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Miami Will Be Underwater Soon. Its Drinking Water Could Go First

265 points by hourislate 8y ago

erentz 8y ago
I’ve never understood how the parts of the country most affected by sea level rise have been so vociferously against it being real. When the BP spill happened and they had all the local mayors and politicians crying about the damage to their coast, I couldn’t understand why no one had the cajones to ask them why they cared so much about their coast being damaged now, when they were completely fine with it being gone and under water in a few decades.
- IB885588 8y ago
  Hyperbolic discounting is a very common way to be irrational. Humans are not very good at thinking long-term. Bezos became the world's richest person in part by extending his time horizon by a few years longer than most CEOs.
- throwaway5752 8y ago
  Really? It's because wealthy people tend to have physical assets and political power there. They don't want to pay more for insurance for their assets in the short term (property/catastrophe coverage) and in many cases they would be difficult or impossible to liquidate and transfer to somewhere not effected. This has been the case in coastal areas, with property developers at least. They have it very badly, where they typically are small-ish family operations at the core and they operate with high leverage as land banks.
  - scottlegrand2 8y ago
    Simple answer with horrible consequences, discontinue all FEMA insurance. This of course will never happen because many elected representatives from both parties have coastal properties that require it in order to get a mortgage. But if you did the above, it really doesn't matter whether climate change is real or not, all the risk will be on the homeowner going forward. That ought to be enough to change behavior in the long run.
- WillPostForFood 8y ago
  Here is what creates cognitive dissonance and drives inaction. The BP spill came with apocalyptic rhetoric about the destruction of the gulf and gulf coast. Yet, within a few years, things are near normal. Please, I’m not saying it wasn’t a tragic, disruptive, damaging event. Just that the reality has diverged wildly from the story told at the time. This creates distrust and inaction for every new apocalyptic prediction. No doubt, at some point, an apocalyptic prediction will come true, and we’ll be caught with our pants down.
  - AnthonyMouse 8y ago
    > No doubt, at some point, an apocalyptic prediction will come true, and we’ll be caught with our pants down. We consistently have this problem with preventative measures. Someone accurately predicts that something terrible will happen unless we do something about it, we spend a large amount of time and money preventing or mitigating it, then people ask why we spent all that time and money when the thing turned out not to be that bad. It turned out not to be that bad because we spend all that time and money. The problem is it's also easy to spend time and money on wasteful pork barrel projects to prevent threats that don't actually exist but line the pockets of government contractors, and then they make the same argument for not cutting them. What we need is a better way to separate the legitimate problems (e.g. climate change) from the hype (e.g. terrorism). Because if you're going to pay a bunch of money for something that also serves as a jobs program, it might as well be addressing the real problem instead of the fake one.
- panzagl 8y ago
  You can sue BP, can't sue the atmosphere.
  - overcast 8y ago
    Not with that attitude!
- psychometry 8y ago
  I think there's been a brain drain happening in a lot of red states in recent decades. The educated people who have the ability and will to leave often do, leaving behind an increasingly ignorant population. It's coincidental that this same geographic region will be most affected by sea level rise, although nowhere on earth will be immune to the effects of climate change.
  - ataturk 8y ago
    I have a hard time with so-called "educated" people. People who go to college fit into a bell curve of intelligence, the same as all human beings. Regardless of their education level, their true intelligence remains the same. Going to college does not make you more intelligent. It might make your more well-rounded, it definitely subjects you to Marxist indoctrination attempts. Generally, people tend to migrate to places where opportunities exist, regardless of education or intelligence. Currently, there is a huge outflow of people from California and NY, which are NOT red states. Rather, they are high-tax, high-cost-of-living states. I can't exactly understand which states you are talking about? Maybe Alabama? Red states such as Texas and North Dakota, where job opportunities are increasing, have seen inflows of all kinds of people. I'm not even sure who you think these "ignorant populations" are. Sure, there are ignorant rural people who fit into specific stereotypes, but the majority of the low information, "ignorant" live in big cities like Chicago, Detroit, Baltimore, and Philadelphia. These are the bluest of the blue areas! Rural poor people tend to be much more self-sufficient than urban poor, but both have many issues they must deal with in life.
  - creaghpatr 8y ago
    Do you have any evidence for this claim?
    - tartuffe78 8y ago
      His own smug sense of superiority should suffice.
      - thetrumanshow 8y ago
- Synaesthesia 8y ago
  Because there’s been a huge and dedicated propaganda machine to saying the opposite. And it’s worked.
- ctlby 8y ago
  Your premise is incorrect. The parts of the country most affected are the coasts--and they are blue.
  - dsr_ 8y ago
    The northeast and west, perhaps, but not the south and southeast.
  - erentz 8y ago
    If we exclude Alaska then about half the coast encompasses Texas through North Carolina. This is also the part of the US coast that is most low lying and will see the greatest encroachment from rising sea levels.
    - ctlby 8y ago
      Half of your “red” coastline consists of Florida—the vast majority of the coastal population of which is blue (see any 2016 electoral map).
      - ataturk 8y ago
        The red vs. blue dichotomy is the man pulling the wool over your eyes in order to divide and conquer. The smartest thing to do would be to not let him get away with it.
      - erentz 8y ago
        Your point about red vs blue isn’t at issue here. These are all still the coastal states that are the most vociferously denying climate change. You’ll find it pretty hard to argue that any of them are more in favor of climate change action that the other coastal states regardless of whether they show up blue or red on an election map.
        ctlby 8y ago
        Of course. But we didn't really start off by arguing about state-level beliefs. You claimed the people most affected by sea level rise least believe in it--presumably as a dig at republicans (haha they're so blinkered by ideology they can't even see their own self interest!) And I claim that, no, republicans mostly do not live on the coasts, are not the most affected, and thus there is no tension between their ideology and their self-interest.
- nemild 8y ago
  Simple. Lousiana has a big oil and gas industry: https://www.eia.gov/state/analysis.php?sid=LA https://www.eia.gov/state/analysis.php?sid=LA I call it the truth distortion field when any large industry impacts what politicians say. Here’s some background: https://www.nemil.com/tdf/introduction.html https://www.nemil.com/tdf/introduction.html
- wwweston 8y ago
  Many people don't vote their interests. They vote their identity and values. Rational self-interest is an assumption that enlightenment liberals and market fundamentalists alike have overplayed. It has its applications, and it may even be a somewhat valid assumption for individuals carefully looking at the terms of an economic deal they have make-or-break decision making power over. For collective civil action, my guess is its influence is somewhere between minimal and a wash.
- RoutinePlayer 8y ago
  It's "cojones" :-)
  - erentz 8y ago
    :-) I blame a former manager. His automatically generated username (first two letters of first name + surname) was cajones, so that’s what he got called. And now I’ve automatically spelt it wrong ever since.
ben509 8y ago
Part of the problem here is exacerbated by all the flood insurance that effectively subsidizes building in flood plains. In addition to long term measures to mitigate climate change, we should have a tax on areas that are threatened by flooding and water levels rising so that we can reduce the immediate issues by incentivizing people to move away from them.
- brightball 8y ago
  FWIW, I can’t speak for Miami but I do know that the costs for flood insurance are high enough in coastal areas that some people skip it entirely.
  - XorNot 8y ago
    The other side of this is to adopt coastal retreat policies as well though. Its not enough to drive insurance up, you need to prevent people moving in anyway because it's cheap land because of that.
    - rhacker 8y ago
      Interesting - you had your fun at the ocean front. Now if you want money for the lost property, you have to buy three streets back? That's not a bad idea.
    - codesforhugs 8y ago
      SciAm recently had a good article about these policies and the challenges they face: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/surrendering-to-rising-seas/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/surrendering-to-r...
- ryandrake 8y ago
  Should we also tax people living in earthquake-prone and tornado-prone areas? How about blizzard-prone areas? Keep going with this and we will run out of places (in the USA) where it’s ok to live. Also, as someone who lived in south Florida, flood insurance is a joke and unavailable near the coast anyway. Nobody expects it to pay out enough in a major catastrophe, including hurricanes and flooding.
chollida1 8y ago
Start worrying when the banks stop offering mortgages to people trying to buy property in south beach. I remember when Katrina flooded New Orleans, lots of people were asking why rebuild the city when it almost certainly will flood like that again. And the answer was a simple, do you know how much it would cost to relocate everyone? What does it do to the economy when almost everyones largest asset(their house) is worth effectively zero and people still have 20 years on their mortgage. In my old city (Calgary, Canada) we had a pretty bad flood in 2013. The government made, what I thought was a smart, deal with the home owners. They would get some government assistence with the condition that this was the first and only time that the governmnet would help. Some owners rebuilt, others just bulldozed their homes. Now everyone knows where they stand, the government helped shoulder the initial burden and the people who moved helped lower the number of people living in a flood plain.
- jdpedrie 8y ago
  > They would get some government assistence with the condition that this was the first and only time that the governmnet would help. We'll see how well that holds up next time those people need assistance. Somehow I don't see any elected politician telling his voters "sorry, we already helped you".
  - quotemstr 8y ago
    Right. Intending to break a bad habit carries no weight. Actually doing it is what counts. The government's action here wasn't smart: it was in fact cowardly.
  - craftyguy 8y ago
    That's a common problem with any elected government. Tough decisions like "we need everyone here to move away right now" never get made because doing so would result in some elected politician not winning re-election.
    - beat 8y ago
      Not necessarily. My mother lived briefly in Shawneetown, IL, on the Ohio River (before I was born). After a particularly bad flood, the locals just packed the whole town up and moved a couple of miles inland to higher ground. I took her down to visit once, and she was totally weirded out. The house she lived in still stood there, abandoned. People move away when a location is no longer economically viable, period. They won't move away until then, despite the risks. If they did, no one would live in volcano or earthquake zones. Think San Francisco Bay is going to be depopulated just because it's a dangerous place to live?
golergka 8y ago
> One morning in June, Douglas Yoder climbed into a white government SUV... This again. I won't stop complaining about this tedious journalistic style until it finally dies. I don't want to hear a personal story of a random person that's related to the issue in some way. I certainly don't want to read anything about how he spends his day - I value my own day too much for that. I just want to read about the issue itself. That's why people don't read longreads anymore.
- iamthirsty 8y ago
  Bloomberg writers definitely overuse this hook, but long-reads are more narrative-focused, so it totally makes sense to introduce the issue this way — just not every time.
  - golergka 8y ago
    I don't mind narrative, but I want narrative about technologies and science instead of people. If you can't write a narrative without focusing on people, may be you shouldn't write about science and tech at all.
- drcode 8y ago
  I bought this book recently called "The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs" https://www.amazon.com/Rise-Fall-Dinosaurs-History-World/dp/0062490427/ https://www.amazon.com/Rise-Fall-Dinosaurs-History-World/dp/... You would think it would be a bad-ass book talking about dinosaurs, but no... it's mainly tedious descriptions about the look on the face of a particular paleontologist when the author met them at the train station, and how wild a particular paleontologist party was the day before they found an important new bone.... I couldn't imagine a more boring book, had to give up half way through.
creaghpatr 8y ago
Interestingly, the Miami housing market outlook for 2019 is excellent, in spite of this news. https://gordcollins.com/real-estate/miami-real-estate-forecast/ https://gordcollins.com/real-estate/miami-real-estate-foreca... It would appear that people who actually have skin in the game believe otherwise.
- seppin 8y ago
  Or they think they can still sell up before it crashes.
- dv_dt 8y ago
  Markets are great for short term simple extrapolative prediction. At long term and/or non-continuous prediction they seem to have had significant failures.
  - siglesias 8y ago
    Citation? There seem to be cases in high technology where the market is very patient for long term returns. Case in point: AMZN trades at a 320 P/E because the market (thus far correctly) can’t see a plausible scenario in which it cedes any e-commerce or AWS share. Maybe this is optimism bias writ large? Another possibility is that even if there is robust demand despite certain destruction, these houses are really worth many millions for the short term (for cachet, status, etc.). Here we model them as really expensive vacations.
    - TheOtherHobbes 8y ago
      Ten years is not the long term.
    - nabla9 8y ago
      > very patient for long term returns. High P/E in the case of AMZN is not measure of long term. It's measure fo fast expected growth, low interest rates, shadow margins, and general short therm overconfidence. It took 10 years for AMZN stock to recover from the peak of 1999 crash. There was nothing wrong with the company, markets just didn't want to wait.
frockington 8y ago
At a rate of 0-3 mm/year or 1 foot/century its going to be hard to convince anyone to care about the sea level. https://tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/sltrends/sltrends.html https://tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/sltrends/sltrends.html
- christophilus 8y ago
  That's an interesting map. Any idea why there are down and up arrows intermingled the way they are?
  - frockington 8y ago
    From my understanding the down arrows indicate the coast is expanding. The key at the bottom says the down arrows are negative sea level growth
    - singularity2001 8y ago
      I read that tide patterns are changing so locally measuring climate sea rise makes no sense yet, as tides superimpose ±8mm So far you need the global integrate of all changes.
  - quantumhobbit 8y ago
    Likely changes to the coast itself. For example Louisiana and the gulf coast are going down faster, because of coastal erosion. I would guess that the parts of Alaska that are seeing the sea level fall are due to the land rising from tectonic activity. Things like changes in water temp and currents can also play a role.
- jnurmine 8y ago
  From what I remember reading, the problem points are really the Arctic and the Antarctic. If they melt, hello Waterworld. For example, the ice cover in Greenland is melting at a record rate. If it goes completely, this alone would raise the sea level with something like 7 m (23 ft). If everything goes, it will be something like a 65 m (213 ft) sea level rise. Now, given the sluggishness of action-taking in this matter, some of the ice cover will almost certainly melt before anything gets done. The end result will probably be much more than a few feet, but less than the maximum, so let's guess 30 m (100 ft). Now, I suppose some self-correcting actions are automatically taken when enough people get displaced and pour to dry areas: traffic ceases in the coastal cities, air traffic to these areas will cease as well, factories will stop, and so on. But still... given +30 m, have you already checked where the current coastline would be where you live?
westurner 8y ago
Now, now, let's focus on the positives here: - more pollution from shipping routes through the Arctic circle (and yucky-looking icebergs that tourists don't like) - less beachfront property - more desalinatable water - hotter heat - more revulsive detestable significant others (displaced global unrest) - costs of responding to natural disasters occurring with greater frequency due to elevated ocean temperatures - less parking spaces (!) What are the other costs and benefits here?
- westurner 8y ago
  I've received a number of downvotes for this comment. I think it's misunderstood, and that's my fault: I should have included [sarcasm] around the whole comment [/sarcasm]. I've written about our need to address climate change here in past comments. I think the administration's climate change denials (see: "climate change politifact') and regulatory rollbacks are beyond despicable: they're sabotaging the United States by allowing more toxic chemicals into the environment that we all share, and allowing more sites that must be protected with tax dollars that aren't there because these industries pay far less than benchmarks in terms of effective tax rate. We know that vehicle emissions, mercury, and coal ash are toxic: why would we allow people to violate the rights of others in that way? A person could voluntarily consume said toxic byproducts and not have violated their own rights or the rights of others, you understand. There's no medical value and low potential for abuse, so we just sit idly by while they're violating the rights of other people by dumping toxic chemicals into the environment that are both poisonous and strongly linked to climate change. What would help us care about this? A sarcastic list of additional reasons that we should care? No! Miami underwater during tourist season is enough! I've had enough! So, my mistake here - my downvote-earning mistake - was dropping my generally helpful, hopeful tone for cynicism and sarcasm that wasn't motivating enough. We need people to regulate pollution in order to prevent further costs of climate change. Water in the streets holds up commerce, travel, hampers national security, and destroys the road. We must stop rewarding pollution if we want it - and definitely resultant climate change - to stop. What motivates other people to care?
mrfusion 8y ago
Have we seen any sea level rise in the US yet? I think people would buy into it more once we have pictures of roads and buildings being hit by water at high tide.
- craftyguy 8y ago
  Yes. Here you go (from the Chesapeake Bay foundation): http://cbforg.maps.arcgis.com/apps/MapJournal/index.html?appid=3231b1004efb4e12b9b7dd79775a8a6b http://cbforg.maps.arcgis.com/apps/MapJournal/index.html?app...
- thehoff 8y ago
  Miami has been trying to raise their streets due to regular flooding. https://www.npr.org/2016/05/10/476071206/as-waters-rise-miami-beach-builds-higher-streets-and-political-willpower https://www.npr.org/2016/05/10/476071206/as-waters-rise-miam...
- smacktoward 8y ago
  See this article from 2014, about the port city of Norfolk, Virginia: https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/in-norfolk-evidence-of-climate-change-is-in-the-streets-at-high-tide/2014/05/31/fe3ae860-e71f-11e3-8f90-73e071f3d637_story.html?utm_term=.832e5ed3d2f3 https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/in-norfolk-e... At high tide on the small inlet next to Norfolk’s most prestigious art museum, the water lapped at the very top of the concrete sea wall that has held it back for 100 years. It seeped up through storm drains, puddled on the promenade and spread, half a foot deep, across the street, where a sign read, “Road Closed.” The sun was shining, but all around the inlet people were bracing for more serious flooding. The Chrysler Museum of Art had just completed a $24 million renovation that emptied the basement, now accessible only by ladder, and lifted the heating and air-conditioning systems to the top floor. A local accounting firm stood behind a homemade barricade of stanchions and detachable flaps rigged to keep the water out. And the congregation of the Unitarian Church of Norfolk was looking to evacuate. “We don’t like being the poster child for climate change,” said the Rev. Jennifer Slade, who added that the building, with its carved-wood sanctuary and soaring flood-insurance rates, would soon be on the market for the first time in four decades. “I don’t know many churches that have to put the tide chart on their Web site” so people know whether they can get to church.
fabricexpert 8y ago
This article is kind of infuriating. Just bring the facts up and talk about them, instead of describing people. I think this is one of the more critical parts (along with the stuff about water supply getting contaminated): > Barring a stupendous reversal in greenhouse gas emissions, the rising Atlantic will cover much of Miami by the end of this century. The economic effects will be devastating: Zillow Inc. estimates that six feet of sea-level rise would put a quarter of Miami’s homes underwater. However, nowhere in the article does it say a six feet rise will happen at the end of the century. So is that actually going to happen? How many models project this and how many don't? What is the "stupendous reversal" required in real terms? What are the options to combat this? Would a giant sea wall work? If you come at this from the angle of "climate change is a myth" the entire article reads as fluff. This makes it basically impossible to convince people that this is a real issue that needs to be dealt with. The sensationalist title distances people from the issue even further (it is sensational because the article doesn't present any evidence that Miami will be underwater soon).
- laverick 8y ago
  Isn't Zillow ignoring the immense value created from all those new beachfront properties?
  - bovermyer 8y ago
    Lex Luthor would like a word with you.
  - FranOntanaya 8y ago
    That works better when the land isn't 100 miles wide with ocean on both sides. Miami City has a better ring than Miami Keys.
  - calgoo 8y ago
    This is actually a joke i have told my wife who has family in Florida: The only way i would buy property in Florida is if im allowed to build an artificial hill/mountain on it, so that in 100 years my family will own a private island. I wonder if there is a long term business model here... Invest in land and prepare it to survive being surrounded by water, build infrastructure etc and then sell it to the same type of people who buy bunkers for end of the world situations.
haha99 8y ago
"by the end of this century" is quite an odd definition of "soon". By then some of us won't even be alive.
frequent 8y ago
Always reminds me of Roisin Murphy "Dear Miami" (1997) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VbX7ASDLwAk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VbX7ASDLwAk "Behind these walls You can be so self-absorbed Behind those eyes, no disguise Disguise, no you can't disguise Behind this fortress of an address Stuck in the passion void With a little style full and for a while But you can't turn back time Dear Miami, you're the first to go Disappearing under melting snow Each and everyone turn your critical eye On the burning sun and try not to cry ..."
tim333 8y ago
For context the global rate of sea level rise currently seems to be 4cm a decade so you could come back in 10 or 20 years and probably not notice much. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_level_rise https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_level_rise
- singularity2001 8y ago
  Melt is accelerating 1cm/decade but that doen't change much near term.
- monetus 8y ago
  I'd be surprised if the rise sticks to a linear progression. The ice caps are caught in a feedback loop.
jillesvangurp 8y ago
There are technical solutions to all of this. I come from a country that has been fighting back the sea for centuries (Netherlands) and that has been exporting it's knowledge to do so for a long time as well. The basic consensus is that we'll need bigger dikes and a few other things over the next decades. Plenty of time to build that. Not a problem. At least not in places that can afford to invest in solutions. Basically build some dikes, desalination plants, pumping stations, etc. and start planning which areas to protect and which areas to abandon. Problem solved. All of this requires money of course. Luckily, Miami is still a pretty rich city in a relatively rich state; it can handle this. If the worst happens, it will be because of ignorance and mismanagement and not because of a lack of solutions or means. It may take a few minor incidents before people figure this out but the smart thing would be to not wait for that.
- heartbreak 8y ago
  Dikes don't work in Miami because the ground is too porous.
  - stevenwoo 8y ago
    Not only that, the article is about the fresh water supply and to protect that would need a dike around most of south Florida (and all the interior rivers if that were possible given the limestone) and part of the Everglades.
    - jillesvangurp 8y ago
      Or build desalination plants and stop draining the natural reserves of fresh water. Probably a lot cheaper. The point of the dikes would be to prevent flooding; not protecting fresh water supplies.
- WhompingWindows 8y ago
  What is the bedrock of the Netherlands, geologically speaking? Pumps, dikes, and the like won't help that much in Miami because the porous limestone underlying the city allows water under and around these traditional methods.
dragthor 8y ago
Hysterical headline and article. In grade school it was dying from the ozone hole, acid rain, and global freezing (new ice age). Recycling, not being wasteful, and conserving water wasn't scary enough I guess.
hfdgiutdryg 8y ago
The idea that it's 2018 and we don't have solar powered desalination plants for some of our largest, sunny, water-limited southern cities boggles my mind. Los Angeles has a nuclear plant just to the north, but no desalination, and more sun than anyone wants. It's insane.
- Synaesthesia 8y ago
  It’s still a really expensive way to get drinking water.
  - hfdgiutdryg 8y ago
    It's cheaper than having your economy collapse when the aquifers empty, and it's only going to get cheaper if money is invested in it.
zackmorris 8y ago
I'm getting the feeling lately that the freedom in speech and action that is the foundation of the United States doesn't mean freedom from consequences. Florida has a rather right leaning/libertarian persuasion, which as the article pointed out, allowed the Miami Drum Services Inc. superfund site and Lake Belt limestone mine to cause contamination of drinking water as recently as 1997. I'm from Idaho and am well aware of the environmental impacts from superfund sites and mining. The corporations go in and make their millions, then taxpayers are on the hook for the cleanup. Now we can't even fish many rivers and lakes here because mine tailings have contaminated the water with mercury (from gold mining) and other nastiness. Due to a long history of this short term thinking where profits are privatized and externalities are socialized, Miami is going to have to come to terms with losing its drinking water and either pipe it in from far away or move to desalinization. It's going to be expensive and unfortunate, but I wonder if it will be enough for people to shift their politics. Judging by the political stalemate in my state, I'm guessing not.
not_that_noob 8y ago
This is one of the best articles I've seen on climate change. We are now looking to a 3 degree rise in surface temps by the middle of this century - well within our lifetimes. Miami is headed underwater. I wouldn't be buying real estate in any low-lying area if I can avoid it. "Three-degree warming is a prescription for short-term disaster: forests in the Arctic and the loss of most coastal cities. Robert Watson, a former director of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, has argued that three-degree warming is the realistic minimum." https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/08/01/magazine/climate-change-losing-earth.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/08/01/magazine/clim...
Iwan-Zotow 8y ago
"Good news, everyone!"
DoreenMichele 8y ago
I've had a class in hydrology. The article did a good job covering the actual threats to the water supply. It ended on a note of "But the impact of people's choices is the bigger threat to Miami's survival." I think that's true. However, I feel it did a poor job of really spelling that out. Despite pockets of extreme wealth—one study estimated that the Miami metro area has the nation’s eighth-highest number of millionaires—the county overall is poor. Its median household income of $44,224 is almost one-quarter lower than that of the country as a whole. It's not uncommon for ocean front property to be very desirable and very expensive. I'm guessing that a lot of those millionaires live near the beach or on the beach and their homes may be some of the ones most at risk of ending up under water as sea levels rise. Rich people are typically the most able to up and move elsewhere. If the rich people in waterfront property homes start leaving, you are left with a bunch of relatively poor people and hard-to-solve, expensive problems. This means you don't need sea levels to rise six feet to significantly alter the city of Miami in ways that can spell Miami's doom in some sense. Like Galveston, which was an important and rich city at one time and then was devastated by a single hurricane, Miami could become a shadow of its former self with no hope of recovery. You only need it to rise however much would serve as some kind of tipping point where rich folks would stop feeling it was a desirable place to be. Maybe that's when their yard is inundated. Or maybe it will be determined by some other metric entirely. The reality is there may be no one who is capable of predicting where that tipping point is. Once it's reached, there may be no reversing the problem. Miami may be left with a poor population, a raft load of expensive problems and no means to readily solve any of them as their poor population slides deeper into debt to keep surviving. Edit/footnote: It's a lousy title. Even the article itself is not actually predicting that the entire city will ever be completely under water like the title suggests.
southern_cross 8y ago
Fun fact, kids. If you pump down an aquifer (any aquifer, anywhere) faster than it is being replenished from above via rainwater, then any other water sitting around it will eventually start to intrude. And if that outside water is salty or otherwise non-potable, then problem! Meaning that saltwater intrusion in coastal areas is a pretty much constant potential risk anyway, regardless of any sea level rise.

265 points by hourislate 8y ago

I’ve never understood how the parts of the country most affected by sea level rise have been so vociferously against it being real. When the BP spill happened and they had all the local mayors and politicians crying about the damage to their coast, I couldn’t understand why no one had the cajones to ask them why they cared so much about their coast being damaged now, when they were completely fine with it being gone and under water in a few decades.

IB885588 8y ago
Hyperbolic discounting is a very common way to be irrational. Humans are not very good at thinking long-term. Bezos became the world's richest person in part by extending his time horizon by a few years longer than most CEOs.
throwaway5752 8y ago
Really? It's because wealthy people tend to have physical assets and political power there. They don't want to pay more for insurance for their assets in the short term (property/catastrophe coverage) and in many cases they would be difficult or impossible to liquidate and transfer to somewhere not effected. This has been the case in coastal areas, with property developers at least. They have it very badly, where they typically are small-ish family operations at the core and they operate with high leverage as land banks.
- scottlegrand2 8y ago
  Simple answer with horrible consequences, discontinue all FEMA insurance. This of course will never happen because many elected representatives from both parties have coastal properties that require it in order to get a mortgage. But if you did the above, it really doesn't matter whether climate change is real or not, all the risk will be on the homeowner going forward. That ought to be enough to change behavior in the long run.
WillPostForFood 8y ago
Here is what creates cognitive dissonance and drives inaction. The BP spill came with apocalyptic rhetoric about the destruction of the gulf and gulf coast. Yet, within a few years, things are near normal. Please, I’m not saying it wasn’t a tragic, disruptive, damaging event. Just that the reality has diverged wildly from the story told at the time. This creates distrust and inaction for every new apocalyptic prediction. No doubt, at some point, an apocalyptic prediction will come true, and we’ll be caught with our pants down.
- AnthonyMouse 8y ago
  > No doubt, at some point, an apocalyptic prediction will come true, and we’ll be caught with our pants down. We consistently have this problem with preventative measures. Someone accurately predicts that something terrible will happen unless we do something about it, we spend a large amount of time and money preventing or mitigating it, then people ask why we spent all that time and money when the thing turned out not to be that bad. It turned out not to be that bad because we spend all that time and money. The problem is it's also easy to spend time and money on wasteful pork barrel projects to prevent threats that don't actually exist but line the pockets of government contractors, and then they make the same argument for not cutting them. What we need is a better way to separate the legitimate problems (e.g. climate change) from the hype (e.g. terrorism). Because if you're going to pay a bunch of money for something that also serves as a jobs program, it might as well be addressing the real problem instead of the fake one.
panzagl 8y ago
You can sue BP, can't sue the atmosphere.
- overcast 8y ago
  Not with that attitude!
psychometry 8y ago
I think there's been a brain drain happening in a lot of red states in recent decades. The educated people who have the ability and will to leave often do, leaving behind an increasingly ignorant population. It's coincidental that this same geographic region will be most affected by sea level rise, although nowhere on earth will be immune to the effects of climate change.
- ataturk 8y ago
  I have a hard time with so-called "educated" people. People who go to college fit into a bell curve of intelligence, the same as all human beings. Regardless of their education level, their true intelligence remains the same. Going to college does not make you more intelligent. It might make your more well-rounded, it definitely subjects you to Marxist indoctrination attempts. Generally, people tend to migrate to places where opportunities exist, regardless of education or intelligence. Currently, there is a huge outflow of people from California and NY, which are NOT red states. Rather, they are high-tax, high-cost-of-living states. I can't exactly understand which states you are talking about? Maybe Alabama? Red states such as Texas and North Dakota, where job opportunities are increasing, have seen inflows of all kinds of people. I'm not even sure who you think these "ignorant populations" are. Sure, there are ignorant rural people who fit into specific stereotypes, but the majority of the low information, "ignorant" live in big cities like Chicago, Detroit, Baltimore, and Philadelphia. These are the bluest of the blue areas! Rural poor people tend to be much more self-sufficient than urban poor, but both have many issues they must deal with in life.
- creaghpatr 8y ago
  Do you have any evidence for this claim?
  - tartuffe78 8y ago
    His own smug sense of superiority should suffice.
    - thetrumanshow 8y ago
Synaesthesia 8y ago
Because there’s been a huge and dedicated propaganda machine to saying the opposite. And it’s worked.
ctlby 8y ago
Your premise is incorrect. The parts of the country most affected are the coasts--and they are blue.
- dsr_ 8y ago
  The northeast and west, perhaps, but not the south and southeast.
- erentz 8y ago
  If we exclude Alaska then about half the coast encompasses Texas through North Carolina. This is also the part of the US coast that is most low lying and will see the greatest encroachment from rising sea levels.
  - ctlby 8y ago
    Half of your “red” coastline consists of Florida—the vast majority of the coastal population of which is blue (see any 2016 electoral map).
    - ataturk 8y ago
      The red vs. blue dichotomy is the man pulling the wool over your eyes in order to divide and conquer. The smartest thing to do would be to not let him get away with it.
    - erentz 8y ago
      Your point about red vs blue isn’t at issue here. These are all still the coastal states that are the most vociferously denying climate change. You’ll find it pretty hard to argue that any of them are more in favor of climate change action that the other coastal states regardless of whether they show up blue or red on an election map.
      - ctlby 8y ago
        Of course. But we didn't really start off by arguing about state-level beliefs. You claimed the people most affected by sea level rise least believe in it--presumably as a dig at republicans (haha they're so blinkered by ideology they can't even see their own self interest!) And I claim that, no, republicans mostly do not live on the coasts, are not the most affected, and thus there is no tension between their ideology and their self-interest.
nemild 8y ago
Simple. Lousiana has a big oil and gas industry: https://www.eia.gov/state/analysis.php?sid=LA https://www.eia.gov/state/analysis.php?sid=LA I call it the truth distortion field when any large industry impacts what politicians say. Here’s some background: https://www.nemil.com/tdf/introduction.html https://www.nemil.com/tdf/introduction.html
wwweston 8y ago
Many people don't vote their interests. They vote their identity and values. Rational self-interest is an assumption that enlightenment liberals and market fundamentalists alike have overplayed. It has its applications, and it may even be a somewhat valid assumption for individuals carefully looking at the terms of an economic deal they have make-or-break decision making power over. For collective civil action, my guess is its influence is somewhere between minimal and a wash.
RoutinePlayer 8y ago
It's "cojones" :-)
- erentz 8y ago
  :-) I blame a former manager. His automatically generated username (first two letters of first name + surname) was cajones, so that’s what he got called. And now I’ve automatically spelt it wrong ever since.

ben509 8y ago

Part of the problem here is exacerbated by all the flood insurance that effectively subsidizes building in flood plains. In addition to long term measures to mitigate climate change, we should have a tax on areas that are threatened by flooding and water levels rising so that we can reduce the immediate issues by incentivizing people to move away from them.

brightball 8y ago
FWIW, I can’t speak for Miami but I do know that the costs for flood insurance are high enough in coastal areas that some people skip it entirely.
- XorNot 8y ago
  The other side of this is to adopt coastal retreat policies as well though. Its not enough to drive insurance up, you need to prevent people moving in anyway because it's cheap land because of that.
  - rhacker 8y ago
    Interesting - you had your fun at the ocean front. Now if you want money for the lost property, you have to buy three streets back? That's not a bad idea.
  - codesforhugs 8y ago
    SciAm recently had a good article about these policies and the challenges they face: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/surrendering-to-rising-seas/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/surrendering-to-r...
ryandrake 8y ago
Should we also tax people living in earthquake-prone and tornado-prone areas? How about blizzard-prone areas? Keep going with this and we will run out of places (in the USA) where it’s ok to live. Also, as someone who lived in south Florida, flood insurance is a joke and unavailable near the coast anyway. Nobody expects it to pay out enough in a major catastrophe, including hurricanes and flooding.

chollida1 8y ago

Start worrying when the banks stop offering mortgages to people trying to buy property in south beach. I remember when Katrina flooded New Orleans, lots of people were asking why rebuild the city when it almost certainly will flood like that again. And the answer was a simple, do you know how much it would cost to relocate everyone? What does it do to the economy when almost everyones largest asset(their house) is worth effectively zero and people still have 20 years on their mortgage. In my old city (Calgary, Canada) we had a pretty bad flood in 2013. The government made, what I thought was a smart, deal with the home owners. They would get some government assistence with the condition that this was the first and only time that the governmnet would help. Some owners rebuilt, others just bulldozed their homes. Now everyone knows where they stand, the government helped shoulder the initial burden and the people who moved helped lower the number of people living in a flood plain.

jdpedrie 8y ago
> They would get some government assistence with the condition that this was the first and only time that the governmnet would help. We'll see how well that holds up next time those people need assistance. Somehow I don't see any elected politician telling his voters "sorry, we already helped you".
- quotemstr 8y ago
  Right. Intending to break a bad habit carries no weight. Actually doing it is what counts. The government's action here wasn't smart: it was in fact cowardly.
- craftyguy 8y ago
  That's a common problem with any elected government. Tough decisions like "we need everyone here to move away right now" never get made because doing so would result in some elected politician not winning re-election.
  - beat 8y ago
    Not necessarily. My mother lived briefly in Shawneetown, IL, on the Ohio River (before I was born). After a particularly bad flood, the locals just packed the whole town up and moved a couple of miles inland to higher ground. I took her down to visit once, and she was totally weirded out. The house she lived in still stood there, abandoned. People move away when a location is no longer economically viable, period. They won't move away until then, despite the risks. If they did, no one would live in volcano or earthquake zones. Think San Francisco Bay is going to be depopulated just because it's a dangerous place to live?

golergka 8y ago

> One morning in June, Douglas Yoder climbed into a white government SUV... This again. I won't stop complaining about this tedious journalistic style until it finally dies. I don't want to hear a personal story of a random person that's related to the issue in some way. I certainly don't want to read anything about how he spends his day - I value my own day too much for that. I just want to read about the issue itself. That's why people don't read longreads anymore.

iamthirsty 8y ago
Bloomberg writers definitely overuse this hook, but long-reads are more narrative-focused, so it totally makes sense to introduce the issue this way — just not every time.
- golergka 8y ago
  I don't mind narrative, but I want narrative about technologies and science instead of people. If you can't write a narrative without focusing on people, may be you shouldn't write about science and tech at all.
drcode 8y ago
I bought this book recently called "The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs" https://www.amazon.com/Rise-Fall-Dinosaurs-History-World/dp/0062490427/ https://www.amazon.com/Rise-Fall-Dinosaurs-History-World/dp/... You would think it would be a bad-ass book talking about dinosaurs, but no... it's mainly tedious descriptions about the look on the face of a particular paleontologist when the author met them at the train station, and how wild a particular paleontologist party was the day before they found an important new bone.... I couldn't imagine a more boring book, had to give up half way through.

creaghpatr 8y ago

Interestingly, the Miami housing market outlook for 2019 is excellent, in spite of this news. https://gordcollins.com/real-estate/miami-real-estate-forecast/ https://gordcollins.com/real-estate/miami-real-estate-foreca... It would appear that people who actually have skin in the game believe otherwise.

seppin 8y ago
Or they think they can still sell up before it crashes.
dv_dt 8y ago
Markets are great for short term simple extrapolative prediction. At long term and/or non-continuous prediction they seem to have had significant failures.
- siglesias 8y ago
  Citation? There seem to be cases in high technology where the market is very patient for long term returns. Case in point: AMZN trades at a 320 P/E because the market (thus far correctly) can’t see a plausible scenario in which it cedes any e-commerce or AWS share. Maybe this is optimism bias writ large? Another possibility is that even if there is robust demand despite certain destruction, these houses are really worth many millions for the short term (for cachet, status, etc.). Here we model them as really expensive vacations.
  - TheOtherHobbes 8y ago
    Ten years is not the long term.
  - nabla9 8y ago
    > very patient for long term returns. High P/E in the case of AMZN is not measure of long term. It's measure fo fast expected growth, low interest rates, shadow margins, and general short therm overconfidence. It took 10 years for AMZN stock to recover from the peak of 1999 crash. There was nothing wrong with the company, markets just didn't want to wait.

frockington 8y ago

At a rate of 0-3 mm/year or 1 foot/century its going to be hard to convince anyone to care about the sea level. https://tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/sltrends/sltrends.html https://tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/sltrends/sltrends.html

christophilus 8y ago
That's an interesting map. Any idea why there are down and up arrows intermingled the way they are?
- frockington 8y ago
  From my understanding the down arrows indicate the coast is expanding. The key at the bottom says the down arrows are negative sea level growth
  - singularity2001 8y ago
    I read that tide patterns are changing so locally measuring climate sea rise makes no sense yet, as tides superimpose ±8mm So far you need the global integrate of all changes.
- quantumhobbit 8y ago
  Likely changes to the coast itself. For example Louisiana and the gulf coast are going down faster, because of coastal erosion. I would guess that the parts of Alaska that are seeing the sea level fall are due to the land rising from tectonic activity. Things like changes in water temp and currents can also play a role.
jnurmine 8y ago
From what I remember reading, the problem points are really the Arctic and the Antarctic. If they melt, hello Waterworld. For example, the ice cover in Greenland is melting at a record rate. If it goes completely, this alone would raise the sea level with something like 7 m (23 ft). If everything goes, it will be something like a 65 m (213 ft) sea level rise. Now, given the sluggishness of action-taking in this matter, some of the ice cover will almost certainly melt before anything gets done. The end result will probably be much more than a few feet, but less than the maximum, so let's guess 30 m (100 ft). Now, I suppose some self-correcting actions are automatically taken when enough people get displaced and pour to dry areas: traffic ceases in the coastal cities, air traffic to these areas will cease as well, factories will stop, and so on. But still... given +30 m, have you already checked where the current coastline would be where you live?

westurner 8y ago

Now, now, let's focus on the positives here: - more pollution from shipping routes through the Arctic circle (and yucky-looking icebergs that tourists don't like) - less beachfront property - more desalinatable water - hotter heat - more revulsive detestable significant others (displaced global unrest) - costs of responding to natural disasters occurring with greater frequency due to elevated ocean temperatures - less parking spaces (!) What are the other costs and benefits here?

westurner 8y ago
I've received a number of downvotes for this comment. I think it's misunderstood, and that's my fault: I should have included [sarcasm] around the whole comment [/sarcasm]. I've written about our need to address climate change here in past comments. I think the administration's climate change denials (see: "climate change politifact') and regulatory rollbacks are beyond despicable: they're sabotaging the United States by allowing more toxic chemicals into the environment that we all share, and allowing more sites that must be protected with tax dollars that aren't there because these industries pay far less than benchmarks in terms of effective tax rate. We know that vehicle emissions, mercury, and coal ash are toxic: why would we allow people to violate the rights of others in that way? A person could voluntarily consume said toxic byproducts and not have violated their own rights or the rights of others, you understand. There's no medical value and low potential for abuse, so we just sit idly by while they're violating the rights of other people by dumping toxic chemicals into the environment that are both poisonous and strongly linked to climate change. What would help us care about this? A sarcastic list of additional reasons that we should care? No! Miami underwater during tourist season is enough! I've had enough! So, my mistake here - my downvote-earning mistake - was dropping my generally helpful, hopeful tone for cynicism and sarcasm that wasn't motivating enough. We need people to regulate pollution in order to prevent further costs of climate change. Water in the streets holds up commerce, travel, hampers national security, and destroys the road. We must stop rewarding pollution if we want it - and definitely resultant climate change - to stop. What motivates other people to care?

mrfusion 8y ago

Have we seen any sea level rise in the US yet? I think people would buy into it more once we have pictures of roads and buildings being hit by water at high tide.

craftyguy 8y ago
Yes. Here you go (from the Chesapeake Bay foundation): http://cbforg.maps.arcgis.com/apps/MapJournal/index.html?appid=3231b1004efb4e12b9b7dd79775a8a6b http://cbforg.maps.arcgis.com/apps/MapJournal/index.html?app...
thehoff 8y ago
Miami has been trying to raise their streets due to regular flooding. https://www.npr.org/2016/05/10/476071206/as-waters-rise-miami-beach-builds-higher-streets-and-political-willpower https://www.npr.org/2016/05/10/476071206/as-waters-rise-miam...
smacktoward 8y ago
See this article from 2014, about the port city of Norfolk, Virginia: https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/in-norfolk-evidence-of-climate-change-is-in-the-streets-at-high-tide/2014/05/31/fe3ae860-e71f-11e3-8f90-73e071f3d637_story.html?utm_term=.832e5ed3d2f3 https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/in-norfolk-e... At high tide on the small inlet next to Norfolk’s most prestigious art museum, the water lapped at the very top of the concrete sea wall that has held it back for 100 years. It seeped up through storm drains, puddled on the promenade and spread, half a foot deep, across the street, where a sign read, “Road Closed.” The sun was shining, but all around the inlet people were bracing for more serious flooding. The Chrysler Museum of Art had just completed a $24 million renovation that emptied the basement, now accessible only by ladder, and lifted the heating and air-conditioning systems to the top floor. A local accounting firm stood behind a homemade barricade of stanchions and detachable flaps rigged to keep the water out. And the congregation of the Unitarian Church of Norfolk was looking to evacuate. “We don’t like being the poster child for climate change,” said the Rev. Jennifer Slade, who added that the building, with its carved-wood sanctuary and soaring flood-insurance rates, would soon be on the market for the first time in four decades. “I don’t know many churches that have to put the tide chart on their Web site” so people know whether they can get to church.

fabricexpert 8y ago

This article is kind of infuriating. Just bring the facts up and talk about them, instead of describing people. I think this is one of the more critical parts (along with the stuff about water supply getting contaminated): > Barring a stupendous reversal in greenhouse gas emissions, the rising Atlantic will cover much of Miami by the end of this century. The economic effects will be devastating: Zillow Inc. estimates that six feet of sea-level rise would put a quarter of Miami’s homes underwater. However, nowhere in the article does it say a six feet rise will happen at the end of the century. So is that actually going to happen? How many models project this and how many don't? What is the "stupendous reversal" required in real terms? What are the options to combat this? Would a giant sea wall work? If you come at this from the angle of "climate change is a myth" the entire article reads as fluff. This makes it basically impossible to convince people that this is a real issue that needs to be dealt with. The sensationalist title distances people from the issue even further (it is sensational because the article doesn't present any evidence that Miami will be underwater soon).

laverick 8y ago
Isn't Zillow ignoring the immense value created from all those new beachfront properties?
- bovermyer 8y ago
  Lex Luthor would like a word with you.
- FranOntanaya 8y ago
  That works better when the land isn't 100 miles wide with ocean on both sides. Miami City has a better ring than Miami Keys.
- calgoo 8y ago
  This is actually a joke i have told my wife who has family in Florida: The only way i would buy property in Florida is if im allowed to build an artificial hill/mountain on it, so that in 100 years my family will own a private island. I wonder if there is a long term business model here... Invest in land and prepare it to survive being surrounded by water, build infrastructure etc and then sell it to the same type of people who buy bunkers for end of the world situations.

haha99 8y ago

"by the end of this century" is quite an odd definition of "soon". By then some of us won't even be alive.

frequent 8y ago

Always reminds me of Roisin Murphy "Dear Miami" (1997) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VbX7ASDLwAk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VbX7ASDLwAk "Behind these walls You can be so self-absorbed Behind those eyes, no disguise Disguise, no you can't disguise Behind this fortress of an address Stuck in the passion void With a little style full and for a while But you can't turn back time Dear Miami, you're the first to go Disappearing under melting snow Each and everyone turn your critical eye On the burning sun and try not to cry ..."

tim333 8y ago

For context the global rate of sea level rise currently seems to be 4cm a decade so you could come back in 10 or 20 years and probably not notice much. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_level_rise https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_level_rise

singularity2001 8y ago
Melt is accelerating 1cm/decade but that doen't change much near term.
monetus 8y ago
I'd be surprised if the rise sticks to a linear progression. The ice caps are caught in a feedback loop.

jillesvangurp 8y ago

There are technical solutions to all of this. I come from a country that has been fighting back the sea for centuries (Netherlands) and that has been exporting it's knowledge to do so for a long time as well. The basic consensus is that we'll need bigger dikes and a few other things over the next decades. Plenty of time to build that. Not a problem. At least not in places that can afford to invest in solutions. Basically build some dikes, desalination plants, pumping stations, etc. and start planning which areas to protect and which areas to abandon. Problem solved. All of this requires money of course. Luckily, Miami is still a pretty rich city in a relatively rich state; it can handle this. If the worst happens, it will be because of ignorance and mismanagement and not because of a lack of solutions or means. It may take a few minor incidents before people figure this out but the smart thing would be to not wait for that.

heartbreak 8y ago
Dikes don't work in Miami because the ground is too porous.
- stevenwoo 8y ago
  Not only that, the article is about the fresh water supply and to protect that would need a dike around most of south Florida (and all the interior rivers if that were possible given the limestone) and part of the Everglades.
  - jillesvangurp 8y ago
    Or build desalination plants and stop draining the natural reserves of fresh water. Probably a lot cheaper. The point of the dikes would be to prevent flooding; not protecting fresh water supplies.
WhompingWindows 8y ago
What is the bedrock of the Netherlands, geologically speaking? Pumps, dikes, and the like won't help that much in Miami because the porous limestone underlying the city allows water under and around these traditional methods.

dragthor 8y ago

Hysterical headline and article. In grade school it was dying from the ozone hole, acid rain, and global freezing (new ice age). Recycling, not being wasteful, and conserving water wasn't scary enough I guess.

hfdgiutdryg 8y ago

The idea that it's 2018 and we don't have solar powered desalination plants for some of our largest, sunny, water-limited southern cities boggles my mind. Los Angeles has a nuclear plant just to the north, but no desalination, and more sun than anyone wants. It's insane.

Synaesthesia 8y ago
It’s still a really expensive way to get drinking water.
- hfdgiutdryg 8y ago
  It's cheaper than having your economy collapse when the aquifers empty, and it's only going to get cheaper if money is invested in it.

zackmorris 8y ago

I'm getting the feeling lately that the freedom in speech and action that is the foundation of the United States doesn't mean freedom from consequences. Florida has a rather right leaning/libertarian persuasion, which as the article pointed out, allowed the Miami Drum Services Inc. superfund site and Lake Belt limestone mine to cause contamination of drinking water as recently as 1997. I'm from Idaho and am well aware of the environmental impacts from superfund sites and mining. The corporations go in and make their millions, then taxpayers are on the hook for the cleanup. Now we can't even fish many rivers and lakes here because mine tailings have contaminated the water with mercury (from gold mining) and other nastiness. Due to a long history of this short term thinking where profits are privatized and externalities are socialized, Miami is going to have to come to terms with losing its drinking water and either pipe it in from far away or move to desalinization. It's going to be expensive and unfortunate, but I wonder if it will be enough for people to shift their politics. Judging by the political stalemate in my state, I'm guessing not.

not_that_noob 8y ago

This is one of the best articles I've seen on climate change. We are now looking to a 3 degree rise in surface temps by the middle of this century - well within our lifetimes. Miami is headed underwater. I wouldn't be buying real estate in any low-lying area if I can avoid it. "Three-degree warming is a prescription for short-term disaster: forests in the Arctic and the loss of most coastal cities. Robert Watson, a former director of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, has argued that three-degree warming is the realistic minimum." https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/08/01/magazine/climate-change-losing-earth.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/08/01/magazine/clim...

Iwan-Zotow 8y ago

"Good news, everyone!"

DoreenMichele 8y ago

I've had a class in hydrology. The article did a good job covering the actual threats to the water supply. It ended on a note of "But the impact of people's choices is the bigger threat to Miami's survival." I think that's true. However, I feel it did a poor job of really spelling that out. Despite pockets of extreme wealth—one study estimated that the Miami metro area has the nation’s eighth-highest number of millionaires—the county overall is poor. Its median household income of $44,224 is almost one-quarter lower than that of the country as a whole. It's not uncommon for ocean front property to be very desirable and very expensive. I'm guessing that a lot of those millionaires live near the beach or on the beach and their homes may be some of the ones most at risk of ending up under water as sea levels rise. Rich people are typically the most able to up and move elsewhere. If the rich people in waterfront property homes start leaving, you are left with a bunch of relatively poor people and hard-to-solve, expensive problems. This means you don't need sea levels to rise six feet to significantly alter the city of Miami in ways that can spell Miami's doom in some sense. Like Galveston, which was an important and rich city at one time and then was devastated by a single hurricane, Miami could become a shadow of its former self with no hope of recovery. You only need it to rise however much would serve as some kind of tipping point where rich folks would stop feeling it was a desirable place to be. Maybe that's when their yard is inundated. Or maybe it will be determined by some other metric entirely. The reality is there may be no one who is capable of predicting where that tipping point is. Once it's reached, there may be no reversing the problem. Miami may be left with a poor population, a raft load of expensive problems and no means to readily solve any of them as their poor population slides deeper into debt to keep surviving. Edit/footnote: It's a lousy title. Even the article itself is not actually predicting that the entire city will ever be completely under water like the title suggests.

southern_cross 8y ago

Fun fact, kids. If you pump down an aquifer (any aquifer, anywhere) faster than it is being replenished from above via rainwater, then any other water sitting around it will eventually start to intrude. And if that outside water is salty or otherwise non-potable, then problem! Meaning that saltwater intrusion in coastal areas is a pretty much constant potential risk anyway, regardless of any sea level rise.