As Florida's Geology Melts Away...

Many of the symptoms of climate change can be addressed with seawalls, irrigation, reinforced construction and raising buildings above flood plains. One of these symptoms which is most difficult to respond to on site is the increasingly frequent phenomena of sink holes caused by the largely invisible erosion of soil and "bedrock" by increasingly heavy torrential rain storms.

One of the states most vulnerable to this underground disintegration  Florida. I am not a geologist but it is widely known that much, if not most of the state of Florida sits above a great shelf of porous honeycombed limestone which is readily dissolved by the thousands of unknown subterranean streams and rivers running above, through and underneath it at an increasing rate as rainfall volumes increase dramatically.

Two notable tragedies caused by this undermining Floridian phenomenon were widely publicized last year. The first incident concerned a man who was sleeping in his suburban home when it was suddenly swallowed along with him by a sink hole. He was never seen again. The second was a relatively new luxury hotel several stories tall which collapsed when a sinkhole manifested beneath it.

Are you considering relocating to Florida in the new climate change paradigm? You might want to reconsider. This state is prone to roast in the southern latitudes, be eroded by rising sea levels, damaged by increasingly destructive hurricanes, tornadoes and other storms and, worst of all, unpredictable collapse from underneath as its limestone geology washes away. Increasingly, living in a home in Florida is like moving onto a shifting sandbar in the middle of a steaming tropical high volume river delta.

If your horizon is ten to fifteen years you'll probably survive Florida. If it's more than fifteen years from now you might be prudent to seriously look into moving to a home built above solid bedrock [granite, igneous rock] at an elevation well above the 100 year flood plain in Burlington, Vermont near Lake Champlain where there's plentiful fresh water, a low crime rate, cooler temperatures and nearby farmland. Better yet, if you don't mind immigrating, take a serious look at the Canadian provinces of Quebec and Ontario for the long haul: twenty years or more.

CONTACT: You can always contact Peter Ogden at: peterogden7x7@yahoo.com or
through the end of autumn 2014 via snail mail at:
Peter Ogden, 110 Genesee St., Ste. 707, Nano Utica, New York, 13502.