Off Topic — HabitableZone

Off Topic » in reply to Geology and Nature

Climate change
Robert — (archived)

I'm glad you've introduced global warming and climate change into the discussion. Continued denial of that problem will dangerously skew decisions about whether and how to rebuild. Sea levels might rise over the next century on the scale of Katrina's storm surge, so it might be appropriate to look at the damage as a map of things to come. Or sea levels might not rise so dramatically, but it's likely we're facing permanent changes in weather patterns that will probably make hurricanse both more frequent and more powerful. I'd suggest planning for the worst-case...which means, as you say, "We should be building cities on elevated plateaux, well away from Earthquake fault zones and volcanoes." While relocating existing, intact cities would be fantastically expensive, at least in the case of New Orleans the investment in the existing city is essentially a writeoff, and we're free to choose where to start over.

BTW, many people have been spelling it "dyke", but I believe you mean "dike". "Dyke" means something else entirely. Unless that's the Australian spelling?

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