The 100 Best Climate Change Management Solutions

Link to the list.

Civil Engineering and the Tyranny of Sunk Costs

A Book Review of New York: 2140 A Novel https://t.co/URSlPzuX7M via @meetoftheminds

— Dr.Steven D.Sanders (@DocEngineering) May 9, 2017

Predicting Our Future

Totally in agreement with BBC report:

"Unfortunately, some experts believe such tough decisions exceed our political and psychological capabilities. “The world will not rise to the occasion of solving the climate problem during this century, simply because it is more expensive in the short term to solve the problem than it is to just keep acting as usual,” says Jorgen Randers, a professor emeritus of climate strategy at the BI Norwegian Business School, and author of 2052: A Global Forecast for the Next Forty Years. “The climate problem will get worse and worse and worse because we won’t be able to live up to what we’ve promised to do in the Paris Agreement and elsewhere.”"

Climate Change Population Migration

From Nature Climate Change:

"Many sea-level rise (SLR) assessments focus on populations presently inhabiting vulnerable coastal communities^{1, 2, 3}, but to date no studies have attempted to model the destinations of these potentially displaced persons. With millions of potential future migrants in heavily populated coastal communities, SLR scholarship focusing solely on coastal communities characterizes SLR as primarily a coastal issue, obscuring the potential impacts in landlocked communities created by SLR-induced displacement. Here I address this issue by merging projected populations at risk of SLR¹ with migration systems simulations to project future destinations of SLR migrants in the United States. I find that unmitigated SLR is expected to reshape the US population distribution, potentially stressing landlocked areas unprepared to accommodate this wave of coastal migrants—even after accounting for potential adaptation. These results provide the first glimpse of how climate change will reshape future population distributions and establish a new foundation for modelling potential migration destinations from climate stressors in an era of global environmental change."

A Paragraph to Ponder

From Arup Thoughts Column:

"The increasingly interconnectedness of today’s infrastructure networks poses additional risks to be overcome. In the event that a freak storm damages a key telecoms facility, the danger might be that the ensuing loss of connectivity creates cascading failures, such as suspending key systems at a local power plant or hospital. Hurricane Sandy in 2012 caused many such connected failures. It also damaged data centres relied on by media organisations like BuzzFeed and the Huffington Post. The issue of interconnected failures in vital aspects of our day-to-day infrastructure will require a ‘systems thinking’ response if climate change resilience is to be achieved."

Rising Waters and the Costs of Inaction

From the New York Times by Michael Kimmelman and Josh Haner - Rising China Waters Imperil a World of Progress:

"That’s a trillion-dollar question, according to the World Bank, which projected the potential cost of damage to coastal cities worldwide from rising seas to be somewhere near that figure. It estimates that China is already losing 1.4 percent of its annual G.D.P. to climate change. Last spring, residents in Guangzhou woke again to flooded streets after a furious downpour swept across the delta and drowned entire neighborhoods of the city. Local news media, once more, said that there had been nothing like it in years. And as usual, Chinese social media sites buzzed with posts of people trapped in flooded cars. One man, named Pang, became an overnight celebrity for catching a fish with his umbrella, then going home and making soup with the head and tail. “It was fresh and tender,” he told The Guangzhou Daily."

Term of the Week - Adaption Economy

From GreenBiz:

"The amount spent on climate adaptation and resilience is on the rise, researchers have found, with the so-called "adaptation economy" maintaining steady growth in many cities throughout the global recession.

In a new paper, published Monday in the journal Nature, scientists from University College London found the total worldwide spend on adaptation hit $316 billion in 2014-2015, despite that policy focus has been directed only towards climate adaptation efforts relatively recently.

However, while a multibillion dollar market opportunity sounds impressive, the study was quick to note the figure still only translates to less than half a percent of global GDP.

The researchers used government statistics to produce a figure that combines public and private sector spending across different areas of the world in an effort to give as complete an overview as possible of the "adaptation economy" — data which is not always readily available to businesses or policymakers.

It also focused on climate adaptation spending in 10 of the world's megacities, including London, New York, Beijing and Lagos, as a means of highlighting the particular risks and opportunities urban areas face as they attempt to strengthen their climate resilience."

NYC Wastewater Resiliency Plan

Link to the report.

Climate Change Migration from Mexico

From the New York Times today by Michael Kimmelman - A Parched and Sinking Capital: Mexico City's Water Crisis Pushes It Toward the Brink - -

"One study predicts that 10 percent of Mexicans ages 15 to 65 could eventually try to emigrate north as a result of rising temperatures, drought and floods, potentially scattering millions of people and heightening already extreme political tensions over immigration."

Another Sign of Blade Runner 2049

The Era of Extreme Weather and the Exhaustion of Emergency Spillways

Why didn’t anyone fix the Oroville spillway? https://t.co/ouDEavI48f via @slate

— Dr.Steven D.Sanders (@DocEngineering) February 15, 2017

Climate Change and Dam Safety

From the New York Times:

"But California’s most troubled large dam is at Lake Isabella, built in the 1950s on what was thought to be a dormant earthquake fault by the Army Corps of Engineers on the Kern River above Bakersfield. The fault has since been shown to be active, and out of concerns that the dam could fail, the authorities restricted the level of the lake behind it. This week, officials assured nearby residents that despite heavy rains, the lake levels, and the dam itself, remained safe.

But the dam will have to be rebuilt, with a new emergency spillway, at a cost expected to be about half a billion dollars. Construction is expected to start this year and to take at least five years. Isabella is an example of how dam spillways designed more than a half-century ago are now often inadequate, said Blake P. Tullis, a professor of civil engineering at Utah State University who has worked on the design of the new spillway. Climate change is part of the problem, he said, but other factors, like land use changes — more parking lots, for example, mean more runoff into rivers — and better weather data have also played a role. “Now, as you do your statistical analysis, the biggest flood you could predict actually happening is much bigger,” Dr. Tullis said. “People are scrambling a bit, asking how we maintain dam safety.”"

Is Trump Moving From Climate Change Science to Climate Change Engineering?

Link to an updated EPA website.

Actuaries Climate Index

Link to the website.

All Politics is Local

In the Trump era, all climate progress will be local https://t.co/0crqli2Vxy via @grist

— Dr.Steven D.Sanders (@DocEngineering) January 21, 2017

Will Trump Focus on Climate Change Infrastructure Resiliency?

From economist Matthew Khan:

"I am listening to Jimi Hendrix and I'm trying to think about predictions I'm willing to make about environmental regulation under President Trump.  Both Don Trump and I both lived in New York City in the early 1970s.  This was a time when Manhattan was dirty, dangerous and disillusioned.   Real estate prices were low.  Don Trump has made huge amounts of $ as Manhattan has become a more livable "green city".  He knows what the capitalization effect is and knows that "location,location, location" mantra of real estate both means a property's proximity to employment and cultural centers and quality of life hubs such as central park. This logic implies that President Trump will not gut regulations that protect the air and water. I actually think he will invest in increasing our nation's climate resilience because he owns so much coastal real estate!  Self interest will nudge him to invest in adaptation!  (sounds familiar?)."

A Model of Climate Change Resilience - Jackson Family Wines

Falcons, Drones, Data: A Winery Battles Climate Change https://t.co/XkyboxOE4B

— Dr.Steven D.Sanders (@DocEngineering) January 8, 2017

Climate Change Migration

From Grist:

"Taken together, the many factors that influence global immigration make it a huge and unwieldy thing to predict. No one knows exactly how many people will be uprooted thanks in part to climate change; estimates range from 50 million to as high as one billion. It’s also challenging to predict which regions will be hardest hit, but places already struggling with drought and flooding “will see their problems increase,” Bradatan says. Southeast Asia, the Amazon Basin, and a lot of Africa are all vulnerable. Coastal areas and small island countries will face major displacement, too, experts say, as sea levels rise. In the Pacific islands of Kiribati and Tuvalu, for example, more than 70 percent of households say they’ll probably move if the climate worsens."

Engineering the S*** Out of Climate Change Consequences

From The Daily Beast:

"The Norwegians coined a phrase for such projects, calling them stormannsgalskap, or “the madness of great men.” While the term was meant to be disparaging, it might very well become a badge of honor in the future. If rising carbon levels are left unchecked, the world will need pioneering innovation. It will need great individuals who are willing to defy governments and do what is necessary to make hard, bold choices.

But better yet, let’s do that now.

Even if one of these massive geoengineering projects could be developed, financed, and implemented in the future, the question arises whether it will do more harm than good. When you’re talking about trying to control climate via an engineering project, there are a thousand variables at play. Pull the wrong string and everything could unravel. An international team of researchers ran models for a dozen different geoengineering projects and concluded that such massive endeavors would likely have disastrous unintended consequences. Their final conclusion was even more disturbing. Even if a project was successful at controlling carbon levels for 50 years, once the project was stopped, the rebound effect could actually accelerate climate change."

Trump Tower Survives Climate Change Sea Level Rise

Link to the report - - Under Water: How Sea Level Rise Threatens the Tri-State Region.