Climate Change Impacts Hit Florida
2014/05/08
graphic: Forecast The Facts
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Record floods and extreme weather: Florida’s floods are linked to climate change
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We have the solutions to the climate crisis. What is missing to solve the climate crisis is political will. We the people need to tell our elected officials it’s time that polluting industries pay a “dumping” fee, and that we want the money returned to households to help us all make the shift to the clean energy economy of the 21st Century. The price of more delay is economic and human disaster. Our children deserve better.
350 or bust 
When I discover the latest one of these around the world I am both horrified for the folk who live right there and, at the same time, ironically encouraged by the thought that these same folk — those who survive — are more inclined to realise that urgent action to curb climate change is needed.
“Direct causation cannot be proven for individual extreme weather events”, but the systemic causation is obvious.
Yes, the whole climate change conversation has become a whole lot more personal for many people, and as you point out, it will continue to be. We are at a critical point in human history, and the outcome is not yet decided. It’s both exhilarating and terrifying to be around for it.
Florida is so very screwed by climate change impacts and there’s almost nothing it can do to adapt. Miami is one of America’s cities most vulnerable to sea level rise. Even sea walls are not very effective as the bed rock underlying much of the state is incredibly porous. There’s no point spending fortunes trying to keep the water from coming over a sea wall when it can pass freely beneath. For a state that’s already freshwater stressed, saltwater inundation is a huge problem. Desalination plants anyone?
New Orleans isn’t the only city that’s sinking. Many coastal cities are experiencing subsidence, the Lower Mainland of Vancouver included. This subsidence magnifies the impacts of sea level rise and leaves affected areas even more vulnerable to destructive storm surges.
It’s tempting to point out that Florida is a GOP stronghold, but I will refrain from that kind of schadenfreude. Especially because it’s not just Florida that’s going to feel greater and greater effects of a destabilized climate, as you point out.