In the Florida Keys, efforts to rebuild after Hurricane Irma in September 2017 have recently ramped up. With the recognition that some residents and business owners are struggling to recover, Monroe County just launched its Rebuild Florida initiative and has had a bus-turned-resource center touring the Keys to help manage the cases of people whose homes were destroyed. So no, the residents and local leaders of the Florida Keys cannot yet afford to be weary.
In Houston, while 70 percent of those whose homes sustained damage during Hurricane Harvey in August 2017 report that their lives are “largely or almost back to normal,” 30 percent report that their lives are still disrupted. With 40 percent of affected residents overall saying that they aren’t getting the help they need and even higher percentages of black and low-income residents saying the same, it’s clear that while those with more resources are on their way to recovery, those with fewer resources are not. While some Houstonians may be able safely and comfortably watch Michael unfold on a different stretch of the Gulf Coast, others are still living with relatives or in just a single room of their homes.
And back in North Carolina, the Raleigh-based News & Observer reported on September 4th of this year that “Money for families who lost their homes in Hurricane Matthew [in 2016] has finally started trickling into North Carolina,” almost two years after the storm brought devastating floods to the state. When that article was published, Hurricane Florence was less than two weeks away from flooding many of the same areas that were hit hard by Matthew.
There is no rest for the weary.
Inside a flood zone or out, inside the wildland-urban interface or out, inside an urban heat island or out, we as Americans, and, really, as humans, cannot afford to be weary. Because if there’s one thing that the latest IPCC Special Report, released this past weekend, makes clear, it’s that the climate-related challenges we face are only expected to deepen.
From the Union of Concerned Scientists:
The Department of Interior Restricts what Science can be used in Policy Decision-making Process
What happened: Deputy Secretary David Bernhardt of the Department of Interior (DOI) issued an order, effective immediately, that claims to practice an “open science” policy that will boost transparency, accountability and public access to scientific research. The order requires that scientific data used in DOI policy decisions be reproducible and made publicly available. The DOI’s order is very similar to the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) restricting science rule (see here and here), a proposed rule that excluded the input of top EPA scientists and has been opposed by nearly 1,000 scientists.
Why it matters: The requirement to make raw data from scientific studies publicly available can restrict the use of scientific evidence in policy decisions as some data cannot legally be released to the public. This is because the release of such data can endanger individuals, rare and threatened species, and culturally or religiously important sites. Furthermore, the orders’ call that data used in policy decisions be reproducible can exclude important contributions of older studies where raw data is inaccessible. Therefore, the number of scientific studies that can be used to inform policy decisions at the DOI will inevitably go down. Future scientific studies by DOI agencies are likely to be restricted in their scope and methodology, and the order may deter outside scientists from working with DOI agencies, out of fear that confidential information could be released. When the best available research is ignored, policy decisions are less effective. The inability to use the best available science will not serve in the best interest of the public, wildlife and lands that the DOI is tasked with protecting.
Learn more about how this order from the Department of Interior will restrict the best available science available for policy decision-making.
Last Revised Date: October 10, 2018
The US Military on the Front Lines of Rising Seas
With seas rising at an accelerating rate, coastal military installations are increasingly exposed to storm surge and tidal flooding. The Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) conducted analyses of this changing exposure for 18 military installations along the East and Gulf coasts. Analysis of Eglin Air Force Base (AFB) found that in the second half of this century, in the absence of preventive measures, the installation can expect the following: frequent and extensive tidal flooding, loss of currently utilized land, and substantial increases in the extent and severity of storm-driven flooding to which it is exposed.
Low-lying Florida faces rising sea levels along its 1,200-mile coastline: water is encroaching from both the Atlantic and the Gulf coasts and up through the Everglades. Unlike the Miami area, Eglin AFB, located directly on the Gulf Coast of the Florida Panhandle, sees very little tidal flooding today. However, by late this century, as seas are projected to rise between 3.7 and 6.1 feet, the base’s Santa Rosa and Okaloosa Island facilities could face significant ocean inundation.
Editor's Note: The above paragraphs are, again, from the Union of Concerned Scientists
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