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

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

#91

Post by AnthonyMouse »

WillPostForFood wrote: post #16
erentz wrote: post #3

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…

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 predict…

> 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.

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

#92

Post by ebikelaw »

chollida1 wrote: post #9

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 wo…

Insurance companies aren't morons. They already know this region is doomed.

https://www.axios.com/sea-level-rise-costing-billions-in-hom...

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

#93

Post by Analemma_ »

notable_chuckle wrote: post #10
ben509 wrote: post #2

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.

I wonder if people living in coastal flood-prone areas are expecting a bail-out when it becomes impossible or impractical to live there.

They absolutely are. 99 Percent Invisible recently did an episode about the Outer Banks islands in North Carolina, which would be eroding naturally anyway even without sea level rise because they are barrier islands, which are always impermanent. Interviews with the residents there made it clear that they feel that a) there is no problem and b) if there is a problem, they are entitled to unlimited government funds for beach reconstruction to preserve the value of their property. Florida isn't going to be any different

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

#94

Post by fernandopj »

clarkmoody wrote: post #86
scottlamb wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Start worrying when the banks stop offering mortgages to people trying to buy property in south beach. If the 2007 financial crisis taught me anything, it's that we can't rely on the banks to make sound financial decisions, particularly regarding mortgages. Even more so now that the government bailed them out at taxpayer expense. They know that will happen again when needed. They have a safety net so they can gambl…

The 2007/8 bailout of banks is far from the first time the US government has socialized losses in the sector. The modern era of Wall Street bailouts started in the '80s after the Mexican Peso crisis. Bank bailouts have been happening since Colonial times, through emergency suspensions of specie payment, par laws, legal tender laws, etc. > we can't rely on the banks to make sound financial decisions Banks that have an…

> Banks that have an implicit (or explicit) guarantee of bailout are making rational decisions about risk, since they can offload it on the taxpayer.

Agreed. From their perspective it's a sound and rational play - a better term would be to say we can't rely on banks to make moral or ethical decisions from a society perspective

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

#96

Post by ataturk »

fabricexpert wrote: post #80

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…

Waiting patiently until we murder 4 Billion people.

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

#97

Post by beat »

fabricexpert wrote: post #80

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…

The article isn't saying Miami will be underwater soon. It's saying that Miami's water supply is at risk, partly due to rising sea levels, partly due to human activity damaging the aquifer (limestone mining, toxic waste).

Moreover, six feet of sea level rise isn't going to happen instantaneously. It will take decades. Property will slowly be lost, but people will just move inland (or move away). And a key question is, whose property goes underwater? If it's wealthy people on the beachfront, they can afford the loss. If it's poor people, that's something else. We saw that in New Orleans, where the worst Katrina flooding happened in the poorest neighborhoods.

This also excludes the idea of simply building seawalls to protect low-lying areas. I mean, that's half of Holland, so it works. Making major social decisions on a distaste for the concept of global warming is foolish, though. Governments should operate pessimistically when it comes to threats to the land and people they govern. It should be assuming it will happen, on the worst-case side, not denying the threat because we don't like to think about it. Think that way, you might as well disband the fire department too. It's expensive and your house probably won't burn down.

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

#98

Post by okmokmz »

legulere wrote: post #55
chollida1 wrote: post #9

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 wo…

The banks will just ask for flood insurance.

Except flood insurance doesn't appear to be economically viable in those areas

>More than 861,000 of them do not have flood insurance. And for homes in those counties that aren't designated flood zones, the numbers are even worse.

>Those four counties have a population about 5 million people, and include the Florida Keys, Miami, Fort Lauderdale and Naples.

>And there's still cause for concern about homes and businesses covered by flood insurance.

>The National Flood Insurance Program, which is part of FEMA, is chronically underfunded.

>A series of major storms that caused floods in the last 12 years, including Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and Superstorm Sandy in 2012, has left the program roughly $25 billion in debt and with limited borrowing resources.

>Its financial woes are expected to be compounded by the flooding that devastated Houston and the Texas Gulf Coast after Hurricane Harvey.

>Irma will only add to the problem. [1]

[1] https://money.cnn.com/2017/09/08/news/economy/flood-insuranc...

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

#99

Post by smacktoward »

mrfusion wrote: post #35

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.

See this article from 2014, about the port city of Norfolk, Virginia: 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.

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

#100

Post by usefulcat »

Analemma_ wrote: post #70
creaghpatr wrote: post #15

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

I've mentioned this before: the market believes that, once the problems in Miami become undeniable, there will be some colossally expensive engineering megaproject to fix it on the taxpayer's dime. And depressingly, the market is probably right, because to not do this would mean having to abandon a major city-- something that has basically never happened in the modern word, apart from disasters like Chernobyl-- and a…

It's probably a lot simpler than that. Most of the debt held by banks is probably due to be repaid in From their perspective, any kind of government bailout would be great, but certainly can't be counted on. This is especially true of engineering projects, where physical reality puts hard limits on what is and is not possible before even considering costs. Printing money a la quantitative easing is trivial compared to building a giant seawall or what have you.
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