RE: Climate:Cool&Warm

From: Lee Corbin (lcorbin@tsoft.com)
Date: Tue Apr 08 2003 - 22:15:41 MDT

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    Steve writes

    > Damien responds
    >
    > > Now [warming] could be abstractly beneficial, in the way that having legacy
    > > industrial plant bombed out of existence can give the next generation a
    > > quick leg up. But people don't usually welcome the kinds of droughts and
    > > floods that are currently afflicting Australia, for example, no matter how
    > > bracing for their character and how much it unsettles the encrusted order
    > > of things.
    >
    > In other words, it's not warming so much as abrupt (relatively) change that
    > people don't like. The "news" in the original piece isn't news to historians
    > (and BTW the data is about as robust as historical evidence ever gets,
    > despite what some scientists would have you believe). What the record shows
    > is that climate change is good news for some, bad for others. So the
    > Medieval Climate Optimum was pretty good if you were a Viking but disastrous
    > for Dutchmen as it led to the huge flood in the 12th century that drowned
    > two thirds of the low countries and created the Zuyder Zee (much of which is
    > still there).

    How quickly did the inundation occur? I'm wondering if it would
    be quite easy for the Dutch today to prevent something similar.

    > Not a lot anyone can do to prevent this though. Florida real
    > estate doesn't look like a good bet to me if you look back
    > just 80 years to the weather it experienced in the 1920s
    > when it had a series of huge hurricanes. Not so many condos
    > and hotels back then.

    Well, why not ;-) Just get the government to declare it a
    disaster area, and the owners don't really run any risk.

    Putting aside hurricanes for a moment, and assuming that all
    of Florida gets privately owned, then could the rise in sea
    level be so slow as to permit owners to build walls to hold
    back the sea?

    Lee



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