
The Nightmare Scenario for Florida’s Coastal Homeowners - smacktoward
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2017-04-19/the-nightmare-scenario-for-florida-s-coastal-homeowners
======
iambateman
> "Cason, the Coral Gables mayor, said Congress ought to create what he called
> a “resilience fund” for homes threatened by the water—but he doesn’t think
> it will."

No. No no no no no. Absolutely not.

Mr. Cason made a crap ton of money, spent millions of dollars "investing" in
property which would soon become worthless and now he's blaming CONGRESS?

Mr. Cason. Sea rise isn't your fault, but buying a gorgeous, lavish beach
house where it will no longer exist is your responsibility.

Congress should create a resilience fund for kids at school who have no food.
Congress should make a resilience fund for veterans who can't work. Congress
should make a resilience fund for folks bankrupt because of medical debt. But
Congress need not send a bucket to the millionaires of Miami.

Postscript: not everyone who lives in Miami is a millionaire. I've hung out
with very poor folks in Miami. That said, The first homes to go are going to
be the ones owned by the elites on the water.

~~~
cle
I'm not sure what being rich has to do with this? If we understand the causes
correctly, then this is just a negative externality. Negative externalities
aren't bad only when the affected party is poor, they're bad because the
affected party didn't have any choice in incurring the cost of someone else's
behavior.

~~~
JBReefer
I agree with you in theory, but if I drive a car straight into the ocean, do I
deserve a government bailout? If I land a helicopter in a marsh, and it is
ruined, should I be bailed out?

This is the same thing, but just much slower. Tons of that coastal housing is
new, the idea of rising sea levels is certainly not new, and we've seen this
coming for a long time. This is basically choosing to drive your house into
the sea, and then demanding a handout.

I _do_ think we should subsidize moving buildings farther inland, or putting
them on stilts like they did in the Rockaways post Sandy, but just straight
buyout? Forget about it.

------
zengid
This reminds me of an answer from Bill Nye's AMA on reddit yesterday, where
someone asked Nye to speculate on a worse case scenario resulting from the US
not doing anything in response to climate change:

"The quality of life for people everywhere will go down. There will be less
food and less clean water available in the developed and the developing world.
It's reasonable that this will lead to conflict: more violence, more war. Here
in the super-developed US, people will have to abandon homes in Miami,
Galveston, Norfolk, and other coastal towns. It will lead to defaulted
mortgages and people looking for jobs inland. Where will those jobs come from?
Sooner we get to work the better." [1]

[1]
[https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/66ajul/i_am_bill_nye_...](https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/66ajul/i_am_bill_nye_and_im_here_to_dare_i_say_it_save/dggw7nk/)

~~~
generic_user
"William Sanford "Bill" Nye

popularly known as Bill Nye the Science Guy, is an American science educator,
television presenter, and mechanical engineer. He is best known as the host of
the PBS children's science show Bill Nye the Science Guy (1993–1998)."

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Nye](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Nye)

Bill Nye is a media personality. Where he draws the line between 'presenting
the facts' and 'entertaining the crowd' is hard to judge. Global warming
disaster porn gets him exposure and helps his career. I would take any of his
predictions with a grain of salt unless backed up by some serious research and
studies. These claims by Nye and others are usually just intuitive guesses
made by the presenter.

~~~
BinaryIdiot
I think it's important to keep the context of the question in mind when
reading his response. Someone asked him what he thought the worst case
scenario would be.

Honestly I'm surprised it's not worse and it seems to fall in line with a lot
of worse-case predictions I've seen made in various studies.

------
rconti
When I was shopping for a house in the Bay Area 3 years ago, my agent asked me
if I was willing to consider Redwood Shores (which is built on fill and very
close to the bay). One reason among several for saying "no" was the proximity
to sea level.

I'm not worried that the next tsunami will swamp it, or that it will be
(physically) underwater in my lifetime, or that nothing will be done to
prevent slow rise from swamping the land.

I'm just simply unwilling to make a 30 year commitment to today's value, when
I don't know what we'll know in 30 years. It's an absolute certainty that
we'll know more in 10 years than we know now. When will that property become
un-sellable? When will the value start being impacted? I'd guess sooner rather
than later, and if that isn't until 2040, that's still way too soon for
comfort -- particularly if I'm trying to retire then.

~~~
jfoutz
Oddly, sea level will probably go down this far north. Earth is spinning,
drawing water to the equator. More mass, more gravity pulling water to the
equator, along with less mass at the poles to offset.

But, yeah, I don't think I'd buy anything by the water either.

 _edit_

So, I'm wrong, Northern California isn't far enough north. it's a real effect.
You're all underestimating the mass of 100,000 cubic miles of ice.

[1]
[http://science.sciencemag.org/content/323/5915/753](http://science.sciencemag.org/content/323/5915/753)

[2]
[http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v409/n6823/abs/4091026a...](http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v409/n6823/abs/4091026a0.html)
reply

~~~
peterwaller
> Oddly, sea level will probably go down this far north. Earth is spinning,
> drawing water to the equator. More mass, more gravity pulling water to the
> equator, along with less mass at the poles to offset.

Can you provide a reference or show some workings which demonstrate that
statement to be true? I've not heard this before, and it's not obvious that it
should be true.

~~~
jfoutz
Here's one.

[http://harvardmagazine.com/2010/05/gravity-of-glacial-
melt](http://harvardmagazine.com/2010/05/gravity-of-glacial-melt)

Wikipedia eqitorial bulge has some info as well.

~~~
rripken
I'm unconvinced. I don't see anything in the harvardmagazine article that
suggests sea level fall in Northern California. The wikipedia page explains
that equatorial bulge has been decreasing. I'd expect ice-melt to add mass
along the equator and further slow rotation which should further reduce
equatorial bulge. I'm not saying you are wrong its just that your references
don't explain your contention in a way that I can make sense of.

~~~
jfoutz
I'm wrong. edited the main comment with more references.

------
chollida1
I'm not sure how to fix this, assuming that global warming does wipe out alot
of the Florida coast line.

I think he is right that its the banks who will start the decline by no longer
issuing mortgages, starting with long term mortgages. We've already seen it
happen in cities that don't have coastal flooding like Detroit.

People leave, property values fall, banks stop giving out as many loans,
values fall further, property taxes revenue declines and the cycle repeats as
the city circles the drain.

Ideally you'd have something like a forced relocation where the
country/state/county would buy your property from you and you'd move, but with
100's of billions in property about to disappear, it's not really realistic
let alone politically feasible for the government to buy everyone's ocean
front property and put the bill on the shoulders of someone from Colorado.

I mean look at a city like New Orleans, its very easy to argue that it
shouldn't have been rebuilt but it was politically impossible for someone to
be the voice of reason and state that certain areas of the city be reclaimed
and no longer available for residential construction.

And that's a relatively poor city, What's going to happen when billionaires
island and South Beach starts to continually flood and then slowly start to
disappear?

~~~
phkahler
>> I think he is right that its the banks who will start the decline by no
longer issuing mortgages, starting with long term mortgages. We've already
seen it happen in cities that don't have coastal flooding like Detroit.

Nope. The banks don't care about the risk so long as you have insurance. They
will continue to have insurance as long as we continue to subsidize them.

~~~
stevenwoo
It sounds like the state of Florida provides insurance of last resort because
larger insurance companies refused to provide coverage after _1992_ with the
state created Citizens Property Insurance Corporation. Of course that doesn't
meant they won't come asking for a federal bailout when things go pear shaped.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens_Property_Insurance_Co...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens_Property_Insurance_Corporation)

[http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/why-the-city-of-
mi...](http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/why-the-city-of-miami-is-
doomed-to-drown-20130620)

------
mrfusion
Not to downplay climate change, I believe in it no matter what and I know it's
one of the biggest catastrophes our planet has ever faced.

But I see a prediction of 32 cm rise by 2050 on Wikipedia (1)

It doesn't seem like the Florida coast is going anywhere overnight. Is there a
chance we're panicking?

(1)
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_level_rise](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_level_rise)

~~~
michaelbuckbee
I think you have to look at it in the context of home ownership. There was a
NYT article [1] about Norfolk and the relationship between flood insurance,
climate change and housing values.

I live in Virginia Beach, in what's officially not a flood zone, but Hurricane
Matthew (which was pretty mild as things go) put our street 4 feet underwater
and about a foot below our front door.

If our neighborhood gets redesignated as a flood zone, we'll lose a big chunk
of our house value immediately and may not be able to sell it.

I'm definitely thinking that we need to move sooner rather than later as no
matter if it's 32, 28, or 57 centimeters of sea level rise it's hard not to
think we won't see more hurricanes, worse flooding, etc.

1 - [https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/18/magazine/when-rising-
seas...](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/18/magazine/when-rising-seas-
transform-risk-into-certainty.html?partner=socialflow&smid=tw-
nytmag&smtyp=cur)

~~~
WillPostForFood
Like most articles about Norfolk, it is incredibly disingenuous to focus on
sea level rise, and not land subsidence, which is the primary cause of the
flooding there.

------
Neliquat
If you went to school in the last 30 years, or popped on the news during that
time, I can't help but wonder how delusional you must be to buy waterfront
property. I say this knowing brilliant enginners with homes they are still
paying off in New Orleans. Why? You must know the return will be terrible, and
it is just a temporary luxury, at a steep price, right?

Are people in general this head-in-the-sand or is it really that hard to
grasp?

~~~
philipkglass
I can take a few guesses at how people might make these mistakes without being
exceptionally delusional:

\- Estimates of climate change in the scientific literature tend to be
conservative. Scientists often publish "at least" projections that lay readers
might read as "up to". Especially if readers are consuming multiply digested-
and-regurgitated versions of scientific reports (primary literature ->
university press office -> Gizmodo).

\- Considering average effects without accounting for extremes: e.g.
visualizing "X centimeters of sea level rise by 2050" for a property near
water without accounting for what that higher average level means during the
worst storm of a decade.

\- Thinking that you'll have enough warning before everyone else's irrational
exuberance evaporates that you can go with the herd for the foreseeable
future. With something as big as a home purchase, most Americans will sadly
only get one chance to learn this lesson the hard way.

~~~
ergothus
In addition, they often talk in terms of centuries, not "in your lifetime" and
definitely not "while you're still young enough for it to change the course of
much of your life".

~~~
philipkglass
The IPCC reports typically go out to 2100. This might imply a couple of ideas
to lay readers that aren't actually in the report text:

\- I only need to worry about this if I live until the year 2100.

\- After the year 2100 the trend lines will stop going up. If humans are ready
for the effects of AGW in 2100, we're sorted away for the rest of history.

------
madaxe_again
Ah, this is rather what I keep on explaining to folks about climate change -
you don't have to wait for cities to be underwater, for infrastructure to be
destroyed, for the worst consequences to be felt - they just have to be
_anticipated_ for disaster to strike.

For instance, you might have a scenario whereby Europe somehow has no climate
change (this is demonstrably not the case), but, say, the 'stans become nigh
on uninhabitable, or at least, bad enough that people don't want to stay put -
you end up with a refugee crisis on your doorstep. This foments political
change, economic change, and again, climate change is having an affect without
directly affecting the local area.

Commensurately, you might find that your home insurance premiums on the gulf
coast just keep on going up, and you decide to sell - except, the best you can
get is less than you bought the place for, because new buyers are either
building in the cost of insurance to the purchase price or don't exist, so you
either don't sell, and end up staying until disaster really does strike, at
which point you have nothing, or you relocate, writing off the worth of your
property - which is where a great deal of people keep most of their net worth
- and again, relocate, destitute. This creates pressure elsewhere on
employment and housing markets, and before you know it, Iowa is saying that
they want to implement immigration controls because the locals are up in arms,
and political instability ensues. Meanwhile, your property on the gulf coast
is still there, still standing, still not submerged, but the town's services
have been gutted by the exodus, and the place is worth nothing - despite
having not had any direct climate change impact.

Our society is a deeply unstable chaotic attractor - little nudges can cause
massive disruption. Climate change is more of a shove, than a nudge.

~~~
DubiousPusher
Cities and municipal infrastructure are one thing. It's a necessary massive
realignment of the food production system that scares the shit out of me.

~~~
scarmig
Food production will have to shift, which costs money. But I would _guess_
that the cost of building agricultural infrastructure in previously too-cold-
and-dry-for-food regions is small compared to the cost of moving entire
cities.

In other words, suppose Iowa becomes a wasteland because of temperature
changes. Other regions will become better suited for crops at the same time.
Do we have reason to believe building the infrastructure for those lands to be
suitable for agriculture would be more expensive than, say, moving the entire
populations of Miami or Dhaka to someplace above sea level?

~~~
DubiousPusher
I can't say which one would be more expensive in raw replacement cost. One
thing I'd point out is that while urban infrastructure is deep, rural
infrastructure is broad. Tens of thousands of miles of highways, railways and
irrigation exist largely for bringing material to where food grows and taking
food from where it grows to where it is processed and then on to where it is
purchased.

How many square miles of rural Iowa adds up to single square block of downtown
Miami I'm not sure but the potential human toll is much more frightening.
Displacing large amounts of people is of course deeply problematic. You need
look no further than the situation we're in today with Syrian refugees for
evidence of that. But in terms of turmoil, death and violence human
displacements tend to pale in comparison to large scale disruptions of food
production.

------
xbryanx
Kim Stanley Robinson explores this very market force in some interesting ways
in his new New York 2140, with the Intertidal Property Pricing Index (IPPI).

[https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-03-08/only-
sci-...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-03-08/only-sci-fi-can-
drown-manhattan-and-make-you-want-to-live-there)

~~~
Atheros
New York City will build a retaining wall and be done with it. These other
predictions are written by naive people and paid for by naive people.

~~~
xbryanx
You haven't gotten to the chapter where the retaining wall is breached in the
2nd wave/pulse yet have you?

------
DubiousPusher
There's probably already an indirect impact happening to property values.
Holding a mortgage requires flood insurance. Inside a 100 year flood zone it
can be difficult and expensive to get flood coverage. If no one will cover
you, you aren't getting that mortgage.

As FEMA redraws 100 year flood zones, even a few inches of increased depth
will cause many "dry" areas to be recategorized.

------
peterwwillis
Florida coastal homeowners have always known there are high risks. There are
these things called hurricanes that can level your house in one go, and they
happen every year. A few inches of rain is just one of several concerns, and
yet for decades the market has been strong, even shortly after hurricanes.

Lots of South Florida floods every year, inland and coastal, and nobody sells
their house just because it floods. If the boats can't make it under the
bridge, they'll just put in locks; they've worked for a thousand years, so
they can probably work for the Venice of America. And there are many cities
throughout the world located near the ocean and under sea level.

The only risky part of South Florida real estate are giant condos in Miami,
which have a habit of becoming empty. If you're a homeowner, though, your land
will pretty much always have value until it is completely under water. Even
then, they may just develop into Stiltsville 2.0.

~~~
pjmorris
+1 for Stiltsville reference.

------
Animats
This is the good scenario. The mortgage and insurance industries see rising
sea levels coming, reprice accordingly, and over time, people move to high
ground. It's the free market in action.

Only a few areas of the US are affected. Florida has the worst problem.
Florida is so flat. Look at an elevation map of Florida and the Gulf Coast.[1]
The bright red areas will have to be evacuated.

The US west coast is mountainous; even where it looks flat, a few hundred feet
inland is well above sea level. San Francisco and LA will build seawalls and
berms as necessary.

[1] [https://pubs.usgs.gov/sim/3047/](https://pubs.usgs.gov/sim/3047/)

~~~
stevenwoo
Technically, a one meter rise will help flood a large inhabited part of the
San Francisco Bay outside SF, Sacramento and surprising parts of the Central
Valley that are close to sea level. [http://geology.com/sea-level-rise/san-
francisco.shtml](http://geology.com/sea-level-rise/san-francisco.shtml)

~~~
Arizhel
It looks like it should be pretty easy to just hire the Dutch and build a
levee to prevent the central valley/Sacramento areas from flooding. All the
water is entering through one very narrow channel just east of Vallejo.

And perhaps the Bay Area can also be saved with a levee at the Golden Gate
bridge.

~~~
Animats
A dam at Novato, plus the Peripheral Canal to divert Sacramento River water to
the California Water Project, is quite possible. A dam at the Golden Gate,
though, is very tough. The bay is 360 feet deep there.

------
scotch_drinker
Whenever I see someone say "We have to do X to prevent Y because of the great
potential costs of Y", I rarely see a discussion of the costs of X in
comparison. Fixing the climate is going to be expensive. It's going to
decrease the cost of living for everyone in similar ways that letting Miami
flood will. I'm not advocating for ignoring it but this isn't just a one way
street.

There is always this urge to DO SOMETHING. Pass a new law, bring in a new
process, take a new pill, whatever. But those things also have costs, costs
that are almost never analyzed and compared because they are "Free costs",
e.g. we are protected in many ways from the costs because they are difficult
to ascertain. If I don't take Lipitor and die of a heart attack, my doctor
will say "see, there was a very visible cost." But if I take it for 30 years
and find out that it causes memory loss and muscle problems and less efficient
exercise adoption, none of that is measured (or possibly even possibly
measured).

Fixing the climate is in a similar position. We need to do something because
Miami will flood and people will default and the government may have to bail
them out. But if we drastically reduce our carbon footprint, people will lose
jobs, prices will be higher, standard of living will go down, etc. And none of
that is discussed. Because it's hard and it might involve saying "It's best
not to do something in this case." Which is hard for us to accept for some
reason.

~~~
ctoth
It's interesting to observe the patterns of those who advocate lack of action
on the climate. Twenty years ago, global warming was absurd and "weren't they
just saying we were going to go through global cooling 10 years ago?" Ten
years ago, it was, climate change? that's not happening and even if it were
people have nothing to do with it. Now that evidence becomes less disputable,
the fallback becomes, well even if humans were responsible it will cost too
much/change our living conditions so much that it won't be worthwhile to do
anything about.

I'm not really sure where this leads, or why it's happening, but I do think
it's worth noticing.

~~~
sxates
Accepting responsibility for trashing the planet implies that you must make
lifestyle changes as a result. If you take responsibility, you can't justify
driving a large SUV, or buying a large house, or buying lots of stuff, or
paying low taxes, or eating a hamburger guilt free, etc. etc.

People hate change, and will fight to resist it, including fighting against
the idea that change is necessary.

------
vermontdevil
What pisses me off is these homeowners are going to expect the federal
government to bail them out when their property gets destroyed by climate
change.

I don't mind helping out areas impacted by tornados hurricanes etc but not
ignorance.

~~~
ergothus
While I generally agree with your gut feelings, my logic says otherwise.

* some people bought their homes 30+ years ago, when the timeline and exact impact wasn't known (and there was reporting of a potential Ice Age coming, despite that not accurately reflecting the science of the time)

* other people have bought since then, but have seen their own politicians telling them it's "in dispute", and the general media just says some people say it's in dispute and others say it isn't.

* our school systems do a terrible job of teaching fundamentals, like "what is a theory" to science.

Heck, while I believe in climate change and human-caused climate change,
including the unprecedented scale, when I've tried to find good answers to
skeptical questions...it's hard for the lay person to find. Things like
"volcanos put out more CO2 in a year than mankind ever" are apparently false,
but it's a lot easier to find that claim than the reverse (and much easier to
find the refutation now than even 5 years ago). "Satellite data shows no
global warming" is one I still don't quite follow - I get that they tend to
pick a range from the last El Nino peak, but I don't know how to reconcile how
they can say each successive year has been "the hottest on record" (including
beating the previous year) but "satellite temperature measurements have been
flat in recent years". If I - a reasonably well-educated person familiar with
online research and with ample time on my hands - can't find decisive answers,
how can I expect that everyone has?

Ultimately, I decide to trust in the overall body of scientists, but that's
pretty subjective, and I can't fault the average person that understands
science only from mass media for deciding NOT to trust the body of scientists.

~~~
vermontdevil
Or increase the flood insurance premiums to ensure the homeowners are aware of
the risks and are contributing to it. Currently Florida has one of the lowest
premiums for federally supported flood insurance. Ridiculous.

See this from the article:

 __The National Flood Insurance Program is up for reauthorization this year;
fiscal conservatives have said they want to use that opportunity to reduce the
program’s subsidies, so that people are paying something closer to the full
cost of their risk. A cut in federal subsidies would particularly hurt
Florida, which despite its exposure pays the lowest average flood-insurance
premiums in the country, according to FEMA data. __

------
nols
The New York Times did a good article on this last fall

[https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/24/science/global-warming-
co...](https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/24/science/global-warming-coastal-real-
estate.html)

------
NotSammyHagar
That will be terrible but will probably happen. So my advice to myself is rent
a house there, don't buy.

------
notadoc
Maybe they should vote to address the problem rather than wedge their
collective heads further in the sand?

