[GWSG] Miami conversations; learning to die; EPA regional adaptation plans

[Tilley, Al]

1.  Conversations reported in the Miami Herald on real estate values and sea level rise reveal a lot of hopeful thinking, denial, and downright ignorance, along with some serious consideration from knowledgeable academics, planners, and others.  At least a lot of people, knowledgeable and not, are talking about it.  In NE Florida the major local paper has yet to run a single serious treatment of the subject with regard to the region (though we do have planning quietly beginning in some of the smaller coastal towns and here and there in Jacksonville).  http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/11/09/v-fullstory/3742641/rising-sea-levels-falling-real.html  The NY Times ran a nice companion piece with an outsider’s perspective on South Florida attitudes.  Thanks to Tom Larson for recommending this matched set of stories.    http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/11/us/south-florida-faces-ominous-prospects-from-rising-waters.html?_r=0   Re Miami ignorance: a couple of  reasons to suppose that things will be over for people in South Florida by two feet of slr is that 6 inches is enough to compromise half their drainage and two feet entirely wipes out their water supply.  These studies have been public for over five years but have not yet lodged in public consciousness.  Harold Wanless seems to be using NOAAS’s most recent figures for slr and is an exception to the affinity for low projections, just as he is a model for informed public discourse on climate.

2.  I hesitated on this one: “Learning How to Die in the Anthropocene.”  It’s bleak but salutary.  I do not know that he is right that we have become a doomed species.  I rather think of us an in extremis, a term from ship handling which means that the usual rules of the road are in abeyance and you must now maneuver creatively to avoid disaster.  We think we know how not to die but seem to prefer on the whole to die anyway, and that asks for contemplation.  Here is one for Veteran’s Day.    http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/11/10/learning-how-to-die-in-the-anthropocene/

3.   The EPA released its draft Climate Change Adaptation Implementation Plans for public comment.  They are said to detail how the EPA intends to help the regions of the US plan for adaptation.  I found a couple of dead ends but learned about some programs in the Southeast I had not known.   So far I have found more of a summary of what is in progress than info on how the EPA intends to help in our region, though good general info on that topic can be found on the Federal and EPA Programs tab.  http://yosemite.epa.gov/opa/admpress.nsf/0/869135C2B949560385257C16004D932F
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