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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

#101

Post by Retric »

Analemma_ wrote: post #73
chollida1 wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And when your house floods every other year, that means flood insurance will cost you what it costs to rebuild your house.... each year. which is to say, you won't be able to get flood insurance.

Until the Federal government gets out of the guaranteed flood insurance business-- which is unlikely to happen soon, as there would be fierce political blowback-- you will always be able to get flood insurance supported by taxpayers.

Federal Flood Insurance has had zero net subsidy from 1968 to 2004. While covering up to 5.5 million homes in the US. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Flood_Insurance_Progr...

Currently it's 25 billion in debt, but that's cheap in terms of federal programs of that magnitude (~15 $ per home per year). Further, the net economic gain from allowing people to build in slightly at risk areas has easily been worth 25 billion over that time period. Consider, without some form of insurance you could not build downstream of major dam's as the low risk of them failing puts huge areas at risk.

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

#102

Post by skh »

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…

At this point in time people who deny climate change is occurring are impervious to logic and reason. They are like people who deny evolution or the people who believe the Earth is around 10,000 years old. Nothing is going to convince them they are wrong.

It's too burdensome to ask that all articles about the detrimental effects of climate change present a proof of said claims. At some point in time it's pointless to engage in an endless reproving of claims that most sane people already believe in.

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

#103

Post by wu_tang_chris »

thetrumanshow wrote: post #49
tartuffe78 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

His own smug sense of superiority should suffice.

I guess if you insult one commenter you get downvotes, but if you insult half of the population no one bats an eye?

HN is a special place

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

#104

Post by graeme »

vorpalhex wrote: post #47
notable_chuckle wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

As much as it'd be great to just point a finger and say "You should of known better!", houses are the bulk of most folks assets and the last thing we need is to turn a few small cities worth of people into homeless refugees. So realistically they'll get a bail out so they can at least recover somewhat. It will still be a loss for them, it'll be a loss to everyone who pays taxes, but it's still better then the alterna…

Why? With this attitude, we'll keep building more vulnerable cities at the coast, effectively subsidizing doomed construction.

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

#105

Post by agumonkey »

state_less wrote: post #40
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.

It's fascinating, I remember during the runnup to the housing collapse where folks kept bidding up the housing like it could go up forever. Maybe folks think they'll be able to get out before the collapse, or some new tech will save them from being underwater?

how do they say in the trading world ? don't be the last basket ?

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

#106

Post by jillesvangurp »

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.

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

#107

Post by beat »

craftyguy wrote: post #87
beat wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. Th…

That's not my point. Obviously people will move away on their own accord if living in a location is no longer safe/viable. My point is, until a location is no longer safe, they will generally stay put and resist any pressure to leave, even if all evidence points to it becoming unsafe in the not so distant future. Elected officials live in the moment, and will not make decisions that impact constituents today in prepa…

Remember, in Jaws 2, the people had re-elected the mayor.

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

#108

Post by alex_anglin »

beat wrote: post #97
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…

Sea walls won’t work for Miami. The ground is too porous, so the water would just seep under.

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

#109

Post by rhacker »

XorNot wrote: post #12
brightball wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

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.

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

#110

Post by bilbo0s »

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…

>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?

I was working briefly with Halliburton during the Rita-Katrina time period. I think it might behoove you to take a more holistic look at this issue.

I'll try to be visual in my explanation by simply asking you to Google maps of the energy pipelines in the US. Here are a couple:

https://www.oilandgas360.com/america-needs-pipelines-for-at-...

https://www.api.org/oil-and-natural-gas/wells-to-consumer/tr...

I think you get the picture.

And that's just energy. It's not only energy that make places like New Orleans, Galveston, and Houston critical. Let's just say that if New Orleans disappeared tomorrow, not only would the US be in for a decidedly bad time, but the nutritional intake of children in Sub-Saharan Africa would be materially affected.

Some of the ports along these coastal plains are enormously important. Of course not all of them are important. I'm not here to argue that Myrtle Beach or Miami are as critical as New Orleans, New York, or the NIT. I'd just strongly urge us to look at the ports and be judicious.

If Miami disappeared tomorrow, we would be fine. So yeah, who cares?

If Houston disappeared tomorrow, that's a whole different thing. If that happened, I'm just saying that we'd better have a good plan in place for that contingency.

Those different realities should, and currently do, inform our strategic policies on these different ports. You can't simply say, "Move this enormously important, warm water port." That's not how you "engineer an empire" so to speak.

All that said, we can mitigate impact. Outside of a few Engineering history specialists, not many people realize that Chicago was built on a swamp that was prone to flooding as well. Not saying that the Chicago solution is appropriate for the situations in Miami or Houston, just saying that there are definitely ways to think long term about minimizing impact.

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