Yves here. This post describes the two main elements of climate change danger to communities, which are flooding/sea level rises and severe storms. We are now seeing a third threat come into focus: the health effects of exposure to extreme heat and the open question of whether current infrastructure can remedy it adequately.
I am mystified as to why more world cities facing flood and sea rise risks have not hired the Dutch to figure out how to protect them. And ideas like managed retreat are, as far as I can tell, absent from mainstream policy discussions.
By Jeff Masters, Ph.D., a hurricane scientist with the NOAA Hurricane Hunters from 1986-1990. In 1995, he co-founded the Weather Underground, and served as its chief meteorologist and on its Board of Directors until it was sold to the Weather Company in 2012. Between 2005-2019, his Category 6 blog was one of the Internet’s most popular and widely quoted sources of extreme weather and climate change information. Originally published at Yale Climate Connections
Debris from a collapsed house in Rodanthe, North Carolina, in the Outer Banks, on May 10, 2022. (Photo credit: Cape Hatteras National Seashore / public domain)
Consider this parable from not so long ago, in a galaxy not so far away:
The Kingdom of Nacirema has been engaged in a long and bloody conflict with an age-old foe, and the war has been going badly of late. More and more soldiers suffering from serious wounds and internal bleeding have been arriving at the hospital. But instead of being admitted to the hospital and receiving the operation needed to stem the bleeding — a painful and expensive procedure — the soldiers have been merely receiving blood transfusions and sent back to the front lines with a dose of painkillers.
Well, this is not working out so great, because the enemy is now using more dangerous weapons, which have been sold to them by the Kingdom of Nacirema’s powerful and corrupt corporations. Now even more soldiers are arriving at the hospital with more grievous wounds, requiring ever-larger blood transfusions. The supply of blood is running low, forcing the kingdom to make some tough choices. Because the soldiers’ wounds are now much more serious, not enough blood is available for the transfusions to save all of them. Which soldiers do they save — and which do they let die?
An Honest Conversation on Climate Change Triage Is Needed
The above story is an allegorical one about the U.S. approach to the new and worsening reality of climate extremes. Despite some recent progress (described in part one of this series), government programs to bolster public infrastructure and move people out of flood zones are drastically underfunded. As a result, when disaster strikes in the form of a major flood, hurricane, or the like, we merely give the equivalent of a blood transfusion to the injured, without stopping the bleeding.
The situation has now reached the point where the government can’t possibly make whole all those wiped out by a disaster, let alone buy out all of the properties that have flooded repeatedly or finance all the beach nourishment projects that could defend coastal property against sea level rise and stronger storms.
For example, the U.S. Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities (BRIC) program, meant to help state and local governments better prepare for future disasters, is hugely oversubscribed, despite a recent addition of more funds. And though voluntary home buyouts have helped tens of thousands of families move out of flood-prone homes, millions more remain at risk.
Without a realistic managed-retreat policy, chaotic unmanaged retreat from the coasts and flood plains is more likely to occur, resulting in much greater harm to all affected — and to the economy.
Adapting to Climate Change Will Be Expensive — But Not as Expensive as Doing Nothing
The scope of the problem is vast.
As sea levels rise, $400 billion will be needed by 2040 to build sea walls to protect U.S. communities against floods expected to occur once per year, according to a 2019 study by the Center for Climate Integrity, which used a moderate sea level rise scenario.
The move of the Cape Hatteras lighthouse, an example of successful managed retreat. When completed in 1870, the lighthouse in North Carolina’s Outer Banks had been located a safe 1,500 feet inland from the ocean, but natural barrier island erosion processes, augmented by rising seas and storm-driven tides, had reduced this distance to just 120 feet by 1999. That year, the lighthouse was moved 1,500 feet back from the shoreline at a cost of $12 million. Locals were strongly opposed to the move, believing it would harm the tourist industry. Ironically, the lighthouse is now more of a tourist attraction than ever. The regional slope of the land is one to 10,000, which means that a one-foot rise in sea level could move the shoreline about two miles. Thus, the lighthouse will likely have to be moved again later this century. (Image credit: National Park Service)
Other costs of preparing for sea level rise — including elevating buildings, hardening utilities, telecommunications, transportation systems, and water and sewage infrastructure, plus health care, community preparedness, and environmental protection and remediation, could be five to 10 times higher, or $2-4 trillion. Measures to protect communities from more infrequent floods, such as the one-in-100-year floods that are occurring with increasing regularity, could incur additional costs.
You can add to that bill the $104 billion needed to refurbish the nation’s dams, plus the tens of billions needed to upgrade our levees. The Bipartisan Infrastructure Act of 2021 allocated some $50 billion over five years for climate change resiliency, but a 2021 recommendation from the American Society of Civil Engineers estimated that over $2.5 trillion in unfunded infrastructure upgrades are needed by 2029 in order to attain “B” grades, meaning the infrastructure is safe and reliable.
Money needed by 2029 to achieve a “B” grade for U.S. infrastructure. (Image credit: American Society of Civil Engineers 2021 Infrastructure Report Card)
Many infrastructure upgrades aren’t taking future climate extremes into account.
As sea level rise expert Robert Young of Coastal Carolina University wrote in a 2022 New York Times op-ed, “most of the funded projects are designed to protect existing infrastructure, in most cases with no demands for the recipients to improve long-term planning for disasters or to change patterns of future flood plain development. At the very least, we need to demand that communities accepting public funds for rebuilding or resilience stop putting new infrastructure in harm’s way.”
Just 3-10% of all money spent in the U.S. on climate-related projects is spent on adaptation; the vast majority of this financing comes from the public sector, according to climate adaptation expert Susan Crawford of Harvard. Most of the money spent on climate change — for example, in the landmark Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 — is earmarked for reducing climate pollution. Crawford advocates prioritizing adaptation spending, since every $1 invested in adaptation could yield up to $10 in net economic benefits, according to a 2021 report from the Global Commission on Adaptation.
At the same time, more Americans are moving into risky places. The U.S. population living along the coast at an elevation of 10 meters (33 feet) or lower is expected to grow to 44 million by 2060.
“Discouraging this risky new development will avoid much larger costs of relocating these people and the supporting infrastructure at a future date,” the Coastal Flood Resilience Project writes.
Resistance to Retreat
At the moment, taxpayers are subsidizing rebuilding properties in known hazard areas multiple times.
The U.S. National Flood Insurance Program paid out nearly $9 billion to so-called repetitive-loss properties between 1978 and 2012 — nearly 25% of total payments, according to the book “Extreme Cities,” by Ashley Dawson. These payouts were skewed heavily toward rich people.
A managed retreat from risky places, accompanied by the building of new, dense construction in the right places, could reduce taxpayer costs and prepare Americans for the coming climate extremes.
But there is little appetite or incentive for politicians to embrace this solution. For example, cities rely on the municipal bond market to fund city services. But any attempt to implement a managed retreat program from risky areas could hurt their credit rating, because a shrinking population is one less able to repay its debt.
“It is rational for city officials to delay any real effort to move people out of harm’s way, or even to suggest that such a step may ever be necessary,” Crawford wrote.
In his 2024 essay, “The Insurance Apocalypse Conversation America Won’t Have,” journalist Hamilton Nolan is blunt about “how far we are from a genuine public discourse on this topic. We are still mired in the ‘Everything is fine!’ phase, where nervous, sweating politicians with pasted-on smiles beckon you into their doomed states while silently praying that the collapse doesn’t come while they’re still in office.”
Voluntary home buyouts have helped about 45,000 families move out of flood-prone homes over the past 30 years, but this represents a tiny fraction of the millions at risk and is fewer than the number of homes experiencing repeat flood damage and the number of new homes built in flood plains. In her 2023 book, “Charleston: Race, Water, and the Coming Storm,” Crawford of Harvard includes a detailed analysis of the problem, arguing that federal leadership and funding are needed to properly manage retreat from coastal regions:
If FEMA’s buyouts continue at their current pace, they’ll be able to get to about 130,000 more houses over the next 90 years. But there are something like thirteen million Americans in coastal areas who will need buyouts by 2051. FEMA’s current buyout program does not offer any help to people in public housing or renters. What’s needed is a region-wide strategic withdrawal program assisted by coordinated governments at all levels, not a series of one-off buyouts.
Do the math: Only 1% of the needed buyouts may happen under the current system — which also happens to be a cumbersome and unfair process. Buyouts usually take two to five years to finish, and FEMA disproportionately funds buyouts of vulnerable properties in White communities compared to communities of color, since money is allocated based on a cost-benefit analysis that prioritizes more expensive properties. Wealthier communities may also have more resources to influence decision-makers who decide who gets a buyout.
Without a realistic managed-retreat policy, chaotic unmanaged retreat is likely to occur, with plenty of legal challenges, resulting in much greater harm to all affected — and to the economy. As Duke University sea level rise expert Orrin Pilkey and co-authors wrote in their 2016 book, “Retreat From a Rising Sea: Hard Choices in an Age of Climate Change“:
Like it or not, we will retreat from most of the world’s non-urban shorelines in the not very distant future. Our retreat options can be characterized as either difficult or catastrophic. We can plan now and retreat in a strategic and calculated fashion, or we can worry about it later and retreat in tactical disarray in response to devastating storms. In other words, we can walk away methodically, or we can flee in panic.
In their thought-provoking 2021 essay, America’s Next Great Migrations Are Driven by Climate Change, Parag Khanna and Susan Joy Hassol write:
In the 21st century, we must shift from coastal to inland, from low to high elevation, and from resource-depleted to resource-rich areas — and we must do so sustainably, for our next habitat may well be our last chance to coexist with nature before there is nothing left to sustain us. To re-sort ourselves according to better latitude and altitude is not to “retreat” but to embrace the future guided by tools that identify topographies better suited for human habitation.
What We Need: Adaptation That’s Transformative, Not Just Incremental
The 2023 U.S. National Climate Assessment, the government’s preeminent report on climate change, recognized the inadequacy of our climate adaptation efforts, saying: “The effects of human-caused climate change are already far-reaching and worsening across every region of the United States … current adaptation efforts and investments areinsufficient to reduce today’s climate-related risks.” The report called for “transformative adaptation,” giving as examples:
- Directing new housing development to less flood-prone areas
- Revitalization of rivers and relocation of human activities in flood plains (as opposed to building channels and dikes)
- The shift from fossil fuels toward clean energy production
- Creation of multi-stakeholders’ committees for managing water use quotas during scarcity (compared to top-down decisions)
In contrast, much of current U.S. climate adaptation efforts are examples of “incremental adaptation, such as spending money to elevate homes above floodwaters. For example, the 2021 Bipartisan Infrastructure Law included funds to elevate 19 single-family homes in the Florida Keys.
I love the Keys, but cruel math says that it is not cost-effective to defend the low-lying islands, which are all but certain to be swamped by rising seas in the coming decades. A state-commissioned 2020 report by the Urban Land Institute found that spending about $8 billion to combat sea level rise and storm surges in the Keys would only prevent about $3 billion in damages over the period 2020-2070 — a return of just 41 cents on each dollar spent. In contrast, the study found that in Miami, a similar investment would yield a return of over $9 for each dollar spent.
The 2022 IPCC report affirmed the idea that difficult trade-offs are in store: “Only avoidance and relocation can remove coastal risks for the coming decades, while other measures only delay impacts for a time, have increasing residual risk or perpetuate risk and create ongoing legacy effects and virtually certain property and ecosystem losses.”
The U.S. has a long history of successful managed retreat and community relocation efforts that we can learn from, climate scientist Nicholas Pinter discusses in a 2021 essay, True Stories of Managed Retreat From Rising Waters. He acknowledges, though, that the lessons learned from relocating relatively small communities in recent years (above) will be difficult to scale up by several orders of magnitude.
A Vision for the Right Way to do Managed Retreat
As Crawford writes, “This is the American approach in a nutshell: Here’s data. Here are a set of perverse incentives — growth above all, dependence on property tax receipts, perceived need to encourage people to live in risky areas by selling them flood insurance — and broken, patchwork, scattershot legal authorities and programs that make scaled-up, thoughtful relocation just about impossible.”
But U.S. climate adaptation efforts could be significantly reformed with the passage of the bipartisan National Coordination on Adaptation and Resilience for Security Act of 2023, which would create the organizational structure needed to move forward and appoint a chief resilience officer appointed by the president to coordinate climate adaptation efforts. Perhaps the chief resilience officer could take some advice from Crawford’s 2023 book, which has the best proposal I’ve seen on how we should be handling managed retreat from sea level rise:
Imagine gradually making it more expensive to live in dangerous places while simultaneously providing time-limited incentives and subsidies supporting moving away — a multidecade plan, for example, to gradually phase out the mortgages on properties that will be eventually returned to nature, and to subsidize future rent payments if made in higher, drier places. Imagine planning for a multidecade, gradual move, in consultation with each community, to new and welcoming locations well-connected to transit and jobs. Imagine caring for the least well-off among us, ensuring that they have a voice in this planning and choices about whether, when, and how to leave, while firmly setting an endpoint on human habitation in the riskiest places, or, at least, making it clear that these places will be repurposed for other uses. Without this kind of vision, the coming transition will be a cliff rather than a slope, casting millions into sudden misery. Governments at all levels need to understand that the riskiest response of all would be to do nothing, or to act only incrementally, in the face of already accelerating threats that may at any moment abruptly begin accelerating even more quickly, robbing us of our ability to plan. Would you get on an elevator if you knew there was a substantial chance of the cables holding the car snapping just before you reached your floor? Would you have your city’s residents collectively get on that elevator? I don’t think so.
Recommended Reading:
- Susan Crawford’s Substack feed on climate adaptation policy, Moving Day
- Climate futurist Alex Steffen’s newsletter
- Book review: “On the Move” is a must-read account of U.S. climate migration
- Book review: “The Great Displacement” is a must-read
- Part one of my three-part sea level rise series: How fast are the seas rising?
- Part two of my three-part sea level rise series: Eight excellent books on sea level rise risk for U.S. cities
- Part three of my three-part sea level rise series: 30 great tools to determine your flood risk in the U.S.
- Bubble trouble: Climate change is creating a huge and growing U.S. real estate bubble
- ‘Where should I move to be safe from climate change?’
- Many coastal residents willing to relocate in the face of sea level rise
- Disasterology: a book review
- With global warming of just 1.2°C, why has the weather gotten so extreme?
- ‘Is it foolish to hold onto my family’s beloved waterfront home?’
- Retreat From a Rising Sea: A Book Review
- The Water Will Come: A Must-Read Book on Sea Level Rise
- “The Geography of Risk: Epic Storms, Rising Seas, and the Cost of America’s Coasts,” a 2019 book by Gilbert Gaul
This is part two of a four-part series on U.S. climate change adaptation. Part one looked at a number of recent government adaptation efforts to prepare the U.S. for our new climate. Part three is an essay giving my observations and speculations on how the planetary crisis may play out. Part four describes some personal actions that you can take to prepare for what is coming, including a discussion of where the safest places to live might be.
Bob Henson contributed to this post
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Very sobering. I watched a funny YouTube video recently speculating what would happen in reverse scenario where sea level dropped by a lot to reveal places like Doggerland.
The TL;DR answer is the Dutch would take over the world. I think I’d like that.
A Dutchman just took over as head of NATO. We’ll see how that goes.
The Dutch drained the land between Cambridge UK and the Wash in the UK, and did a fine job. Ely was originally named the Isle of Ely. The Dutch were hired, came over and drained the land Now it is very productive farmland.
Many things are possible.
The Fens are hardly farmed sustainably.
Fen blows can take out 25-50mm soil pa.
Add in oxidation of organic soils and the shelf life of this area as the ‘bread basket of Britain might be surprisingly short.
I think no World Class City (or no one anywhere) is doing anything- hiring the Dutch, or anything- for two reasons:
lack of conviction/ universal agreement and buy in— at least half are in denial;
no money… or an institutional conviction we do not have resources to ‘do the right thing’
It would mean re-jiggering systems and The Narrative(tm). That would strand a lot of assets held by
The Power Peeps. Can’t have that!
And the Power Peeps keep buying ocena front in the Hamptons, FL, heck, even Gaza!
If this makes US citizens feel better, they are not alone. Today I checked oil demand in Spain which is again increasing and increasing. 53MM tons in 2022, 57 MMT in 2023 and en route to 60MMT this year. Depressing. And ensuring floods, droughts etc will worsen and worsen.
We experienced an early form of the “make it more expensive to rebuild” idea after living through Hurricane Katrina on the Mississippi Gulf Coast.
For insurance purposes, everything south of Interstate 10 in the State was reclassified as being in a “velocity zone.” {Where we lived, less than a hundred yards from the eastern bank of the Pearl River, was classified as a minimal flood risk zone. We ended up with seven feet of sea water in our house and spent the hurricane huddling in the attic.} A “velocity zone” is roughly, the most dangerous flood zone. This green lit massive increases in Flood Insurance rates. Gentrification of the seashore zone was the result. One aspect of this ‘gentrification’ not mentioned much is the fact that those wealthy enough to afford the higher costs of the new coastal regime could also afford to walk away from their coastal abodes if necessary. The poorer dwellers along the littoral were stuck; unable to afford moving away. There’s the real danger of future ‘uncontrolled’ population migrations away from the coasts; these poorer groups will be fleeing, as the posters mention, not relocating in an orderly manner.
Secondly, building codes were made very much tougher along the coast. All dwellings, including many rebuilding after the hurricane, were mandated to be above 16.5 feet mean elevation. This was coupled with the requirement that the supports for said buildings be of the most expensive kind; rebar reinforced cast concrete columns. No more used power pole stilts allowed. (Even though the treated wooden poles worked fine. The buildings on top of the stilts would blow or wash away and leave the stilts remaining.)
Another side effect of unmanaged coastal disasters is the “Free Market” gouging of the populace by home sellers and renters. The remaining housing stock within a certain distance of the point of disaster becomes a scarce commodity. Prices rise as “the Market” does its ‘magic’ and rebalances prices and availability. Even four years after Hurricane Katrina, when we decided to flee the coastal region and move inland, prices for all housing within a hundred miles of the coast was elevated compared to ‘expected’ price inflation. We settled on an ex-rental, fixer upper here in the Half Horse Town. It was what we could afford. [As a side note; the conditions that small and mid-sized rental owners expected renters to endure were, to coin a phrase, “deplorable.”] So, as a corollary to the fleeing meme, expect those ‘fleeing’ coastal disasters to end up having to live in conditions much worse than they were used to before the disaster struck. Refugees will be the kindest term to use to describe that population. Say, imagine big sprawling refugee camps like in the Sudan, or even Gaza today, sited outside of Little Rock or Memphis. Instant favelas, a la Americain.
Stay safe. Expect the best and plan for the worst.
The likely reason for bannning re-used power poles as support stilts is creosote. It was used as a preservative on old power poles but has been found to be toxic to humans and others. Copper Napthenate is the newer, approved preservative; not found on older, re-used power poles.
I have helped a friend spray the outside of their log cabin house with copper napthenate to renew the bug blocking quality. Nothing hurts a log structure worse than boring beetles and other chewing creepy crawlies. Rot is a problem as well.
We took extreme precautions in applying that chemical. As in full face military grade respirators and complete body coverage in ninety degree weather. That is some very dangerous stuff.
Six of one, a half a dozen of the other.
Basically, all wood preservatives are toxic at some level.
The real effect here is social. By removing the old power poles as acceptable building materials, the authorities are driving the costs of living in the coastal regions out of the reach of “ordinary” people. If that strategy were equal opportunity, I would not complain. But it is not. It favours the rich.
End of rant.
Nothing hurts a log structure worse than boring beetles and other chewing creepy crawlies. Are these same beetles which populate our politics?
Well, if it were Log Cabin Republicans, I would suspect clawless hamsters to be the culprits.
As for our politics, I suspect they are scarab beetles. (I almost said dung beetles, but they perform a useful function.)
What you describe sounds like a few years of opportunity remaining for poorish global warming realists in the future flood zone to sell their homes and land for the highest possible price for richerish global warming denialists from inland to buy their homes and land for that highest possible price. The poorish home and land sellers can then use the money to buy land and homes in the most unfashionable areas away from the coast and the sea.
The problem with that is that the prices of all property in America are artificially elevated now. The ex-urbs and true rural zone are now “fashionable” places to “retire to.” This drives up prices in those regions. The Fed has a lot to answer for.
I think just like covid, this is another example of how America’s citizens are on their own. One political party does not even think climate change is real:
How Republicans view climate change and energy issues
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/03/01/how-republicans-view-climate-change-and-energy-issues/
And the other political party is pushing a plan which is, as we have discussed here, perhaps a tad unrealistic (and it goes without saying that this political party promises too much and delivers as little as possible.):
The Green New Deal
https://berniesanders.com/issues/green-new-deal/
Let’s face it, the 2000 Presidential election was when we (as a country) decided this, and we elected the oil man, W. Now, if he had explicitly told us his plan was to invade the Middle East to secure our oil future, and that it would result in endless lost wars; we might have elected the other guy. That was realistically when we could have invested in the technology and been the world leader in things like EVs and solar panels, but instead America’s CEOs and Wall St were happy to give that role to China. Oops.
Ironically enough, it was W’s dad that came close to really acting on climate change (very NSFW, but funny!):
The Time America Almost Stopped Climate Change | Climate Town
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MondapIjAAM
So, crazy forest fires, 100 year floods every year, hundreds of tornadoes for a month straight, flooding downtown during high tides, you’re on your own. Best to be rich and own multiple homes as bolt holes. If you’re really rich just make a small country like NZ your bitch, and keep one of your Gulfstream Vs on hot standby at the nearest airport.
Note that the infrastructure adaptation costs for Sea Level Rise are dominated by Transportation and Water/Wastewater. They are enormous. Un-usable roadways and water treatment facilities during tidal flooding or river flooding events impacts (stops) a functioning urban location in its tracks.
Disease, dysentery, and despair will present.
“Organized retreat” is most certainly not the favored approach in my area. The municipal leadership of our town, an island in San Francisco bay off the coast of Oakland, has bowed to pressure from developers and the state government and sanctioned the building of thousands of new residential buildings on many acres of low-lying bayside landfill subject to both flooding from sea level rise and liquefaction in the event of a major earthquake, which sooner or later will once again strike our area. Now the city leaders are hard selling a bond issue for voters to further tax themselves to pay for infrastructure and additional public services for the protection and support of what I am fond of characterizing as quicksand futures.
Unfortunately, the chances for anything resembling an orderly retreat from the coasts are slim and none. All signs point to staying the current course until a combination of disasters render that impossible. Not that I’m saying anything particularly insightful, but the far more probable scenario is a chaotic rout. Getting people to accept that millions upon millions of dollars worth of beachfront property are effectively worthless will be exceedingly hard. Even when this is accepted they will make every effort to keep the music running just long enough to unload the property on someone else who will be stuck holding the bag.
The EnRoads climate effects simulator includes a drop down option to map local inundation by sea level rise. (Short term, land rebound post ice cap is irrelevant.) Many knobs on the model to adjust, fun times.
And be sure to play with the growth rate slider. It has the biggest impact, even though the simulator designers didn’t included any negative growth options.
Can you name any place that has benefited from climate change effects?
Wall Street.
Remediation is a big money maker.
I can’t, but Breitbart can .
https://www.breitbart.com/environment/2024/06/26/alarmists-climate-change-causing-grim-extremes-in-summer-weather/
Apparently we have been ignoring the thrilling news of saving people’s lives.
Well, if you believe CO₂ is driving climate change, then the following counts as beneficial for almost all places on earth: Carbon Dioxide Fertilization Greening Earth, Study Finds ; Karl Hille; NASA; 2016-04-26.
The corresponding study: https://doi.org/10.1038/nclimate3004
Most prominently the Sahel is greening thanks to increased CO₂, helping to feed the growing population there. Plants, especially so called C3-Plants like grain and trees, require less water if there is more CO₂.
Well, I suppose the example counts as well if you believe that temperatures drive CO₂ via Henry’s law.
If you believe neither, then this example does not apply as climate change effect.
Siberia. Think about that gigantic frozen land mass eventually transforming into lush green.
The Dutch spent over two centuries perfecting their coastal management systems, and faced a few tragedies in between while learning harsh lessons, while spending enormously from the public purse and managed by public agencies.
Can anyone imagine such public coordination and planning taking place anywhere today in the west? Vested private interests are fundamentally at odds with public planning, investment and resource management. If only the rich could just be exiled to their own, low-lying, private islands.
This recent NBER paper, below, is one of the very best mainstream papers I’ve read to call BS on the local geographic temp variations can predict long run temperature rise impacts relationship used for 3 decades to assuage us that climate change just isn’t gonna matter all that much for GDP so why bother? (I know Steve Keen has been beating this drum for a long time.) And lo and behold, when you look at global temperature changes, which better predicts extreme wind, rain and temperatures rather than local temperature variation, the results are way more stark: a social cost of carbon orders of magnitude higher and same with GDP impacts. And these are using pretty conservative assumptions that lead to even more stunning numbers when looking at a 5c increase by 2100 etc. Perhaps the mainstream PMC will take heed of known climate catastrophe from more mainstream modeling and channels of discourse? HA.
https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w32450/w32450.pdf
ABSTRACT:
Time is on nature’s side. Take Florida for example. Once a very thin strip of sand on the East coast with swamp on the left all the way to Gulf. Humans came and transformed swamp into land via the magic of human technology basically in this case the pump and dredger. The land was then swamped with humans and buildings for said humans. Insurers made millions convincing said humans that you need to insure. Now insurers are losing billions and telling humans adios. Humans will now lose billions of dollars in assets and be forced out by migration or drowning due to Nature taking back over the thin strip of sand on the East and the Gulf on the West. Gosh, what a tragic loss. While it might take a hundred years, or maybe two or three hundred years for the job to be finished, Nature is very persistent and methodical. It always has been thus. I have to ask, why was anyone ever thinking otherwise? Humans are just the most recent species that believes they are special. Special species just come and go and Nature chuckles. Reminds me of the thought dynamic – We had to destroy the village to save it. The joke is on us.
Humans ( Indians) were already living all over Florida as-it-was before the coming of Western Technological humans to transform that swamp via the magic of Western technology.
Its not as if the Indians already there for thousands of years were not humans.
Don’t tell an American that, otherwise they’ll get defensive about Manifest Destiny.
>>>I am mystified as to why more world cities facing flood and sea rise risks have not hired the Dutch to figure out how to protect them
The main dyke that protects Amsterdam, which is located on an inlet with a depth of around 10 meters, is a simple earth wall built in the 1930’s w/a length of about 25 miles.
Compare/contrast Amsterdam with New York harbor—there is no engineering reason why the same principles can’t be used to construct an earth sea wall at the East River/Long Island Sound, Staten Island-Brooklyn Narrows, between NJ and Staten Island.
–
It would just cost $$$$$ given the currents and need to accommodate maritime traffic; and require a planning/construction timetable of 10+ years—assuming zero environmental litigation.
given the timespan and over-budget of relatively simple infrastructure projects like the 2nd Ave. Subway or new Hudson River train tunnel, I would not hold my breath re. the Great Sea Wall of NY.
I do not share Yves mystification as to why more “world cities facing flood and sea rise risks have not hired the Dutch” to help them. I am pessimistic that any of the politicians or business interests in the u.s. see much future in stopping their “kick the can down the road” policies. The short term too powerfully dominates long term interests as I believe Jimmy Carter’s demise clarified. We will party on ’til the music stops as we did through the Financial Crash of 2008. Besides this, I expect Dutch mitigations for sea level rise would be prohibitively expensive — though I also expect domestic firm mitigations for sea level rise would also be prohibitively expensive and likely woefully ineffective. If we lack will and way to slow or halt the burning of fossil fuels, to even cut or halt subsidies to Big Oil, then how well might we respond to sea level rise. Living in Upstate, I am loathe to see New York State raise my taxes to build boondoggles for protecting NYC from sea level rise. I love NYC and greatly enjoy my visits there. However, that does nothing to lend me faith that Albany could accomplish much to save NYC, and I can too easily believe many firms could weasel significant tax monies into their projects to save the City without doing much to save the City. I do not doubt that the Dutch could do better … though I doubt the Dutch could build much that might truly save the City. The Dutch might build dikes to save some inland areas along the Atlantic coast and perhaps some areas of coastal cities or their suburbs, but at this point I believe our great cities could not be saved without the intervention of some powerful alien race … and I am not holding my breath waiting for the arrival of their emissaries.
The concept of some kind of gradual climate adaptation boggles my mind. The u.s. has roughly two centuries of housing built to fit very different climate. Living in Upstate NY I am all too aware of how many homes were built to suit conditions, styles, and customs from the past century or two. The homes are well built but very long in the tooth and increasingly obsolete as shelter for future generations. Many Upstate homes rely on wells for their water. Similarly many cities rely on wells for their municipal water. I believe as a consequence most housing is built near or along the beautiful streams and rivers of this area. These same streams are not accustomed to handle the effects of an atmospheric river, and atmospheric rivers seem to have become much more frequent — though usually, but not always, in places away from Upstate. Houses from a century ago were built at a time when oil would never run out and there was plenty of wood around if it did. That is not the case today. From my own assessment of the current state of u.s. housing and Upstate housing more particularly, adaptation to climate change will involve much much more than moving the well-to-do from their beautiful homes by the sea … and paying for their losses when they move away. Generalizing from my limited view of housing in the u.s. based on the many places I have lived as a MIC contract engineer and based on my few years living in Upstate, the majority of u.s. housing is not fit-for-purpose if that purpose is adaptation to climate change. Worse, I suspect the local housing authorities would fight efforts at viable adaptations every step of the way.
If the NYC boondoggles actually stop NYC from becoming unlivable in stages then you won’t have to worry about millions of NYC climate refugees coming to live in Upper New York State.
If they don’t, or if they can’t be afforded to even be tried because enough upstate New Yorkers successfully resist tax-supporting such boondoggles, then upstate New York can expect 10 or so million climate refugees from NYC over the next few decades.
Sounds like a cheap source of labor.
About 5 or 6 years ago as my parents were starting to formalize longer term retirement plans my mother became adamant that they’d move to Florida as she couldn’t long term do northern winters and it was cheaper. I first begged her not to BUY anything in Florida and it eventually took all my siblings to demand that they didn’t buy anything in Florida if they were determined to go. My parent’s minds were so sure that climate change was not their generations problem that they had such a hard time understanding that their kids (me and my siblings) would be the ones left with trying to sell a home in Florida in a future that was almost guaranteed to be precarious at best for selling anything. I’m not even sure all of us telling them no worked, but thankfully my youngest siblings have settled in southern PA and Maryland and have very young kids… which mean Florida is too far away for grandma now. That aside I do like to think the adamant discussion that NOT buying property in Florida did help form their current thoughts though.
American climate politics and policy are dominated by the climate denialist demographics the same way that American covid politics and policy are dominated by the covid denialist demographics. The climate denialist demographics will make sure that “America” will never be allowed to prepare itself for the rising effects of global warming.
Never. Ever.
Reality-based global warming accepters’ only hope of survival is to pack into parts of the United States where they can achieve enough of an overwhelming local majority that they can conquer and rule those levels of governance which control preparations and approaches to preparation and survival within those geographic areas.
“Let ‘er rip” applies to American policy on heater-gas sky-flooding the same way it applies to American policy on covid. Reality-based global-warming accepters have a choice. They have a binary choice.
The two choices they have a binary choice of choosing between are these . . . #1: keep wasting time on a futile effort to convert “America” to a reality-based policy and die along with all the rest of the American victims of climate denialism or . . . #2: seek to conquer some small areas within which they achieve utterly total political and economic and cultural and policy dominance and use the resources of those areas to try survival-readying themselves for the onrushing effects of onrushing warming.
If those preparations are seen by onlookers to be successfully survival-genic, then onlookers are free to try converting their zones to reality-based climate-acceptance. If they succeed, then the initial climate-realist survival zones can give them advice and support on also becoming successful survival zones. Ideally, the reality-based climate survivalists will achieve some feasible maximum of regions under their control and power within which they can try to build what Survivalism they can succeed in building.
And the zones which remain determinedly committed to fantasy-based climate denialism in order to “own the liberals”? Let Darwin take them.
The realists better have lots of guns because the denialist do
If Biden were re-elected, the realists might just get 4 years of semi-peace and semi-quiet in which to get themselves lots of guns ( and lots and lots of ammo, training and practice). Perhaps that is a reason for the realists to try getting Biden re-elected. But ONLY if they really ARE realists . . . . as in realistic enough to use that 4 year grace period to gun up to denialist levels.
If they get their Biden elected, and then waste those 4 years trying to disarm the denialists with Liberal Fascist Gun Control, then they would show themselves to be not really all that realist, and they really would deserve whatever Darwin decides to give them.
As long as the Americans are not looking north for a place of refuge, I can’t say I care much. Albeit all these republicans should be made to (re)read the story of Joseph and the Pharaoh’s dream with the 14 cows.
More data
https://delphi.cmu.edu/covidcast/?date=20240426
Not much data but they do Google Search keywords volume and hospital admissions.
Congrats Mandy
https://x.com/roeyhadar/status/1806079936660140168?s=46
Good article, but . . .
Obviously rising sea levels would be a problem for coastal dwellers (and a huge problem for coastal aquifers, something I didn’t see in the article), but it seems to me that rising sea levels are not the only, and perhaps not even the major, problem caused by global warming.
What is being done in the US to cope with the direct impact of rising temperature in hot areas? What is being done in the US to cope with the impact of changing rainfall patterns (droughts, floods etc)? What is being done in the US to cope with the impact of changing vegetation patterns (which obviously affects agriculture)? What is being done in the US to cope with the impact of more intense winds and storms in general?
Aren’t these in totality likely to have more impact on the US than sea level rises?
This “debate” has been on going for a generation, two generations and nothing much has been done except on an individual and local level. Why? Reasons! You know reason$. and denial and kick the can and every other excuse. I am convinced that it will take a mega-disaster to bestir FIRE: Finance, Insurance, Real Estate. Insurance is taking localized actions. As always it sells, sells, sells as long as the risk is low then it flees, flees, flees when the profits are threatened.
When there is nowhere else to go, no choices, then there will be action. It may well be too late.
Be a Doomster with Jem Bendell. In Breaking Together he argues we are already in societal collapse, especially since our elites will do little more than greenwashing to stop the disaster. If infrastructure starts getting destroyed faster than our faltering economy can rebuild, then we will lose net infrastructure most years. If we cross a dangerous tipping point we might slash our food crop production and destroy ocean fishing. Elites are busy playing political games, not in actual planning and leading. At a minimum, do not move to a desert or a flood plain! Not even to a beach house in Malibu! Also, note that in the book link you can scroll down to link to a free download of his book.