The article mentions king tides and cites a report [0] that the floods are getting worse.
[0] http://www.rsmas.miami.edu/news-events/press-releases/2016/n...
[0] http://www.rsmas.miami.edu/news-events/press-releases/2016/n...
If only way to be sure is to wait for the data to show up 50-100 year baseline data for flooding, then by the time you act - all the costly infrastructure commitments have been made... it's another form of socializing the costs while privatizing the profits.
Sea walls, land use changes, water pumping, loss of wetlands all affect the severity of tides. All these things could be changed to avoid issues while completely ignoring climate change for now.... Yet they do nothing. Ocean bathymetry is extremely complex, messing with one thing on a shoreline effects everything around it. Just yelling "It's all climate change" is both stupid and dangerous. Trying to stop the shoreline from moving is stupid, expensive, and in the long term, dangerous.
That is wishful thinking. The clear consensus is that we can't, and that it's not a close call.
The clear consensus is that AGW is real. That is a far cry from saying that there is a clear consensus that it must be dealt with ever, let alone that it must be dealt with in the near-term.
I encourage you to read the IPCC summary report; it will clear up a lot of mysteries.
If you mean that there is no political consensus in the United States, yes, that's true beyond a doubt.
If you mean that there is no consensus among scientists and experts in the field, then that's wrong. There is and has been a clear consensus that we "must" act urgently.
However, if we're looking at the actions of everyone who might actually deal with it, then there's a clear consensus that we're actually choosing to face the consequences instead.
"Must" implies a degree of certainty, a statement that we will have to deal with it one way or another, and thus we will deal with it - however, that doesn't seem to be the case here, it is quite plausible that we will choose to not deal with it properly. It would be nice if we acted urgently, but there's no "must" there - it's quite likely that we will not do so.
If we want to use the word "must" then it might be more appropriate to say that irreversible climate change is the thing that must occur, given the current global political 'climate'.
> if we're looking at the actions of everyone who might actually deal with it, then there's a clear consensus that we're actually choosing to face the consequences instead.
Very many are denying that climate change is happening, or falling back to denying the consequences, or falling back to saying there's nothing we can do about it.
After you've made a decision that for your country/company/party/economic group/whatever the desired course of action is to not work against climate change, then you still have to communicate and "sell" that decision to everyone else, and denying the consequences or saying that we can't do anything has much less backlash than openly saying "fuck you, got mine".
While it's also true that "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!", I believe that most of the involved politicians understand the future consequences (at least the mid-term consequences to their particular area) quite well, but politic communication is about telling whatever will get your goals achieved the best, not about communicating your personal beliefs truthfully.
It's the same thing with jobs - can you imagine any politician telling to a distressed area/industry "no, your jobs are never going to come back" even if that's an obvious truth?
> can you imagine any politician telling to a distressed area/industry "no, your jobs are never going to come back" even if that's an obvious truth?
One thing I like about Bill Clinton is that he actually would say that, at least sometimes. Few have that political courage.
Personally, I didn't know about the Gulf El Nino issue kls pointed out, but there is no ignoring the lunar events (2016 Supermoon) and so it will be interesting to see if flooding begins to decline as the moon begins to move away from the Earth for a couple decades. Again the linked article is very clear the increased flooding is attributable to tide (lunar) events for the most part.
Like all articles it also fails to acknowledge that Miami was swamp turned into land that could be through engineering a massive canal/waterway system and Miami Beach wasn't originally a beach it is artificial, complete with manufactured sand. One thing to also keep in mind is the continued development of Miami Beach over this 10 year time period, which has also meant more recently the island lost land that used to soak up rain water like a sponge in lieu of asphalt that floods (compare this to Florida Keyes where much of the land is protected from development and continues soaking rain water). Again if this were a natural phenomenon caused by climate change as opposed to over development and tide events, Miami and the Keyes would see increase flooding as well but these studies appear to be limited to Miami Beach.
> the linked article is very clear the increased flooding is attributable to tide (lunar) events for the most part. ... it will be interesting to see if flooding begins to decline as the moon begins to move away from the Earth
That is not what the article says. The article does not at all attribute the increased tide height to lunar activity; the words "moon" and "lunar" do not appear in the text. Everyone says this is a long-term problem and they do not mention any possibility of improvement due to the moon.
> the island lost land that used to soak up rain water like a sponge
The water causing the floods is coming up through the ground from the sea, not coming down from the sky. Rain isn't an issue.
> if this were a natural phenomenon caused by climate change as opposed to over development and tide events, Miami and the Keyes would see increase flooding as well but these studies appear to be limited to Miami Beach.
What is that based on? The article explains the reason that Miami Beach is affected.
What is that based on?
> The floods are worse this year ...
Everyone in the article is talking about long-term increases in sea level rise and flooding.
* a University of Miami study reporting that Miami Beach has seen a 200 percent increase in flooding in the last decade
* current (conservative) estimates predict a three-foot rise over the next 100 years
* The city is already elevating its roads
* the city’s new hydraulic pumps, installed as a result of initiatives by Miami Beach’s mayor Philip Levine
* Steps are being taken, buildings are being raised
* what they’re [developers are] doing now is elevating the building at a minimum of 3 feet
* The water will start coming up from the floor,” he [Alan Faena] said. “There’s not much we can do. That’s the reality.”
* the Rockefeller Foundation recently funded Miami's “resilience officer,” the first of many in what the foundation expects to be a global array to help organize various cities' responses