Climate change harsh on Atlantic barrier islands

[unhappycamper]

http://hamptonroads.com/2014/09/climate-change-harsh-atlantic-barrier-islands



An SUV is stuck in the sand on N.C. 12 in the Mirlo Beach area of Rodanthe, N.C. on Thursday, March 7, the day after a winter storm brought soundside flooding and some ocean overwash to Hatteras Island.

Climate change harsh on Atlantic barrier islands
By Cornelia Dean, Science Times/New York Times News Service
© September 30, 2014

QUOGUE, N.Y.

As the president of the Fire Island Association, Suzy Goldhirsch has a message she says she often offers property owners.

“We are living on a sandbar in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean,” she tells them. “We are in a high-risk environment. We on barrier islands are on the front lines of climate change.”

The same could be said of many coastal areas around the world, which are threatened by rising sea levels as the planet warms. But the barrier islands that line the Atlantic and Gulf Coasts, from Cape Cod to the Mexican border, are a special case.

A new report from the National Research Council finds that the effect of climate change is especially harsh on these islands. Population growth in much of this long coast “is nearly twice the national average,” the report said. Meanwhile, “these same coasts are subject to impact by some of the most powerful storms on earth and the destruction potential of these events is increasing due to climate change and relative sea-level rise.”

[Nihil]

1. About time people moved off them and let the islands do the job they've done for millions of years.

Suzy Goldhirsch started off so well with clarity & accuracy ...

> We are living on a sandbar in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean

... but then went down into total fuckwittery ...

> nature can no longer be left to take its course even as sea level rises.
> “Let nature take its course — I don’t think that’s good planning” she said.

... and, unfortunately, such stupidity is infectious ...

> Subsidies, emergency relief and ad hoc projects on the East and Gulf Coasts
> have encouraged development in the face of such danger


The voices of sanity have a major uphill struggle ahead ...

> it is hard to win support for safety measures that would require communities
> to “forgo revenue-generating potential by limiting development.”

... but the answer is blindingly obvious really:a straight blanket statement that the
government will not bail out anyone who lives in such a region.

Let them stick their "revenue-generating potential" right up their Hamptons ...

[hatrack]

2. About out of patience myself . . .

They enjoy all the benefits of living next to the ocean, and every three years, or five years or eight years, we pay the freight - in Florida, or the Outer Banks, or Long Island.

Sorry, no. And it's going to be an exercise in futility in the end no matter how much money goes down the sandhole.

[Nihil]

3. I have the same frustration with people who build on flood-plains.

Another example of the triumph of stupidity.