Rising seas and pounding storms taking toll on Highway 37

Press Democrat ^ | 3 Feb 2017

[rey]

Surveying flooding along Highway 37 in January, ecologist Fraser Shilling began doubting his projections for when climate change will cause severe, perhaps catastrophic impacts on the major North Bay thoroughfare.

In an influential 2016 report used as a guide for the highway’s future, Shilling, co-director of the Road Ecology Center at UC Davis, had established a timetable of several decades for those impacts to be fully realized.

But that was before January storms forced the full or partial closure of the highway for roughly 12 days, causing havoc for thousands of daily commuters.

“We’re starting to overwhelm the system in places that we were thinking we had 20 years of lead time. But we don’t,” Shilling said this week from his office in Davis. Delaying action could be catastrophic, he said, predicting that one day water will push over embankments and levees and the highway will be “gone.”

Highway 37, one of the lowest-lying in California, has long been threatened by climate change and rising sea levels, inadequate levees and political waffling over who bears responsibility for maintaining and upgrading the road. The 21-mile highway meanders across four counties — Solano, Napa, Sonoma and Marin — traversing tidal marshlands, rivers and creeks, and farmland where flooding presents a threat to livelihoods.

[rey]

This is so much BS. We have flooding all over this county. In this particular instance and up on Mark west Springs road, the cause is the restoration work, not the environment. This paper had run a ton of articles on the wetland restoration around 37 and up on Mark West. Both of these areas flood even with small storms. They altered the area to allegedly benefit wildlife. not to benefit the roadway.

Elsewhere in the county they have lowered roads. When working on roadways that are too narrow, they are obliged to widen them but they may NOT bring in more material to do so. As a consequence they use what is there to widen the road, in effect lowering it making it more prone to flooding and the Press screams, "CLIMATE CHANGE!"

[17th Miss Regt]

Excellent background info, rey! Thanx!

[Red Badger]

If you build an inadequately engineered highway through “tidal marshlands”, do not be surprised that it gets flooded and wiped out from time to time..............

[onedoug]

If sea level has risen why isn’t Bangladesh covered with water?

[Gaffer]

Seems to me that free thinking CA State (Secessionist) Government ought to be thinking about how they’re going to be paying for all this “Climate Change” work their peeps are carping about when they aren’t a US State anymore.

Good luck with that guys.

[Huebolt]

The Medieval Warm Period (MWP), Medieval Climate Optimum, or Medieval Climatic Anomaly was a time of warm climate in the North Atlantic region that may also have been related to other climate events around the world during that time, including China[1] and other areas,[2][3] lasting from about 950 to 1250.[4] It was followed by a cooler period in the North Atlantic and elsewhere termed the Little Ice Age. Some refer to the event as the Medieval Climatic Anomaly as this term emphasizes that effects other than temperature were important.

Greenland is called that because it was verdant when first discovered. Retreating glaciers in Iceland uncover homesteads and farms from that time.

Of course, this extreme warming was caused by all the SUV’s and diesel trucks running around 1000 years ago.

[txrefugee]

How did people get around before there were roads? A lack of roads does not mean the end of civilization. It does sound like some really shoddy road construction, probably a bid from someone with a connection to a politician.

[Red Badger]

This was US Highway 98, between Ft. Walton Beach and Destin in the aftermath of Hurricane Opal in 1995. Nobody screamed "CLIMATE CHANGE"................

[Gaffer]

I think it’s because of the EcoGravity Star that responds to global warming. With the Bangi’s being in the stone age and all, the EcoGravity Star lets them be. Ocean don’t come dere, you see? It’s like the dash be silent.

[Opinionated Blowhard]

See. Now that Obama is gone, the seas have started to rise again!!!!!

[webheart]

The sea level only rises in certain places where climate change is more severe like California. This particular area is between liberal Santa Rosa and liberal Marin County. The people there have plenty of money so they are not impacted y the policies that they foist upon everyone else by virtue of having a Senator and the House Minority Leader living there.

[Gaffer]

So. Is that like I-95 in New Jersey?

[Fightin Whitey]

If sea level has risen why isn't Bangladesh covered with water?

"As Guam is sinking, it is soaking up an unfair amount of water, and the African Americans there are bearing an undue amount of the burden for the privileged, uh, Asian UnAmericans in that faraway place where they live."

[RegulatorCountry]

Similar scenes are practically an annual occurrence on North Carolina’s Outer Banks. There are storms, damage happens. New inlets are cut, old ones fill in. The dune line moves. It always has. Those islands were a popular pirate haunt precisely because of the shifting inlets and shoals. This was 300 years ago. Nothing has changed, despite an all-out effort to give that impression to poorly informed people who have been taught not to question authority.

[Red Badger]

It’s a main corridor along the Gulf Coast. For months, people had to go many miles around the bay in the opposite direction in order to get to work here or there................

[lacrew]

“Elsewhere in the county they have lowered roads. When working on roadways that are too narrow, they are obliged to widen them but they may NOT bring in more material to do so. As a consequence they use what is there to widen the road”

I deal with this at work from time to time, so I understand why that’s required...but man is that stupid. A very expensive solution would be to put the road on piers, I suppose.

[Red Badger]

Yep, people who have little or no education readily buy into the clap-trap of ‘Climate Change’.................

[Gaffer]

I endured a few months at Keesler AFB, MS in 1968. I remember the area well. I also remember I left just prior to Camille.

[Gaffer]

I am ashamed to admit this dunce is a Congressman from Georgia.

[17th Miss Regt]

Seems to me that free thinking CA State (Secessionist) Government ought to be thinking about how they’re going to be paying for all this “Climate Change” work their peeps are carping about when they aren’t a US State anymore.

Why should they start thinking now? I mean, after all this time....