
Miami Will Be Underwater Soon. Its Drinking Water Could Go First - hourislate
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-08-29/miami-s-other-water-problem
======
fabricexpert
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 that six feet of sea-
> level rise would put a quarter of Miami’s homes underwater.

However, nowhere in the article does it say a six feet rise will happen at the
end of the century. So is that actually going to happen? How many models
project this and how many don't? What is the "stupendous reversal" required in
real terms? What are the options to combat this? Would a giant sea wall work?

If you come at this from the angle of "climate change is a myth" the entire
article reads as fluff. This makes it basically impossible to convince people
that this is a real issue that needs to be dealt with. The sensationalist
title distances people from the issue even further (it is sensational because
the article doesn't present any evidence that Miami will be underwater soon).

~~~
leereeves
According to NASA [1], global sea levels have been rising at a fairly steady
3.2 millimeters per year since 1993.

According to NOAA [2], the "relative sea level trend" in Miami Beach is 2.39
mm/year.

At those rates, in 100 years, the sea will have risen about one foot, not six.

1: [https://climate.nasa.gov/vital-signs/sea-
level/](https://climate.nasa.gov/vital-signs/sea-level/)

2:
[https://tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/sltrends/](https://tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/sltrends/)

~~~
pstuart
Only if that rate remains steady, and it very well may not.

~~~
leereeves
True. And some scientists believe that rate _is_ accelerating, for example
Steve Nerem et al:

[https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/02/180212150739.h...](https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/02/180212150739.htm)

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.

~~~
mikestew
_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 throw a number out there with
no backing whatsoever.

~~~
nkoren
If Greenland melts, you get 6 _meters_ (20 feet).[1]

1:
[https://nsidc.org/cryosphere/quickfacts/icesheets.html](https://nsidc.org/cryosphere/quickfacts/icesheets.html)

~~~
wizardforhire
Greenland is melting.

[https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-
environment/wp/20...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-
environment/wp/2018/03/28/greenland-is-melting-faster-than-at-any-time-in-the-
last-450-years-at-least/?utm_term=.83fe975442cb)

~~~
credit_guy
Check this out for real time data about the Greenland ice mass budget.
(Spoiler: Greenland is not melting)

[https://www.dmi.dk/en/groenland/maalinger/greenland-ice-
shee...](https://www.dmi.dk/en/groenland/maalinger/greenland-ice-sheet-
surface-mass-budget/)

~~~
jerdimus
You are right, it's not losing mass through melting.

But it is losing mass when iceberg calving is accounted for.

"Over the year, it snows more than it melts, but calving of icebergs also adds
to the total mass budget of the ice sheet. Satellite observations over the
last decade show that the ice sheet is not in balance. The calving loss is
greater than the gain from surface mass balance, and _Greenland is losing mass
at about 200 Gt /yr_."

Edit: And i thought this article on the scale of a gigaton of water was
interesting as well:

[https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-
environment/wp/20...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-
environment/wp/2015/07/01/meet-the-gigaton-the-huge-unit-that-scientists-use-
to-track-planetary-change)

~~~
credit_guy
200 Gt = 0.007% of the ice mass of Greenland.

Or 0.5mm sea level increase (from your link).

------
chollida1
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 worth effectively zero and people still have 20 years on their
mortgage.

In my old city (Calgary, Canada) we had a pretty bad flood in 2013. The
government made, what I thought was a smart, deal with the home owners.

They would get some government assistence with the condition that this was the
first and only time that the governmnet would help.

Some owners rebuilt, others just bulldozed their homes. Now everyone knows
where they stand, the government helped shoulder the initial burden and the
people who moved helped lower the number of people living in a flood plain.

~~~
jdpedrie
> They would get some government assistence with the condition that this was
> the first and only time that the governmnet would help.

We'll see how well that holds up next time those people need assistance.
Somehow I don't see any elected politician telling his voters "sorry, we
already helped you".

~~~
craftyguy
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.

~~~
beat
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.
They won't move away until then, despite the risks. If they did, no one would
live in volcano or earthquake zones. Think San Francisco Bay is going to be
depopulated just because it's a dangerous place to live?

~~~
craftyguy
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 preparation for a
future disaster.

~~~
beat
Remember, in _Jaws 2_ , the people had re-elected the mayor.

------
creaghpatr
Interestingly, the Miami housing market outlook for 2019 is excellent, in
spite of this news.

[https://gordcollins.com/real-estate/miami-real-estate-
foreca...](https://gordcollins.com/real-estate/miami-real-estate-forecast/)

It would appear that people who actually have skin in the game believe
otherwise.

~~~
dv_dt
Markets are great for short term simple extrapolative prediction. At long term
and/or non-continuous prediction they seem to have had significant failures.

~~~
siglesias
Citation? There seem to be cases in high technology where the market is very
patient for long term returns. Case in point: AMZN trades at a 320 P/E because
the market (thus far correctly) can’t see a plausible scenario in which it
cedes any e-commerce or AWS share.

Maybe this is optimism bias writ large? Another possibility is that even if
there is robust demand despite certain destruction, these houses are really
worth many millions for the short term (for cachet, status, etc.). Here we
model them as really expensive vacations.

~~~
nabla9
> very patient for long term returns.

High P/E in the case of AMZN is not measure of long term. It's measure fo fast
expected growth, low interest rates, shadow margins, and general short therm
overconfidence.

It took 10 years for AMZN stock to recover from the peak of 1999 crash. There
was nothing wrong with the company, markets just didn't want to wait.

------
ben509
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.

~~~
ryandrake
Should we also tax people living in earthquake-prone and tornado-prone areas?
How about blizzard-prone areas? Keep going with this and we will run out of
places (in the USA) where it’s ok to live.

Also, as someone who lived in south Florida, flood insurance is a joke and
unavailable near the coast anyway. Nobody expects it to pay out enough in a
major catastrophe, including hurricanes and flooding.

~~~
closeparen
Blizzards don’t typically level buildings, and a tornado’s path of destruction
is narrow enough that the lucky homeowners can sufficiently subsidize the
unlucky ones through insurance.

Neither of those risks are comparable to earthquakes and hurricanes/flooding,
which can be relied upon to thoroughly destroy huge swaths of cities,
regularly.

~~~
gamblor956
California regularly survives 6.0 earthquakes with minimal damage, because our
building codes require earthquake-safe construction. For example, the 2008
Chino Hills quake, at 5.5 intensity, caused almost no damage other than the
unsecured contents of store shelves falling onto the floor.

In contrast, a slightly stronger quake in DC (5.8) caused hundreds of millions
of dollars in damage to structures, including to the Washington Monument,
because the local building codes did not contemplate earthquakes.

------
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.

~~~
WhompingWindows
What is the bedrock of the Netherlands, geologically speaking? Pumps, dikes,
and the like won't help that much in Miami because the porous limestone
underlying the city allows water under and around these traditional methods.

~~~
sobani
Non existing. Basically every building in Holland is build on 'stilts'. 40-100
feet long beams of wood or concrete that reach through the 'bog' surface until
it reaches a stable layer of sand.

See [https://youtu.be/5GEGWP95HFw?t=2m0s](https://youtu.be/5GEGWP95HFw?t=2m0s)
for an example of how those stilts are placed. Note that until 2:30 it's
basically just using a big weight. From about 2:40 the machine starts to get
serious.

Beyond dikes we've had mills keeping ground water levels steady since at least
the 10th century.

------
DoreenMichele
I've had a class in hydrology. The article did a good job covering the actual
threats to the water supply. It ended on a note of "But the impact of people's
choices is the bigger threat to Miami's survival." I think that's true.
However, I feel it did a poor job of really spelling that out.

 _Despite pockets of extreme wealth—one study estimated that the Miami metro
area has the nation’s eighth-highest number of millionaires—the county overall
is poor. Its median household income of $44,224 is almost one-quarter lower
than that of the country as a whole._

It's not uncommon for ocean front property to be very desirable and very
expensive. I'm guessing that a lot of those millionaires live near the beach
or on the beach and their homes may be some of the ones most at risk of ending
up under water as sea levels rise.

Rich people are typically the most able to up and move elsewhere. If the rich
people in waterfront property homes start leaving, you are left with a bunch
of relatively poor people and hard-to-solve, expensive problems.

This means you don't need sea levels to rise six feet to significantly alter
the city of Miami in ways that can spell Miami's doom in some sense. Like
Galveston, which was an important and rich city at one time and then was
devastated by a single hurricane, Miami could become a shadow of its former
self with no hope of recovery.

You only need it to rise however much would serve as some kind of tipping
point where rich folks would stop feeling it was a desirable place to be.
Maybe that's when their yard is inundated. Or maybe it will be determined by
some other metric entirely.

The reality is there may be no one who is capable of predicting where that
tipping point is. Once it's reached, there may be no reversing the problem.
Miami may be left with a poor population, a raft load of expensive problems
and no means to readily solve any of them as their poor population slides
deeper into debt to keep surviving.

Edit/footnote: It's a lousy title. Even the article itself is not actually
predicting that the entire city will ever be completely under water like the
title suggests.

------
tim333
For context the global rate of sea level rise currently seems to be 4cm a
decade so you could come back in 10 or 20 years and probably not notice much.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_level_rise](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_level_rise)

~~~
monetus
I'd be surprised if the rise sticks to a linear progression. The ice caps are
caught in a feedback loop.

------
not_that_noob
This is one of the best articles I've seen on climate change. We are now
looking to a 3 degree rise in surface temps by the middle of this century -
well within our lifetimes. Miami is headed underwater. I wouldn't be buying
real estate in any low-lying area if I can avoid it.

"Three-degree warming is a prescription for short-term disaster: forests in
the Arctic and the loss of most coastal cities. Robert Watson, a former
director of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, has
argued that three-degree warming is the realistic minimum."

[https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/08/01/magazine/clim...](https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/08/01/magazine/climate-
change-losing-earth.html)

------
hfdgiutdryg
The idea that it's 2018 and we don't have solar powered desalination plants
for some of our largest, sunny, water-limited southern cities boggles my mind.
Los Angeles has a nuclear plant just to the north, but no desalination, and
more sun than anyone wants. It's insane.

~~~
Synaesthesia
It’s still a really expensive way to get drinking water.

~~~
hfdgiutdryg
It's cheaper than having your economy collapse when the aquifers empty, and
it's only going to get cheaper if money is invested in it.

------
frequent
Always reminds me of Roisin Murphy "Dear Miami" (1997)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VbX7ASDLwAk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VbX7ASDLwAk)

"Behind these walls You can be so self-absorbed Behind those eyes, no disguise
Disguise, no you can't disguise

Behind this fortress of an address Stuck in the passion void With a little
style full and for a while But you can't turn back time

Dear Miami, you're the first to go Disappearing under melting snow Each and
everyone turn your critical eye On the burning sun and try not to cry

..."

------
golergka
> One morning in June, Douglas Yoder climbed into a white government SUV...

This again. I won't stop complaining about this tedious journalistic style
until it finally dies.

I don't want to hear a personal story of a random person that's related to the
issue in some way. I certainly don't want to read anything about how he spends
his day - I value my own day too much for that. I just want to read about the
issue itself.

That's why people don't read longreads anymore.

~~~
iamthirsty
Bloomberg writers definitely overuse this hook, but long-reads are more
narrative-focused, so it totally makes sense to introduce the issue this way —
just not every time.

~~~
golergka
I don't mind narrative, but I want narrative about technologies and science
instead of people. If you can't write a narrative without focusing on people,
may be you shouldn't write about science and tech at all.

------
southern_cross
Fun fact, kids. If you pump down an aquifer (any aquifer, anywhere) faster
than it is being replenished from above via rainwater, then any other water
sitting around it will eventually start to intrude. And if that outside water
is salty or otherwise non-potable, then problem! Meaning that saltwater
intrusion in coastal areas is a pretty much constant potential risk anyway,
regardless of any sea level rise.

------
frockington
At a rate of 0-3 mm/year or 1 foot/century its going to be hard to convince
anyone to care about the sea level.
[https://tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/sltrends/sltrends.html](https://tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/sltrends/sltrends.html)

~~~
christophilus
That's an interesting map. Any idea why there are down and up arrows
intermingled the way they are?

~~~
frockington
From my understanding the down arrows indicate the coast is expanding. The key
at the bottom says the down arrows are negative sea level growth

~~~
singularity2001
I read that tide patterns are changing so locally measuring climate sea rise
makes no sense yet, as tides superimpose ±8mm

So far you need the global integrate of all changes.

------
mrfusion
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.

~~~
smacktoward
See this article from 2014, about the port city of Norfolk, Virginia:
[https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/in-
norfolk-e...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/in-norfolk-
evidence-of-climate-change-is-in-the-streets-at-high-
tide/2014/05/31/fe3ae860-e71f-11e3-8f90-73e071f3d637_story.html?utm_term=.832e5ed3d2f3)

 _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._

------
zackmorris
I'm getting the feeling lately that the freedom in speech and action that is
the foundation of the United States doesn't mean freedom from consequences.

Florida has a rather right leaning/libertarian persuasion, which as the
article pointed out, allowed the Miami Drum Services Inc. superfund site and
Lake Belt limestone mine to cause contamination of drinking water as recently
as 1997.

I'm from Idaho and am well aware of the environmental impacts from superfund
sites and mining. The corporations go in and make their millions, then
taxpayers are on the hook for the cleanup. Now we can't even fish many rivers
and lakes here because mine tailings have contaminated the water with mercury
(from gold mining) and other nastiness.

Due to a long history of this short term thinking where profits are privatized
and externalities are socialized, Miami is going to have to come to terms with
losing its drinking water and either pipe it in from far away or move to
desalinization. It's going to be expensive and unfortunate, but I wonder if it
will be enough for people to shift their politics. Judging by the political
stalemate in my state, I'm guessing not.

------
Iwan-Zotow
"Good news, everyone!"

------
erentz
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 and under water in a
few decades.

~~~
psychometry
I think there's been a brain drain happening in a lot of red states in recent
decades. The educated people who have the ability and will to leave often do,
leaving behind an increasingly ignorant population. It's coincidental that
this same geographic region will be most affected by sea level rise, although
nowhere on earth will be immune to the effects of climate change.

~~~
mancerayder
Funny, Florida is getting an influx of people exiting the Northeast due to the
local tax cap changes of the current administration and our high prop and
local taxes here. It's all over the press.

Thus I'm skeptical. And "brain drains" refer to skilled employees leaving, not
some intelligence or education level which you're implying.

~~~
lovich
I've always seen brain drain used to reference the educated leaving an area.
Frequently calling out professors and other educators leaving as part of the
brain drain

------
haha99
"by the end of this century" is quite an odd definition of "soon". By then
some of us won't even be alive.

------
dragthor
Hysterical headline and article.

In grade school it was dying from the ozone hole, acid rain, and global
freezing (new ice age).

Recycling, not being wasteful, and conserving water wasn't scary enough I
guess.

------
westurner
Now, now, let's focus on the positives here:

\- more pollution from shipping routes through the Arctic circle (and yucky-
looking icebergs that tourists don't like)

\- less beachfront property

\- more desalinatable water

\- hotter heat

\- more revulsive detestable significant others (displaced global unrest)

\- costs of responding to natural disasters occurring with greater frequency
due to elevated ocean temperatures

\- less parking spaces (!)

What are the other costs and benefits here?

~~~
westurner
I've received a number of downvotes for this comment. I think it's
misunderstood, and that's my fault: I should have included [sarcasm] around
the whole comment [/sarcasm].

I've written about our need to address climate change here in past comments. I
think the administration's climate change denials (see: "climate change
politifact') and regulatory rollbacks are beyond despicable: they're
sabotaging the United States by allowing more toxic chemicals into the
environment that we all share, and allowing more sites that must be protected
with tax dollars that aren't there because these industries pay far less than
_benchmarks_ in terms of effective tax rate. We know that vehicle emissions,
mercury, and coal ash are toxic: why would we allow people to violate the
rights of others in that way?

A person could voluntarily consume said toxic byproducts and not have violated
their own rights or the rights of others, you understand. There's no medical
value and low potential for abuse, so we just sit idly by while they're
violating the rights of other people by dumping toxic chemicals into the
environment that are both poisonous and strongly linked to climate change.

What would help us care about this? A sarcastic list of additional reasons
that we should care? No! Miami underwater during tourist season is enough!
I've had enough!

So, my mistake here - my downvote-earning mistake - was dropping my generally
helpful, hopeful tone for cynicism and sarcasm that wasn't motivating enough.

We need people to regulate pollution in order to prevent further costs of
climate change. Water in the streets holds up commerce, travel, hampers
national security, and destroys the road.

We must stop rewarding pollution if we want it - and definitely resultant
climate change - to stop. What motivates other people to care?

