HomeMy WebLinkAboutIndividual Comment - email 072615
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Sent: Sunday, July 26, 2015 9:36 AM
Subject: latest sea level rise report 50' in next 100 years a
Dear Governor Ige,
You are an engineer, you should be able to understand
the difference between facts, politics and greed. Despite the fact that you look
to Japan for inspiration (your recent trips and support for Japanese technology
here), it is a fact that the Eurpoeans are light years ahead of us in renewable
technology and planning. We should be looking there instead of Asia. Asians
are only interested in money. The Koreans and Japanese have no natural
resources to protect. Chinese are the biggest polluters, they want to be just
like Americans. Euro's tend to look at the environment first, after all they have
had more time to see what greed, war and environmental degradation (look at
Greece) can bring on people and the land that we must live on. We should
follow the Euro model, not the Asian or North American.
The lengthy, ambitious, and already contested paper by longtime NASA
climate scientist James Hansen and 16 colleagues appeared online
Thursday in Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics Discussion, an open-access
journal published by the European Geosciences Union.
Conclusions summary:
"Humanity faces near certainty of eventual sea level rise of at least Eemian
proportions, 30-50 feet (in the next 100 years), if fossil fuel emissions continue
on a business-as-usual course, e.g., It is unlikely that coastal cities or low-
lying areas such as Bangladesh, European lowlands, and large portions of the
United States eastern coast and northeast China plains could be protected
against such large sea level rise. Rapid large sea level rise may begin
sooner than generally assumed. Storms conjoin with sea level rise to
cause the most devastating coastal damage
Effects of freshwater injection and resulting ocean stratification are occurring
sooner in the real world than in our model. There are many other practical
impacts of continued high fossil fuel emissions via climate change and ocean
acidification, including irreplaceable loss of many species. We conclude that
the 2 ◦C global warming “guardrail”, affirmed in the Copenhagen Accord
(2009), does not provide safety, as such warming would likely yield sea level
rise of several meters along with numerous other severely disruptive
consequences for human society and ecosystems.
The message that the climate science delivers to policymakers, instead of
defining a safe “guardrail”, is that fossil fuel CO2 emissions must be reduced
as rapidly as practical. It is also clear that continued high emissions are likely
to lock-in continued global energy imbalance, ocean warming, ice sheet
disintegration, and large sea level rise, which young people and future
generations would not be able to avoid. Given the inertia of the climate and
energy systems, and the grave threat posed by continued high emissions, the
matter is urgent and calls for emergency cooperation among nations."
Hawaii is an ant on the elephant. We cannot stop it. We can only
prepare. More coastal development, sucking up our fresh water is not
preparing.
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