Tag Archives: coast

Mass transit wins big in ballot initiatives

by MaryanneParkins Posted on November 10, 2016

In an otherwise rough election for cities, poor people, and the environment, all three got a bit of good news from state and local ballot initiatives funding mass transit. Across the country, voters approved a majority of measures to expand bus and rail lines.

Smart Growth America, the pro-transit and urbanism advocacy group, compiled a list of the biggest transit initiatives on Tuesday’s ballots. Of the 27 measures tracked, 19 passed. And of the eight that failed, five received majority support but fell short because local tax increases required a supermajority.

Among the biggest successes were a sales tax increase to build new light rail in Seattle, a property tax to pay for repairs and maintenance on the San Francisco Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) system, and a slight sales tax hike to expand bus and rail services and upgrade bike lanes and sidewalks in Los Angeles County.

It wasn’t only the famously eco-friendly cities of the Left Coast that supported mass transit. Even in the South — the country’s most conservative region, with some of its most car-dependent metro areas — voters approved taxes for transit. Wake County, North Carolina, passed a half penny per dollar sales tax increase for new services, including three bus rapid transit lines and a commuter rail line. Atlanta passed two separate sales taxes for biking and walking trails, street and sidewalk improvements, and bus upgrades and rail expansions.

There were also positive results in smaller cities in the Midwest and Interior West. In Eastern Washington, the conservative side of the state, Spokane passed a 0.2 percent sales tax to fund more bus service and launch the area’s first bus rapid transit line. Indianapolis and surrounding Marion County voted for a 0.25 percent income tax to increase bus service. (The Indianapolis area has long had Republicans who support transit, such as former Mayor Greg Ballard and Carmel, Indiana, Mayor Jim Brainerd.)

The Center for Transportation Excellence, a pro-transit think tank, kept track of all transit-related ballot measures and found support for mass transit in small and mid-sized cities, too. Kansas City, Missouri, passed a 3/8-cent sales tax increase to build light rail, while Greensboro, North Carolina, voted for a transportation investment bond to fund new sidewalks.

There were also some disappointments. Measures to expand transit in Broward County, Florida, and in southeast Michigan failed. But, overall, the results were evidence that most Americans — even Trump voters — are willing to pay for greater, greener mobility.

Continue reading: 

Mass transit wins big in ballot initiatives

Posted in alo, Anchor, eco-friendly, FF, GE, Landmark, ONA, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Mass transit wins big in ballot initiatives

In a weird twist, hurricanes help keep deltas above water.

by JeramySchlenker Posted on October 19, 2016

As sea level rises, tropical storms will be a bigger problem for coastal cities — but the same storms could potentially deliver sand, silt, and clay to bolster sagging shorelines.

New Orleans, Shanghai, Cairo, Dhaka, and Karachi all sit on deltas, where a major river fans into smaller tributaries and wetlands to meet the sea. When big rainstorms wash lots of dirt downstream, it can replace, and even add to, eroding deltas. A third of the sediment flowing into Southeast Asia’s Mekong Delta, for example, is runoff from big tropical storms, according to a new study this week in Nature.

“We’ve all seen images of storm surges battering New Orleans or up the East Coast,” says geologist Steven Darby of the University of Southampton, who led the Mekong study. “But equally,” he says, “those surges and flooding … can have a constructive effect.”

Whether the influx of sediment can balance out losses from erosion and sea-level rise remains to be seen. As storms get bigger and make landfall in new places, each delta will react differently — and for some coastal cities, it’s possible that the storms that plague them will also play a role in keeping them afloat.

See the original article here: 

In a weird twist, hurricanes help keep deltas above water.

Posted in alo, Anchor, FF, GE, LG, ONA, Ringer, The Atlantic, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on In a weird twist, hurricanes help keep deltas above water.

Is Hurricane Matthew the New Normal?

by AbrahamVillegas Posted on October 7, 2016

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

Hurricane Matthew, which is currently menacing the United States after causing more than 800 deaths in Haiti, has focused the world’s attention on the growing threat posed by flooding and extreme storms. Here’s what you need to know about how climate change could make these natural disasters even worse.

Severe weather costs billions

So far in 2016, there have been a total of 12 floods and severe storms in the United States that have caused more than $1 billion in losses each, according to data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The losses cover damage to property and infrastructure, interruptions to business operations such as store closings, and agricultural damage to crops and livestock.

Four of those catastrophic floods—two in Louisiana and one each in Texas and West Virginia—have occurred inland as a result of heavy rain. That’s double the previous record, which dates back to 1980. The pattern is clear: “Since 1991, the amount of rain falling in very heavy precipitation events has been significantly above average,” according to the National Climate Assessment, released in 2014.

Why the increase? As explained in the assessment, warmer temperatures enable the air to hold more water vapor. This extra vapor is then ready to be picked up and unleashed by the next storm system.

National Climate Assessment

As the Environmental Protection Agency states, however, the trend is by no means a universal one. As some parts of the country—such as the Midwest, Northeast, and Great Plains—see increased flooding, other regions, like the Southwest, have seen a decrease.

Sea levels are rising, and coasts are threatened

Global sea levels have risen 8 inches since 1880, according to a Climate Central analysis, and the trend shows no signs of slowing down. The culprit? Human activity. Climate Central’s report shows that along the coasts, two-thirds of flood days are now caused by human impact.

In addition to flooding from heavy rainfall, rising seas caused by melting ice sheets and warming water (which takes up more space than cooler water) are already causing coastal flooding in places such as Norfolk, Virginia—even on days without rain, as the New York Times explains. This type of flooding, termed “sunny-day flooding,” can happen at high tide and when winds are strong enough to cause the water to flow onto streets, the Times notes.

Human activity causes two-thirds of coastal flood days. Climate Central

Hurricanes could get worse

Climate models cited by the National Climate Assessment also predict an increase in the number of powerful category 4 (wind speeds above 130 miles per hour) and category 5 hurricanes (wind speeds above 155 miles per hour) by late this century. Hurricane Katrina, which devastated the Gulf Coast in 2005, was upgraded to a category 5 at its most dangerous peak before striking Louisiana as a category 3 storm. It displaced more than 400,000 people, with some estimates topping 1 million. More than a decade later, the exact number of people killed by the storm is still unknown.

Matthew made landfall in Haiti as a category 4 but has been reduced to a category 3 as it pummels Florida. (UPDATE: Matthew has now been downgraded to a category 2 storm.) Yesterday, President Barack Obama declared states of emergency in Florida, Georgia, and South Carolina, and Florida’s governor, Rick Scott, warned, “This storm will kill you.” Matthew spent more time as a category 4 or 5 storm than any other hurricane on record in the eastern Caribbean, said Adam Smith, a scientist at NOAA.

The warmer surface temperature of the water in the Caribbean Sea has contributed to Matthew’s “resilience and power,” Smith added in an email to Mother Jones.

Storm surge, or the water pushed onto land by high winds, has been another contributing factor to Matthew’s danger. It reached a peak of four feet near Cape Canaveral, Florida, and is predicted to reach as much as six to nine feet in parts of Florida and South Carolina if the surge coincides with high tide.

In fact, storm surge is one of the most dangerous effects of a hurricane. “Along the coast, storm surge is often the greatest threat to life and property from a hurricane,” according to the National Hurricane Center.

And the threat could grow. A study released in 2013 showed that warming temperatures could cause a tenfold increase in extreme storm surges in the next few decades.

“Climate change makes worse many of our weather extremes than they would have been naturally,” Smith said.

View this article – 

Is Hurricane Matthew the New Normal?

Posted in alo, FF, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Is Hurricane Matthew the New Normal?

Is the Louisiana Flooding More Devastating Than Hurricane Sandy?

by BeckySoria Posted on August 22, 2016

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

The relief effort in Louisiana is ramping up after 10 days of monumental flooding. On Tuesday, President Barack Obama will visit Baton Rouge to survey the damage and find out how the federal government can help. The Red Cross has repeatedly described the flooding as “the worst natural disaster to strike the United States” since Hurricane Sandy hit the East Coast in 2012.

But for those who aren’t on the ground in Louisiana, it can be difficult to understand what that really means. Here are some numbers that compare the two disasters.

Deaths and damaged homes: Thirteen people have died and about 60,000 homes have been damaged in the flooding that began in Louisiana on August 12. As of Friday, the Obama administration listed 20 parishes in the state as disaster areas, making federal funding available to assist those communities. Hurricane Sandy had a bigger death toll, claiming 72 lives in the United States and damaging 200,000 homes. But that storm hit a much wider swath of land, including metropolitan centers like New York City, whose population is nearly double that of the entire state of Louisiana.

People in shelters: When you compare the storms in terms of the numbers of people in shelters, the situation is similar.

“The Red Cross has mobilized our largest sheltering and feeding effort since Superstorm Sandy with the flooding in Louisiana,” said Molly Dalton, a spokeswoman for the humanitarian organization. “It’s the largest volume of people in need of emergency shelter in the last four years…In addition, FEMA has reported really high numbers of people registering for emergency assistance, which is another indicator we’re going by.”

About five days after Hurricane Sandy, she said, the Red Cross had 11,000 people in 250 shelters across 16 states. One week into that relief effort, it had about 7,000 people in shelters, “and we’re seeing about the same over the last week” in Louisiana, Dalton said on Friday. “Thursday night we had 3,900 people in 28 shelters, but at the peak of the response we had 10,000 people in 50 shelters in Louisiana. So it’s going down, but there are still a lot of people in shelters.” Sunday night, the Red Cross had nearly 3,000 people in 19 shelters across the state.

Looking at the big picture, the Red Cross and partners have provided more than 40,000 overnight stays since flooding began in Louisiana. That compares with 74,000 overnight stays during the entire relief effort for Hurricane Sandy, and 3.8 million overnight stays for Hurricane Katrina victims who where spread across 27 states.

“It’s not possible to estimate the full impact of the Louisiana floods this early in the response, and every disaster is different, so it would be difficult to make any comparison to past disasters,” another Red Cross spokesperson told Mother Jones on Monday. “But we do know that this is going to be a massive response.”

Meals served: “So far in Louisiana in the first week, we’ve served 158,000 meals, and if you look at the same point in Sandy, we had served 164 thousand,” Dalton said Friday. “So as far as what we’re seeing then and what we’re seeing now, it’s very, very similar.”

It’s important to remember, she said, that Hurricane Sandy struck many more states, stretching from New England as far south as the District of Columbia. “This is just one area of Louisiana,” she added. “So if you look at it that way…it’s a very devastating disaster.”

At the peak of the deluge, Louisiana was hit by 6.9 trillion gallons of rain between August 8 and August 14, or roughly 10.4 million Olympic-size swimming pools‘ worth of water. The flooding is receding now, particularly in the northern reaches of the state, though some areas in the south will take longer to dry out, says Gavin Phillips, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service. “It’s going down everywhere now,” he says. “There’s nothing worsening at this point.”

The Red Cross estimates the relief effort in Louisiana could cost at least $30 million, though that number may grow as relief workers learn more about the scope of the disaster. As of Monday, the humanitarian organization had received about $7.8 million in donations and pledges.

While Hurricane Sandy and the recent Louisiana flooding were devastating, they pale in comparison to Louisiana’s other famous disaster, Hurricane Katrina, which hit the Gulf Coast 10 years ago, killing at least 1,833 people.

View the original here: 

Is the Louisiana Flooding More Devastating Than Hurricane Sandy?

Posted in FF, G & F, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Is the Louisiana Flooding More Devastating Than Hurricane Sandy?

We’ve only explored 0.0001 percent of the ocean, but that’s about to change.

by JulienneScarbrou Posted on August 18, 2016

drop in the bucket

We’ve only explored 0.0001 percent of the ocean, but that’s about to change.

By on Aug 18, 2016Share

Off the coast of Bermuda, tiny vessels are diving 1,000 feet to research something we know surprisingly little about: the ocean itself. Though the ocean makes up 95 percent of the planet’s habitable area, we’ve explored 0.0001 percent of it.

Nekton, a U.K.-based NGO, launched its first mission in mid-July to finally give us an understanding of the deep sea, using tiny research pods that are reminiscent of goldfish bowls — bowls with robot arms that grab samples from corals and sponges. The Guardian reports that the mission has uncovered new species, large black coral forests, and fossilized beaches.

Nekton Mission

There’s one thing we do know about the deep sea: We’re already changing it. Higher temperatures and ocean acidification are starving the deep sea of oxygen and changing how food circulates. That’s worrisome, because the deep ocean performs important functions: absorbing heat, regulating carbon, and terrifying us with alien-like creatures (Exhibit A: the blobfish).

Once the Nekton mission is complete, the pods will turn their grabby little arms to the Mediterranean Sea.

Until then, the goings-on of the deep sea remains one of life’s greatest mysteries — like how life originated or where your socks disappeared to after that last load of laundry.

Election Guide ★ 2016Making America Green AgainOur experts weigh in on the real issues at stake in this electionGet Grist in your inbox

Read article here: 

We’ve only explored 0.0001 percent of the ocean, but that’s about to change.

Posted in alo, Anchor, FF, G & F, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, PUR, Smith's, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on We’ve only explored 0.0001 percent of the ocean, but that’s about to change.

Understanding Louisiana’s big flood risks

by theacntnt1985-01 Posted on August 18, 2016

high water

Understanding Louisiana’s big flood risks

By on Aug 18, 2016Share

This story was originally published by Wired and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

There is a lot of water in southern Louisiana right now. The region’s been lashed with rain for the past week — the water has inundated freeways, surged past levees, and left about 40,000 homes water-logged husks of their former selves. The rain has stopped, for now. And when the water finally drains, people will return to their homes, pick up what’s left, and start rebuilding.

But the climate science prognosis doesn’t look good. This is the eighth time in about a year that 500-year rainfall has hammered the United States, and climate change will make extreme weather events like this more common. That means, among other things, millions of dollars worth of property damage. Fixing everything up and managing the growing threat of climate-related destruction hinges on flood insurance — which relies on ever-evolving, incomplete maps to determine risk. But new models will make it possible to better predict floodplains as it becomes increasingly dangerous to live on the coast.

The system isn’t perfect, but for people living in flood-prone regions like southern Louisiana, it’s the best line of defense, says Rafael Lemaitre, a FEMA spokesperson. If you’re covered, FEMA will pay out as much as $250,000 to repair your home.

But there are problems with how those policies get parceled out. “So much of it starts with what you define as a floodplain,” says Craig Colten, a geographer at Louisiana State University. FEMA creates flood risk maps that delineate areas of the region with a certain likelihood of being flooded every year. (An area that has a 1 percent probability of being flooded every year is called a 100-year floodplain.) Then, they base insurance premiums on where residents fall in those areas — the higher the risk, the higher the price.

Those maps, it turns out, are only updated every decade or so, when FEMA looks back on which places have flooded in the past. “It’s going to be a while before the recent flooding is factored into the maps,” Colten says. And the way water moves on the land is changing all the time: More developed areas with roads and parking lots lead to more runoff, for example. Climate change, too, is dramatically increasing the risk of flooding.

What coastal communities really need is predictive flood maps: projections of flood risk based on modeling. Right now, pretty much all flood insurance comes from FEMA, which, again, updates its maps infrequently and also allows residents to comment and push back on the boundaries, effectively letting them determine their own flood risk. Insurance companies, which might have the capital to invest in models that incorporate climate change, have largely stayed out of the business since the 1920s — partly because it’s too risky, partly because government-subsidized rates are too low for private companies to compete with.

But that may change soon, says Jeff Waters, a flood modeler at Risk Management Solutions, which models catastrophe risk for insurance companies. In recent years, he says, computers have finally been able to handle the computationally draining task of modeling something as dynamic as flooding across the U.S. Better modeling could lead to better estimates of risk in certain places, which would allow companies to price policies accordingly and residents to really understand how risky their locations are. And as FEMA enacts some much-needed reforms (like phasing out government subsidies, for one), it may become easier for insurance companies to offer up flood policies, too.

Another way to manage deepening risks, Colten says, is to widen the pool of people who buy into flood insurance. Currently, only the people living in 100-year floodplain areas are really expected to buy insurance — they’re the ones most at risk, after all. But if the insurance pool included people from 500-year floodplains, say, the risk would spread out more thinly. This scheme would’ve worked well for the flooding happening now, Colten says, since the water traveled far beyond the 100-year floodplain.

And FEMA is going with another, more direct way of managing the increasing risks of climate change: encouraging more severe weather-resistant infrastructure. Some of the funds FEMA provides for a disaster go toward rebuilding cities and houses to stricter code and in areas that aren’t quite so risky — say, at higher elevations or further away from the ocean. “Instead of constantly rebuilding for the next disaster, it’s much smarter to use federal dollars to build safer and build back,” says Lemaitre. As climate change risks climb and insurance costs rise to reflect reality, the shoreline of Louisiana will change, too: fewer buildings on the coast, and a lot more houses on stilts.

ShareElection Guide ★ 2016Making America Green AgainOur experts weigh in on the real issues at stake in this electionGet Grist in your inbox

More here:  

Understanding Louisiana’s big flood risks

Posted in alo, Anchor, FF, G & F, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, PUR, Safer, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Understanding Louisiana’s big flood risks

These Photos of Louisiana’s Deadly Floods Are Terrifying

by Amelie29J029 Posted on August 15, 2016

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

Severe weather and flooding has wracked southern Louisiana in recent days, as more than two feet of rain fell in parts of the region. The flooding has so far caused at least six deaths, according to the Associated Press. More than 20,000 people have been rescued, and 10,000 others have been put in shelters, Gov. John Bel Edwards said in a press conference yesterday.

The US government has declared four parishes federal disaster areas: East Baton Rouge, Livingston, St. Helena, and Tangipahoa. Damage assessments are continuing in other parts of the state, according to the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Edwards declared a state of emergency last Friday and requested aid from the federal government on Sunday.

Shocking images from the scene include cars submerged in water, floating caskets, and residents evacuating in boats. Here’s a look at the tragic scene from Louisiana:

Justin Mai reaches his hands into the mud at a construction site as he makes makeshift sandbags using plastic grocery bags during the historic flooding in Baton Rouge. Photo by Chris Granger @cgranger #flood #batonrouge

A photo posted by NOLAnews (@nolanews) on Aug 15, 2016 at 6:24am PDT

Flooding devastation is seen from the air following record-breaking rainfall in southeast Louisiana. Interstate 12 in Baton Rouge runs through the middle of this photograph. (Photo by Andrew Boyd, @gandrew55) #weather #flooding #laflood #batonrougeflood

A photo posted by NOLAnews (@nolanews) on Aug 14, 2016 at 3:51pm PDT

Read this article: 

These Photos of Louisiana’s Deadly Floods Are Terrifying

Posted in alo, FF, GE, LG, ONA, Radius, Ringer, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on These Photos of Louisiana’s Deadly Floods Are Terrifying

Is Trump Even Aware of Where He’s Speaking?

by DedraBayldon5 Posted on August 15, 2016

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

Donald Trump will deliver a speech on Monday afternoon in Youngstown, Ohio, a quintessential Rust Belt city that has declined sharply from its manufacturing boom times. It’s the kind of place where Trump is perfectly positioned to make inroads among white working-class residents who have long voted Democratic but are drawn to Trump’s opposition to free-trade deals and his pitch for a return to better days.

But Trump doesn’t plan to talk about the economy in Youngstown. Instead, he will deliver a foreign policy address focused on ISIS.

In his speech, Trump will also propose an “ideological test” to administer to all immigrants entering the United States, according to the Associated Press. The “test for admission” would include questionnaires, a search of the immigrants’ social-media accounts, and interviews with friends and family to assess the immigrant’s views on religious liberty, gender equality, and LGBT rights.

The foreign policy focus is a strange one for Youngstown, where the dissolution of the domestic steel industry triggered economic depression and racial tensions—the very circumstances that have fueled Trump’s rise. But it wouldn’t be the first time Trump has delivered a message to one audience that is better suited to another.

At a rally in Loudoun County, Virginia, earlier this month, Trump rattled off a list of shuttered manufacturing plants—the exact topic that would most resonate in a place like Youngstown. But Loudoun County is not in the Rust Belt. It’s the richest county in the United States, thanks to lucrative defense contracts after September 11, 2001. All the factories Trump mentioned during this speech were far from the Washington, DC, exurbs of Loudoun County. One was in North Carolina.

Trump kept up the trend last week in southwestern Virginia coal country, where a speech to coal miners focused as much on the latest batch of Hillary Clinton’s emails as on the future of the state’s coal mines. Surrounded on stage by miners in hard hats, Trump couldn’t resist a reference to his winery in Charlottesville, Virginia, the college town 250 miles from where Trump was speaking in Abingdon. “I don’t know if you know my Charlottesville place, but it’s a fantastic place,” he said. “It’s now a winery, it’s one of the largest wineries on the East Coast.”

Trump has also insisted on campaigning in blue states he is highly unlikely to win. He gave a rambling talk in Fairfield, Connecticut, on Saturday evening. At the end of August, he plans to campaign in Oregon, another deep-blue state in an election where even some Republican strongholds are turning purple.

And then there was Trump’s puzzling decision to hold a rally in Portland, Maine, earlier this month. Because Maine allocates electoral votes by congressional district, Trump has a shot to win the state’s relatively conservative 2nd District. The only problem: He held his rally in the wrong district.

Read more: 

Is Trump Even Aware of Where He’s Speaking?

Posted in FF, GE, LG, ONA, PUR, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Is Trump Even Aware of Where He’s Speaking?

No cars allowed on this 3,000-mile East Coast bike trail

by sharonhinder880 Posted on July 20, 2016

No cars allowed on this 3,000-mile East Coast bike trail

By on Jul 20, 2016Share

Biking from Maine to Florida might sound like a nightmare to lots of people — but it’s a proposition that could become much more appealing if the East Coast Greenway Alliance gets its way. A 3,000-mile bikes-only, no-cars-allowed trail that stretches the length of the East Coast could become a reality for the super-bikers among us.

OK, you may be thinking. When will this actually be finished, if ever? 

Roll up your pants and grab a helmet, because you can bike the East Coast Greenway today — some of it, at least. At the moment, only 850 miles are designated, off-road bike paths. But the goal is for 95 percent of the route to be traffic-free by 2030.

The path will be one of the longest bike trails in the United States. The trails are locally owned and managed, so if you’re an East Coaster excited about getting the Greenway up and running in your area, you can help make that happen.

Many bike trails already exist along rivers, old railways, and other scenic locations along the East Coast — but the challenge is to bring them up to code and connect the dots. Once that happens, we’ll have the cycle-friendly equivalent of the Appalachian Trail at our fingertips.

Election Guide ★ 2016Making America Green AgainOur experts weigh in on the real issues at stake in this electionGet Grist in your inbox

Original article: 

No cars allowed on this 3,000-mile East Coast bike trail

Posted in alo, Anchor, bigo, FF, GE, LG, ONA, solar, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on No cars allowed on this 3,000-mile East Coast bike trail

Obama’s Red Line in the South China Sea: Scarborough Shoal

by ArnoldEarls4 Posted on July 13, 2016

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

In light of today’s sweeping decision at the Hague denying China’s claim to various islands and reefs in the South China Sea, this is an interesting tidbit from the Financial Times:

US President Barack Obama in March delivered a stark admonition to Xi Jinping over the South China Sea, warning the Chinese leader of serious consequences if China reclaimed land at Scarborough Shoal, one of the most dangerous flashpoints in Asia.

….Following the meeting in Washington, China withdrew its ships from the area….“The signalling from the US side was that this was serious,” said a former official. “There was an accumulation of pieces … the conclusion was that the People’s Liberation Army was advocating action. It wasn’t necessarily indicators that Xi himself had made any decisions, but there was the feeling that it was on his desk and coming to him for a decision.”

….China has come under criticism for building man-made islands in recent years, but the US saw Scarborough as more strategically significant given its proximity to the coast of the Philippines, which has a mutual defence treaty with the US. Some officials worried that China could install radar and missiles on Scarborough. Along with facilities in the Paracel and Spratly Islands, that would help China create a strategic triangle, which would enable the policing of any air defence identification zone in the South China Sea.

At the moment, China reclaims land at various spots in the South China Sea, and everyone complains but nobody does anything about it. Likewise, we operate reconnaissance flights and perform Freedom of Navigation exercises, and China complains but doesn’t do anything about it. Basically, both sides can do whatever they want because neither side wants to start a war over it. This pretty obviously favors China at the moment, since they have the resources for large-scale reclamation projects and just enough of a navy to protect them. We have a considerably bigger navy, but it’s unlikely the American public would show much support for a shooting war with China to protect a rock out in the middle of nowhere. All China really has to do is wait a while for us to get bored, and then keep on building.

Link – 

Obama’s Red Line in the South China Sea: Scarborough Shoal

Posted in alo, Everyone, FF, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, Pines, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Obama’s Red Line in the South China Sea: Scarborough Shoal