Florida Keys face climate change now as sea rises

(Photo of beach in Florida Keys from Flickr and photographer Vladeb/Brian Garrett)

The Florida Keys are already feeling the damage from rising seas and climate change. The low-lying island chain is being eroded, flooded and losing unique wildlife – and that’s not just from hurricanes. The seas have risen 9 inches in the past century.

I’ve seen the encroaching water close-up. We bought a condo on the ocean in Islamorada in the mid-1990s. And we sold it 10 years later, in large part because the water was lapping at our building, requiring a seawall to be built. Aside from several hurricanes in recent years that took out our dock, insurance costs had skyrocketed and we knew if our building ever was destroyed they’d have to rebuild further back and smaller, and some of us would be out of luck.

An article in the Christian Science Monitor last week talked about frequent flooding of streets, the death of foliage from salt water, and gradual disappearance of some animals needing fresh water – like the tiny Key deer. A study at the University of Miami said a best-case scenario would be the sea rising another 7 inches by 2100. Worst case was 55 inches.

That would just about wipe out everything. Most of the Keys are flat and little more than a block wide, with water on both sides.

Some efforts are underway to combat flooding streets – for example in Key West where they are putting in gravity wells at intersections. And there’s talk about raising some roads. But money is short and I can’t see that they’d ever be able to save this wonderful, beautiful spot if the water rose even 24 inches.

What’s happening in the Keys is starting to occur on other coastlines, where beach erosion is eating away at the shore.

Just a reminder that climate change legislation is about more than what the coal companies want and the politics of getting re-elected.

(Sources: Christian Science Monitor, ClimateWire)

Rising seas on Delaware coast lead to study

(Photo of Delaware coast with two WWII towers from Flickr and photographer m wms)

News Update 1: Sea levels along 25 miles of Delaware coastline are rising at the rate of about 1 foot per century. Thermal expansion from global warming, along with erosion, settling and sediment blockage by man-made structures, have caused problems for some time. A historic lighthouse at Cape Henlopen fell into the sea in 1926 and two WWII towers are surrounded by water during heavy storms or extremely high tides. After a storm and flooding in May, state environmental officials are concerned about what the future holds as far as storm frequency and intensity, wetlands loss, rainfall, flooding, erosion and changes in groundwater aquifers. So they are working with NOAA over the next two years to map the land under the sea with a new technology called LiDAR, which uses digital photography to identify and find solutions to impending problems. (Sources: delawareonline, Greenwire)

Levee weakness, rising seas could put Washington under water if major storm hits

(Photo of Jefferson Memorial from Flickr and photographer ktylerconk/Kathleen Conklin)

News Update 2: I recently read a futuristic novel about global warming, in which a rising Potomac River caused a Katrina-like flood to inundate Washington, D.C. So I was struck when I saw this story on The Daily Green this week: Officials are saying a 70-year-old levee system in the capital is at risk of failing in a major storm. If the levee system fails, downtown Washington could be under 10 feet of water, officials said. Built on reclaimed swamp, national monuments, museums and office buildings are at increasing risk as global warming increases sea levels, development causes more storm run-off and heavier rains threaten. Three of the levees, inconspicuous because they’re covered by grassy berms, are deficient, according to the Army Corps of Engineers, and the District of Columbia has committed $2.5 million to repair them. On several occasions sandbags have been put out on the National Mall to protect monuments and in 2006 heavy rain damaged several downtown buildings and closed the Justice Department. (Sources: The Daily Green, Associated Press)

Cost of doing nothing about global warming: up to $3.6 trillion a year for losses in the U.S.

(Photo of damage from Hurricane Katrina from Flickr and and photographer SAsqrd/Steve.)

Weekly Angst: Every time I hear that it will cost too much to fight climate change and will “wreck the economy,” I say to myself (or sometimes out loud), “But what will it cost if we DON'T do anything?” So I was happy to see that Tufts University has just released a report on the cost of doing nothing, commissioned by the Natural Resources Defense Council.

The study determined that continuing business-as-usual in terms of greenhouse gases could end up costing the U.S. economy as much as $3.6 trillion a year by the end of the century.

They also estimated that the cost of four major climate change impacts – coastal hurricanes, real-estate damage from rising seas, increased energy costs to meet hot temperatures, and water scarcity – would rise over time and could cost $1.9 trillion annually by 2100. The breakdown for that year:
• Hurricane damages $422 billion
• Real estate losses: $360 billion
• Increased energy costs: $141 billion
• Water costs: $950 billion

Other hard-hit sectors include tourism and agriculture.

“The longer we wait, the more painful and expensive the consequences will be,” said Dan Lashof, director of NRDC’s Climate Center.

The report predicted an average temperature increase of 13 degrees Fahrenheit in most of the U.S. in the next century and 18 degrees in Alaska, which is warming faster. Seas were predicted to rise 23 inches by 2050 and 45 inches by 2100, engulfing coastlines.

If global warming continues unchecked, the analysis found, New York City will have the climate of Las Vegas, and San Francisco will feel like New Orleans.

“Climate change is on a collision course with the U.S. economy,” warned Frank Ackerman, lead author of the study. The researchers used a new British model for figuring overall costs. They looked at economic losses, non-economic damages and the increased risk of catastrophe.

Climate disasters
And speaking of the increased risk of catastrophe, an op-ed piece in the New York Times Saturday by Charles M. Blow pointed out that we’re already experiencing more costly extreme weather disasters.

There have been four times as many weather disasters worldwide in the past 30 years as in the preceding 75, he said, citing the Center for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters. The U.S. has suffered most of them.

Of the 30 costliest hurricanes in the U.S. history, 10 have occurred since 2000, according to the National Hurricane Center. The worst year, of course, was 2005 (Katrina et al), with an estimated $39 billion loss.

Report’s recommendations
But getting back to the Tufts/NRDC report – it concludes with three overriding recommendations for action:
1. Enact comprehensive mandatory limits on global warming pollution to stimulate investment and guarantee that we meet emission targets.
2. Overcome barriers to investment in energy efficiency.
3. Accelerate development and deployment of emerging clean energy technologies.

Do it and do it now. Then we can avoid most of these costs (not all, though, because GHG in the atmosphere now will be there for many years.) And, of course, it’s not just financial cost. Think about the human cost of all these disasters. It’s mind-boggling.

Download the report.

(Sources: NRDC, Greenwire, New York Times)