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posted by Fnord666 on Sunday August 11 2019, @10:52AM   Printer-friendly
from the clam-soup dept.

Submitted via IRC for Bytram

With nowhere to hide from rising seas, Boston prepares for a wetter future

Boston dodged a disaster in 2012. After Hurricane Sandy devastated parts of New Jersey and New York, the superstorm hit Boston near low tide, causing minimal damage. If Sandy had arrived four hours earlier, many Bostonians would have been ankle to hip deep in seawater.

Across the globe, sea levels are rising, delivering bigger storm surges and higher tides to coastal cities. In Boston, the most persistent reminder comes in the form of regular "nuisance" flooding — when seawater spills onto roads and sidewalks during high tides. Those nuisance events are harbingers of a wetter future, when extreme high tides are predicted to become a daily occurrence.

"The East Coast has been riding a post-Sandy mentality of preparing and responding before the next big one," says Robert Freudenberg, an environmental planner at the Regional Plan Association, an urban research and advocacy firm based in New York City. But a more enduring kind of threat looms. "Sea level rise is the flooding that doesn't go away," he says. "Not that far in the future, some of our most developed places may be permanently inundated."

And Boston, for one, is not waiting to get disastrously wet to act. In the seven years since Hurricane Sandy's close call, the city-run Climate Ready Boston initiative has devised a comprehensive, science-driven master plan to protect infrastructure, property and people from the increasingly inevitable future of storm surges and rising seas. The famously feisty city intends to be ready for the next Sandy as well as the nuisance tides that promise to become the new normal, while other U.S. coastal cities are trying to keep up.


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  • (Score: 3, Informative) by bzipitidoo on Monday August 12 2019, @01:08AM (1 child)

    by bzipitidoo (4388) on Monday August 12 2019, @01:08AM (#879013) Journal

    Over the past 20k years, sea level rise has not been "roughly the same rate". It has varied greatly. Rose approximately 100m between 20k and 7k years ago. From 5000 B.C to about 1850, sea level rise has been very little. After 1850, it has picked up speed.

    What I find especially scary is the relentless political pressure on scientists to lowball their estimates. All this effort to downplay and minimize the problem is making it much more difficult to prepare sensibly.

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  • (Score: 1) by khallow on Monday August 12 2019, @04:23AM

    by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Monday August 12 2019, @04:23AM (#879081) Journal

    What I find especially scary is the relentless political pressure on scientists to lowball their estimates.

    Or is it highball those estimates? What I find remarkable is the lack of support for claimed levels of future climate change. But I suppose we'll find out who is more right in a few decades.