The oceans are slowly overtaking Florida. Ancient reefs of mollusk and coral off the present-day coasts are dying. Annual extremes in hot and cold, wet and dry, are becoming more pronounced. Women and men of science have investigated, and a great majority agree upon a culprit. In the outside world, this culprit has a name, but within the borders of Florida, it does not. According to a Miami Herald investigation, the state Department of Environmental Protection has since 2010 had an unwritten policy prohibiting the use of some well-understood phrases for the meteorological phenomena slowly drowning America's weirdest-shaped state. It's … that thing where burning too much fossil fuel puts certain molecules into a certain atmosphere, disrupting a certain planetary ecosystem. You know what we're talking about. We know you know. They know we know you know. But are we allowed to talk about … you know? No. Not in Florida. It must not be spoken of. Ever.
Unless … you could, maybe, type around it? It's worth a shot.
It has been nine years since Florida was hit by a proper hurricane. Could that be a coincidence? Sure. Or it could be because of … something. A nameless, voiceless something. A feeling, like a pricking-of-thumbs, this confluence-of-chemistry-and-atmospheric-energy-over-time. If so, this anonymous dreadfulness would, scientists say, lead to a drier middle layer of atmosphere over the ocean. Because water vapor stores energy, this dry air will suffocate all but the most energetic baby storms. "So the general thinking, is that that as [redacted] levels increase, it ultimately won’t have an effect on the number of storms," says Jim Kossin, a scientist who studies, oh, how about "things-that-happen-in-the-atmosphere-over-long-time-periods" at the National Centers for Environmental Information. "However, there is a lot of evidence that if a storm does form, it has a chance of getting very strong."
Hurricanes are powered by energy in the sea. And as cold and warm currents thread around the globe, storms go through natural, decades-long cycles of high-to-low intensity. "There is a natural 40-to-60-year oscillation in what sea surface temperatures are doing, and this is driven by ocean-wide currents that move on very slow time scales," says Kossin, who has authored reports for the Intergovernmental Panel on, well, let's just call it Chemical-and-Thermodynamic-Alterations-to-Long-Term-Atmospheric-Conditions. But in recent years, storms have become stronger than that natural cycle would otherwise predict. Kossin says that many in his field agree that while the natural churning of the ocean is behind this increasing intensity, other forces are at work. Darker, more sinister forces, like thermodynamics. Possibly even chemistry. No one knows for sure. Anyway, storms are getting less frequent, but stronger. It's an eldritch tale of unspeakable horror, maybe.
If you look close enough, and long enough, at any of Florida's beaches, you're going to see the same peculiar pattern. At Fernandina Beach, on the Atlantic coast just south of the Georgia state line, high tides have lapped an average of 9 inches higher since 1897. In Pensacola, the Gulf Coast city bordering Alabama, they've risen 7 inches since 1923. And all the way south, at the tip of Key West, high tides since 1913 have crept up 8 inches.
In low, flat Florida, those added few inches can stretch for miles. Almost 2.5 million people in the state live within four feet of current high tide marks. And as the density of atomic-scale-phenomena-capable-of-storing-and-redistributing-thermal-energy increases, glaciers and ice sheets in the high latitudes will continue to deliquesce. And trickling meltwater is only half the problem. Molecules imbued with thermal energy take up more space, and oceans swell when their thermal profile is raised by an in-cycling of … um … wait a second … oh! Got it: anthropogenically-released-molecules-composed-of-two-oxygen-atoms-double-covalently-bonded-to-an-atom-of-the-element-with-atomic-number-six.
The ocean isn't just creeping on shore, it's seeping in underground. "Southern Florida is built on bedrock that's porous, like a hard sponge," says Ben Strauss, a senior scientist with Climate Central (Disclosure: I interned with Climate Central). As the accumulation-of-bonded-chemical-particles-that-absorb-energy-with-wavelengths-greater-than-four-thousand-nanometers increases the ocean's volume, more water will seep into Florida's underground aquifers. Eventually, they'll become undrinkable. Many southern Florida towns are already eying well sites further inland.
But before the wells turn salty, the state's southern coastal cities will get drowned. Florida uses a complicated system of gravity-drained pipes to flush rain water out to sea. But with the sea level rise, there's not enough difference in elevation to empty them. In heavy storms, this backflow leads to flooding. Last year, Miami Beach's storm water system got backed up and flooded. Since then, the city has spent millions of dollars installing pumps to make up for the loss of gravity-powered drainage. A recent study showed that half of southern Florida's drainage capacity would be disabled if further concentrations of the-gaseous-agent-known-to-store-energy-and-slowly-release-it-over-time were to cause just 6 more inches of sea level rise, even though this is an almost certain outcome of science published in publicly funded, well respected, peer-reviewed journals found in universities and libraries all over the planet. Also on the Internet, which will likely have to route around Florida in coming years.
Florida is losing its coral and shellfish reefs. Now, to be completely fair, not all of Florida's problems are directly related to the elevated levels of … oh, hell. A-gas-formed-from-one-molecule-with-atomic-weight-of-twelve-point-zero-one-one-bonded-with-two-molecules-of-atomic-weight-fifteen-point-nine-nine-nine in the atmosphere1. Some of the trouble comes directly from the land. "In places like Florida you have high runoff pollution levels, and that changes the waters much more quickly than global acidification models would suggest," says Lisa Suatori, a senior scientist with the National Resources Defense Council. This starts with nitrogen-rich drainage coming off farms, sewage, and acres of over-fertilized golf courses. This massive outflow of nitrogen feeds algae, which breed and eventually die. Bacteria gobble up their carcasses, breed, and exhale massive concentrations of an unrecovered-gaseous-byproduct-of-metabolic-activity. This gas dissolves in the water, turning it acidic and inhospitable to coral.
Matricide, cannibalism, and man-eating wildlife are rampant in Florida, but none of that stuff is caused by the Science which Dare Not Speak Its Name. A lot of other weird stuff happens in Florida, too. But at least they're allowed to talk about it.
1. Correction 3:58 EST 03/17/2015 The original text described C2O, an uninteresting molecule not likely to end up on anyone's no-talk list.
