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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

#181

Post by mjn »

mistrial9 wrote: post #165
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 the 4th Climate Assessment of the State of California (this week in Sacramento) the officially accepted number is now 9'ish feet mean sea level rise by 2100. ( still reading summary as linked below) correction: 95th percentile of summary prediction is shown as 20 inches by 2050 (page 9 link below) (more specific report on this topic http://www.opc.ca.gov/webmaster/ftp/pdf/docs/rising-seas-in-... )

To be more specific, 9 feet (2.7m) is the report's worst-case upper bound, the 99.9th-percentile results of running a new simulation model, RCP 8.5, not a prediction of what's likely to happen. That model has a huge range: Its 50th-percentile (median) estimate is only 1 foot (0.3m) of rise, and its 95th-percentile estimate is 7.5 feet (2.3m). There's discussion of that on pp. 31-32 of the summary report here (PDF): http://www.climateassessment.ca.gov/state/docs/20180827-Stat...

The chart on p. 32 is a bit tricky to read, because this particular model is estimating maximum sea levels, not mean sea levels. Maximum sea level here is measured relative to a fixed reference of year 2000 mean sea level, and the 20th-century typical max was 1.5m above mean year 2000 sea level. The 99.9th-percentile line at 4.2m is therefore showing a 2.7m rise in the max sea level above pre-2000 norms. The colored blue and red ranges below the 99.9 lines represent the 50th-95th percentile estimates of the two different models. (In this case, at La Jolla specifically.)

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

#182

Post by craftyguy »

planteen wrote: post #118
craftyguy wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a common problem with any elected government. Tough decisions like "we need everyone here to move away right now" never get made because doing so would result in some elected politician not winning re-election.

Elected officials force people to move in Rapid City, South Dakota after the 1972 flood. Today, the flood plain is a very nice bike path with no houses. This probably happened due to the high deal toll (238 fatalities). "Many businesses were permitted to stay in the flood plain, but houses and motels were either raised or moved due to the likelihood that a flood would occur while a person may be sleeping. The majorit…

> after the 1972 flood.

Again, that was a reaction to something that already happened. Are there any examples of elected officials forcing folks to leave an area well before something bad happens?

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

#184

Post by beat »

igravious wrote: post #130
beat wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> The article isn't saying Miami will be underwater soon. I beg to differ, it's the first sentence of the title of the article: “Miami Will Be Underwater Soon. […]” Then there's, “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 that six feet of sea-level rise would put a…

I never said the melodramatic "What nobody knows is when that will happen, or what happens next", so consider yourself spared.

As for whether they're helpless or not... that depends largely on whether the rising sea level infiltrates the aquifer to the point where it becomes brackish rather than fresh water. And even then, the problem can be dealt with, by turning to desalination (probably of straight seawater).

For "Who is Zillow?", they're the #1 real estate website. Property values are their business, and they have lots of data (and a corporate perspective, rather than a scientific one, for better or worse). What options does Miami have? Spend more money on protecting the aquifer from mining and contamination, and maybe invest in desalination. Is Miami an outlier? Kinda. Most coastal cities are also on river mouths, and thus have better fresh water resources. But overstretching the fresh water supply is often a problem, even if that fresh water isn't itself endangered - see Los Angeles, for example.

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

#185

Post by mbostleman »

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…

Yes. I think the issue is that mainstream "journalism" is actually entertainment in all respects other than the fact that it carries a fairly widespread credibility among its audience as not being entertainment but rather a factual, verifiable source of information - one that is beyond the audience's ability to understand. Sort of like the unquestioning acceptance that many give to doctors or lawyers because (it is assumed) neither medicine or law can be understood without them.

What I mean is, if you watch a movie, you suspend disbelief and willingly assume the context they give you to be real for the sake of the movie without questioning it. You do that because you want to be entertained. And if you took everything literally and demanded that the context be aligned with reality, it wouldn't be any fun. As such, few people walk out of something like a Mission Impossible movie believing that any of it was actually possible.

I had a discussion in online chat with co-workers in the last week or so regarding the wild fires currently burning in the US west. One lamented how sad the effects of climate change like these are. Out of curiosity, I looked at historical stats for wildland fires. Without getting in to a lot of detail, the source I found was very reliable and did not show any upward (or downward) trend in either count of fires or total acreage on an annual basis since the 1960s. I pointed this out - not as proof that climate change did not affect fires - but as a simple data point that didn't seem to match his assertion. The person was surprised and admitted that he didn't have any actual reason to believe that the occurrence or size of fires was more or less - he just assumed they were more and that the cause was climate change.

So to be clear, I'm not saying that climate change doesn't exist. Nor am I saying that wildland fires are not somehow affected by climate change. Only that people tend to take narratives that are created and repeated by journalists as facts, without questioning them, much as they would a movie.

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

#186

Post by landcoctos »

will_brown wrote: post #84
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 live in South Beach. Private flood insurance has pulled out of the market after Hurricane Andrew in 1992, and it’s not just South Beach it’s a majority of Miami-Dade County. On the beach it has gotten to a point where some commercial properties can’t get insured...that will be an inevitable disaster.

.

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

#187

Post by will_brown »

landcoctos wrote: post #186
will_brown wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I live in South Beach. Private flood insurance has pulled out of the market after Hurricane Andrew in 1992, and it’s not just South Beach it’s a majority of Miami-Dade County. On the beach it has gotten to a point where some commercial properties can’t get insured...that will be an inevitable disaster.

.

If you know a way to delete your profile/history on HN let me know. Afraid not much I can do

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

#188

Post by nkoren »

mikestew wrote: post #168
leereeves wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True. And some scientists believe that rate is accelerating, for example Steve Nerem et al: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/02/180212150739.h... That accelerating projection "has the potential to double the total sea level rise by 2100 as compared to projections that assume a constant rate -- to more than 60 cm instead of about 30". Two feet instead of one. I still don't see where six feet is coming from.

I still don't see where six feet is coming from. I read $SOMEWHERE recently that the the worst case scenario predicted six feet. But that's, IIRC, if we do absolutely nothing, the methane in the Arctic is all released, and Greenland melts. The more likely scenario is somewhere from 1-3 feet. So unless memory fails me, the article didn't just pull it out of its arse, but a source would've been nice rather than just th…

If Greenland melts, you get 6 meters (20 feet).[1]

1: https://nsidc.org/cryosphere/quickfacts/icesheets.html

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

#189

Post by skybrian »

mbostleman wrote: post #185
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…

Yes. I think the issue is that mainstream "journalism" is actually entertainment in all respects other than the fact that it carries a fairly widespread credibility among its audience as not being entertainment but rather a factual, verifiable source of information - one that is beyond the audience's ability to understand. Sort of like the unquestioning acceptance that many give to doctors or lawyers because (it is a…

Entirely agree that many of our opinions are often not based on much in the way of facts.

But to try to do do better: what's your source on fires?

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

#190

Post by RoutinePlayer »

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…

It's "cojones" :-)
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