We apparently can't afford to avoid AGW, but we can afford to adapt to it? Greg
CLIMATE: National strategy needed for historic sites at risk from warming -- report Emily Yehle, E&E reporter Published: Tuesday, May 20, 2014 By the end of this century, rising sea levels will likely leave Jamestown under the ocean, almost 500 years after it became the first permanent English settlement in the Americas. In a new report<http://www.ucsusa.org/global_warming/science_and_impacts/impacts/national-landmarks-at-risk-from-climate-change.html> released today, the Union of Concerned Scientists warns that the landmark is only one of hundreds of historic sites at risk due to climate change. Some will be swallowed by rising seas, others destroyed by frequent wildfires and still others washed away in floods, according to the report. UCS joined archaeologists and local officials at a congressional briefing today to underscore the importance of creating a national plan to preserve such sites -- and establishing the funding to go along with it. Their efforts come as Congress considers how to best pay the increasing costs of wildfire suppression, as fires burn longer, hotter and more frequently on public lands. Such fires destroy more than trees and vegetation -- they damage historical sites that have withstood centuries of less extreme weather. At Bandelier National Monument in New Mexico, for example, fires have impacted more than 1,000 archaeological sites, including the Ancestral Puebloan ruins. "What's been remarkable is to see how quickly things have been changing," said Adam Markham, director of climate impacts at UCS. "It's really been quite shocking to see all the damage." The report details 17 case studies, in what its authors emphasized was just "the tip of the iceberg." They range from Annapolis, Md.'s historic district, where severe flooding threatens 18th-century buildings, to the Bering Land Bridge National Preserve in Alaska, where archaeological sites documenting the first human migration to North America are threatened by coastal erosion. But at today's briefing, Jeffrey Altschul, president of the Society for American Archaeology, warned against the "Save Our Lighthouse" approach, where sites are saved individually as they become threatened. That is more expensive in the long run, he said, and ignores the reality that some sites are more worth saving than others. "It's time to engage in a different conversation," he said. "What sites do we want to save? What are we willing to let go?" Email: eye...@eenews.net<mailto:eye...@eenews.net> -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "geoengineering" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to geoengineering+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to geoengineering@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/geoengineering. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
