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Where America's climate migrants will go as sea level rises
- mc32 7y agoThe map is very rough and relies on counties affected, rather than topography (elevation and closeness to bodies of water and waterways) so some counties can have coastal exposure but also have shelter (high elevation). King county WA for example or Los Angeles co. CA So it presents a more alarming picture than one would imagine.
- Animats 7y agoYes. That map shows entire counties in blue if any point in the county would be flooded. For almost all of coastal California, you don't have to go very far inland until you're way above sea level. LA looks flat, but go three blocks inland from the beach in Venice and you're up a few meters. The California coast is the shelf of a mountain range. Florida, though, does have real problems. Most of the state is barely above sea level. And Miami is on permeable rock; sea walls won't help.
- qroshan 7y agoThis analysis is also garbage and is typical what comes out of clueless single-dimensional thinking. This 'research' doesn't take into account technological advances, human responses, infrastructure innovation that can happen while the oceans are slowly rising at 0.01 mm per day
- rilindo 7y agoI find it hilarious that even in a worse scenario with the climate crisis, Chicago somehow did not get any migrants .
- beefalo 7y agoTheir map doesn't make any sense to me. They show no expected migration to really any of the cities in the midwest but somehow they expect a mass migration of people from Miami to rural western Kentucky?
- goatlover 7y agoWhy rural Kentucky and not Northern Florida or Georgia?
- tomatotomato37 7y agoThe whole concept doesn't make sense; 80 years in the future we won't even know if the US exists as a singular entity anymore let alone where its centers of population will end up. Imagine if 1920 Russia tried to predict where its population would end up in 2000; nothing would match up.
- alistairSH 7y agoAre the shades of red based on migration relative to that same region's previous numbers, or some national average?
- wenc 7y agoHilarious and wrong headed. Chicago is the largest city stateside (Toronto on the Canadian side) next to a Great Lake with the infrastructure and hinterland to support a large population. Fresh water supply is going to be critical in a climate crisis.
- kitsy 7y ago> Counties in shades of pink and red will see higher-than-average migration It may be that the extra migration doesn't impact that average comparted to less populous counties.
- Tarragon 7y agoOn the map shades of red indicate above average immigration. White is unspecified so some meaning of avaerage; not none, but average. That said I have basically the same question. Why are cities not getting above average immigration? You noticed Chicago, I noticed Buffalo and Rochester, which are the #2 and #3 largest cities in NY.
- goodcanadian 7y agoIt appears that the colours have more to do with migration compared to historic trends: Many may end up moving to the suburbs in the Midwest, where the model shows a larger-than-average influx of migrants compared to historic trends. So, it is really showing places that have not historically had a lot of people moving in.
- jellicle 7y agoRight. The complaints seem largely about being unable to understand the map. If rural western Kentucky gets 2 climate migrants and Chicago gets 100, this may represent a much greater increase in Kentucky migration rates than Chicago migration rates.
- frockington1 7y agoAccording to the map, Midwestern cities are immune. Only random rural areas will experience an influx of people. In Ohio for example Columbus, Cincinnati, Cleveland all are white while middle of nowhere is red
- vannevar 7y ago"Dilkina and her team used migration data from the Internal Revenue Service to analyze how people moved across the U.S. between 2004 and 2014." It looks like their analysis may have been skewed somewhat by the fracking boom in America's oil shale country. That may explain the otherwise odd migration pattern into sparsely populated areas running up from Texas through the center of the country.
- rcMgD2BwE72F 7y ago>skewed somewhat by the fracking boom in America's oil shale country. Isn't it extremely ironic, given the topic hand?
- scrumbledober 7y agoI find it hard to imagine 200k people leaving San Mateo County. most of the county is above 6ft elevation, and there's just so much money I would think dikes could be built to keep the flats dry. At the worst I would expect more housing to be built in the hills.
- Ididntdothis 7y agoI would pretty much guarantee that wealthy areas like San Mateo will make the tax payer pay for dikes and stuff. Poor areas along the coast will be in trouble though.
- jfim 7y agoWhat's interesting is that many of the tech offices are actually adjacent to the bay (eg. Facebook's Menlo Park campus, Google's Mountain View and Sunnyvale campuses, Microsoft and Amazon buildings, NetApp, etc.) and in floodable areas [0]. It's not clear whether those companies would invest in dikes or just move somewhere else, but I'd assume the former. [0] https://msc.fema.gov/portal/search https://msc.fema.gov/portal/search and search for "1 Hacker Way, Menlo Park, CA", "1600 Amphitheatre Parkway, Mountain View, CA" or "1170 Bordeaux drive, Sunnyvale, CA"
- klipt 7y agoOptimistic of you to expect the Bay Area to build more housing anywhere. Look at the people displaced by fires in the North Bay who now can't afford to live anywhere nearby.
- Ididntdothis 7y agoI think the OP meant more expensive housing in the hills. Not affordable or dense.
- scrumbledober 7y agoPossibly dense, but almost certainly not affordable. There isn't really any affordable housing in San Mateo County to begin with (source: my $2000/month one bedroom apartment with no dishwasher)
- dumbfoundded 7y agoThis is what I take away: - Everyone already knows rising sea levels will cause more flooding and property damage. - What's new here is that they make attempts to estimate displaced populations and where they will migrate. - The reception of American climate migrants will not be evenly distributed. Cities nowhere near the coast will be impacted by climate change.
- madcaptenor 7y agoI live in Atlanta and I've been joking that if things get really bad, at least I'll have beachfront property.
- ash 7y ago> In the worst-case scenario, in which sea levels rise by six feet by 2100, ... Where does six feet come from? It seems very suspicious. It contradicts NOAA Sea Level Trends data of tide gauge measurements, going back to 1930 and sometimes earlier. According to the map, in almost all places in US the projected sea level trend is no more than 1-1.5 feet by 2100: https://tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/sltrends/sltrends.html https://tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/sltrends/sltrends.html What is more, the trend is clearly linear from the start of the measurement. The trend hasn't changed in recent years. For example, see data from the gauge in Sandy Hook, New Jersey, from 1932: "The relative sea level trend is 4.09 millimeters/year with a 95% confidence interval of +/- 0.2 mm/yr based on monthly mean sea level data from 1932 to 2018 which is equivalent to a change of 1.34 feet in 100 years." https://tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/sltrends/sltrends_station.shtml?id=8531680 https://tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/sltrends/sltrends_station.... Gauge in Lewes, Delaware, data from 1919: "The relative sea level trend is 3.48 millimeters/year with a 95% confidence interval of +/- 0.23 mm/yr based on monthly mean sea level data from 1919 to 2018 which is equivalent to a change of 1.14 feet in 100 years." https://tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/sltrends/sltrends_station.shtml?id=8557380 https://tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/sltrends/sltrends_station....
- nfg 7y agoYou can’t just eyeball these graphs and assume the trend is linear: https://tamino.wordpress.com/2019/10/09/sea-level-acceleration-3/ https://tamino.wordpress.com/2019/10/09/sea-level-accelerati... See also https://tamino.wordpress.com/2019/10/14/sea-level-acceleration-denial/ https://tamino.wordpress.com/2019/10/14/sea-level-accelerati...
- tomatotomato37 7y agoMate, you're trying to contradict NOAA government data with someone's blog.
- nfg 7y agoNo, I’m not. The NOAA site does not posit that the underlying trend is linear over the period - it simply displays a linear fit on the graphs. See here for more details https://tamino.wordpress.com/2018/04/16/recent-sea-level-change/ https://tamino.wordpress.com/2018/04/16/recent-sea-level-cha...
- papreclip 7y agoIt seems really unintuitive to me that there is enough ice on the globe to raise the sea level by 6 feet (let alone 230). But then if I had to guess the land area of Antarctica, I would have estimated something the size of Oklahoma or Texas (when Antarctica is 40% larger than the USA)
- throwawayhhakdl 7y agoA chunk of it is thermal expansion and the fact that CO2 is being absorbed in
- emiliobumachar 7y agoI've heard most of the rising sea levels will come from thermal expansion of water, not melting ice. Liquid water is notorious for having almost no thermal expansion, but the little bit it does have will be multiplied by the volume of the ocean, then divided by the surface area of the ocean, yielding the rough vertical rise.
- HarryHirsch 7y agoMuch of the Antarctic landmass is below sea level, if the Antarctic ice shield melted the continent would look like an archipelago. There is much water tied up in the Antarctic ice shield(well, it took 40 myr to accumulate, you get this much even in a cold desert), on average it's 2 km thick. The IPCC estimates that if it melts fully it would result in 50 m of sea level rise.
- smooth_remmy 7y agoAny ice below sea-level will melt into water that will take up exactly the same amount of space. So any ice below sea-level that melts will not cause sea levels to rise.
- elmo2you 7y agoCould you please elaborate on your claim? I feel confused. I learned that ice has a (slightly) lower density than water, hence it usually floats. I was convinced that submerged ice is doing so because of an additional weight on top of it (above-water ice pack). Maybe there is also ice that is submerged without this extra weight, but then its density should be lower than water. Either way, I don't see how submerged ice could take up exactly the same space when melted. If it has a different density, it should change in volume (elementary physics).
- IanDrake 7y agoIn the free market of ideas, no one actually believes this will happen. Just look at coastal real estate. Buyers and lenders would have to be colossal fools to pay such premiums to be waterfront. Even Obama just plunked down 12M on a waterfront mansion on the low lying island of MV.
- hfdh434535 7y agoBuyers and Lenders are in fact, colossal fools. People build in floodplains all the time.
- IanDrake 7y agoObama only ran the country for 8 years, but hfdh434535 knows better. Real estate is about the closest thing to putting your money where your mouth is as far as climate change goes and the people have spoken - the coasts are still the most valuable and desirable places to live.
- baq 7y agoThat is true, always has been and always will be true, regardless of where the coastline happens to be at the time :)
- dkarras 7y ago>Real estate is about the closest thing to putting your money where your mouth is as far as climate change goes and the people have spoken I would definitely buy coast property today because this won't be a significant problem in my lifetime. I'd buy from coast again when it becomes a significant problem, just that the coast location would be different of course.
- IanDrake 7y agoYou're re missing the point. Look at the map, the blue region is the extent in 100 years. What do you think happens in that 100 years? I assume this would be a near linear progression. That means current waterfront has about 10-20 years, not 100.
- vkou 7y agoSea level rise will not be the problem. It is going to happen on multi-generational timescales. Food insecurity, resource conflicts, extreme weather events, and a global migrant crisis (caused by the first two issues) will be. Unlike sea level rise, all it takes is one bad year to spark these.
- FooHentai 7y agoHere in NZ, we already see issues where storms and 'king tides' cause significantly worse outcomes when they coincide. As those king tides rise and penetrate further inland, these increased weather events are going to be much worse at the coast. Also, Miami and Venice are on borrowed time.
- slg 7y agoThis seems to only be factoring in oceans. Won't the sea level rising have a huge impact on the rivers and floodplains in the middle of the country that this predicts will see a big influx of people? There is plenty of high elevation coastal land that I would expect to be safer than land on the banks of the Mississippi River.
- trcarney 7y agoRivers and floodplains wouldn't be effected by the rising sea level. River systems get their water from precipitation not the sea. The only effect a sea level rise would have on a river system is the delta of the river would move further inland with the coast line. However, one could argue there would be an increase in precipitation as less water is trapped in ice but that doesn't seem to be what many people are predicting. I say all this with the caveat that I am not very well read up on the science of all of this, I'm just going by what I have read in articles and what not.
- AnimalMuppet 7y agoNo. Why should it? If the sea level rises two feet, how does it affect rivers that are, say, 100 feet above sea level? Or 500 feet? What's the cause and effect here? The sea level rise is due to more water in the ocean. That doesn't translate into more water in a river, because water doesn't flow uphill.
- JackFr 7y agoMillions flee from Miami to Buffalo, and yet Venice and the Netherlands plod on.
- agumonkey 7y agoI had this wonky idea that maybe buildings in these area should be adapted to have their first floors underwater yet still usable in some ways.
- whatsmyusername 7y agoNo because you'll get black mold growing that will spread throughout the structure. Maybe in otherwise dry areas, but I doubt it.
- Izkata 7y agoDepends on how you go about it. In the 1800s, Chicago was lifted up from nearly being at the same level as Lake Michigan: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raising_of_Chicago https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raising_of_Chicago
- whatsmyusername 7y agoOn a small scale sure, there's always exceptions. I don't see this happening across the entire coastline of the US or (even less likely) along the shores of affected tributaries.
- keanzu 7y agoIn 1903 humans first achieved heavier than air powered flight. Less than 60 years later, in 1959, man landed on the moon. I feel confident that in the next 80 years we'll manage to figure out how to build some 6ft tall levees. There will be little climate migration. People like living near the coast.
- vonmoltke 7y ago> Less than 60 years later, in 1959, man landed on the moon. That was 1969, or less than 70 years.
- keanzu 7y ago"The first human-made object to touch the Moon was the Soviet Union's Luna 2, on 13 September 1959. The United States' Apollo 11 was the first crewed mission to land on the Moon, on 20 July 1969." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moon_landing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moon_landing Poor reading comprehension on my part. You are, of course, correct.
- axaxs 7y agoI'm in full agreement, but that idea isn't popular here, where I find folks a bit fatalistic. I understand why of course, assuming 'someone will solve it' takes the urgency out of the problem. We do need to take action, absolutely. But am I worried about sea level rise here in Florida? Not at all. There's just too much money at stake to throw our hands up and run. And I don't mean just here, or even the US... most of the world's wealth is on the coast.
- keanzu 7y agoA third of the country will be underwater sounds a lot more scary than we'll have to build some small walls, about 1ft per decade, in some areas. About one third of the Netherlands lies below sea level, with the lowest point being 22 feet (6.7 meters) below sea level. Doesn't make for much of a post-apocalyptic visual - act now or end up like the Netherlands.
- mring33621 7y agoThere's going to be good money to be made in climate change-related real estate trends!
- adamrezich 7y agocrazy how coastal real estate isn't tanking
- milkytron 7y agoI think it's because insurance policies are still supporting real estate in areas at risk.