Port Angeles: Population 250,000?
In last Wednesday’s Peninsula Daily News there was an article (not available online) about the possible effects of global warming in the Port Angeles-Sequim area. According to Physics Professor Richard Schwartz, the following changes might be coming:
In ten years there might not be any permanent snow fields in the Olympic Mountains.
The glaciers could be gone in thirty years.
Rain will fall harder and harder, causing rivers to overflow in the spring and dry up in the summer and fall.
Schwartz said “if I were a farmer I’d buy land in Northern Alberta.”
He said droughts and water wars in California and Arizona could send a mass exodus to the Northwest. “You — or your successors — are going to be inundated with people looking to get out of the heat.”
He predicted that the Port Angeles-Sequim area could eventually have 250,000 residents. “It could happen in about twenty years if things become sufficiently bad in the Southwest. This is not necessarily a doom and gloom scenario, but one we have to keep in mind as we plan.”
In ten years there might not be any permanent snow fields in the Olympic Mountains.
The glaciers could be gone in thirty years.
Rain will fall harder and harder, causing rivers to overflow in the spring and dry up in the summer and fall.
Schwartz said “if I were a farmer I’d buy land in Northern Alberta.”
He said droughts and water wars in California and Arizona could send a mass exodus to the Northwest. “You — or your successors — are going to be inundated with people looking to get out of the heat.”
He predicted that the Port Angeles-Sequim area could eventually have 250,000 residents. “It could happen in about twenty years if things become sufficiently bad in the Southwest. This is not necessarily a doom and gloom scenario, but one we have to keep in mind as we plan.”
Labels: Olympic Mountains, Port Angeles, Richard Schwartz, Sequim
posted by Tom Harper at 7:16 PM
2 Comments:
Herd all the newcomers into Sequim, it already looks like a California suburb.
Maybe, maybe not. Forecast models vary considerable. If the mechanisms that carry heat from the equatorial regions north and south shut down, reqions above 30 or 40 degrees latitude may in fact get colder. A much greater concern is the shifting of weather patterns in the world's 5 major food producing areas. Distupting those could cause famine on a massive scale. The guy could very well be right about Alberta, the 'breadbasket' area of North America most likely would shift north.
If it's true, then all I have to say is 'there goes the neighborhood'.
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