Robert A. Rohde wrote: > Raymond Arritt wrote: > > Tom Adams wrote: > > <snip> > > > > What are the biggest threats in that time-frame. > > > > I wish I knew. We are trying to find out. > > Stick around, I'm sure we'll have a good idea in 30 years. > > > > Does the US have a good adaptation plans against sustained drought? > > > Pretty much come down to migration, right? > > > > You might try looking at the web site for the National Drought > > Mitigation Center, http://drought.unl.edu/ > > Most municipalities plan their water needs on the assumption that a > drought lasts no more than 7 years. As far as I know, only a tiny > handful have started planning for the permanent changes in water budget > that could result from climate change. Most water management is about > having large enough reserves to get through the dry spells, but climate > change may bring unending dryness to some areas. > > > > If not drought, what do you think the next big AGW induced > > > disaster/migration will be in the US, assuming New Orleans was the > > > first. > > I expect climate change will be marked much more often by slow shifts > towards new conditions than it will be by abrupt major disasters. On > the timescale of human lives, climate change is still generally a very > slow process.
Well, looking back from now, New Orleans seems a powerful counterexample to the "more often slow shifts than abrupt major disasters". How about expecting that we will have more and more severe abrupt disasters of the sort we have already had, where we were already near the tipping point. In the US, that would be more killer hurricaines and dust bowls. Of course, there are more slow shifts than I can count including watershed shifts that just add to impact of drought. And, the disasters will be ambiguous, the deniers will say they are just more of the same we had before AGW, and there will be some truth in that, since it will be a matter of likelihood. To all posters, thanks for all the informaton. I was focusing on the US because I was wondering how it would play with our politics. I do see how the slow changes that are novel will be more convincing about cause and effect perhaps, but the disasters might convince people that we need to try harder to mitigate the warming. > > -Robert A. Rohde > http://www.globalwarmingart.com/ --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Global Change ("globalchange") newsgroup. Global Change is a public, moderated venue for discussion of science, technology, economics and policy dimensions of global environmental change. Posts will be admitted to the list if and only if any moderator finds the submission to be constructive and/or interesting, on topic, and not gratuitously rude. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/globalchange -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
