Inherency In Boston, climate change has already started to take it’s effect on the city. Days get hotter sooner in the year, it snows less, but most troubling of it all for me is the rising of the ocean. At first glance it may not seem like a urgent thing to be worried about. Who cares if the water’s a little higher up? But if the sea continues to rise and we don’t prepare for it, our city could take massive damage from flooding. Scott K. Johnson, who has a master’s in Hydrogeology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, says “While rising sea levels do threaten to simply inundate some areas around the harbor, they also limit the effectiveness of drainage systems, which function based on the lower elevation of ocean water.” This issue isn’t something easily fixed unfortunately. The seas are rising because of carbon emissions in the atmosphere, trapping heat on the planet. Even if Boston were to lower its carbon emissions significantly, it wouldn’t make any major impact because we are just one city. Dominique Mosbergen, a reporter from The Huffington Post says “Troublingly, the ice had already surpassed this tipping point twenty years ago, the researchers said — only the technology to confirm this hadn’t existed until now” …show more content…
The total costs of the damage that could be done to the drainage systems by say the year, twenty fifty likely exceeds that of the costs of a project like the sea wall if just a three foot rise could cost one point thirty nine billion dollars. Should something like that happens, taxpayers would probably end up paying for some of the costs that come from that damage as well. We’re in a lose-lose situation in terms of money, but we can use that money now to prevent harm from coming to our city instead of using it in the future to repair our
Climate Change and Global Warming cause sea levels to rise. This increase in sea levels not only causes inundation of low lying and coastal areas but also irrevocable damage to coastal environments. Globally the ocean is predicted to rise nearly 140 cm on a global scale by the year 2100 (Cooper et al. 2013); therefore this has massive implications for countries all around the world with cities (settlements etc.) based near bodies of water. When compared to the last 80 years this is an acceleration of nearly twice the rate that ...
In the year 1919, on January 15th, Boston experienced a strange disaster. This said disaster is now known as the Boston Molasses Flood. The disaster occurred when an above-ground tank filled with 26 million pounds of molasses burst and unleashed a wave of molasses from eight to fifty feet high and moving at 35 miles per hour killed people and destroyed buildings in the surrounding neighborhood. After the wave of molasses had slowed down, it settled at two to three feet in depth. Acting like quicksand, the molasses effectively suffocated people and animals. The massive cleanup of the molasses took over 87,000 man-hours. This is white textThe negative impact of the flood was tremendous as it killed 21 people, injured 150, lead to a civil lawsuit representing 119 families, caused great destruction to the buildings and stores, polluted the water, and led to a costly cleanup. Nevertheless, the resulting positive impacts of holding businesses accountable through civil lawsuits, creation of state licenses for engineering and architecture, advancing government regulations over big
manmade levees, dikes, and other flood control measures, is a case in point. In a
The effect of sea level rising is especially challenging for the population that lives in low-lying coastal communities, such as Miami Beach. The city is surrounded by sea. Miami Beach is linked to the mainland city of Miami through causeways, and it is an area that allocates much of the wealth from its art decoration and former celebrity playground standing. For them, funding does not seem to be a problem. However, the threat they are facing, cannot be entirely solved by money. Its sea level rising is at 9 millimeters a year, while there is only 3 millimeters on global average acceleration. If the sea level rises for 6 feet by 2100, Miami Beach city will get swallowed. When referring about sea level rising phenomenon, Miami Beach always acts as a ground zero example. Government leaders around the world are waiting to see how this rich living laboratory experiment place can avoid drowning. Below is a figure showing the sea level rising between 1900 and 2020 in Miami and Miami Beach
The city of Miami Beach has already tried once to solve the flooding issue. The mayor, Philip Levine took action by “installing enormous pumps underground that will suck water off the streets and dump it into Biscayne Bay.” Levine has already installed six of the fifty-four that he has planned to install around Miami Beach. These pumps are a complete waste of money because regardless of how many will be installed, the sea level rising will just cause the pumps to be ineffective. On her trip, Kolbert meets with scientist Hal Wanless. Wanless shares his opinion with Kolbert about the millions of dollars that Miami Beach has already spent on trying to stop the reoccurring flooding. Wanless states, “So much money down the drain. Sooner or later-and probably sooner-the city will have too much water to deal with.” The state officials must find a different way to solve the flooding if they want to save their state. But the officials have already made up their minds to not invest any further money because of the failure and money lost from the
Out of the largest 136 coastal cities in the world, Vancouver ranked 11 in terms of future flood damage (ibid) creating concerns for the safety of the human population. The historic sea level rise in Vancouver is 2.0cm/50 years but has jumped to an expected one meter by the year 2100 (“Sea Level Adaptation”, 2013). Majority of Canadians will be living within 20km of the coast with approximately 80% of British Columbians living within 5km (ibid). It is projected that the number of people living near coastlines will increase while will raise the amount of the population vulnerable to climate change trends
Baker, William C., and Tom Horton. "Runoff and the Chesapeake Bay." GreenFILE. EBSCO, Nov.-Dec. 1990. Web. 1 Mar. 2014.
. Policy Problem Rising sea levels are becoming a prominent issue along with global warming and climate change for many regions near coastal areas, with Miami, Florida being one of the most detrimental areas. With a current population of 413,892 living just 6 feet above sea level, Miami is positioned as one of the first areas to experience some of the disastrous effects of climate change (Johnson). Within the next 100 years, rising sea levels have the ability to damage South Florida’s fragile barrier islands, the population that lives near coastal areas, and its appealing subtropical beaches (Madigan A12). Coastal areas, which provide the largest area for disaster, however, are not the only areas that will experience the effects of climate change.
Climate scientists project that the detrimental effects of climate change will be most profoundly felt in low-income and tropical regions like Puerto Rico, making the island highly susceptible to climate change effects such as ocean acidification, rising temperatures and sea levels, and increased frequency and intensity of extreme weather events. Puerto Rico’s Climate Change Council (PRCCC) expects that the rising sea levels in Puerto Rico will affect our infrastructure, freshwater resources, agriculture, ecosystems and economic growth. The government needs to decide whether Puerto Rico requires more elaborate strategies for combatting rising sea levels, while taking into consideration what measures are
...ment to New Jersey using water resource concerns as a tool to limit large-scale suburban development. These southern agricultural counties are a unique region where large numbers of people are dependent on valuable groundwater resources to continue living in a healthy environment.
The picture above shows areas which are red in the UK and northern Europe which would be completely underwater if sea levels were to rise by five meters. It is clearly seen in the picture that a lot of coastal areas would be significantly affected. If coastal areas were to be affected, millions of people would have to be re-located causing many social and economical problems. At the rate in which global sea levels are rising 30mm/year and is set to increase and rise more, these areas highlighted in red would be underwater in approximately 160 years time due to human activity with increasing levels of CO2 in the atmosphere.
Observational records indicate that sea level has already risen between 10 and 25 cm globally over the past 100 years. In addition, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has projected a sea-level rise of 15-95 cm as a consequence of global warming. Sea-level rise will also increase the depth of coastal waters and increase inland and upstream salinity intrusion, both of which affect fresh and brackish water wetlands. Sea-level rise has the potential for increasing the severity of storm surges, particularly in areas where coastal habitats and barrier shorelines are rapidly deteriorating. These direct consequences of global- and regional-scale changes will increase the vulnerability of coastal wetlands which are already heavily impacted by human activities.
"On a recent afternoon, Scott McKenzie watched torrential rains and a murky tide swallow the street outside his dog-grooming salon. Within minutes, much of this stretch of chic South Beach was flooded ankle-deep in a fetid mix of rain and sea.
In a world divided by war, it is easy to overlook problems that affect all of mankind. The dramatic rise in ocean levels worldwide constitutes just that sort of problem. Although the fundamental problem of global warming has been given airtime and plenty of written-media coverage, the problem of rising sea levels seems to have met a certain amount of apathy. A likely explanation is that the rising sea levels mainly threatens impoverished peoples that may have no choice but to doubt the threat, since there is no way for them to relocate. Concurrently, Americans, seemingly beset by some false sense of well-being, really have no fear of the possible annihilation of our coastal cities. Granted, the worst case scenario (the total loss of all glacial ice) would take several hundred years to become a reality, but the possibilities are frightening.
One of the major effects of global warming is the rise of sea level due to thermal expansion of the ocean, in addition to the melting of land ice. Now there are dozens of land areas that sit well below sea level and the majority of those land areas are very well populated. At least 40 percent of the world 's population lives within 62 miles of the ocean, putting millions of lives and billions of dollars ' worth of property and infrastructure at risk. (Juliet Christian-Smith, 2011) This means if the sea level rises to the projected level of 25 meters (82 feet) half of the world will retreat back to the ocean. (Rohrer, 2007) Also rising sea levels means higher tides and storm surges riding on ever-higher seas which are more dangerous to people and coastal inf...