Strategies for Climate Change Adaptation, Mitigation
Here’s an article that discusses the projected price tag of seawalls required to protect U.S. cities by 2040, pegging the cost at $416 billion. Seawalls are examples of “adaptation,” i.e., making changes in the way we live so as to minimize the damage resulting from a changing climate.
From the NASA website (can you believe it’s still here?): (Adaptation) involves adjusting to actual or expected future climate. The goal is to reduce our vulnerability to the harmful effects of climate change (like sea-level encroachment, more intense extreme weather events or food insecurity). It also encompasses making the most of any potential beneficial opportunities associated with climate change (for example, longer growing seasons or increased yields in some regions).
The cousin of adaption is mitigation, i.e, the effort to reduce climate change itself by reducing the flow of heat-trapping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.
From the same website: ….either by reducing sources of these gases (for example, the burning of fossil fuels for electricity, heat or transport) or enhancing the “sinks” that accumulate and store these gases (such as the oceans, forests and soil). The goal of mitigation is to avoid significant human interference with the climate system, and “stabilize greenhouse gas levels in a timeframe sufficient to allow ecosystems to adapt naturally to climate change, ensure that food production is not threatened and to enable economic development to proceed in a sustainable manner” (from the 2014 report on Mitigation of Climate Change from the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, page 4).
Larger, though more poorly defined costs exist on top of the cost of all the strategies for climate change adaptation and mitigation; we have a long list of expensive ancillary items coming our way: increasing healthcare, premature death and liabilities, repairs after devastating storms, fire fighting, dealing with food and water shortages, resettling climate refugees, and fighting wars that result from increasing scarcity of resources.
Needless to say, this will not be pretty. The only positive remark to be made is that the sooner we commit ourselves to solutions, the lower the ultimate costs will be.
Craig,
I believe you are making a number of erroneous assumptions then extrapolating scenario’s and solutions for events that may never occur, or are not necessarily either preventable or undesirable.
1) You assume the planets climate is currently (or in the immediate past) in a sort of optimum climate ‘nirvana’ like state and can be preserved in that condition ad infinitum.
2) You assume all the causes for Climate Change are comprehensively known with already proven and achievable “remedies”. You are of the “no Debate” mindset, doggedly expounded by alarmist pundits who claim to know all the “science” necessary, with no room for further research unless it follows your adopted doctrines.
3) You demand huge expenditure based on little more than an adherence to your own largely “faith based’ doctrines. Sea walls are not necessarily desirable or beneficial. Erosion of coastlines has nothing to do with “climate Change” but a lot to do with natural phenomenon and human occupation.
4) The IPCC report is a lengthy dissertation and conclusions based on a series of assumptions, that have become elevated by pundits, activists and advocates into a sort of new religious doctrine. Buried in the 2019 report is a section on methodology.
Although the report boasts at length new input by 280 “scientists”, it fails to mention that acceptance of the work by these “scientists” and indeed selection of the “scientists” themselves if the prerogative of a group of 14 individuals forming the little known Bureau of the TFI (TFB).
It’s this group of 14 who decide IPCC Guidelines for the “technically sound methodological” procedure for things like the basis of assessing national greenhouse gas inventories etc.
Those guidelines include eliminating any “contentious” or ‘disruptive” research or information to avoid inconsistencies !
(How very scientific !) The members of the TFI panels appear to be startlingly under-qualified in anything but political patronage and devotion to the cause.
Qualifications to join this Panel seem to be a passion for climate change activism, without any relevant qualifications except a career in government funded bureaucracy.
Take my fellow countryman and TFI panel member Rob Sturges.
A) Rob is a confident, charming (even charismatic) gentleman with a Bachelors Degree in Commerce from a minor Australian University. Since then he (largely through his lift-green political connections has built a career as a professional Climate Change bureaucrat.
B) Ritta Piipatta
Ritta is another charming, deeply sincere young bureaucrat who at least holds a Doctor of Technology (Environmental Engineering) degree from Helsinki University of Technology.
The problem with Ritta is she is a very activist Climate Change advocate exceeding outspoken about “social justice’ principles defining scientific conclusions. More worrying is her advocacy to strip anyone whom she describes as “climate deniers” of their academic qualifications. (although, to be fair that was some years ago before her leftist relatives secured her various highly paid government patronage positions.
C) Dominque Blain.
Dominque holds a Ph.D. in Forestry from the University of Toronto. Her thesis topic, ‘Soil
factors affecting forest regeneration post slash and burn agriculture in Eastern Peru’ and “three common tree species in a remnant forest of the State of Veracruz, Mexico”, brought her into collaboration with her fellow Tree researcher, Chilean, Yasna Rojas.
D) Yasna Rojas has been a professional “climate change activist” after her tree researching days, serving on numerous committees and “panels’ . her left credentials are perfect in her native Chile and internationally where she like her fellow “environmental Engineer” and TFI panel member Fatma Baygüven, are ardent members of activist groups.
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The rest of the members, without exception, appear to have never held any other position outside of academia or activist groups including governmental agencies or funded organizations.
Most hold degrees in “Environmental Studies”, Climate Change Science” or similar. This is not necessarily a debarment to sit on a Panel to assess research papers of appointments, but it does suggest a certain mindset or orthodoxy of bias.
A bit like convening a group of people with degrees in theology and a lifetime of commitment to studying and evangelizing religious theory, to decide the conduct methodology of contemporary secular legal processes !
The danger is these folk form their own little world where the enormous machine that has arisen around climate change is all absorbing.
Outsiders, those not part of this establishment or movement, may wonder how it is that with so many experts in trees, there is no mention in the IPCC report on the research of methane and C02 emissions from trees lacking inclusion ?
So much of the science surrounding Climate Change and indeed the effect of climate change is unknown in a torrent of propaganda and misinformation. The desire for advocates and even the IPCC to create certainty and even orthodoxy, is understandable.
Orthodoxy engenders security. It’s comforting for people to believe the expert “scientist’ know what they’re talking about. It’s all very comforting for people to be able to absorb older philosophic, political or ideological concepts into the “science” of climate change.
We must resist the temptation to interpret every event through a prism of “Climate Change”.