Columbia County Observer

Alarming Climate Change Effects on FL

(Posted Nov 21, 2011  08:09 am)

By Les Coleman

MIAMI, FL - Managing the Risks of Extreme Events and Disasters to Advance Climate Change Adaptation is out, and none too soon: 2011 has been one of the most costly years on record for extreme weather events worldwide, and the U.S. has had more "billion dollar events" than ever before. Released by the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the new report reveals that changes in weather patterns and resulting ocean warming will have a direct effect on Florida.

Dr. Harold Wanless, professor and chair of the Dept. of Geological Sciences, University of Miami, co-authored the report. He warns that by the end of this century, regions of South Florida will be uninhabitable.

"There is consensus that Miami-Dade County will be abandoned, basically, by the end of the century. Mumbai will be abandoned - 15 million people, Atlantic City - you name it. With a four- or five-foot rise in sea level, most of the deltas of the world will be abandoned."

The rise in sea level is a result of warming due to carbon dioxide gas released into the atmosphere from burning fossil fuels, Wanless explains. As sea water warms, polar ice melts.

The report reflects the recognition that the changing planetary climate is increasing living creatures' exposure to extreme weather events. By managing risk and boosting preparedness, the report suggests, humans can increase their resiliency to potentially devastating events.

The Obama Administration is working to increase climate resiliency throughout the U.S. However, for South Florida, Wanless says it may be too little, too late.

"South Florida has seen about a 10-inch rise in sea level since 1930. That's about eight times the rate over the several thousand years before that."

Florida Gov. Rick Scott told reporters last year that global warming and climate change are unproven. Scott's office did not respond to a request for comments on the report.

Wanless says the water is lapping at Floridians' feet.

"We're at levels now that we haven't seen for 600,000 years or so; we'll shortly be at levels we haven't seen in over a million years, at which time sea levels were about 100 feet higher than they are today. That's where we're heading."

Wanless says he hopes Scott will get the message, adding that the governor's own home in Naples would be swamped.

Comments  (to add a comment go here)

On Dec 24, 2011 Terry Rauch from Lake City wrote:

     To make statements with no facts to back them is a page from the story "Chicken Little".

     There is consensus that Miami-Dade County will be abandoned, basically, by the end of the century. What facts are they using? To help everybody out "consensus" means: A general agreement.

     Who made this agreement?

     Let's put a little "common sense" in the mix and refer to a 5th grade earth science book. It claims "the earth does not receive water from outer space nor does any water leave the planet to outer space." So we live more or less speaking in a big ball. Water moves around the earth to different places, but it mass never changes. So how will this great flooding happen if the water mass is the same?

     Did it ever cross the minds of the so called elite professors that maybe our springs are going dry because the water from the springs has been pulled by the northern poll and frozen in the Antarctic? Possible? Sure and it's far more plausible than the garbage I am reading from their report.

     From all of the reports I have read over the years of the "global warming" scare, the one thing I can conclude is: The global warming scare will not ever end because if they did, these scientist that have no talent nor abilities to be scientist would have to get a normal job doing physical labor. I wonder if that will be the next scare? Scientist actually have to produce proof to their claims. Theories, hypothesis and postulates are not expectable.