The popular phrase from the HBO show Game of Thrones, “winter is coming”, no longer applies to our world. That is because regular and smooth seasonal transitions have become a thing of the past. The summers have been getting increasingly hotter while the winters have become shorter and sporadic but also more extreme. The repercussions of Global Warming that scientists (That’s 97% of the entire scientific community) have been warning us about for years have arrived. So, the more appropriate saying is, “winter is possibly coming, but we don’t know when or how bad”.
In a recent New York Times article (Flooding of Coast, Caused by Global Warming, Has Already Begun, Justin Gillis) the threat level of the melting ice caps was described as….well…..threatening. “These tidal floods are often just a foot or two deep, but they can stop traffic, swamp basements, damage cars, kill lawns and forests, and poison wells with salt. Moreover, the high seas interfere with the drainage of storm water”. As crippling an effect as those dangers will have, they’re only the start. Consider that mankind has always built upon the shores of rivers and coast and in the last 5,000 years we’ve gotten pretty good at developing our communities along the waterfront. Unfortunately, we aren’t very adept at living in communities where the water arrives after we’ve already established our presence. Another major effect of the melting ice caps and anyone living along the eastern coast will confirm this, is that massive hurricanes have become dangerously frequent. According to a study (Trade-off between intensity and frequency of global tropical cyclones) in 2015 by scientists Jim Elsner and Namyoung Kang, it was stated that due to the rising temperatures from greenhouse effects, the hurricanes we’ll be experiencing fewer storms but certainly more intense and destructive storms. The H.R.D. (Hurricane Research Division) reports that since 2005, the United States has had a yearly average of 3.3 storms classified as Major Storms. These are the storms on the scale of Katrina and Sandy that are so damaging they call in the F.E.M.A. boys.
The response of many major cities, like Miami Florida and New Orleans, is to build Sea Walls or levees. For those of you who don’t know, levees are man-made earthworks meant to keep floods at bay. It sounds simple enough to build dirt and clay mounds along the water’s edge to keep people safe. However, that job’s importance is often neglected by Washington, in which case you get faulty levees due to poor funding and low maintenance like what happened in New Orleans during Katrina. The Republican led congress has been refusing to address the issue of rising sea levels (as well as refusing to acknowledge the reality of global warming), meaning it’s up to local governments to fund any anti-flooding construction. Thus raising the question of can humanity afford to live along the coast in the years to come?
What is certain is that modern humanity will have a great deal of adapting to do in order to live on this transforming planet. However, to what degree our future governments will address this crisis remains something of a mystery.
Image source: The Atlantic