CHICAGO | General Discussions

[left of center]

Yeah, that article is mostly sensationalized nonsense. While the city will definitely have to deal with not only more rainfall overall, but more sudden rainfall that has a month's worth of rain fall in a matter of a few hours, the lake is NOT the ocean (as many of the previous posts have pointed out as well). If Lake Michigan rises to the point that it begins breaching its historic coastline and flooding populated areas, we can always open the locks and have excess water flow down the Illinois River to the Gulf of Mexico in order to help regulate lake levels. There are some complexities with doing this, as legally the city can only divert a certain amount of water annually, but that's something that we can fix with legislation. A rising Atlantic Ocean is not going to respond to political will.

Chicago will have problems due to climate change, but those problems will pale in comparison to what cities like Miami, New York, New Orleans, etc. will have to face.