The Guardian has a feature on what will happen to several major cities when (not “if”, it’s going to happen) we get a 3°C rise in global temperatures by 2100. Osaka, Shanghai, Alexandria, Rio…just gone. Miami, also, but the response there is simply comical.
A sense of urgency is evident at city hall, where commissioners are asking voters to approve a “Miami Forever” bond in the November ballot that includes $192m for upgrading pump stations, improving drainage and raising sea walls.
The “drainage” suggestion is tragically hilarious. Where are they going to drain the water to?
Even at 2C, forecasts show almost the entire bottom third of Florida – the area south of Lake Okeechobee currently home to more than 7 million people – submerged, with grim projections for the rest of the state in a little more than half a century.
Almost the entire peninsula is going to be underwater. They think they can build a big wall around the city, and run pumps to bail it out. In a region with catastrophic hurricanes…hurricanes that are expected to get more severe.
Miami is a lovely, lively city. But it’s under a death sentence, and some people need to wake up to reality. This is probably the last century that you’ll be able to visit Miami, or the Keys, or the Everglades.
Want to know what Miami will look like in that scenario (seal level rise plus seawalls plus a hurricane)? Just look up pictures of New Orleans in the wake of Katrina.
In addition, there is something people don’t know and/or forget. The metric for “sea level” on the East and Gulf Coasts is “mean low water”. Most of the time, “sea level” is higher than you think it is. (On the West Coast it’s worse. The metric is “mean lower low water”.)
No effort to combat the CAUSE, only address the RESULT of climate change. Thinking of the “long term” must be too difficult, the easy solution is to address each difficulty the Big Problem presents us with.
Like: every year the house drops a few siding shingles, rather then replace the entire siding, simply replace each shingle that drops. Problem solved/s
Similarly, instead of a full body paint of one’s vehicle, keeping touching up every scratch every day until the car gets “totaled”.
Yes, and the people of Florida elect climate deniers to the senate and governorship. And they are still in denial even as Miami Beach floods regularly. Isaac Asimov once came to speak at my college, and the opening words of his talk were “People are stupid.” He go that right.
What are the Miami politicos thinking?
They should just follow the example of some other East Coast red states, and simply pass a bill which says that climate change is not happening, that the regular flooding in Miami is “fake news”, that prayers will take care of problems (if any are admitted) that occur, and (this soon) that the regular ritual sacrifice of gays and liberals and scientists will serve to propitiate their loving God.
Oh sorry. Did I ramble? (Looks over post) Yeah, that looks about right.
I thought sea-walls, drainage and pumps would generally be no help in Florida anyway? Since being largely made up of porous limestone, any rising water is just going to keep coming up through the floor.
Weeeeeell… with large cities with such a skyline… Build up? Add a few new layers every 50-100 years and keep building up?
I’m sure that’s how it works, right? Right?
=8)-DX
I’m honestly surprised that capitalism hasn’t convinced more deniers. Flood insurance disappeared in Miami at the end of the last millennium. Now even standard home insurance is going away. For the last five years, you’ve needed to pay cash for most homes and any new construction, because most lenders will not write a mortgage that can’t be insured. When you have capital fleeing the city and new home building at a dead standstill, you’d think the Right might wake up, since money is its stock in trade (well, money and racism). Guys like Trump are getting screwed. I guess the cognitive dissonance is too overwhelming.
It’s worth mentioning that Miami pretty consistently votes Democrat, so it’s voters elsewhere in Florida who are screwing them by electing deniers.
Finally, perhaps the low countries have different geology beneath the surface, but if you’ve ever driven from, say, Haarlem to Ghent, what the Dutch and Belgians call their “National Defense Force” is really quite remarkable. Seawalls and storm booms and various channels for diverting the flows can work as a stalling measure. But there need to be rich white people threatened. Which, ya know, in Biscayne and Key West and Palm Beach and South Beach, there are. You’d think they’d fund some better crony candidates who’d start behaving like grown-ups. But maybe the FoxNews tribalism is too strong.
Miami is a lovely, lively city. But it’s under a death sentence, and some people need to wake up to reality. This is probably the last century that you’ll be able to visit Miami, or the Keys, or the Everglades.
I don’t encounter as many climate change deniers as I used to, but back when I did, I always asked them why they weren’t margining out their investments in Florida real estate, or North Carolina beach front property.
I’ll hazard a guess that when the property values there start to go down, it’s going to be precipitous.
People don’t get this. I know someone who actually bought real estate near Annapolis, MD. When they told me, I was horrified, “You just bought 2 acres of swampland!” But it’s not swamp, they said. “Yet.”
It’s already happening, the King tides get worse every year and every year cities and people in South Florida talk about what needs to be done to “fix” the issue. There is no long term fix for this. The floods will get more frequent and the people who don’t have any money or any place else to go will be the ones who don’t get (financially) bailed out. The Trumps and their ilk on the other hand will probably turn a profit…
https://www.local10.com/weather/king-tides-flood-south-florida-businesses-roads
We’re not immune from it in New England either, there are dozens of people whose homes were damaged by Sandy who rebuilt in exactly the same spot, right on the beach. At least the new building codes said they had to raise their houses but still…
It reminds me of the people in San Diego when I lived there, who bought houses built 100 or 200 yards from the edge of a sandstone cliff, with the full disclosure that in a decade or two or three erosion was going to halve their distance. Now they want some one to “save” them from what they were warned about, “someone/the government” HAS to build a mutli million dollar seawall to keep the ocean and gravity from eroding the cliffs…
that has puzzled me as well, even the Pentagon has been planning what to do in the event of all the disruption world wide in the wake of climate change.
my cynical guess is that the ones that are paying for most of the anti-climate change BS know it is BS but they are already heavily invested in what we are doing today and do not want or can not change fast enough to continue their return on investment as is to change to a more ecological based system.
Or they are really stupid and too lazy to think longer then a commercial break about anything.,
I just regret that I probably won’t be here when the shit really hits the fan.
uncle frogy
anbheal@#7:
When you have capital fleeing the city and new home building at a dead standstill, you’d think the Right might wake up, since money is its stock in trade
They won’t start telling the truth until the flight of capital is completed. Then they will pull up the social safety net behind them – just watch: the poor people who buy into that area are going to lose their money, and – in the form of icing on the cake – the rich will shit all over them when they do.
1970’s Miami was a paradise. It is a shame what is going to happen to Florida. It is a shame for what has already happened to Florida. I love Florida even if it is the weirdest state. When the land south of lake Okeechobee floods the sugar barons will be kaput. The fishing just might improve.
@9
those cliffs are barely sandstone much closer to just stabilized sand than any stone.
Does this mean there will be no more repeats of CSI Miami ?
At least my grandkids will inherit beachfront property even if my parents (who bought the house originally) couldn’t.
@#11, Marcus Ranum
Ding ding ding! We have a correct answer! The very rich will quietly sell their property there to people who think they’re getting a great bargain (this is already well-underway, I’m sure). I wonder what Disney World is going to do? When you start reading that an increasing number of attractions are no longer open, you’ll know they’ve stopped maintenance.
The modern-day right wing is a machine for siphoning money out of the hands of the poor into the hands of con artists. It’s been that way for a long time — since the 1970s at least; it’s not a coincidence (take a look at that article — it’s… interesting) that there are a bunch of outright scams which are directly marketed at the right-wing, and that they all share their mailing lists. If you’re sucker enough to believe Bill O’Reilly and buy gold, you’ll probably send in cash for at least one or two other things as well.
If I recall correctly, though, there is fairly good evidence that the Koch brothers genuinely believe that climate change is a hoax. So maybe the other right-wingers will be able to unload on them (and their heirs).
Put head between your legs and kiss the Keys good-bye!
Miami native here. Yea we fucked. This is a liberal county but the rest of the republican counties screw us over despite us bringing in most of the revenue for the state. There was talk not to long ago about Miami dade county succeeding from the rest of Florida and becoming a new state. The reasons expressed were specifically because of this states politicians global warming denial. Nothing came of it.
This has some very nice photoshop simulations of what some US cities will look like as the water rises.
http://www.takepart.com/article/2015/07/15/what-sea-level-rise-looks-america-coast/
For example, San Francisco loses the Embarcadero and most of the financial district.
Boston back bay looks like Venice.
Miami looks like a reef.
It’s sobering.
About the only good news is that Washington will be a legitimate swamp, again.
The hurricanes plus sea level rises are what will kill the city. Without the hurricanes, part of it might be salvageable by building upward on stilts and pillars, or even artificial hills that could then become high islands (although it would be incredibly expensive).
Didn’t jeb bush say he was concerned about global warming when he was guv of Florida ?