5 ms·

The key to my comment was the last clause “at any kind of scale”. If the community living there can’t support the costs of environmental maintenance, at a cert

by dfee 8y ago

The key to my comment was the last clause “at any kind of scale”. If the community living there can’t support the costs of environmental maintenance, at a certain point it becomes like a superfund site: people will need to move to higher ground. In NOLA, in Houston, in Miami and beyond.

js2 8y ago
What about the forest fires in the West and even places like NC? Overflowing rivers throughout the US? Tornadoes from the mid-West to the mid-Atlantic? Hurricanes? Where in the US is safe as climate change induces more frequent and more extreme weather-related disasters?
- godzillabrennus 8y ago
  Ohio seems reasonably safe. Maybe Cleveland will see real estate prices go up for the first time in 20 years?
  - scruple 8y ago
    Depends on where... I have family in southern/central Ohio and, while they've always been a risk, there has been a marked uptick in the occurrence of tornadoes. Xenia, OH very famously has been hit multiple times by serious tornadoes. Where my parents are, where I did most of my growing up, in southeastern Ohio, is a little safer because of the Appalachian foothills, but I fondly remember the tornado sirens blaring every Wednesday at noon during the spring, summer, and fall. A friend of mine from high school, who is a meteorologist and storm chaser today, was telling me the last time that we spoke that tornado alley is potentially / actually shifting eastward over time. I haven't tried to verify what he was saying, because I trust him given his career choices, but it does seem to bear out from the anecdata that I have available.
    - madengr 8y ago
      Tornados cut a narrow swath, compared to a hurricane. I’d wager all the tornados in the last 100 years cause less total economic damage than a single hurricane hitting a coastal city.
      - scruple 8y ago
        Well, I believe that the point is that as tornado alley shifts east that these natural disasters will come closer to larger or perhaps denser metropolitan areas. I do agree with your point. Though, if / as torando alley shifts eastward there could be some significant overlap between the areas that could be impacted by both torandos and hurricanes. I'm reminded of the tornados that hit Alabama last year.
        hueving 8y ago
        No, even if they hit denser metropolitan areas, they do nothing compared to a hurricane in aggregate damage.
        scruple 8y ago
        I never said they did.
  - kregasaurusrex 8y ago
    It's still seeing a net population decline though, both in the Metropolitan and suburban areas. A recent post on the Columbus subreddit showed Cleveland has one of the lowest average internet speeds in the country, and this story from Ars [0] shows actual redlining in how new cable was (not) being laid down. The apartment I lived in growing up was using dial-up until my freshman year of high school a decade or so ago. [0] https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2017/03/att-allegedly-discriminated-against-poor-people-in-broadband-upgrades/ https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2017/03/att-a...
- asdffdsa 8y ago
  How much federal aid is given to California wild fires vs. east coast hurricanes vs. New Orleans floods? How valuable are those regions to the financial health of the country?
  - kevingadd 8y ago
    This evaluation kind of fails though. Even if (for example) California is worth lots of aid because of its massive economic value, who's to say it will still be massively valuable economically after a decade of storms? That could decimate agriculture and other infrastructure, undermining its ability to host businesses. It seems pretty hard to account for this in advance.
    - zaroth 8y ago
      It’s called actuary science, and it turns out to be so good overall that a nearly trillion dollar business model runs quite well on it.
      - kevingadd 8y ago
        I'm not disputing the idea of actuary science here (I have relatives who work as actuaries), I'm disputing the idea of 'we should abandon this entire city because it's not worth the cost of saving the residents from hurricanes based on some economic projections', which seems to be a recurring theme here. It's one matter to make insurance really expensive due to very obvious risk or make other pricing adjustments based on projections and quite another to axe a city.
        lotsofpulp 8y ago
        Get rid of the government subsidized insurance and it will effectively axe the city as no new mortgages will be offered since no private companies are willing to offer insurance for it. No one is going to offer you insurance for a sure loss.
        8y ago
- coryrc 8y ago
  If you don't get federal disaster money for the tide rising, you shouldn't get it for forests historically managed by fire.
  - pkaye 8y ago
    What if it is federally owned land?
- sliken 8y ago
  Fighting the entire USA coastline against rising oceans is batshit crazy and would bankrupt the country if we tried. I always found it crazy that flood insurance would pay people to rebuild... on a flood plain. I've read stories where people rebuild once a decade or so. Seems clearly irrational and people living outside of floodplains should subsidize those that don't. Similarly if you are high risk of fires or earthquakes you should pay a premium on insurance and that insurance should depend on reasonable mitigations. A friend moved into high risk area and they required a clear area near the house and a rooftop watering system to get the insurance that was required to get the home loan. So yes, the country should either pay for mitigation (levees, fire control, earthquake resistant building costs etc) where it makes sense or ban developments in high risk areas. Paying for people to live below ocean level makes no sense.
  - dragonwriter 8y ago
    > Similarly if you are high risk of fires or earthquakes you should pay a premium on insurance You do for fire risk and standard homeowners insurance doesn't cover earthquakes, you need a separate policy, which is non-free, so you are clearly paying a premium for it.
    - PopeDotNinja 8y ago
      I used to sell insurance, including homeowners. As part of selling a homeowners policy, I was supposed to ensure that a home was not ridiculously vulnerable to catching fire. An example would be making sure the owner hadn't stuffed the house full of canisters of gasoline, or that the exterior of the house wasn't in direct contact with an abundance of dry vegetation. Any insurance company that is willing to be represented by agents too lazy too verify a home is a fire waiting to happen is gonna lose money big time. It seems the logical approach to handling house in a wildfire prone area orvavflood plain would be to simply charge stupid high rates or not offer the insurance at all.
      - goodcanadian 8y ago
        It seems the logical approach to handling house in a wildfire prone area orvavflood plain would be to simply charge stupid high rates or not offer the insurance at all. Which is exactly what insurance companies do. It is usually very difficult to get flood insurance in a flood plain. Rather than taking that as a clue that people shouldn't live there, all too often, the government steps in to subsidise the risk. I don't want to over simplify, things are complicated and sometimes it is appropriate to subsidise such risk, but sometimes it is not.
- roenxi 8y ago
  Being alive does involve a level of risk. My understanding is the number of hurricanes, for example, are expected to a little-less-than-double [0]. So, if you experience a hurricane it is still probably not due to global warming. Probably broadly true of the others, too. We have words for these things because they've been threats since the dawn of time - nowhere has ever been especially safe safe from things going horribly wrong. The biggest problem always has been and will remain a lack of preparedness by communities for disasters. [0] https://www.c2es.org/content/hurricanes-and-climate-change/ https://www.c2es.org/content/hurricanes-and-climate-change/
- hueving 8y ago
  Tornadoes do so little damage the insurance market actually works. The complain is insurance markets that need to be subsidized by federal funds because they don't raise enough money on their own (see florida, Louisiana, etc.).
- DoubleCribble 8y ago
  A LOT of the forest that burned in the CA Camp fire isn't going to come back. Thanks to warming winters, the pine bark beetles are making their way up the Sierras and laying waste to entire mountains of pine trees. The folks who want to live in the burned out areas will now likely be surrounded by chaparral instead of pine forest.

by dfee 8y ago

js2 8y ago

What about the forest fires in the West and even places like NC? Overflowing rivers throughout the US? Tornadoes from the mid-West to the mid-Atlantic? Hurricanes? Where in the US is safe as climate change induces more frequent and more extreme weather-related disasters?

godzillabrennus 8y ago
Ohio seems reasonably safe. Maybe Cleveland will see real estate prices go up for the first time in 20 years?
- scruple 8y ago
  Depends on where... I have family in southern/central Ohio and, while they've always been a risk, there has been a marked uptick in the occurrence of tornadoes. Xenia, OH very famously has been hit multiple times by serious tornadoes. Where my parents are, where I did most of my growing up, in southeastern Ohio, is a little safer because of the Appalachian foothills, but I fondly remember the tornado sirens blaring every Wednesday at noon during the spring, summer, and fall. A friend of mine from high school, who is a meteorologist and storm chaser today, was telling me the last time that we spoke that tornado alley is potentially / actually shifting eastward over time. I haven't tried to verify what he was saying, because I trust him given his career choices, but it does seem to bear out from the anecdata that I have available.
  - madengr 8y ago
    Tornados cut a narrow swath, compared to a hurricane. I’d wager all the tornados in the last 100 years cause less total economic damage than a single hurricane hitting a coastal city.
    - scruple 8y ago
      Well, I believe that the point is that as tornado alley shifts east that these natural disasters will come closer to larger or perhaps denser metropolitan areas. I do agree with your point. Though, if / as torando alley shifts eastward there could be some significant overlap between the areas that could be impacted by both torandos and hurricanes. I'm reminded of the tornados that hit Alabama last year.
      - hueving 8y ago
        No, even if they hit denser metropolitan areas, they do nothing compared to a hurricane in aggregate damage.
        scruple 8y ago
        I never said they did.
- kregasaurusrex 8y ago
  It's still seeing a net population decline though, both in the Metropolitan and suburban areas. A recent post on the Columbus subreddit showed Cleveland has one of the lowest average internet speeds in the country, and this story from Ars [0] shows actual redlining in how new cable was (not) being laid down. The apartment I lived in growing up was using dial-up until my freshman year of high school a decade or so ago. [0] https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2017/03/att-allegedly-discriminated-against-poor-people-in-broadband-upgrades/ https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2017/03/att-a...
asdffdsa 8y ago
How much federal aid is given to California wild fires vs. east coast hurricanes vs. New Orleans floods? How valuable are those regions to the financial health of the country?
- kevingadd 8y ago
  This evaluation kind of fails though. Even if (for example) California is worth lots of aid because of its massive economic value, who's to say it will still be massively valuable economically after a decade of storms? That could decimate agriculture and other infrastructure, undermining its ability to host businesses. It seems pretty hard to account for this in advance.
  - zaroth 8y ago
    It’s called actuary science, and it turns out to be so good overall that a nearly trillion dollar business model runs quite well on it.
    - kevingadd 8y ago
      I'm not disputing the idea of actuary science here (I have relatives who work as actuaries), I'm disputing the idea of 'we should abandon this entire city because it's not worth the cost of saving the residents from hurricanes based on some economic projections', which seems to be a recurring theme here. It's one matter to make insurance really expensive due to very obvious risk or make other pricing adjustments based on projections and quite another to axe a city.
      - lotsofpulp 8y ago
        Get rid of the government subsidized insurance and it will effectively axe the city as no new mortgages will be offered since no private companies are willing to offer insurance for it. No one is going to offer you insurance for a sure loss.
        8y ago
coryrc 8y ago
If you don't get federal disaster money for the tide rising, you shouldn't get it for forests historically managed by fire.
- pkaye 8y ago
  What if it is federally owned land?
sliken 8y ago
Fighting the entire USA coastline against rising oceans is batshit crazy and would bankrupt the country if we tried. I always found it crazy that flood insurance would pay people to rebuild... on a flood plain. I've read stories where people rebuild once a decade or so. Seems clearly irrational and people living outside of floodplains should subsidize those that don't. Similarly if you are high risk of fires or earthquakes you should pay a premium on insurance and that insurance should depend on reasonable mitigations. A friend moved into high risk area and they required a clear area near the house and a rooftop watering system to get the insurance that was required to get the home loan. So yes, the country should either pay for mitigation (levees, fire control, earthquake resistant building costs etc) where it makes sense or ban developments in high risk areas. Paying for people to live below ocean level makes no sense.
- dragonwriter 8y ago
  > Similarly if you are high risk of fires or earthquakes you should pay a premium on insurance You do for fire risk and standard homeowners insurance doesn't cover earthquakes, you need a separate policy, which is non-free, so you are clearly paying a premium for it.
  - PopeDotNinja 8y ago
    I used to sell insurance, including homeowners. As part of selling a homeowners policy, I was supposed to ensure that a home was not ridiculously vulnerable to catching fire. An example would be making sure the owner hadn't stuffed the house full of canisters of gasoline, or that the exterior of the house wasn't in direct contact with an abundance of dry vegetation. Any insurance company that is willing to be represented by agents too lazy too verify a home is a fire waiting to happen is gonna lose money big time. It seems the logical approach to handling house in a wildfire prone area orvavflood plain would be to simply charge stupid high rates or not offer the insurance at all.
    - goodcanadian 8y ago
      It seems the logical approach to handling house in a wildfire prone area orvavflood plain would be to simply charge stupid high rates or not offer the insurance at all. Which is exactly what insurance companies do. It is usually very difficult to get flood insurance in a flood plain. Rather than taking that as a clue that people shouldn't live there, all too often, the government steps in to subsidise the risk. I don't want to over simplify, things are complicated and sometimes it is appropriate to subsidise such risk, but sometimes it is not.
roenxi 8y ago
Being alive does involve a level of risk. My understanding is the number of hurricanes, for example, are expected to a little-less-than-double [0]. So, if you experience a hurricane it is still probably not due to global warming. Probably broadly true of the others, too. We have words for these things because they've been threats since the dawn of time - nowhere has ever been especially safe safe from things going horribly wrong. The biggest problem always has been and will remain a lack of preparedness by communities for disasters. [0] https://www.c2es.org/content/hurricanes-and-climate-change/ https://www.c2es.org/content/hurricanes-and-climate-change/
hueving 8y ago
Tornadoes do so little damage the insurance market actually works. The complain is insurance markets that need to be subsidized by federal funds because they don't raise enough money on their own (see florida, Louisiana, etc.).
DoubleCribble 8y ago
A LOT of the forest that burned in the CA Camp fire isn't going to come back. Thanks to warming winters, the pine bark beetles are making their way up the Sierras and laying waste to entire mountains of pine trees. The folks who want to live in the burned out areas will now likely be surrounded by chaparral instead of pine forest.