Katrina and Rita, wake up calls?

I have been talking the last few days about my sister's evacuation from Houston to Dallas. It took her 26 hours to travel the 250 miles. It pointed out the difficulty of evacuating several million people from an area. A little over 6 months ago, before the start of hurricane season I had a post, Global Warming, it's too late to stop it where I discussed the article It's much too late to sweat global warming Time to prepare for inevitable effects of our ill-fated future.

Preparing to live through the global climate change bearing down on our civilization will be an enormous undertaking. It will require immense financial resources, technical expertise and organizational skill. But perhaps what's needed most of all, especially in the United States, is fresh thinking and political leadership -- an acceptance that climate change is inescapable and requires immediate counter-measures.

The unspeakable death and destruction wrought by the Indian Ocean tsunami showed what can happen when people are unprepared for disaster, but there is no reason global warming should take us by surprise.

Although you can't say global warming is responsible for on hurricane some formerly in denial are beginning to see a pattern of stronger storms. In March New Scientist.com had an article, Ocean heat store makes climate change inevitable.

No matter how well the world controls emissions of greenhouse gases, global climate change is inevitable, warn two new studies which take into account the oceans' slow response to warming.

Even if greenhouse gases never rise beyond their present level, temperatures and sea levels will continue rising for another century or more because of a time lag in the oceans' response to atmospheric temperatures, say researchers.

So what does this mean to civilization?

1. Rising Sea Levels


2. More Powerful Storms

And I made this observation in March

These two factors working together will make vast areas along the sea coasts uninhabitable. The Gulf Coast of the United States will be one of the first areas impacted. The Army Corps of Engineers has already said that it will do nothing more to protect New Orleans. The city barely missed a direct hit from a powerful hurricane last season and it is only a matter of time before it's luck runs out. Rising sea level combined with more powerful storms mean it's only a matter of time before the Florida panhandle is simply wiped clean. These scenarios are both likely in the next few years and will result in death and property losses in the billions of dollars. The correct political decision would be to halt all new construction on the Florida panhandle and the lowlands along the Gulf Coast, including New Orleans. Of course this is not going to happen.

Six months later New Orleans is all but destroyed as are much of the coastal areas of Mississippi and Alabama and many are dead. The evacuation of the Houston area was a nightmare. It's time to admit that we have too many people living in harms way and unless the politicians admit this simple fact many more will die.

Note
Jack Grant does some math that shows why warm water is important.