Should I tell my Republican friend that her Florida mansion is doomed by sea-level rise?

Dear Sara,

My friend is a Republican who owns a very expensive mansion on Fisher Island in Miami. I’m fairly sure my friend believes that climate change is real but does not know how serious the situation may get within her or her children’s lifetimes. What year will I tell her is the last I’ll be able to visit her there, because it will be underwater? How many years ahead of that will she need to sell it before it’ll be rendered worthless? I’m thinking of getting her a garden gnome wearing a snorkel. – Climate Concerned in New York City.

Fisher Island.

Let’s begin with the facts, which are straightforward. Sea-level rise is not just a problem for 50 or 100 years from now. It’s already begun. Today, under certain conditions – when there’s an unusually high tide, for example – water spills into basements and low-lying streets across South Florida.

The problem will get worse. Another 6 to 10 inches of sea-level rise is expected in South Florida by 2030, and perhaps more than two feet by the time today’s high-school seniors turn 60. In response, Miami Beach, a wealthy community on a barrier island just north of your friend’s home on Fisher Island, is spending hundreds of millions of dollars to elevate roads, raise seawalls, and install pumps to suck the water away.

Read the story from Yale Climate Connections by Sara Peach - “Should I tell my Republican friend that her Florida mansion is doomed by sea-level rise?”

Climate change doesn’t care about our plans - that’s why cities need to plan for climate change

Ban Ki Moon, then United Nations Secretary General observed in 2011, that “Climate change does not respect borders, it does not respect who you are -- rich and poor, small and big.”

Interstate highway 45 is submerged from the effects
 of Hurricane Harvey seen during widespread flooding
in Houston, Texas, U.S. August 27, 2017.

Recent events from the immense damage that hurricanes Maria, Harvey and Irma have wreaked on Puerto Rico, Houston, Miami and the Caribbean, or the monsoon floods that have forced millions from their homes in India and Bangladesh, illustrate that climate change does not respect whether we are ready or not. Our planet’s climate has changed and its impact will be felt by every one of us and for generations to come.

Climate scientists have, historically, been reluctant to attribute specific natural disasters or weather events to climate change. Yet, there is no doubt that warmer surface water temperatures in the Gulf of Mexico, the Atlantic Ocean and the seas and oceans of South Asia contributed to the intensity of recent hurricanes and monsoon rains.

Read the zilent.org story by Mark Watts - “Climate change doesn’t care about our plans - that’s why cities need to plan for climate change.”

Leonardo DiCaprio's crusade to save the world

Leonardo Wilhelm DiCaprio's parents hung a painting above his crib in the grotty 1970s East Hollywood neighborhood of Los Angeles when he was a baby. The painting wasn't an action shot of Peter Rabbit or Curious George. No, it was a reproduction of Dutch painter Hieronymus Bosch's three-paneled "Garden of Earthly Delights," a dystopian visual description of Eden being found and lost. It is one of DiCaprio's earliest memories.

"You literally see Adam and Eve being given paradise," says DiCaprio, his blue eyes peering above sunglasses in a Miami Beach restaurant that has somehow worked "SoHo" into its name. Underneath the table he fidgets his feet in and out of canvas loafers. He drifts away for a moment. DiCaprio just finished shooting an interview for a -climate-change film he's making. (Original working title: Are We Fucked?) He's already been to India flood plains and the Antarctica polar cap, and now he's not far from Miami playgrounds where he once reputedly left a nightclub with every woman from his VIP section. All, according to DiCaprio, could be washed away.

Read the Rolling Stone story - “Inside Leonardo DiCaprio's Crusade to Save the World.”

Gltzty city 'sees and smells' the reality of climate change

High heels are fashionable in South
 Beach, Miami, but it seems that
what's really  needed to avoid "the shit"
left floating about because of climate
 change are boors like these.

America's glitziest city is frequently in the news for its celebrity status and addiction to the contemporary buzz.

South Beach Miami is pumping and the national media talks lovingly of the city’s wonders, but says little about the fact that attractions may well be soon gone.

The Sydney Morning Herald reported just a few days ago that “Warming world's rising seas wash away some of South Florida's glitz”.

It said: “What was not so widely reported was that South Beach stank of shit. There is no nice way to put it. The place smelled of human waste. There had been a brief, heavy downpour but the water could not escape, so the sewers backed up and filled the roads. The traffic slowed to walking pace or seized entirely, and the models tottering between the restaurants and hotels and clubs had to pick wide arcs on the pavements to avoid the nasty pools swelling from the gutters.”