The coast of NJ is so overbuilt that the term for this in civil engineering is 'New Jersefication' ! Recently Gov. Corzine linked beach replenishment to public access to beachfront--- a wise move since the same people who build million dollar+ homes on the beach and expect us to replace them after every storm are denying public access to the shore. I took some great photos last year on LBU of 'for sale' signs on bayfront lots under a foot of water.

We live in a tide-vulnerable area of LI Sound. We keep close track of sea levels/tides, because when the tide comes over the road, we can't get home.

3-4 times a year, the tide comes as high as our knees on the road.

This pattern hasn't changed at all over 15 years--though we are always worried about the possibility of a much higher tide, as during The Perfect Storm c. 1991.

But so far, no real sea level changes that I can see.

The local small public beach has lost far more sand to the huge private-house jetty nearby than to climate change.

Sand depletion along the south shore of Long Island coincides with the construction of groins in the Hamptons which apparently affects the migration of sand.

At the same time, sea-walls in the Great South Bay - which line much of the mainland and northern shore of Fire Island have increased the turbidity of water (no place to dissipate waves) resulting in erosion where channels meet the ocean.

These have little to do with climate change and more to do with human intervention

One of the worst lasting effects of the Bush Administration is the encouragement of ridiculing science and ignoring inconvenient truths.

If people would restrain the urge to live and build "on the coastal areas" it might help to protect the shorelines of the parts of the country bordering the sea. The caller from the Hamptons is saying something similar to this idea. I'm with her!

Funny this is on the show today. My family and I got caught in a terrible flash flood this past Friday in Sea Isle City. It was unbelievable! Sea Isle is notorious for the flooding during hard rain, as is Ocean CIty (where we have a house), but my folks destroyed their car because the flooding happened so quickly. It appeared to have gone from 1 foot to 3 feet within minutes.

My husband and I were about a mile behind them in our Outback Subaru on the island and had to go through 1.5 ft puddle after puddle (lake after lake) to get to my parents (and my nephews). Even then we barely were able to get to them through the floods. 3 hours later we headed out on the only high ground road going the wrong way, had to plow through 4 blocks of flooding to get to the bridge out, and they closed the island after we got off.

It HAS never been so bad. Never. Hurricanes have been bad year after year, but this year, everyone has remarked it has never been this bad. Never.

New York State and NYC have, to some degree, looked at these climate change models and how to deal with sea level rise. The NY DEC and NYC DEP have looked at what could happen with regard to tunnel flooding and overtopped withdrawal intake pipes, for example.

Also see the The Nature Conservancy's Hudson Valley _Rising Waters_ report for various models and responses in that region.

http://www.nature.org/wherewework/northamerica/states/newyork/science/art23583.html

Fire Island remains arguably one of the most vulnerable stretches of coastline to climate change. A massive beach replenishment over the winter largely mitigated what could have been potentially disasterous beach erosion from Hurricane Bill two weeks ago. I fear these efforts are merely temporarily solutions to a much larger problem.

I've been going to Mantoloking, NJ for years and years. The beach is definitely much, much smaller. I couldn't say whether its from rising sea levels or loss of sand and dune, but there is undeniably less beach. Furthermore, the Army Corps of Engineers is off the coast of NJ pumping sand onto the beach more or less constantly. They move around, but they are always somewhere.

The term "climate change" is more appropriate because it not just a few more degrees uniformly everywhere, all the time.

It is more a disruption where in some locales there is very little change and in other places major shifts.

how many displaced foreign refugees should we expect will have to resettled here in the USA?

Oh, and in regards to the lonely polar bear pictured on this page, they've actually increased in numbers the past few years.
Have a nice day, all.

One supposes that since the earth isn't warming after all these past 10 years, this fact explains the shift to "climate change" instead of "global warming."
One also wonders how it is that NYC was covered under a mile of ice eons ago, and how it happened that that ice froze and thawed, all by itself, with no help from humans. Perhaps this topic could be addressed?
Wanted to provide some helpful context and nuance for those tuning in to hear what undoubtedly will be more alarmist nonsense.