Submitted by Evelyn C. McDonald
Arts & Culture Reporter
September 21, 2016 11:30 a.m.
The Amelia Museum of History sponsors lectures the third Friday of every month. Last Friday Morris “Marty” Hylton III addressed the subject of rising sea levels. The best part about the talk was that he didn’t politicize the subject. Rising sea level is something we can see with our own eyes. This may be a natural phenomenon that has nothing to do with climate change. The point is that natural or not, we are potentially in the path of that phenomenon.
Hylton is the director of the Historic Preservation Program in the College of Design, Construction and Planning at the University of Florida. His organization has been doing studies around the state and other parts of the country on the impact of rising seas.
He discussed the issue of rising sea level as it is affecting coastal areas such as Miami, Tampa and Cedar Key. In the face of rising sea levels, communities have three responses – protection, accommodation, or retreat. Protection may be seen in the flood barriers in place along the coast of Italy to protect the lagoon surrounding Venice. The rebuilding of Galveston after the hurricane of 1900 is an example of accommodation. Buildings that were still standing were raised up above the surge level. Retreat happened on Nantucket where a cliff that was receding 12 feet a year threatened a lighthouse. The lighthouse was relocated inland and may have to be relocated again.
UF is doing work on Nantucket where huge storms have re-configured the ocean floor and made the cliffs more vulnerable. There they are installing large tubes filled with sand to stabilize the cliffs. Low lying areas are also threatened in Miami where the city is spending millions to raise the level of the streets.
One of the interesting aspects of Hylton’s talk was his description of the use of laser technology to measure and construct models of structures. Laser measurements yield one of the most accurate models of a building. In Cedar Key, they used the model of a hotel to run scenarios of the effects of various flood levels. As a side benefit if damage had been done to the hotel during a storm, the model could be used to assist in the reconstruction of the building.
The state of Florida has funded development of a website where you can view maps of the state and look at various scenarios for sea level rising. The initial purpose of the site was to see what impact sea level rising would have on transportation. The site is at sls.geoplan.ufl.edu. As islanders, this is an issue worth considering.
Evelyn McDonald moved to Fernandina Beach from the Maryland suburbs of Washington, D.C. in 2006. She is a chair of Arts & Culture Nassau, a city commission charged with support of the arts in Nassau County. She serves on FSCJ’s Curriculum Committee for the Center for Lifelong Learning. She is also the chair of the Dean’s Council for the Carpenter Library at the UNF. Ms. McDonald has MS in Technology Management from the University of Maryland’s University College and a BA in Spanish from the University of Michigan.
Ms. McDonald, there is nothing political about stating that rising sea levels are a result of climate change. Its science. Some people may want to politicize the cause of climate change, but that is because they have invested so much into denying it. Scientists predicted this would happen and its happening. And sooner than anyone expected. But in the end, as long as everyone acknowledges that it’s happening and is on board to do what can be done to alleviate it’s effects, I don’t care if they want to attribute it’s cause to something else.
Sea levels have been rising since the end of the last Ice Age which is in fact “climate change”. Human contribution to climate change is non-existent, except to activists posing as scientists and to those gullible enough to believe them instead of looking at real science. So, while we may disagree on the reasons, the reality is that adaptation, not mitigation, is the better way to go in dealing with rising seas or other effects of climate change.
Science is apolitical. Only those who want to close their minds to the truth it reveals– to sway the minds of others–see climate change as political science.
What we know is that the water level at the City Marina been measured over the last 100 years and has risen about 3/4 of a ft.
A “margin of safety” in planning is usually 2oo%. Hopefully our city planners are anticipating a rise of +/- 2′ in the next 100 years.
The hidden cost to home owners is the ever increasing $ required for flood insurance and the “adoption” of your home into a flood zone, where it wasn’t before. This can seriously impact your life…your property value and the way that you might expand the use of your land.