Study Projects $12 Billion In Houston Property Losses As Seas Rise Over 100 Years

[hatrack]

A new study suggests more than 100,000 households will be displaced and more than $12 billion infrastructure losses suffered as a result of climate change raising the sea level in the Galveston area over the next 100 years.

The finding comes three days after a Texas A&M University study found that Corpus Christi’s infrastructure will also be affected by climate change.

“The Socio-Economic Impact of Sea Level Rise in the Galveston Bay Region,” commissioned by the Environmental Defense Fund and the British Consulate-General Houston, estimates that 78 percent of households will be displaced in Galveston County. A more aggressive sea level rise could displace 93 percent of households, according to the study.

“Climate change is happening,” said David Yoskowitz, co-author of the report and a professor at Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi. “It is not a hypothetical, it is a fact. Sea-level rise is occurring in Galveston Bay as well as around the Gulf of Mexico, this is another fact.

EDIT

http://houston.bizjournals.com/houston/stories/2009/06/01/daily51.html?s=

[Uncle Joe]

1. I hope the deniers can gather the emotional fortitude to wake up and acknowledge what humanity

is doing to our global environment.

I know these people have the good sense to not seal them selves in a garage with the car running and yet they refuse to accept the consequences of hundreds of millions if not billions of cars continuously running, not to mention industries' long term effects on the planet.

I know the vast majority of them must care about their children, so I've come to the conclusion this denial is emotion based, because the consequences are too difficult for their fragile selves to deal with.

Thanks for the thread, hatrack.

[enid602]

2. bad combo

Don´t forget that much of the water in the Houston area is from wells; ongoing water pumping and the construction of more highrise buildings leads to greater future subsidence. In Houston, you have subsidence AND rising seas. A bad combo.

[Skink]

3. We could build master planned cities in the interior.

like the planned communities of today but whole cities. That right there could provide sustainable investment. Green buildings that could house thousands. L.A. sort of did this when they put the downtwon miles from the water.