Posted 05.24.2011 at 2:00 pm
9 Comments
Chicago City Hall's Green Roof
TonyTheTiger via Wikimedia
Chicago, no stranger to excruciatingly harsh winters, is a city that knows how to roll with the climatological punches. So perhaps it should come as no surprise that the Second City is spending its temperate summer preparing for the weather it expects down the road--60 years down the road. Chicago, home to regular lake-effect snow and subzero wind chills, is prepping for a sultry, more humid future more akin to that of the Deep South, the New York Times reports.
Based on current trends, the city is taking extraordinary measures to prepare itself for the warming future that climate change predicts. That includes new kinds of concrete, different species of trees, and a new emphasis on drainage. Why? To quote the Times, things are heating up in Chicago, albeit slowly:
Related Articles
 | Extreme Engineering: A Floating City |
 | IBM's City Simulation Trains Planners to Tackle Future Problems for Growing Urban Centers |
 | South Korea Will Build Sustainable City of Tech and Learning by 2020 |
Tags
The Environment, Clay Dillow, chicago, climate change, environment, green city, green techBy 2070, Chicago could expect 35 percent more precipitation in winter and spring, but 20 percent less in summer and fall. By then, the conditions would have changed enough to make the area’s plant hardiness zone akin to Birmingham, Ala.
Chicago has long been working toward being a green city and a model for other urban areas that strive to reduce waste and function more efficiently. Those efforts include green rooftops, a blitz in tree planting that costs about $10 million per year (and helps keep the city cool by providing shade), and adding plants that help retain water and reduce drainage problems.
Now, the city is continuing those initiatives but rethinking how they are implemented in light of how climatologists think the larger climate is going to change in coming decades. Gone will be the ash trees and white oaks (the state tree) that are common there, replaced with swamp oaks and sweet gum trees. Thermal radar is mapping city hotspots and removing old pavement in those places, replacing it with the city’s own brand of light-reflecting pavement (that includes recycled tires) that is also permeable, reducing runoff during the storms that will increase in frequency, so say the researchers.
It’s a big investment in science that some still decry as bunk, or at the very least inconclusive. But as an investment, it very well could pay off. Insurers have estimated that some coastal communities that don’t begin taking steps to adjust to a warming world now could face climate-related damages in the tens of billions of dollars by 2030.
Want to learn more about the environment, solar energy, sustainability, and more? Subscribe to Popular Science today, for less than $1 per issue!
9 Comments
To comment, please Login.
Popular Tags
The Environment on Popular Science
|
|
|
|
|
|
June 2013: American Energy Independence
Five amazing, clean technologies that will set us free, in this month's energy-focused issue. Also: how to build a better bomb detector, the robotic toys that are raising your children, a human catapult, the world's smallest arcade, and much more.
Popular on Popsci
Most Commented
Most Emailed
Most Viewed
Online Content Director: Suzanne LaBarre | Email
Senior Editor: Paul Adams | Email
Associate Editor: Dan Nosowitz | Email
Assistant Editor: Colin Lecher | Email
Assistant Editor: Rose Pastore | Email
Contributing Writers:
Kelsey D. Atherton | Email
Francie Diep | Email
Shaunacy Ferro | Email
Today on PopSci.com
Copyright © 2012 Popular Science
A Bonnier Corporation Company. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part without permission is prohibited.
This is a giant waste of taxpayer's hard earned money.
"Records from land stations and ships indicate that the global mean surface temperature warmed by about 0.9°F since 1880" (from the EPA's climate change web sight).
Even if the rate of climate change doubles, triples, quadruples, etc. do the math and see how many centuries it will take before Chicago City Hall's "new kinds of concrete" pay off. If the climate changes this drastically we will have more important things to worry about. In my opinion, Chicago is misusing taxpayers money to make a political statement.
global warming is a bunch of BULLCRAP!!!!
Ya it's bullcrap! Nevermind those glacier receding further & further. Nevermind the toxins we pump into the atmosphere and the smog we create in the cities, acid rain and all that jazz. We'll be dead before anything bad happens right? So who cares!
Yeah Rod Avery. Nothing less then the Earth exploding can change some peoples' minds. Ignorance at its best.
So they are expecting a climate suitable for those trees by the end of summer...?
Global warming may seem like nothing to you all due to you dieing before anything happens,so you dont end up caring what you do and end up just making the effect more prominant and ever more closer...yet do you care about your children, your childrens children and so on...they are the ones that will suffer and have to pay for your actions or in this case no action at all...trees not only turn CO2 into O2 but also help get rid of all the smog and car emmissions that are causing this to happen...yet here is a town that is trying to help our planet in all the ways they can as well as to prepare for a possible future that could potentionaly happen...yet are any of you doing anything that would help the planet, probebly only those that would save you money like turning off lights when they are not needed right... the only time people like this will finally change there ways is when their discision is too late...if the world was on the brink of destruction and their was no way around it then they would realize what they did was selfish and wrong...i leave the decision to the each and every one of you the only way out of the grave that we humans have dug is to all work together...
All of us architects in Chicago applaud the Planning Commission's direction and objectives. Only those in the pay of Big Oil think otherwise. Scabs.
Global warming is crap,i can't agree more.
ohh dudes please stop being so naive,view all that mess from a top and you will se the answer. I think you all know that almost all problems in the world based on human stupidity and of course the money.Just saying, who knows who earn meney om global problems.. ''The problem'' have two sides, one bad and good one.
The bad side turns to us and the good side turns to some clever dicks on the top of the world.