Feb 25 2009
Preparing for Land Loss in England
A very serious report by the UK’s Institution of Mechanical Engineers says that we should accept that the world will change drastically due to climate change, and that we’ll need to adapt. One of the changes the IME says is coming is rising seas that may flood England — and large parts of the U.S. coastline where major cities are located. In order to survive, they advise, we had better start planning. This is similar advice to what English climate scientist James Lovelock is telling the BBC lately. In a short interview on Monday morning (02/23) he told the BBC’s Today program that it’s too late to do anything about climate change and we’d better plan on how to adapt to it. I’m wary of such predictions because they tend to let people get away with doing nothing. If people feel, “what’s the use” then they won’t support the governments that have barely begun to take action on climate change.
We need to support efforts to both do something about climate change now, and plan ways to survive if what we do isn’t enough. President Obama signaled his intent last night in his speech before a joint session of Congress, when he declared that he wants a market cap on C02 emissions to be submitted to him soon. That means he wants a carbon cap, which is drastic action for the United States and something that would never, in a million years, have happened under a Republican administration. This means that the president who has surrounded himself with the best and brightest scientific minds in America to be his science and climate advisors still feels there is something we can do about climate change and it’s worth a try, even if it costs a lot in both money and effort and work. So read the following with a grain of salt and remember — no one can predict the future with any absolute accuracy.
Britain should prepare for massive loss of landmass, warns engineers
UK should change building design, transport and energy infrastructure ahead of climate change and high sea level. Engineers fear London could be submerged as the climate changes. According to the BBC, the report states:
“However, the existing Kyoto Protocol has, to date, been a near total failure, with emissions levels continuing to rise substantially.”
While the report’s authors point out that the Institution, like many scientific bodies, has a strong belief that we need “to reduce CO2 to secure long-term human survival”, they also say that we should be realistic about what we can achieve. And “even with vigorous mitigation effort, we will continue to use fossil fuel reserves until they are exhausted.”
It’s clear to me that people will try to use all the remaining fossil fuels, which would change our climate for the next 10,000 years or more, but just because people will try does not mean they will be successful. This is where politics comes into policy. Political viewpoints on this subject do matter.
From The Guardian, February 2009.
Ministers should prepare the British people to “adapt” in the longer term to a landscape devastated by climate change, including the possible abandonment of parts of London and East Anglia, a leading industry body warns today .
Action to curb carbon emissions is failing, so the UK should immediately change the way it designs buildings, transport and energy infrastructure in preparation for aworld potentially characterised by extreme heat and high sea levels, argues the Institution of Mechanical Engineers (IMechE) in a new report.
The institute said it wanted its latest research to provoke serious action for future planning “not just for the sake of our planet but also for the human race. Yes, we need to mitigate [emissions] – but the evidence shows this is not working alone.”
Even with significant global commitment to avert climate change it could be many centuries before average temperatures can be stabilised, says the document, Climate Change: Adapting to the Inevitable?, which was described by environmentalists as a “wake-up call” for government.
IMechE said that sea levels are predicted to rise by 2m by 2250 and 7m by the end of that century.
“A seven-metre rise in sea levels would impact on vast areas of the UK, including parts of London which border the Thames,[such as] Canary Wharf, Chelsea and Westminster, all of which would need to be abandoned,” the report argues.
Although they were long-term predictions, the authors say Britain should be preparing for change today and they questioned whether Britain should be considering new nuclear power stations at places such as Sizewell on the Suffolk coast.
Tim Fox, head of environment and climate change at the IMechE and one of the authors of the publication, denied the institute was being alarmist or seeking to undermine actions against greenhouse gases. They were merely trying to be “pragmatic” engineers who needed to prepare for extreme scenarios, he said.
The action the members of IMechE want includes:
• Building new railways because many of the existing routes use valleys that could be flooded
• Building reservoirs underground to prevent evaporation
• Spending heavily on researching new forms of energy such as fusion
. . . . IMechE said that even under less extreme circumstances there would be a need for decisions on the building or enhancement of flood defences, or ultimately whether an area will be no longer fit for habitation.Fox said he realised that the current credit crunch made it difficult for governments to invest, but he said cash spent now would offer future savings.”
