Monday, December 10, 2012

Environmental Geohazards

"What we know is that sea level has risen about a foot -- more than 0.3 metres in New York over the last century.
"Under conservative projections, we expect at least half a metre of sea-level rise during the 21st Century.  You raise the floor of the basketball court and you get more slam dunks."
Radley Horton, climatologist, Columbia University Center for Climate research

That was a slam-dunk that hit the coastal regions of New York and New Jersey on the U.S. eastern seaboard.  Some slam-dunk.  The long-drawn-out process of repairing buildings, homes and lives in the wake of superstorm Sandy has underlined the issue of environmental change and its impacts .  It took just a few hours for a nearly three-metre storm surge to rise and sweep along the country's most densely populated areas.

Thousands of homes were destroyed, and people living on the barrier islands and coastal regions of an ocean where rising levels promise even more frequent and greater upheavals have good reason to wonder what their future holds.  Government officials in New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Delaware and on down through to the Carolinas are taking a second, hard look at their regulations and building codes.

The feasibility of doing what the Netherlands has done and Italy is undertaking, of building dikes and storm barriers and restoring wetlands and marshes has become a sudden very costly priority.  "There are millions of people who live in areas like this and, you know, at what point does it make sense to just call it a day and not have people live there?" asked a disaster expert and chairman of one of three New York State commissions examining the aftermath.

New weather patterns have underlined the dangers inherent in allowing building in areas that should never have received permits.  People are drawn to places where common sense should inform authorities if not lovers to ocean-proximity that there may be trouble down the road.  Nature is unpredictable at any time, and there are times when the sheer power and magnitude of her storm systems simply overwhelm the ability of mere humans to endure. 

We should defer instead.

The science journal Nature has published a report informing that a 1-1/2-metre  sea-level rise is on its way, irrespective of carbon emission reductions.  That kind of rise is guaranteed to permanently flood seven percent of New York, nine percent of Boston, 94 percent of Miami Beach, and 20 percent of Miami, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

The cyclical warming of the Atlantic Ocean, high tide, full moon and two weather systems clashing forced Sandy into an inland trajectory.  And too many people have established their living quarters in high-risk areas subject to climate variability.  Like people elsewhere living at the foot of volcanoes that periodically erupt, close by earthquake-prone zones, and in low-lying flatlands where floods have habitually overtaken the scenery.

In the Philippines, Interior Secretary Mar Roxas announced: "We are going to look at what really happened.  There are allegations of illegal mining, there are allegations of the force of nature.  We will find out why there are homes in these geohazard locations."  Government geological hazard maps indicate the farming town of New Bataan with its 45,000 population was built in 1968 in an area classified as "highly susceptible to flooding and landslides."

The powerful typhoon Bopha that hit the Philippines killed over 500 people, rendered 310,000 homeless and evacuation centres are bulging with refugees.  Government agencies have been busy rushing in food and emergency supplies.  "I want to know how this tragedy happened and how to prevent a repeat" announced President Benigno Aquini III.  See above.

And at the United Nations climate talks that took place in Qatar last week, wealthy and indigent countries had harsh words over funding promises meant to assist the developing world in costs related to mitigating global warming and adapting to the environmental and weather changes related to it.

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