?
Shoshin falsely claims that sea level rise has been discredited without citing any peer reviewed science. Funny that.
Of course the real story here is that the throughout the 20th century sea level had been rising at 2mm a year. That was a anomalous rise not seen in 10,0000 years. Now for the past 20 years sea level is rising at 3.2mm a year. Here is the evidence.
Current global warming appears anomalous in
relation to the climate of the last 20 000 years:
http://www.int-res.com/articles/cr_oa/c048p005.pdf
I like citing the next paper because his idiocy (Sisko) cites the site without actually reading it:
http://sealevel.colorado.edu/content/reconstructing-sea-level-using-cyclostationary-empirical-orthogonal-functions
From the abstract of the article:
"The computed rate of global mean sea level rise from the reconstructed time series is 1.97 mm/yr from 1950 to 2009 and 3.22 mm/yr from 1993 to 2009."
But I am sure you and your fellow travelers will not let such little things as scientific facts get in the way of good lie, right?
May I also suggest that you look at the links from post#6 where once again the U.K's Daily Fail is corrected by the British Met Office for their misrepresentations, once again.
It's interesting how this seal level rise is always 'somewhere else'. More or less zero change where I live.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAs for Romney and Obama...? What exactly are they suppose to do? Fluffy declarations?
Using Florida as some example of 'whatever' is silly. It's basically a termpory flatland that is variable in coastal outline for thousands of years.
@GeojellyRoll,
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhy are you so immune to scientific facts? It has been demonstrated empirically in peer reviewed literature that the sea level rise of the past century is anomalous for the entire Holocene. Yet, here you are denying those facts. So I want to know is what gives with the snubbing of reality?
No Lesser Fool than Phil Jones stated that temperatures have not risen in the past 16 years. I guess after Climategate he's decided to stop lying to himself and everyone else.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAnother Godhead bites the dust.
Meanwhile Al Gore and the WWF deforest Indonesia driving up their CO2 emissions by astronomical amounts in his quest to become the Palm Oil King of the Universe.
Even I can't make this up.
The only reason none of this matters is that CO2 is a non-issue. So Al and the Panda Packers, carry on!
@Northernguy,
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI can not tell you how convincing your statement about how one anonymous dude who lives in an unnamed city, that is built behind dikes can not observe sea level rise where he lives. /Sarcasm.
Northern Guy Says: Perhaps the oceans adhere to a different set of physics on the east coast.
Trent Says: Perhaps it is time you learned that Earth's oceans are not a bathtub. Many local factors can influence sea level:
1. Isostatic rebound from the last Ice Age.
2. Subsidence from local ground water being extracted.
3. Residing near a subduction zone
Then we have the consideration of ice sheet gravitational pull and the distance from the ice sheet. Believe it or not sea level is not uniform around the world and your Kindergarten notions of what you should be observing at your undisclosed locality are not worth jack.
Let's see now. The earth has been in a general warming trend since the end of the last ice age, over 10k years ago. We have no evidence that that long term trend will stop. So, whether you believe it is all natural, part natural and partly influenced by man, or all man's fault, the earth is warming and the smarter one's will prepare for it.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe dumber ones will sit around bickering like 3rd graders over what is causing it.
(I really wish the aliens would take me away from this planet...no, this galaxy.)
North Carolina already passed a law against Sea Level Rise perhaps Florida should pass a similar law.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI am a 4th generation Floridian and I moved in 1975 because of the predictions of Florida being inundated. The water table is to be contaminated by salt water before more of the land is covered.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI now live in Indiana. I don't know if Drought is better or not. All of our native trees are dying, so I have been thinking about transplanting some Florida trees like scrub oaks. At least they like hot weather.
Oh yes, at this point, who cares about how this all was "caused"? It is beyond that point, we just need to try and slow down those things that will make our Climate worse than it already will be.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAnd if you really believe that Climate Change is not happening then how do you explain all the fighting over who will "own" and drill in the Arctic???? This was not in the picture 20 years ago. Oil Corporations disseminate lies on one hand and with the other are attempting to drill....Russia plants a flag under the Arctic sea. America is in Africa training troops for various countries, on how to deal with Climate Change mass migrations. Greenland is becoming a magnet for Geologists and Corporations who want the recently and soon to be uncovered oil, and minerals and rare earth.
Corporations are planning ahead while denying climate change is happening. They think that the Public is stupid and don't mind that millions will die as long as they Profit.
I absolutely agree with what you say about sea level varying sometimes dramatically over the surface of the earth. In fact I could name a few contributing factors that you didn't include in your list.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThat is my point! Shorelines change, sometimes temporarily sometimes permanently. What I'm curious about is why when the sea level doesn't rise somewhere it is just a natural outcome but when it does rise somewhere it is "proof" that the predicted rise has arrived.
As for my _kindergarten notions of what I should be observing_ they are based on what leading climatologists claimed would happen right here. They claimed thirty years ago that within our lifetime we would be inundated by the rising seas with catastrophic consequences for the city. Speaking with the certitude of settled science they keep repeating the mantra of imminent catastrophe even though half a lifetime has gone by since the original prediction with barely perceptible change in water levels.
When ever people post comments about their observed climate change consequences where they live I post a comment countering it with observations of greater reciprocal effects somewhere else on the planet. My observations are as relevant as anyone else's. I just don't draw conclusions about the next thousand years from them.
Some other observations about where I live. It, like half of North America, was covered by thousands of feet of ice not too long ago. That has been steadily melting ever since its peak. The result is slowly rising temperatures and slowly rising sea levels. It is definitely warmer than before here and everywhere else on earth. The level of warmth is increasing.
Comments about disappearing sandbar islands off the coast of Florida are no more proof of anthropogenic global warming than my comment about the absence of similar effect in deep water harbors on the west coast North America is proof that it is not happening.
The only difference is that I don't engage in name calling or other forms of abuse when I make such posts.