New Climate Catastrophe Policy: Triage - 7

Solid Technology

This series takes a look from several vantage points at the attitude officialdom in various places has regarding preparations for the impact global warming induced climate change will have on various types of infrastructure.

In so doing one runs across a lot of different reactions as well as a lot of different types of geography that will be impacted.

Different types of preparations are very normal because the variations in geography naturally require different adaptations.

Since these issues derive from different aspects of environmental changes taking place in varying degrees, a one size fits all approach is not to be expected or desired anyway, because, while we see many changes from sea rise, droughts and flooding, to unusual storm scenarios, we also see strange factors such as sea rise sooner at some locations than at others:

There is virtually universal agreement among scientists that the sea will probably rise a good meter or more before the end of the century, wreaking havoc in low-lying coastal counties. So the members of the developers’ lobbying group NC-20 say the sea will rise only 8 inches, because … because … well, SHUT UP, that’s because why.

That is, the meter or so of sea level rise predicted for the NC Coastal Resources Commission by a state-appointed board of scientists is extremely inconvenient for counties along the coast. So the NC-20 types have decided that we can escape sea level rise – in North Carolina, anyhow – by making it against the law. Or making MEASURING it against the law, anyhow.

...

“We’ve got the highest rate of sea level rise on the East Coast,” said Skip Stiles, executive director, Wetlands Watch, who will be making a presentation on the historic, current and future sea level changes and potential impact on the Eastern Shore.

Stiles said some of the evidence of sea level rise visible to people who spend time around the water include seeing wetlands disappear, ditches going tidal, backyard vegetation changes, and “ghost forests” — full grown trees that are dead along the shore because the water is “moving in underneath them.”
...
Stiles said all of the Virginia tide gage measurements are showing about the same rise of a foot and a half over the last 100 years.

(Social Dementia Causes Heated Misunderestimations - 2). The triage type mentality leads some legislators to think they can pass a law dictating how much or how little the oceans may rise in their jurisdiction.

On the other hand, some specialists who study this ongoing phenomenon within governments, note that another aspect of the sense of triage is all too prevalent:

Instead of “planning to be flooded,” as he put it, city, state and federal agencies should be investing in protection like sea gates that could close during a storm and block a surge from Long Island Sound and the Atlantic Ocean into the East River and New York Harbor.

(NY Times). In other words instead of accepting an attitude that admits of hopelessness, those critics advocate for a more proactive approach.

On the front lines where global warming induced climate change is created, that is, on the fossil fuel consumption front, the attitude is still quite defeatist too.

Rather than go for renewable energy technology revolution, the governments are bowing to fossil fuel industry pressures and are allowing, under what seems like desperation thinking, drilling to take place where it should not be allowed.

The recent case of President Obama speeding up the permitting of drilling in the dangerous Arctic is a case in point:

After a day of slower-than-expected preparations in the Chukchi Sea, Shell Alaska officially began drilling into the seafloor above its Burger prospect at 4:30 a.m. Sunday, the company said.

(Shell Begins Drilling). It did not take long for dangers to show up causing the drilling to stop:

Royal Dutch Shell halted drilling in the Chukchi Sea on Monday -- one day after it began -- because of sea ice moving toward the company's drill ship off Alaska.

(Shell Stops Drilling). This is too casual an approach to what is a very, very serious problem that threatens civilization as we know it (New Drug Dealer - Same Addiction).

As far as global warming induced climate change is concerned it does not matter in the least that the dirty oil use that causes greenhouse gas increases in the atmosphere is native oil or is foreign oil.

But that is the new rave "local oil is better than foreign oil" policy governments are engaged in, a policy that blunders ahead toward disaster with only triage at the forefront of planning.

The next post in this series is here, the previous post in this series is here.