A new US government report suggests floods will become more common over the next century. Shoreline tides are getting progressively higher, and flooding will be a weekly event in some coastal parts of the US.

(Transcript of Lawrence Gunther’s bi-weekly 12-minute segment on Live from Studio 5 broadcast over AMI TV and Audio across Canada)

Q. Welcome back Lawrence, what does the report predict, and how certain is it that these predictions will come true?

A. The report is clear that climate change is causing sea levels to rise and putting coastal communities at risk.
A. What differs in this report is the rate of change being predicted using very conservative predictive models.

Q. Is the flooding directly related to climate change?

A. Climate change is sighted as the cause, but not necessarily larger storms like we saw in 2017 with all the hurricanes and storms that battered the east coast.

Q. If not storms, then what?

A. King sunshine tides, which is high tide related flooding caused by rising ocean levels.
A. 25 to 130 times a year by 2050, and every day by 2100.

Q. Are these worse case scenarios?

A. The science is based on moderate increases in temperatures using predictive models, but the flooding is growing at rates that far exceed the rate of temperature change.

Q. What about people and cities, are they at risk as well?

A. Miami Florida and Norfolk Virginia are already experiencing this sort of flooding.
A. Worst hit will be the south-east US and Gulf States, but the entire east and west coasts of North America are at risk, as is the Arctic and island states in the Pacific and Atlantic.

Q. What does the report recommend?

A. 100 military installations have already experienced flooding.
A. All Navy bases will need to be transformed.
A. The US military is quite concerned with climate change as they can’t seem to get a handle on predicting exactly when and where the situation will get worse.
A. The problem is growing chronic quite quickly, and not growing at a steady rate.