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Presumably I'll get downvoted for this but here it goes.. I know that news sites like to link anything they can to climate change in the global human-caused sen

Presumably I'll get downvoted for this but here it goes.. I know that news sites like to link anything they can to climate change in the global human-caused sense because it might create more clicks but how is this a "climate exodus" in that sense? It's more a case of people having built homes in a very flat, easily flooded place that has always been really, really shitty for living due to the dangers of extremely bad hurricane damage (something that has been the case since Europeans settled the region). Way too tenuous for a title like that, but it fits the more hysterical narratives of climate change so in it goes. Note, i'm not doubting or denying the very real global dangers of human-caused climate change, but we should be careful in ascribing just anything to them. Some regions of the world have always been unsafe for human habitation due to persistently unfriendly weather, that we have colonized them with our technology doesn't mean that something has fundamentally changed about their climate whenever things go wrong and nature reasserts itself.

MuffinFlavored 7y ago
> It's more a case of people having built homes in a very flat, easily flooded place that has always been really, really shitty for living due to the dangers of extremely bad hurricane damage (something that has been the case since Europeans settled the region). I don't know how to say this politically but this is something that took me back when the call-to-arms came about for the Bahamas recently given the latest hurricane. Isn't it kind of a broken system? Every hurricane season, the Bahamas stands to get absolutely hammered. It's devastating, but... almost on a schedule?
- kls 7y ago
  See my post below, Bahamas is no different, most of those houses that where destroyed where built pre-codes. I have a lot of family in the Bahamas, there houses are all on stilts and cat 5 rated. All of their houses survived. Hurricanes are nothing new, we have endured them all of our lives, they are not getting worse or more frequent. My family has been in Florida and the Bahamas for 14 generations along the way it just became second nature to instruct the next generation on what to look for in a house that will survive the storm. My original family homestead is still standing and was built in the 1700's, it has seen many storms some worse that Irma and Dorean.
  - thangalin 7y ago
    > they are not getting worse or more frequent NOAA data indicates otherwise: * https://www.nhc.noaa.gov/climo/images/Atlantic_Storm_Count.jpg https://www.nhc.noaa.gov/climo/images/Atlantic_Storm_Count.j... * https://www.nhc.noaa.gov/climo/ https://www.nhc.noaa.gov/climo/ * https://www.nhc.noaa.gov/climo/images/AtlanticStormTotalsTable.pdf https://www.nhc.noaa.gov/climo/images/AtlanticStormTotalsTab...
    - kls 7y ago
      according to the charts you linked to Hurricanes and Major Hurricanes (the only ones a person really needs to worry about) look pretty steady to me. It is well know that storm seasons peak and trough, on a roughly 10 year cycle. I remember the old timers telling me that long before meteorology could predict the weekly weather with any form of accuracy. We peaked in 2005 and hit bottom in 13 we are close to a peak again. I got hit by 4 hurricanes in 2005, it was a freak anomaly and I assume I will never see that again in my lifetime. Take named storms out of the equation, we literally drive around in those things. The north gets worse storms when they get their noreasters. They are of little to no concern other than they have the possibility to develop.
      - not_kurt_godel 7y ago
        > it was a freak anomaly and I assume I will never see that again in my lifetime. Why do you believe this? The earth's climate is indisputably changing. This means that different patterns will be established than what was normal in the past. There are good reasons to believe that increasing ocean temperatures and higher ocean levels are likely to increase hurricane frequency, intensity, and destructiveness. Although the data we have so far isn't yet conclusive that this is happening currently, it's definitely suggestive and certainly consistent with said reasoning. Why do you think you know better?
        kls 7y ago
        Because, I have for the past 44 years been in a hurricanes path on a pretty regular interval. It has not changes with the exception of a single year where I got hit by 4 of them. After that for the past 14 years it has returned to that interval where about once ever 8 years I either get winged or direct hit by a hurricane. Unfortunately the last one was a major hurricane. It's been 2 years so in about 6 I will get winged or hit again. It's like clockwork and has not changed and until it does I will accept that about every 8 years I have to deal with a storm.
- enraged_camel 7y ago
  Dorian was the most powerful hurricane recorded in the history of the Bahamas, and the worst natural disaster in the country's history. Last year, Hurricane Harvey caused catastrophic "500-year" floods in Texas. Just this past week, remnants of tropical depression Imelda dropped unbelievable amounts of rain along the Texas Gulf Coast - more than 40 inches in some areas. As these types of extremes become more frequent, you need to ask yourself if this stuff is just what is on the schedule, or if things are getting worse.
  - kls 7y ago
    the 1935 Labor Day storm was the worst storm in recorded history to ever make landfall. The 1932 Storm that hit the Bahamas was far worse than Dorean. It was only eclipsed by the aforementioned labor day storm, the 1928 storm that hit Okeechobee and the 1932 storm that hit Cuba. 1932 an 1933 where the worst recorded 2 years for major hurricane landfalls. We have never seen a concurrence of 2 seasons like that in modern times. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Category_5_Atlantic_hurricanes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Category_5_Atlantic_hu...
kls 7y ago
I live in the Keys (Summerland Key), so I think I have some skin the the game here. These is not and climate change exodus happening there is a real economic issue in the keys with workforce affordability, the average rent in the keys sits very near the average rent for San Francisco. A decent home for rent will run you between $3500 to $4000 a month. Meanwhile the average non-skilled job pays about $10 an hour in the keys. This has been going on long before Irma hit us. Irma exacerbated the problem by destroying most of the ground level homes built before 1979 as well as Mobile homes and RV's. The exact homes that where the most affordable to the workforce. These people are leaving due to economics not because Irma was somehow a freak of climate change. Article on work force housing issue and how Irma made it worse: https://therealdeal.com/miami/2019/07/21/many-residents-of-the-keys-compensate-for-high-priced-housing-with-smaller-rental-spaces/ https://therealdeal.com/miami/2019/07/21/many-residents-of-t... I have lived in Florida for 44 years and have seen storms far nastier than Irma long before climate change was a thing. It's the nature of the beast here, and homes can and are being built to withstand these storms. They do a lot of damage, but they are not these cyclones of death that the media makes them out to be. At CAT 4 or 5 storm is a serious storm don't get me wrong. I took a lot of damage from Irma due to a roof hatch failing, but it was all water damage, structurally my house is fine. But it also sits 9 foot above sea level as far as ground and then 14 foot pier foundation above that. Storm surge here can be up to 15 ft. If you are not above that your house is going to flood in a serious storm. If you are above that, and your house is built to code, it is going to survive the storm. If you are ground level, anywhere on the islands other than by the cemetery in Key west, which IIRC is 15 to 20 ft above sea level, you are going to flood. Take a look at the 1935 Labor day storm that hit us, look at the devastation, compare it to Irma and you will see that these storms come and go, The 1935 storm was the worst storm to have ever have made landfall. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1935_Labor_Day_hurricane https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1935_Labor_Day_hurricane It was horrific, my grandparents and great grandparents went thru it, all of them said they would never live to see another one like it, and they where correct. I wish people would focus more on ocean pollution and preservation, I have seen the decline in ocean stock first hand in my life. Killing the ocean is what is going to kill us, and it has to do directly with what we are pumping into the water. Edit: Forgot to note outside of commercial shellfish, fishing and fishing guide occupations there is no industry down here other than the service industry.
Waterluvian 7y ago
I visited South Carolina for a wedding and we had a house on the ocean. Every house was on stilts. I asked locals and they said that it was so the houses survived storm season. One also said that they still get obliterated every 20 years or so but you just budget that in. 20 year rebuilds turning into 1 year rebuilds is what I think first world "climate exodus" looks like. Yes, they know the location is pretty bad. But the numbers had worked for that ocean side Vista. They won't anymore.
- paul_f 7y ago
  Homes on stilts are designed to survive major storm. Cat 1 and 2 hurricanes. What is a 1 year rebuild? Are you saying a major hurricane will make landfall everywhere, every year? Because that's what you are implying.
  - Waterluvian 7y ago
    I wouldn't fixate on the numbers. The point of the anecdote is that because climate change means more storms more often, the cut-off point for habitability gets shifted.
    - mrosett 7y ago
      It hasn't been established that climate change means more storms more often though.
      - TheOtherHobbes 7y ago
        No, but if the regular storms become larger and more destructive, that still affects habitability. https://www.c2es.org/content/hurricanes-and-climate-change/ https://www.c2es.org/content/hurricanes-and-climate-change/ And the point about more storms hasn't been established yet - which doesn't mean that it won't be established in the future. Given the likelihood of larger storms and the possibility of more frequent storms, living in a storm-prone area becomes a much less appealing idea. The UK has a similar problem. Some properties have been flooded multiple times in the last couple of decades. They're now uninsurable, which is not far off from being uninhabitable. Even if they stay dry for years at a time, it only takes a couple of very expensive renovations to reduce their value towards zero.
DoreenMichele 7y ago
It's being linked to climate change because small, low-lying islands are seeing serious losses of land mass. From the article: Fifteen years after Hurricane Katrina, Louisiana is trying to relocate the Native American settlement of about 100 people on the Isle de Jean Charles, a narrow island that lost 98% of its land over the past six decades to climate change. My best understanding is that this is, in fact, a new phenomenon related to global warming, the defrosting of permafrost, etc. Some regions of the world have always been unsafe for human habitation due to persistently unfriendly weather There is no place without some kind of disaster. I've looked. It's a case of pick your poison. Hurricanes in the Southeast. Tornadoes in the Plains States. Earthquakes and the ever-so-lovely Fire Season on the West Coast. Etc. But much of Florida is not far above sea level and some of the issues they are seeing can legitimately be linked to climate change. That's not just hand-wringing in this case. This is especially true for low-lying islands, which are seeing new problems around the world. It isn't the norm for islands to simply disappear to rising sea levels.
- rjbwork 7y ago
  Yes, but some places are far worse than others. Down here in Atlanta we get some pretty bad thunder storms (and accompanying low lying land floods), and rare but not unheard of hail. We're pretty far from any real faults, though we have gotten tiny tremors from east Tennessee and north/south Georgia before, they're at most 4-5, with everything in Georgia around a 3. We're far enough away from, and high enough above the ocean for sea level rise to not impact us. Tornados are exceedingly rare. We hardly ever get any real hurricane weather, usually just some rain from the outer reaches of it as it hits the coasts. I'd choose this over my former South Louisiana digs any day. We had to evacuate for hurricanes multiple times when I was a kid there. For hurricane Andrew we were driving north in the pouring rain and wind so high nobody could close the car doors except my dad. I've never been even close to that scared of weather in Georgia.
  - DoreenMichele 7y ago
    I think that falls under personal preference. I was born and raised in Georgia. I'm abundantly familiar with what goes on there, weather-wise. Near daily thunderstorms in the summer. Electrical storms that can kill electronics, appliances or even people. If it snows at all, businesses shut down, schools shut down, car wrecks go up, etc. If it gets too cold, they sometimes shut down schools and businesses. When I was eight years old and we had something like a foot of snow, roofs were collapsing, they were sending a van around to pick up nurses so the hospitals would be staffed and my sister and father walked like five miles in the snow to get to a store to get supplies we needed because no municipality in the state has any equipment for doing snow clearance and all the roads were closed. Snow is not some kind of natural disaster in places that routinely get snow. But it is a real and serious problem in Georgia simply because it happens so rarely that it doesn't make any real sense to acquire snow plows and the like. They would rust and rot in place and be unusable on the rare occasion that it does snow enough to see an accumulation on the ground. Most of the time, you wait a day or so, things warm up, it melts, schools and businesses re-open. But, meanwhile, people die in car wrecks. https://www.vox.com/2016/1/27/10840810/snow-car-crash-map https://www.vox.com/2016/1/27/10840810/snow-car-crash-map Atlanta sometimes has serious flooding. https://www.11alive.com/article/weather/10-year-anniversary-historic-2009-flood/85-67a5d008-de15-4529-a68b-796eabcacf65 https://www.11alive.com/article/weather/10-year-anniversary-... Etc.
CydeWeys 7y ago
The obvious connection to the climate crisis is that global warming is causing ice to melt and thus sea levels to rise. Rising seas are catastrophic for buildings and infrastructure in low-lying coastal areas, which because of its geography Florida has more of than anywhere else in the US. The world is on the way to becoming uninhabitable for modern human civilization, and we're the cause. It happens that the majority of humanity lives in coastal areas that will be put underwater by the amount of sea level rise that's going to happen by the end of this century at current rates of warming. The current retreats from the most vulnerable areas in Florida are just a tiny, tiny taste to come of the massive climate refugeeism that is on the horizon. It's not hysteria, this is what is going to happen unless we make massive changes.
- BurningFrog 7y ago
  I looked it up, and current sea level rise is around 3mm/year, which adds up to a foot per century. More than I thought, but hardly a non outrunnable flood. https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/sealevel.html https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/sealevel.html
  - EdwardDiego 7y ago
    Did you ignore the rest of the link you posted by mistake? > Higher sea levels mean that deadly and destructive storm surges push farther inland than they once did, which also means more frequent nuisance flooding. Disruptive and expensive, nuisance flooding is estimated to be from 300 percent to 900 percent more frequent within U.S. coastal communities than it was just 50 years ago. The mean sea level rising isn't out-runnable, but the storm events can be. And also: > Sea level rise at specific locations may be more or less than the global average due to local factors such as land subsidence from natural processes and withdrawal of groundwater and fossil fuels, changes in regional ocean currents, and whether the land is still rebounding from the compressive weight of Ice Age glaciers. Again, all from your own link.
    - BurningFrog 7y ago
      > Did you ignore the rest of the link you posted by mistake? No I intentionally read all of it. But you knew that :) > The mean sea level rising isn't out-runnable, but the storm events can be. Some low lying areas should probably be abandoned. My point is just that it happens very slowly, and can be planned for. I also suspect some of that increase is because of bigger populations living near the coast. > Sea level rise at specific locations may be more or less than the global average This is true regardless of climate change. Some land rises, other sink.
em3rgent0rdr 7y ago
Humans used to settle near water when it made sense technologically and for their economy. The risks from flooding have always been strong, but back when those areas were settled the risk management made settling there a reasonable tradeoff. Nowadays when we no longer need to be reliant on settling near bodies of water, it probably makes more sense to move inland to lower-risk areas.
tmaly 7y ago
I saw worse in the Philippines several years ago. Bodies were piled like sardines after a category 5 typhoon. Its the nature of flat land to flood with bad storms

MuffinFlavored 7y ago

> It's more a case of people having built homes in a very flat, easily flooded place that has always been really, really shitty for living due to the dangers of extremely bad hurricane damage (something that has been the case since Europeans settled the region). I don't know how to say this politically but this is something that took me back when the call-to-arms came about for the Bahamas recently given the latest hurricane. Isn't it kind of a broken system? Every hurricane season, the Bahamas stands to get absolutely hammered. It's devastating, but... almost on a schedule?

kls 7y ago
See my post below, Bahamas is no different, most of those houses that where destroyed where built pre-codes. I have a lot of family in the Bahamas, there houses are all on stilts and cat 5 rated. All of their houses survived. Hurricanes are nothing new, we have endured them all of our lives, they are not getting worse or more frequent. My family has been in Florida and the Bahamas for 14 generations along the way it just became second nature to instruct the next generation on what to look for in a house that will survive the storm. My original family homestead is still standing and was built in the 1700's, it has seen many storms some worse that Irma and Dorean.
- thangalin 7y ago
  > they are not getting worse or more frequent NOAA data indicates otherwise: * https://www.nhc.noaa.gov/climo/images/Atlantic_Storm_Count.jpg https://www.nhc.noaa.gov/climo/images/Atlantic_Storm_Count.j... * https://www.nhc.noaa.gov/climo/ https://www.nhc.noaa.gov/climo/ * https://www.nhc.noaa.gov/climo/images/AtlanticStormTotalsTable.pdf https://www.nhc.noaa.gov/climo/images/AtlanticStormTotalsTab...
  - kls 7y ago
    according to the charts you linked to Hurricanes and Major Hurricanes (the only ones a person really needs to worry about) look pretty steady to me. It is well know that storm seasons peak and trough, on a roughly 10 year cycle. I remember the old timers telling me that long before meteorology could predict the weekly weather with any form of accuracy. We peaked in 2005 and hit bottom in 13 we are close to a peak again. I got hit by 4 hurricanes in 2005, it was a freak anomaly and I assume I will never see that again in my lifetime. Take named storms out of the equation, we literally drive around in those things. The north gets worse storms when they get their noreasters. They are of little to no concern other than they have the possibility to develop.
    - not_kurt_godel 7y ago
      > it was a freak anomaly and I assume I will never see that again in my lifetime. Why do you believe this? The earth's climate is indisputably changing. This means that different patterns will be established than what was normal in the past. There are good reasons to believe that increasing ocean temperatures and higher ocean levels are likely to increase hurricane frequency, intensity, and destructiveness. Although the data we have so far isn't yet conclusive that this is happening currently, it's definitely suggestive and certainly consistent with said reasoning. Why do you think you know better?
      - kls 7y ago
        Because, I have for the past 44 years been in a hurricanes path on a pretty regular interval. It has not changes with the exception of a single year where I got hit by 4 of them. After that for the past 14 years it has returned to that interval where about once ever 8 years I either get winged or direct hit by a hurricane. Unfortunately the last one was a major hurricane. It's been 2 years so in about 6 I will get winged or hit again. It's like clockwork and has not changed and until it does I will accept that about every 8 years I have to deal with a storm.
enraged_camel 7y ago
Dorian was the most powerful hurricane recorded in the history of the Bahamas, and the worst natural disaster in the country's history. Last year, Hurricane Harvey caused catastrophic "500-year" floods in Texas. Just this past week, remnants of tropical depression Imelda dropped unbelievable amounts of rain along the Texas Gulf Coast - more than 40 inches in some areas. As these types of extremes become more frequent, you need to ask yourself if this stuff is just what is on the schedule, or if things are getting worse.
- kls 7y ago
  the 1935 Labor Day storm was the worst storm in recorded history to ever make landfall. The 1932 Storm that hit the Bahamas was far worse than Dorean. It was only eclipsed by the aforementioned labor day storm, the 1928 storm that hit Okeechobee and the 1932 storm that hit Cuba. 1932 an 1933 where the worst recorded 2 years for major hurricane landfalls. We have never seen a concurrence of 2 seasons like that in modern times. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Category_5_Atlantic_hurricanes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Category_5_Atlantic_hu...

kls 7y ago

I live in the Keys (Summerland Key), so I think I have some skin the the game here. These is not and climate change exodus happening there is a real economic issue in the keys with workforce affordability, the average rent in the keys sits very near the average rent for San Francisco. A decent home for rent will run you between $3500 to $4000 a month. Meanwhile the average non-skilled job pays about $10 an hour in the keys. This has been going on long before Irma hit us. Irma exacerbated the problem by destroying most of the ground level homes built before 1979 as well as Mobile homes and RV's. The exact homes that where the most affordable to the workforce. These people are leaving due to economics not because Irma was somehow a freak of climate change. Article on work force housing issue and how Irma made it worse: https://therealdeal.com/miami/2019/07/21/many-residents-of-the-keys-compensate-for-high-priced-housing-with-smaller-rental-spaces/ https://therealdeal.com/miami/2019/07/21/many-residents-of-t... I have lived in Florida for 44 years and have seen storms far nastier than Irma long before climate change was a thing. It's the nature of the beast here, and homes can and are being built to withstand these storms. They do a lot of damage, but they are not these cyclones of death that the media makes them out to be. At CAT 4 or 5 storm is a serious storm don't get me wrong. I took a lot of damage from Irma due to a roof hatch failing, but it was all water damage, structurally my house is fine. But it also sits 9 foot above sea level as far as ground and then 14 foot pier foundation above that. Storm surge here can be up to 15 ft. If you are not above that your house is going to flood in a serious storm. If you are above that, and your house is built to code, it is going to survive the storm. If you are ground level, anywhere on the islands other than by the cemetery in Key west, which IIRC is 15 to 20 ft above sea level, you are going to flood. Take a look at the 1935 Labor day storm that hit us, look at the devastation, compare it to Irma and you will see that these storms come and go, The 1935 storm was the worst storm to have ever have made landfall. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1935_Labor_Day_hurricane https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1935_Labor_Day_hurricane It was horrific, my grandparents and great grandparents went thru it, all of them said they would never live to see another one like it, and they where correct. I wish people would focus more on ocean pollution and preservation, I have seen the decline in ocean stock first hand in my life. Killing the ocean is what is going to kill us, and it has to do directly with what we are pumping into the water. Edit: Forgot to note outside of commercial shellfish, fishing and fishing guide occupations there is no industry down here other than the service industry.

Waterluvian 7y ago

I visited South Carolina for a wedding and we had a house on the ocean. Every house was on stilts. I asked locals and they said that it was so the houses survived storm season. One also said that they still get obliterated every 20 years or so but you just budget that in. 20 year rebuilds turning into 1 year rebuilds is what I think first world "climate exodus" looks like. Yes, they know the location is pretty bad. But the numbers had worked for that ocean side Vista. They won't anymore.

paul_f 7y ago
Homes on stilts are designed to survive major storm. Cat 1 and 2 hurricanes. What is a 1 year rebuild? Are you saying a major hurricane will make landfall everywhere, every year? Because that's what you are implying.
- Waterluvian 7y ago
  I wouldn't fixate on the numbers. The point of the anecdote is that because climate change means more storms more often, the cut-off point for habitability gets shifted.
  - mrosett 7y ago
    It hasn't been established that climate change means more storms more often though.
    - TheOtherHobbes 7y ago
      No, but if the regular storms become larger and more destructive, that still affects habitability. https://www.c2es.org/content/hurricanes-and-climate-change/ https://www.c2es.org/content/hurricanes-and-climate-change/ And the point about more storms hasn't been established yet - which doesn't mean that it won't be established in the future. Given the likelihood of larger storms and the possibility of more frequent storms, living in a storm-prone area becomes a much less appealing idea. The UK has a similar problem. Some properties have been flooded multiple times in the last couple of decades. They're now uninsurable, which is not far off from being uninhabitable. Even if they stay dry for years at a time, it only takes a couple of very expensive renovations to reduce their value towards zero.

DoreenMichele 7y ago

It's being linked to climate change because small, low-lying islands are seeing serious losses of land mass. From the article: Fifteen years after Hurricane Katrina, Louisiana is trying to relocate the Native American settlement of about 100 people on the Isle de Jean Charles, a narrow island that lost 98% of its land over the past six decades to climate change. My best understanding is that this is, in fact, a new phenomenon related to global warming, the defrosting of permafrost, etc. Some regions of the world have always been unsafe for human habitation due to persistently unfriendly weather There is no place without some kind of disaster. I've looked. It's a case of pick your poison. Hurricanes in the Southeast. Tornadoes in the Plains States. Earthquakes and the ever-so-lovely Fire Season on the West Coast. Etc. But much of Florida is not far above sea level and some of the issues they are seeing can legitimately be linked to climate change. That's not just hand-wringing in this case. This is especially true for low-lying islands, which are seeing new problems around the world. It isn't the norm for islands to simply disappear to rising sea levels.

rjbwork 7y ago
Yes, but some places are far worse than others. Down here in Atlanta we get some pretty bad thunder storms (and accompanying low lying land floods), and rare but not unheard of hail. We're pretty far from any real faults, though we have gotten tiny tremors from east Tennessee and north/south Georgia before, they're at most 4-5, with everything in Georgia around a 3. We're far enough away from, and high enough above the ocean for sea level rise to not impact us. Tornados are exceedingly rare. We hardly ever get any real hurricane weather, usually just some rain from the outer reaches of it as it hits the coasts. I'd choose this over my former South Louisiana digs any day. We had to evacuate for hurricanes multiple times when I was a kid there. For hurricane Andrew we were driving north in the pouring rain and wind so high nobody could close the car doors except my dad. I've never been even close to that scared of weather in Georgia.
- DoreenMichele 7y ago
  I think that falls under personal preference. I was born and raised in Georgia. I'm abundantly familiar with what goes on there, weather-wise. Near daily thunderstorms in the summer. Electrical storms that can kill electronics, appliances or even people. If it snows at all, businesses shut down, schools shut down, car wrecks go up, etc. If it gets too cold, they sometimes shut down schools and businesses. When I was eight years old and we had something like a foot of snow, roofs were collapsing, they were sending a van around to pick up nurses so the hospitals would be staffed and my sister and father walked like five miles in the snow to get to a store to get supplies we needed because no municipality in the state has any equipment for doing snow clearance and all the roads were closed. Snow is not some kind of natural disaster in places that routinely get snow. But it is a real and serious problem in Georgia simply because it happens so rarely that it doesn't make any real sense to acquire snow plows and the like. They would rust and rot in place and be unusable on the rare occasion that it does snow enough to see an accumulation on the ground. Most of the time, you wait a day or so, things warm up, it melts, schools and businesses re-open. But, meanwhile, people die in car wrecks. https://www.vox.com/2016/1/27/10840810/snow-car-crash-map https://www.vox.com/2016/1/27/10840810/snow-car-crash-map Atlanta sometimes has serious flooding. https://www.11alive.com/article/weather/10-year-anniversary-historic-2009-flood/85-67a5d008-de15-4529-a68b-796eabcacf65 https://www.11alive.com/article/weather/10-year-anniversary-... Etc.

CydeWeys 7y ago

The obvious connection to the climate crisis is that global warming is causing ice to melt and thus sea levels to rise. Rising seas are catastrophic for buildings and infrastructure in low-lying coastal areas, which because of its geography Florida has more of than anywhere else in the US. The world is on the way to becoming uninhabitable for modern human civilization, and we're the cause. It happens that the majority of humanity lives in coastal areas that will be put underwater by the amount of sea level rise that's going to happen by the end of this century at current rates of warming. The current retreats from the most vulnerable areas in Florida are just a tiny, tiny taste to come of the massive climate refugeeism that is on the horizon. It's not hysteria, this is what is going to happen unless we make massive changes.

BurningFrog 7y ago
I looked it up, and current sea level rise is around 3mm/year, which adds up to a foot per century. More than I thought, but hardly a non outrunnable flood. https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/sealevel.html https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/sealevel.html
- EdwardDiego 7y ago
  Did you ignore the rest of the link you posted by mistake? > Higher sea levels mean that deadly and destructive storm surges push farther inland than they once did, which also means more frequent nuisance flooding. Disruptive and expensive, nuisance flooding is estimated to be from 300 percent to 900 percent more frequent within U.S. coastal communities than it was just 50 years ago. The mean sea level rising isn't out-runnable, but the storm events can be. And also: > Sea level rise at specific locations may be more or less than the global average due to local factors such as land subsidence from natural processes and withdrawal of groundwater and fossil fuels, changes in regional ocean currents, and whether the land is still rebounding from the compressive weight of Ice Age glaciers. Again, all from your own link.
  - BurningFrog 7y ago
    > Did you ignore the rest of the link you posted by mistake? No I intentionally read all of it. But you knew that :) > The mean sea level rising isn't out-runnable, but the storm events can be. Some low lying areas should probably be abandoned. My point is just that it happens very slowly, and can be planned for. I also suspect some of that increase is because of bigger populations living near the coast. > Sea level rise at specific locations may be more or less than the global average This is true regardless of climate change. Some land rises, other sink.

em3rgent0rdr 7y ago

Humans used to settle near water when it made sense technologically and for their economy. The risks from flooding have always been strong, but back when those areas were settled the risk management made settling there a reasonable tradeoff. Nowadays when we no longer need to be reliant on settling near bodies of water, it probably makes more sense to move inland to lower-risk areas.

tmaly 7y ago

I saw worse in the Philippines several years ago. Bodies were piled like sardines after a category 5 typhoon. Its the nature of flat land to flood with bad storms