Reading Virginia Key’s Future Through Climate Change

Given the odds of the significant impact on South Florida, one of the most important sessions of the Miami Book Fair for island hoppers could turn out to be the “Climate and the Environment”  session, where expert authors on climate change discuss our future under global warming.

This “Idea X-Change” session begins at 4 p.m., Saturday, Nov. 20, Room 7106 (Building 7, first floor), Miami Dade College, Wolfson Campus,  and features Heidi Cullen, a climatologist and environmental journalist, (The Weather of the Future: Heat Waves, Extreme Storms, and Other Scenes from a Climate-Changed Planet );  Gyynne Dyer (Climate Wars) and Peter Maass, (Crude World: The Violent Twilight of Oil). 

Scientists are predicting at least a three foot rise in sea level worldwide by the year 2020 and a recent New York Times  story, “Reading Earth’s Future in Glacial Ice,” singled out Miami as one of our country’s most vulnerable communities:
"Parts  of the East Coast and Gulf Coast would be hit hard...About 15 percent of the urbanized land in the Miami region could be inundated.” 

But don't take the New York Times word for it, the Miami Dade County  official climate change website has this to say:

“The biggest concern for South Florida, especially in Miami-Dade County, is the threat of "sea level rise." The oceans are expected to swell as the world becomes warmer. Ice melting from the poles will add to the volume of the oceans and the warmer oceans resulting from a warmer atmosphere will actually cause the oceans to grow in volume (warm water expands; cold water contracts). The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) predicts that Florida will see a rise in sea level of about 18-20 inches by the next century.

Higher seas means more than just less beachfront. Miami-Dade would become more vulnerable from storm damage. Wetlands and coastal mangroves would be lost to a rising sea, impacting our commercial fisheries and even our water supply as the ocean pushes westward and north into the Everglades and the Biscayne Aquifer.”

Given this information,  it seems it would give pause to Those Who Would Build Megastructures (you know who you are)  on Virginia Key. 

Probably not.  But that’s another story.....


@2010 All Rights Reserved by Blanca Mesa, View From Virginia Key.

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