At the University of Miami lecture last night, where Dr. Harold Wanless spoke on global warming and sea level rise, what was shocking was the size of the audience. There were well over 150 people in attendance. You could have heard a pin drop, as Dr. Wanless outlined recent science and data showing that ice melt in Greenland, the Arctic and Antarctica are occurring at a far faster pace than climate scientists anticipated only a few years ago.
People are paying attention, finally, even if the threat of sea level rise has scarcely broken the surface of political discourse. Dr. Wanless wryly noted that the disappearance of arctic ice is being championed as as opportunity for drilling more oil. The main focus of public policy should be two-fold: transition as quickly as possible away from fossil fuels, and, begin to plan and invest for moving the key landmarks of civilization away from the coasts.
Scientists can't put a timeline on when sea level rise will manifest, although anyone with a bit of imagination can go to Alton Road and 10th Street on Miami Beach at a normal high tide and see for themselves: we are just getting the first taste.
At 11AM today, the CLEO Institute in Miami is organizing a rally right there, next to the Whole Foods Market, "to call on presidential candidates to address sea level rise that is impacting our communities right now".
5 comments:
High tide at 12:30 at Matheson Hammock. It should be quite a sight!
check out 2min rap-video re Climate challange http://youtu.be/sRS6LnnBs5s
When and where is the next Wanless lecture? His audience will be even larger the next time around.
Wanless and others like Capt. Dan Kipness who speaks on climate change impacts to worlds ocean (and food supply) should speak before County commission and (gasp) Florida legislature. Our city and state are most at risk in North America.
Go and look at high tide? Are you serious? You as much as admit when you say no one knows when the melt will manifest in sea level rise and then say you can go look at it at high tide. What a joke! If icebergs are melting, sea level should go up. If it's not, where is the water going? And where is the preponderance of scientific evidence that the globe is warming except from the lips of scientists cooking the books to further their political agenda? And even if you are granted that we are warming, where is the preponderance off scientific evidence proving anthropogenic causation except from the lips of the same agent provocateurs? What a bunch of liberal hooey.
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