Under water by 2100? Risk of the rising sea (CATASTROPHE LOOMS!!!)

San Jose Mercury News ^ | 1/26/07 | Mike Taugher

[ProtectOurFreedom]

The seas have been rising for 18,000 years, but the pace has quickened.

At the Golden Gate Bridge, the Pacific Ocean crept seven inches higher during the past century, as global warming melted glaciers and expanded ocean waters.

Californians are taking notice. In one of the first efforts of its kind in the state, officials are starting to address the threats rising seas pose to the Bay Area.

One of the first steps was to compile maps that show what would happen if the sea level rose three feet -- the upper limit for what might occur by 2100, according to computer models of climate used by the state.

The maps show a dramatic level of inundation: San Francisco and Oakland international airports would be under water, along with Foster City, parts of Redwood City and virtually all the bay wetlands, many of which have been restored at great public expense as habitat for wildlife.

Also at risk are railroad tracks running through Alviso, highways, buildings, and public works projects, such as the East Bay Municipal Utility District sewage-treatment plant in Oakland.

“There are some areas that are extremely vulnerable,” said Leslie Lacko, a coastal planner for the San Francisco Bay Conservation and Development Commission.

According to a 1990 study, a three-foot rise in sea level would threaten $48 billion in real estate, roads and pipes around San Francisco Bay.

[ProtectOurFreedom]

You know, I never thought about that inherent self-contradiction in liberalism before. They want to totally destroy all our millenia-old ciivic institutions overnight and instantly embrace radical change (homo "marriage," abortion on demand, free narcotics), yet they are totally committed to lethargic, ossified, nonchanging central control of all economic aspects of our lives (state ownership of enterprise, state control of health care).

[Hot Tabasco]

officials are starting to address the threats rising seas pose to the Bay Area.

In the 70's they were predicting the San Andreas (sp?) Fault was going to result in California dropping off into the sea in 30 years! What the hell went wrong????????????

[TigersEye]

I will admit that I hadn't seen the analogy between natural and ideological systems before either. Once I did the contradiction suddenly became glaringly obvious.

You point out a very important aspect of the liberal ("Progressive") view of governance. It regards the accumulated wisdom of millenia of human societies as useless or worthless. This ignores the fact that everything they know and everything they are is a result of that accumulated wisdom.

Ossified is a great word for that view. They want to fabricate a view of how things could be, not how they are or ever were, and impose that view of how things should be, through law and regulation, on how things are. That arbitrarily imposed model is then applied to what 'is' in an attempt to freeze everything in that made up image of order. Individuals and societies are expected to mirror that artificial construct and ossify themselves into an unchanging image of perfection devoid of historical context. The unexpected is expected to never arise.