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Still Plenty of Money to Spend on Rising Oceans
As the world's seas continue their inexorable rise, we're going to see more and more engineers working on more and more coastal defences. Most, of course, will be much smaller and much less elaborate than MOSE. MOSE is a $6.35 Billion plan for inflatable barriers to protect Venice from high tides and surges. Many will be like the project now under way in Ventura, Calif., where crews are moving a crumbling bicycle path, two parking lots and some underground utility lines about 35 metres inland from a beach that has already receded 100 metres or more since the 1970s because of rising sea levels and increasingly severe storms. Rising sea levels came first? What, alphabetically? At $4.5 million, it's not a big deal in itself, but it is a vivid example of what might lie ahead for California as costal erosion worsens. It's being called "managed retreat," and it's something that must be contemplated by every country with a coastline. Except in the Netherlands, where they are expanding their beaches, described a few paragraphs above what is provided here. "The challenge," says Gary Griggs at the University of California Santa Cruz, "is that we have built most of our civilization within a few feet of sea level or right at the edge. It's going to be either managed or unmanaged, but it's going to be retreat." Posted by: Bobby 2011-02-01 |
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