95F Sunday In Miami, 98F Monday, But A Climate Debate In Atlantis West? Heaven Forbid!!
New water pumps and tidal valves worth millions of dollars are needed to keep the streets from flooding even on sunny days. Septic tanks compromised by rising groundwater leak unfiltered waste that threatens the water supply. Developers are often buying out residents of established communities, hoping to acquire buildable property on higher ground.
Climate change became a daily reality long ago in Miami, where both rich and poor have been forced to grapple with the compounding effects of warmer temperatures and higher sea levels. The evidence is everywhere of a city under siege by the rising sea. “Climate change is really the issue that sits on all other issues,” said Rachel Silverstein, executive director of Miami Waterkeeper, an environmental research and activist group. “It affects security. It affects drinking water. It affects tourism. It affects public health. Property values. It’s a part of the discussion of almost any topic that might come up.”
So imminent is the prospect of a warming climate in Florida that the state’s new Republican leadership has acknowledged it and taken some action, even as President Trump and his administration have refused to join international climate treaties and attacked climate science.
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Not many people have yet connected climate change to their jobs and health care, Dr. Leiserowitz said, but the urgency of the climate issue is beginning to take hold in Florida. That is especially true in the Miami-Fort Lauderdale area, where 49 percent of respondents, compared with 30 percent elsewhere in the state, said they had made physical changes to their homes in the past year to protect against sea-level rise, flooding or extreme weather. The latest daily heat record in Miami was broken on Sunday, only the third day of summer, when the temperature reached 95 degrees. The high on Monday, 98 degrees, tied the existing record.
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https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/24/us/miami-democratic-debates.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fclimate&action=click&contentCollection=climate®ion=stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement=1&pgtype=sectionfront
