Report illustrates toll of climate change in Vancouver
A sustainability expert says $25 billion worth of local real estate could be "negatively affected" by rising sea levels caused by climate change. Eileen Keenan, a research and sustainability adviser with Vancouver-based Bing Thom Architects, also says the question of who should fund local mitigation efforts to defend this region from the impact of global warming is “very problematic”.
Keenan has partnered with local architect and colleague Andrew Yan in a new report offering a sobering analysis of what sea-level rise means to the region and what can be done to minimize damage the area will sustain by the year 2100.
The report is titled The Local Effects of Global Climate Change in the City of Vancouver. It will be released under the auspices of Bing Thom’s research-and-development arm.
According to the 25-page report’s introduction, “BTAworks has created a toolkit to illustrate the effects of global climate change at a neighbourhood level in Vancouver”. Through 2011 provincial assessment values and city zoning plans, the report arrived at the $25-billion estimate for the value of real estate that could be negatively affected by sea-level rise. There could be further damage to local utilities that could be affected by a change in sea level.
Depending on whether earthen dikes or seawall barriers are used, the report’s authors estimate that coastal defence will cost somewhere between $255 million to $510 million.
“We always claimed in the report [that] these are ballpark figures,” Keenan told the Georgia Straight in a phone interview. “We’re just trying to give some kind of order of magnitude of what this thing is. Because I think people look at it and they say, ”˜This is going to be very expensive and it’s going to be impossible to fix.’ But by the same token, you look at what we’ve spent on other things, and what we’ve spent on other capital projects. And also what we often don’t consider is what we stand to lose if we don’t do anything.”
Keenan claimed that a local engineer provided estimates of $5,000 per metre for earth-mound dikes and about $10,000 per metre to build a seawall like the one in Stanley Park, and this is how the range of $255 million to $510 million was determined.
Keenan said that the compilation of various sea-level-rise scenarios, from one metre above sea level to 5.6 metres above sea level, was made possible due to Vancouver’s open-data initiative providing information for researchers like her and Yan.
She suggested the province could lead the way in providing data provincewide and make recommendations for mitigation. “As to how it [mitigation strategies] should be funded, obviously that’s very problematic.”
One problem, Keenan added, is that many of these strategies need to be adapted at the local level, but she said that “at the local level, it can’t be afforded.”
However, Keenan said the first step, before talk of who will pay, is to educate residents here and elsewhere and undertake a public-awareness campaign. “People need to become aware of the fact that it’s not just impacting the wealthy owners of the waterfront homes, that it has real impact elsewhere too,” she said.
Ian Bruce, climate-change specialist with the David Suzuki Foundation, told the Straight he is pleasantly surprised that a local architecture firm is sufficiently motivated to take on something that is so important and normally a government concern.
“I think it clearly shows how vulnerable our communities are to the effects of global warming and sea-level rise,” Bruce said by phone. “It clearly illustrates and shows, within our own community, exactly what’s at stake.”
Bruce, a Mount Pleasant resident, said he still sees a future for Vancouver, provided people get educated and governments start providing leadership on the issue.
“I think it’s very likely that all levels of government have a responsibility and a stake in ensuring that Canadians are protected from the effects of climate change,” he said. “One of the things about reducing global-warming emissions, it’s a bit like an insurance policy where we can help reduce the consequences of global warming by taking immediate and decisive action now to put in place solutions such as clean energy.”
Comments
11 Comments
heads up
Jul 14, 2011 at 5:50am
I guess that these do gooders and sustainability advisers didn't bother looking up historic sea level rise in vancouver. Even if the current trend accelerates 5x historic values, it is still only 5 inches in 100 years.
Look for yourself.
http://tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/sltrends/sltrends_global_station.shtml?...
Tom Frankenbach
Jul 14, 2011 at 7:45am
There is a fallacy in the belief that reducing CO2 emissions will lessen the potential for sea level impact. Several recent peer review studies reveal that ice melt was much greater and temperatures were much warmer just in the last 12,000 years when CO2 levels were only 260PPM to 280PPM including an ice free Arctic on numerous occasions during that time frame. The risk of spending enormous sums of money to mitigate CO2 will not likely prevent the rise of the oceans that we now know rose when CO2 was much lower. As proof one only need examine the failure of the Kyoto Treaty which did nothing to lower CO2 emissions in the countries that participated. In fact an objective examination indicates that the US, without being part of the waste ridden treaty, lowered CO2 emissions more than most of the participant countries.
The prudent and least wasteful approach is to spend the money on adaptation if the real intent is to protect the land and the people. There is also an inexpensive and fast way to stop ice melt as was revealed in May by the IPCC's Drew Shindell (lead scientist) who presented the findings of numerous IPCC scientists that 2/3 of the ice melt on the planet was being caused by black carbon and ozone, which means that CO2 mitigation (which could only reduce ice melt by less than 1/3) will do nothing to prevent further ice loss in the short term, whereas mitigation of black carbon and ozone would change ice melt immediately and that the full 2/3 reduction in ice melt would occur within 5 years. The challenge for Vancouver will be to implement engineering strategies that address the reality of ocean level rise past and future as opposed to politically based strategies which would waste money by only trying to mitigate CO2.
chris y
Jul 14, 2011 at 7:52am
A quick check of global sea level rise shows <1 mm/year for the last 5 years.
A quick check also shows sea level at-
Vancouver= +0.37 mm/year
Victoria= +0.8 mm/year
Tofino= -1.59 mm/year.
Port Angeles, WA= 0.18 mm/year.
Before architects start hand-wringing about sea level catastrophes, maybe it would be prudent to wait for some sign, any sign, of a seal level catastrophe. So far its all climate model fantasy games.
Goldorak
Jul 14, 2011 at 8:06am
LOL now the architect climbs in the band wagon and the David Suzuki that gets its millions from US Foundations, that managed to short democracy through the Carbon Tax is peddling its global warming Bull...
Shameless profiteers!
Vancity Dude
Jul 14, 2011 at 8:35am
Studies which only look at sea-level rise as a consequence of global-warming are typical of the lack of system-wide thinking this crisis requires. Who cares about whether or not your pricey house gets flooded if you're already dead from famine or nuclear fallout from resource wars? The adaptations required will be extreme, not just raising the dykes. For one thing, the whole Fraser Valley needs to be emptied of people and restored to farmland immediately in order to ensure some food security. But I'm sure the home-owners in Richmond and Surrey don't want to hear that, nor do any politicians/architects/non-profit groups want to take ownership of that idea. Canadians will all be affected by climate change, in myriad and unexpected ways, in the near future. Harsh, decisive leadership is required, not feel-good bandaid solutions.
CO2ScamAlert
Jul 14, 2011 at 12:23pm
This article is pure garbage.
Science used to be about empiricism. Now it's just a bunch of people trying to get their nose in the money trough.
People are finally waking up to the fact that today's 'Science' is just agenda-driven politics. Man-made CO2 driven warming is a scam. If this is news to you look in to the facts. BC has a Carbon Tax for a problem that doesn't exist. The government must be in heaven.
Lawson1945
Jul 14, 2011 at 12:44pm
Simply put I do not care about this scam called Climate Change it is by those who cannot find a real job get one, that is all this is about one has made millions scaming us. Tell me the name of that person!
Yawn
Jul 14, 2011 at 1:19pm
The climate change deniers have become so boring and predictable with their sub-literate rants based on nothing but rejecting real overwhelming scientific evidence in favour of oil industry-funded nonsense and prattle from moronic weathermen and religious nuts. When will they just give up and go away?
Sockpuppet Bots Suck
Jul 14, 2011 at 5:46pm
@Yawn -The climate change deniers may be predictable because some of the posts are the output of persona management software. http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/02/16/945768/-UPDATED:-The-HB-Gary-Em...
If it sound like the output of a computer program, it just might be.
Kim Collins
Jul 16, 2011 at 10:30am
I keep reading all these posts where people deny that climate change is both real and created by human activity. It's sad. Do they not know the history of climate science? We've known about climate change for a long time:
"In 1896 a Swedish scientist published a new idea. As humanity burned fossil fuels such as coal, which added carbon dioxide gas to the Earth's atmosphere, we would raise the planet's average temperature. This "greenhouse effect" was only one of many speculations about climate change, however, and not the most plausible. Scientists found technical reasons to argue that our emissions could not change the climate. Indeed most thought it was obvious that puny humanity could never affect the vast climate cycles, which were governed by a benign "balance of nature." In any case major change seemed impossible except over tens of thousands of years.
In the 1930s, people realized that the United States and North Atlantic region had warmed significantly during the previous half-century. Scientists supposed this was just a phase of some mild natural cycle, with unknown causes. Only one lone voice, the amateur G.S. Callendar, insisted that greenhouse warming was on the way. Whatever the cause of warming, everyone thought that if it happened to continue for the next few centuries, so much the better.
In the 1950s, Callendar's claims provoked a few scientists to look into the question with improved techniques and calculations. What made that possible was a sharp increase of government funding, especially from military agencies with Cold War concerns about the weather and the seas. The new studies showed that, contrary to earlier crude estimates, carbon dioxide could indeed build up in the atmosphere and should bring warming. Painstaking measurements drove home the point in 1960 by showing that the level of the gas was in fact rising, year by year."
http://www.aip.org/history/climate/index.htm
Oh yeah, here's a nifty video from 1958 about climate change from Bell Labs: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qF9WdV8pUPk
Enjoy!