
Rising Waters Threaten China’s Rising Cities - hourislate
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/04/07/world/asia/climate-change-china.html?hp
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Animats
China has a huge flat coastal river delta that's heavily populated. The US has
that only at New Orleans, which is a much smaller city and has high ground
nearby.

The US comes out fairly well on rising sea levels. Except for Florida. Florida
has so much low-lying coast that it's hopeless. The US west coast is
mountainous enough that high ground isn't far inland, and only short sections
of the coast at SF and LA are vulnerable. The coastal cities of the east coast
have reasonably short coastlines, enough money to build sea walls, and compact
river mouths.

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jessriedel
I don't understand the relevance of nearby high ground. Assuming you can't
build levees, doesn't the cost of losing a city come primarily from losing the
buildings (which must be rebuilt), not the transport cost of moving items
inside the building to a new location? In other words, if your house is in the
path of a tornado, learning that there is a nearby patch of land guaranteed
not to be hit is not useful.

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bgun
The difference is that the sea level rise happens over decades, and the city
will gradually move inland and upward as its (newly) beachfront property
recedes. China's river delta cities can't.

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jessriedel
It's not clear to me that this is less costly than moving across the country.
You'd have to look carefully at the network effects, but from an
infrastructure perspective you still end up building a whole new city.

In other words: what's the advantage of building San Diego II a few dozen
miles from San Diego, even slowly, rather than just expanding Denver by moving
people there.

(Note that I agree it's better than building a new city in the middle of
nowhere; the question is whether the network benefits of San Diego II can be
mimicked by Denver. In this sense, I agree that countries with cities that are
almost all on the coast would benefit from having high ground nearby their
doomed coastal cities.)

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M_Grey
Well... yeah. Miami isn't going to be around for all that much longer either.
Large parts of the world are going to be inundated, flooded, or actually
drowned. To be fair though, the fine distinction between "frequent flooding
destroys everything," "Literally underwater all of the time," and "It's a
salty swamp here now," might be lost on former residents.

Some places will be able to adapt, because they have money and the right
geological conditions, but plenty of others (Miami) would require... well... I
can't even imagine.

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pm90
Hmm, what if someone could accurately predict what the shoreline would look
like and then buy a whole swatch of cheap properties that will eventually be
on the waterfront? A la Superman, where Lex tries to split the San Andreas
fault...

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gwern
Discount rates and property taxes make it relatively infeasible to buy that
land and turn a risk-adjusted profit - especially since the margin for error
is so slim (a few hundred horizontal feet one way, your properties are a 100%
loss, a few hundred feet the other way, you lose much of the waterfront
premium). Compared to investing in a stock index at 5%+, the idea is nowhere
near worthwhile; you need to find land which would at least double or triple
in value just to try to profit at 10-20 years out, and even more if you are
planning 20+ or taking into account the carrying costs & risk.

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kmonsen
To be honest, I think it is fairly unpredictable what will happen with stock
values if there is strong global warming. And if government breaks down having
anything might not be worth much unless you have an army to defend it.

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gwern
In the long run, equities have always outperformed real estate, regardless of
climate or weather events: companies and peoples can move, pieces of land
cannot. And 'Mad Max' scenarios are currently not projected to happen anytime
remotely soon if ever.

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M_Grey
To be fair, 'Mad Max' isn't something you project, it's an overly optimistic
post-script to a total nuclear exchange. It may be that pressure from climate
change and poor coping mechanisms on an international scale could lead to said
nuclear exchange, although I certainly hope not.

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nvahalik
The article makes the claim ("In the Pearl River Delta, breakneck development
is colliding with the effects of climate change.") that climate change is
having a major impact, but all of the items they listed (outside of a sea
rise) are caused by human development.

Climate change seems like an innocent bystander in this one.

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product50
Isn't the solution simple here - to build levees or damming the river? I know
levees are expensive but given how critical this area is to China's
development, the cost is justified. I mean, entire New Orleans region is below
sea level and is supported by levees.

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nullnilvoid
That's what they have been doing in Netherlands for decades. Half of
Netherlands is less than one meter above sea level. A significant portion is
below sea level already.

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dmix
I haven't yet read this article but is this really _that_ much of a threat to
these cities? It really does seem like the solution to build levies/walls is
obvious and straight forward. Am I missing something about the complexity of
this problem?

I'd imagine the scale/length could be quite expensive for some of these areas.
But it hardly seems like an unattainable infrastructure building project.
Especially considering all of the talk about billions of dollars in potential
damages to cities... This is exactly why we pay taxes.

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IIIIIIIIIIII
The problem probably isn't the situation 364.8 days per year, but what happens
that one time every few years when weather (typhoons) and maybe even the tides
align to create conditions much worse than average for just a few hours. See
New Orleans... the worst part is that because it's so rare most people (and
media) will rant against the "waste of taxpayer money". You have to build very
expensive infrastructure that's almost never needed, that goes against human
nature it seems to me.

