A NEW ATLANTIS- #MIAMI Sinking!

Miami’s rising sea level is an enormous problem







In Miami Beach, Henry Briceño, a professor at Florida International University’s Southeast Environmental Research Center has been trying to raise awareness on how global warming is affecting his own community.

By Chiamaka Nwakeze

(Science Recorder ) – Eighteen American scientific societies including the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the U.S. National Academy of Sciences (NAS) and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) have reached a consensus on global warming, namely that it is occurring and is largely attributable to human activities. These rising temperatures create significant changes in weather patterns across the globe, resulting in stronger hurricane storms, loss of natural habitats, species extinctions and rising sea levels.

In Miami Beach, Henry Briceño, a professor at Florida International University’s Southeast Environmental Research Center, has been trying to raise awareness on how global warming is affecting his own community.

Briceño has begun to sample the water around Miami Beach and has found high levels of nutrients such as nitrogen, which indicates that the quality of the water is poor. And like many scientists, Briceño, believes that the poor water quality is a result of climate change and global warming.

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Paradise in Peril

Climate Poster Child - Norfolk, #Virginia

In Norfolk, evidence of climate change is in the streets at high tide




By Lori Montgomery





NORFOLK

(Washington Post) – At high tide on the small inlet next to Norfolk’s most prestigious art museum, the water lapped at the very top of the concrete sea wall that has held it back for 100 years.





It seeped up through storm drains, puddled on the promenade and spread, half a foot deep, across the street, where a sign read, “Road Closed.”   The sun was shining, but all around the inlet people were bracing for more serious flooding. The Chrysler Museum of Art had just completed a $24 million renovation that emptied the basement, now accessible only by ladder, and lifted the heating and air-conditioning systems to the top floor. A local accounting firm stood behind a homemade barricade of stanchions and detachable flaps rigged to keep the water out. And the congregation of the Unitarian Church of Norfolk was looking to evacuate.



  “We don’t like being the poster child for climate change,” said the Rev. Jennifer Slade, who added that the building, with its carved-wood sanctuary and soaring flood-insurance rates, would soon be on the market for the first time in four decades. “I don’t know many churches that have to put the tide chart on their Web site” so people know whether they can get to church.


On May 6, the Obama administration released the third National Climate Assessment, and President Obama proclaimed climate change no longer a theory; its effects, he said, are already here. This came as no surprise in Norfolk, where normal tides have risen 1¹ / ₂ feet over the past century and the sea is rising faster than anywhere else on the East Coast.



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And when the storms come - look out!

Doc's Comments

Perhaps this futuristic picture of Norfolk is a little dramatic, but then again maybe not. One thing is for certain though no one wants to be a "poster child" for climate change. Particularly when the storms unleash their furies.

 

Dr Peter G Kinesa

June 2, 2014

Anyone on the planet dumber than US Senator Marco #Rubino?

Define stupid?

Marco Rubio says human activity isn't causing climate change

By Brian Bennett

(Los Angeles Times) – Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida, a GOP star and possible 2016 presidential contender, does not believe human activity is causing climate change, he said Sunday.

“I do not believe that human activity is causing these dramatic changes to our climate the way these scientists are portraying it,” Rubio said on ABC's This Week.


"I do not believe that the laws that they propose we pass will do anything about it, except it will destroy our economy,” he added.

A National Climate Assessment released by the White House last week found that Rubio’s home state of Florida is one of the most vulnerable to rising sea levels and changes in temperatures and storm patterns. President Obama has proposed several new regulatory programs to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide, which most scientists say are the chief cause of a warming global climate.

Who do you believe?

Rubio said he doesn’t agree that actions humans take today could affect how the climate is changing.
“Our climate is always changing,” Rubio said. “And what they have chosen to do is take a handful of decades of research and say that this is now evidence of a longer-term trend that's directly and almost solely attributable to manmade activities.”

Rubio, who was swept into the Senate in 2010 on a wave of support from tea-party Republicans in Florida, just completed a swing through New Hampshire, the first state that will hold a presidential primary in the 2016 race for the White House. Although he has been a rising star in the GOP, his popularity among conservatives slipped last year after conservative commentators battered him for his role in the Senate's passage of immigration reform legislation last year. (The Republican-controlled House has refused to take up the bill.)

Rubio’s denial that human activity is to blame for climate change could stand him in good stead with the conservatives who dominate some Republican nomination contests, although it puts him at odds with the views of most Americans.


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Then lets ask George

#Antarctica: Where's the ICE?

New Antarctic ice shelf threatened by warming

By Chris Wickham; Editing by Janet Lawrence






LONDON (Reuters) – Scientists are predicting the disappearance of another vast ice shelf in Antarctica by the end of the century that will accelerate rising sea levels.

The Filchner-Ronne Ice Shelf fringing the Weddell Sea on the eastern side of Antarctica has so far not seen ice loss from global warming and much of the observation of melting has focused on the western side of the continent around the Amundsen Sea. But new research from the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research in Germany says the 450,000-sq-km ice shelf is under threat.

"According to our calculations, this protective barrier will disintegrate by the end of this century," said Dr Harmut Hellmer, lead author of the study, published in the journal Nature this week.

The huge ice shelves that float on the seas fringing Antarctica provide a buffer against warming waters eating away at the base of the much larger glaciers behind them that sit on the land.
"Ice shelves are like corks in the bottles for the ice streams behind them," said Hellmer. "They reduce the ice flow.

"If, however, the ice shelves melt from below, they become so thin that the dragging surfaces become smaller and the ice behind them starts to move."

Hellmer and his team predict the melting of the Filchner-Ronne shelf could add up to 4.4 mm per year to rising global sea levels.

Ya gotta believe

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