With climate change, the past is irrelevant

I have been made aware that current planning for flood damage mitigation and prevention uses the tried and trusted concepts of "100 year flood level" and the like.

This would be very wise -- if we lived in a steady-state world.

When those design tools were devised, the past was a pretty good guide to the future.

Sadly, thanks to the galloping climate change that now only the wilfully blind can deny, the past is now anything but a guide to the future.

It is irrelevant.

We know with 100 per cent certainty that sea levels will rise, within the expected lifespans of buildings being erected now.

We know that all weather patterns will gain in energy, and this means stronger winds causing higher waves.

If you would read Turning Up the Heat, a very readable book on climate change by distinguished Australian scientist Barrie Pittock, you will find out that climate change is not always gradual and predictable.

There are also what he calls "threshold effects".

Something happens that causes a major change, in a very short time.

We know that all over the globe, ice is melting.

This is usually considered a steady, slow process, but it is one of the things that can change suddenly.

What if a large chunk of ice (like the size of NSW) were to suddenly break off the Antarctic ice sheet?

It could cause a very high wave that would certainly reach the Woy Woy Peninsula.

If I lived in your beautiful area, therefore, I would buy land right on the seashore, at the (current) sea level.

Why?

Because surviving a major catastrophe may be worse than dying from it.

Robert Rich PhD, Healesville, Victoria