After Gutenberg

My snarky comment upon a Huffington Post report that a U.S. Senate panel has approved oil drilling near the Florida Coast: “Well, near to what is the Florida coast at present.”

Well, guess what, Texans. SCUBA ain’t just for Florida anymore.

by Flickr user eh3k
“Hurricane Ike storm surge hits Jetty East”

Writing for the Environmental Defense Fund, Amy Hardberger, an attorney with EDF's Texas Office's Climate/Air and Water programs, notes that the “Texas cities Houston and Galveston just got a wake-up call”

Conservative estimates of sea level rise due to climate change will displace 78 percent of households over the next 100 years in Galveston County alone, according to a new study that EDF and the British Consulate-General commissioned from the Harte Research Institute at Texas A&M Corpus Christi.

And that's the conservative estimate. In a business-as-usual scenario, Galveston-area sea levels could rise as much as 1.5 meters in the next 100 years, which could displace more than 100,000 households and create more than $12 billion in infrastructure losses for Houston and Galveston. Rising sea levels will also damage at least 23 public facilities, industrial sites and water treatments plants, begging many questions about where to move or how to protect these sites.

A rise in sea level is one of three related issues that has NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) administrator Jane Lubchenco very concerned. As she discussed in an NPR (National Public Radio) interview, there also has been a one degree centigrade rise in ocean temperature over the past century. And, the other issue, which she perceives as a threat to the ocean fisheries is ocean acidification.

The ocean has absorbed about one-third of the anthropogenic emissions that we have been dumping into the atmosphere since the beginning of the Industrial Age. This is a major concern to climate scientists because the oceans are losing the ability to absorb more carbon dioxide, which will mean a more rapid increase in the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, thus more global heating.

Ocean acidification is a major concern to marine biologists, like Dr. Lubchenko, because a more acidic ocean is inhospitable to calciferous marine life, which forms the base of the food chain for fisheries. Translation for the AG audience and all the ships at sea: Yes, We Have No Tuna Fish Sandwiches.