[Lore]

I'm going to try this, one more time. This is not denial of SLR, its a statement that yall don't seem to understand much about construction, fixed assets, and building depreciation.

IPCC numbers are currently stated to be +0.11 in/yr. On the other hand, I don't think Hanson is being overly ridiculous about "several meters within the century"; though his position is still OUTSIDE of the consensus view.

So how do we get from +0.11 in/yr (equivalent to 0.28m /century) ( current, factual, observed rate); to a 2100 date with say +3 meters. Obviously its not linear. This is a *GOOD* thing for building depreciation and industrial/commercial business decisions.

The IPCC has always been conservative in its estimation. That's what James Hansens's paper was standing to correct.

Numerous papers have documented how IPCC predictions are more likely to underestimate the climate response.

In many similar cases, the evidence suggests that changes in climate are occurring faster, and with more intensity, than the IPCC have predicted. It is not credible to suggest the reports were biased in favour of the theory of anthropogenic global warming when the evidence demonstrates the IPCC were, in fact, so cautious.

In fact, there is evidence however to suggest that the exact opposite is actually the case, both in terms of the scientific evidence itself (see below) and the way the work of the IPCC is reported. A recent study (Freudenburg 2010) investigated what it calls 'the Asymmetry of Scientific Challenge', the phenomenon in which reports on science fail to evaluate all outcomes, favoring certain probabilities while ignoring others. They found that "...new scientific findings were more than twenty times as likely to support the ASC perspective [that disruption through AGW may be far worse than the IPCC has suggested] than the usual framing of the issue in the U.S. mass media".

Claims that the IPCC is alarmist are not supported by evidence, and there are clear indications that the opposite may be the case.

https://www.skepticalscience.com/ipcc-s ... sensus.htm

So... why?

Lets look at your building lifecycle.

Site selection
construction
occupancy
remodel
occupancy
abandonment / replacement / demolition

This generally happens over a cycle of 30-50 yrs depending on the durability/use of the building, but 30yrs is a perfectly reasonable, and economically justifiable lifespan.

30 Years is not reasonable. Right now commercial buildings are depreciated over 39 years. It doesn't pencil out when depreciated assets become worthless once sold. Not in a slow growth economy and a especially in a no growth economy where the books won't matter.

And it's not just the buildings and the property, but the infrastructure that surrounds them. Access to major seaports will eventually become a lost effort. The Port of Houston alone contributes about 1,800,000 jobs throughout TX. Let's also not forget the transport and the refineries of oil here as well.

Why?

net PV. the decision about the buildings, cost, earnings, etc; are analyzed in terms of net present value. Present value basically acknowledges that the $100 you make or spend 30 yrs from now is worth no where near as much to you, right now, as the $100 you spend or make today.

So while the ice melt and SLR accelerate; the value of the building decelerates almost in lock step. To put perfectly bluntly; it flat does not matter that a thirty year old building is inundated; it would only matter if you did some really high dollar remodel just before inundation; but you can no longer insure nor get financing for properties/remodel which have a realistic likelihood of being inundated soon.

Thus, once a building is within the flood plain, which is periodically, (and in Texas harshly), redrawn to account for climate/subsidence/water drainage changes; its cycle is over; and its lifespan will come to an end very shortly, whether it gets flooded or not.

So by the time SLR actually EATS the building?

no one will be there.
no industrial capacity will be dependent on it.
the activity will have moved years before.

You're making an assumption that everything else in the government, financial, insurance and real estate markets is working just fine when all that happens. Guess what, it won't be. Any endangered property, flooded or not will become worthless as it cannot be insured, financed, let alone find a client to buy it. You also won't be able to pick up sticks and move since the infrastructure, for one thing won't be there, either will the resources both materially and financially to rebuild.

Hansen's paper(1) is compatible with, and supportive of this process. At each point in time going forward, the change in the rate (ie, acceleration) is smooth and known, and produces a knowable level for MSL, and thus, a knowable flood plain map. At no point, even with Hansen's numbers, will a new, high value, 0-50 yr building be constructed in a location which will be inundated by SLR and storm surge; during its 30 yr economic life.

See above. I'm sure the oil industry will be happy to move all their refineries from the coast to say places like OK. No problem.

SLR is not a step function. It is a smooth curve. And that makes all the difference in the world as far as buildings, siting, life cycle... As long as the rate is knowable over the course of the very near term (5-10yrs) at each stage in the time line, the decisions made with regard to facility construction and flood plain maps will be appropriate. (eg, known fast rate is better than unknown modest rate)

SLR is an accelerating curve. The rate is not knowable. That's the problem. If it were Hansen wouldn't have a paper worth reading. Therefore you cannot plan other then to get as far away from the worse case scenario as possible.

BTW, this does not imply a lack of wailing and nashing of teeth on TV when a building does get eaten, it only means that the accountants, bankers, and insurers; real estate moguls and company CEOs won't really care. Unless one of them was dumb enough to self-fund a reconstruction project in the flood plain. For them... their professional life expectancy likely just went to zero.

Yes they care, because its still a financial loss to the bottom line. You're confused about depreciation. Depreciated assets carry a book value of zero, but it's just an accounting measure. It is not a process for valuing assets

[dohboi]

Thanks, Lore. It looks like we were thinking along partly similar lines at about the same time.

Nice point about the non-linearity of sea level. Even if it were 'smoothly' exponential, you get most of those added ten feet of slr in the two decades just before it hit that level, whether that's 2040, 2050, or later.

But really, it's more like a game of jenga. Very hard to know exactly when the whole thing comes tumbling down, even if you can see that it's getting less and less stable. Thwaites, in particular, is definitely nearing a tipping point, after which it will all go non-stop, very very fast--in a few years, or a couple decades at most--according to latest research on how this crucial plug to the entire West Antarctic Ice Sheet has behaved in the past. After doing this research, Richard Allen, arguably the top glaciologist in the world, said that he could no longer be sure that it wouldn't all be gone within his lifetime--he's in his late 50's, iirc.

[AgentR11]

I am not confused about what depreciation is. I'm trying to write general-audience readable. Any PV loss at disposal 30 yrs out is minimal. Yes they will whine on TV. No one will get a bonus chopped because of it. btw.. 39 yrs.. is kinda right in the middle of what I wrote, no? 30-50 yrs. Which is how long buildings last, in the real world. (remodel's often reset the timer, but they are essentially a new building that reminds one of the old building)

And cities certainly won't die because of it. They move. Inch by inch. foot by foot. Just like SLR, and just in line with SLR; always at the edge.

As to refineries; they are a special case, not because of structure, or SLR, or anything physical. rather, because of very specific oddities in refinery construction permitting. In the case of refineries; expect some very odd adaptations as a result of permitting weirdness; but do expect them to be functioning, exactly where they are 30 yrs from now, regardless of SLR. Past 30yrs out, do we even know what refined products folks will want to produce in the US? That whole permit process needs fixing to put some agility back in the system. Ideally they would leapfrog up along the pipeline routes as the coast encroaches, but for now, expect some quite hideous adaptations!

I could see something horrific like 10+m concrete barriers anchored with a bajillion piles 100+m deep..... obnoxious spitballing there.

My problem with the SLR doom folks is its always portrayed as "this is MSL today, and poof, 100 yrs from now, this is MSL". Which makes for great GIS imagery and it is fun to play with the tool; but it tells you almost nothing useful.

What is important is that acceleration, and that the acceleration is smooth because of the nature of ice. Fast or slow are both ok. Step function (as the GIS imagery is often used to suggest) would be catastrophic to the entire world. Cities in general would cease to have a purpose at that point anyway.

from the abstract: "Doubling times of 10, 20 or 40 years yield multi-meter sea level rise in about 50, 100 or 200 years." and states that an exponential (with obvious limits on total ice available) function is involved.

So, as with an exponential curve, as Hansen asserts; where ever I am at on the timeline today+1yr, today+3yr and today+5yr will be mostly the same scale of increase; and as you proceed towards +30yr, +40yr, +50yr; gets much faster. So I build my building at this point in time, and all is fine and dandy for a few years, lets say the observed data matches Hansens' prediction.

In 20yrs, I start thinking about some sort of remodel, say I think the cranes are weaker than I'd like for a new class of widget I want to mess work with. So I talk to the engineer, and they come back and say, dood, we'd love to help, but your building is now within the surge map, and we doubt financing can be arranged. But you know...if you put your cranes over THERE, they won't be in the surge zone, and prospects for insurance and finance are much better. I say, gud nuff, and the little iterative adaption proceeds apace without anyone thinking "omg we have relocate the entire world...". 15yrs later, Hurricane Bob comes ashore with a big fat surge and drowns the old shop... but the old shop was just being used as an ancient parts depository (aka junk yard). I'll whine horribly because the engine I was going to put in my Retro 2035 F250 pickup truck was on a hoist in there; but otherwise, when the water from the surge recedes, the newer plant will continue operating, and the old shop will be conveniently forgotten while hoping the county takes the land without actually looking at the mess! lol.

Eventually, the sea's regular high tide will overtop the land of the old shop, but by that time, it'll just be a modest heap of rusted metal and broken concrete; or if the wetland's guys got interested, might clean it up a bit and call it a new "nature preserve" (while trying to ignore the presence of rock-like-objects in a location that should have zero rocks).

That is how SLR will play out. Year by year. Month by month. Not a sequence of singular, 30 year step functions.

[dohboi]

"acceleration is smooth because of the nature of ice."

That's not what top glaciologist say, but perhaps you know more about the matter than they do?

In any case, you seem to have stopped reading posts, so no point continuing a one sided conversation.

[AgentR11]

"acceleration is smooth because of the nature of ice."
That's not what top glaciologist say, but perhaps you know more about the matter than they do?

Smooth, as in continuous function of time, 1to1, onto; first derivative continuous. An exponential function is absolutely smooth. Don't confuse smooth with linear.

I do read posts, but the nature of the post timer does not permit me to respond conversationally; so I stick to posting my points with regard to the topic of SLR, floods and Houston for the most part.

So, by your assertion, you have a published glaciologist who would assert that MSL can be 1m, and then an instant later 2m?

[Lore]

The step function is when coastal areas get hit by mega storms with nothing in the way to slow them down any longer and no help to rebuild from them.

Agent, you continue to assume that there is some kind of financial market capable of restructuring all these lost assets. Not likely with this much devastation.

[dohboi]

Yeah, it's more like discontinuity. Hansen just uses exponential as a convenient tool.

Glaciologists tell us that how things go down is:

Nothing much happens for thousands of years or more

Then things start to show signs of change

Then very suddenly, even in terms of human time scales--BAM, the whole thing goes in a few years.

That has been the general understanding for years, but now it's been stunningly proven to be even more sudden that glaciologists had thought for Thwaites in particular. I don't blame you for not keeping up with the latest advances in the science of glaciology--our understanding has been changing in a number of fields recently, mostly with not very comforting results. It's hard to keep track of it all. But that's what the latest research is telling us.

You can search yourself, but I'll see what I can find for you.

You are certainly right if you want to point out that we may well have even much worse things to worry about globally like food shortages and the escalating conflicts they are likely to trigger. And of course many other places are definitely facing worse outcomes much sooner than Houston. But please do be open to understanding the latest in the fast evolving science of glaciology.

ETA: Here's one of the main threads on neven's site on the subject: http://forum.arctic-sea-ice.net/index.p ... ,72.0.html

On the need to incorporate uncertainties into planning for coastal areas: http://phys.org/news/2015-02-ipcc-sea-l ... -risk.html

Recent Hansen et alia paper: http://www.atmos-chem-phys.net/16/3761/2016/

Money quote: "“This uncertainty is illustrated by Pollard et al. (2015), who found that addition of hydro-fracturing and cliff failure into their ice sheet model increased simulated sea level rise from 2 m to 17 m, in response to only 2°C ocean warming and accelerated the time for substantial change from several centuries to several decades.”

Brief video from Hansen: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JP-cRqCQRc8

Box and others: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0pDB_C-jwkU

"Paleo sea level records from warm periods during the last 3 million years indicate that global mean sea level has exceeded 5 m above present (very high confidence) when global mean temperature was up to 2°C warmer than pre-industrial " http://www.climatechange2013.org/images ... _FINAL.pdf

When I asked Richard Alley, almost certainly the most respected glaciologist in the United States, whether he would be surprised to see Thwaites collapse in his lifetime, he drew a breath. Alley is 58.

‘‘Up until very recently, I would have said, ‘Yes, I’d be surprised,’ ’’ he told me. ‘‘Right now, I’m not sure. I’m still cautiously optimistic that in my life, Thwaites has got enough stability on the ridge where it now sits that I will die before it does. But I’m not confident about that for my kids. And if someday I have grandkids, I’m not at all confident for them.’’ http://mobile.nytimes.com/2015/11/15/ma ... erer=&_r=1

OK, here's the crucial video by R. Alley. The whole thing is worth a watch, but the crucial bit begins about minute 30 where he starts talking about Thwaites; or start at about minute 36 if your really short on time, where he points out that the Thwaites glacier will most likely disintegrate very rapidly adding about FOUR METERS of SLR in a matter of DECADES.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yCunWFmvUfo

[AgentR11]

Yeah, it's more like discontinuity. Hansen just uses exponential as a convenient tool.

Physics of ice melt does not permit a discontinuous function. Period. They have nothing in common. Hitting an inflection point where acceleration increases is in no way similar to a discontinuity.

Nothing much happens for thousands of years or more
Then things start to show signs of change
Then very suddenly, even in terms of human time scales--BAM, the whole thing goes in a few years.

That is a very good description of a smooth, exponential function.

[AgentR11]

The step function is when coastal areas get hit by mega storms with nothing in the way to slow them down any longer and no help to rebuild from them.

Storm surge is a normal factor of building decisions. We know where the Cat5/Katrina-esque marker is. The cost to insure is based upon such things. Houston will get Katrina scale surges in the future. Each time it happens, large slices of marginal flood zone properties will get zoned out of economic viability; nothing will be rebuilt on them; the displaced companies either go out of business, or set up shop higher up; either is fine.

Agent, you continue to assume that there is some kind of financial market capable of restructuring all these lost assets. Not likely with this much devastation.

If there are no financial markets capable, then industrial civilization is over; all the cities will be dead within a few months; and whether Bob's Engine Maintenance shop got flooded or not, is irrelevant.

As far as SLR, Houston, and flooding; I'm obviously not interested in the question after the point in time where industrial civilization is dead. That's a pointless argument.

Make no mistake, if the financial markets die; billions of people will starve to death; and quite quickly. I don't think most folks have any clue how dependent the food CALORIE system is on modern financial systems.

[dohboi]

It is the pattern of ice flow out of glaciers that has been shown to be discontinuous in the paleo-record.

Once the ocean water gets past a lip in the bedrock and gets to the level where the ice is very tall, the ice cliffs become very unstable, so they crumble very rapidly, not stopping until basically the whole glacier is gone.

This is what they find in the ice record from patterns in bed rock. Usually there is a very clear pattern year by year where the ice melts back during summers then stops or slows during the winter. But once the water enters gets under these glaciers that are grounded below sea level, the dissolution of the whole thing happens so rapidly that there are no breaks visible--it just keeps melting without stop till it's pretty much all in the sea.

Two things to note: Melting of glaciers is more complex than melting ice cubes. If it were that simple, you wouldn't need a whole science to understand it. So don't think that you passing acquaintance with the physics of ice melt equips you adequately to know what is possible and indeed probable going forward with sea level rise.

Second, the ice doesn't all have to physically melt to raise sea level--it just has to flow out into the ocean from the ice sheet. And this it will do very rapidly. Of course, once it's in the increasingly warm ocean, it will start to melt much, much more rapidly than it would while it was in an enormous ice sheet.

The wild card, as I understand it, is what happens once massive amounts of ice do enter the ocean. Currents are likely to change, and the cooling of the ocean surface is likely to at least cause global average temperature to slow their increase, and perhaps even cool (at least regionally, and perhaps enough to put a break on further melt). But there are lots of unknows as to how this might play out, again as far as I can tell.

It's all interesting scientifically, of course. But the consequences are so grim, it can be difficult to have casual conversations about it. Do watch at least a bit of the Alley video linked above, so you can get a much clearer explanation than I could muster here.

[AgentR11]

Resolution of paleo record does not support the use of the word "discontinuous". If you are going to suggest that word is used to describe a model of SLR or ice flow; please cite. Going from 0 to some; or some to faster is not a discontinuous rate of change. If you measure 5x at yr 1 and 10x and yr 2; that doesn't prove a step function, nor discontinuity; it only can be used to demonstrate an average rate over that time span.

non-linear.
exponential.
Perfectly fine. And accurate.

And more than scary enough. More than enough to force people to visibly move out of the way. And hundreds of billions or maybe even trillions of dollars will be spent adapting to incremental SLR as it happens before the system finally fails and industrial civilization dies.

The thread however, is about Houston and flooding; and my point is that as long as industrial civilization is alive and kicking, Houston will be here on/near the coast, in whatever shape the coast happens to be; and where ever the bayous go from stream to brackish tidal zone, there will be the Port of Houston.

[dohboi]

If you prefer 'non-linear' go with that. In the long-term geological record, it looks pretty much like a sudden jump from one state to another. I don't care to cavil about terminology.

"as long as industrial civilization is alive "

There's the rub, indeed.

(And yes, ROCK, we do know about subsidence. That doesn't make things any nicer, as far as I can see.)

[ROCKMAN]

Agent - I haven't bothered to stay up with the thread: has anyone come to understand that the GOM was going to eventually inundate Houston even of AGW wasn't a factor? I just don't think many here are capable of appreciating the subsidence issue effecting the entire Gulf Coast. AGW might bring that future a bit sooner but it was always going to happen.

There a reason they call them flood plains and why it isn't a good idea to build on them since they will always eventually and repeatedly flood. Hence "flood plain". LOL

[AgentR11]

There are lots of smooth curves that have "sudden" jumps if you yoink their coefficients around hard enough and make the graph big enough. Doesn't make them any less of a smooth, continuous function.

Rock - I dunno, its hard to describe; people come to visit Houston, and they drive through downtown, or see a picture, or look at the refinery spread from the ship channel bridge and think its some vast fixed structure that is meant to last forever and Houston dies if it drowns. They don't get in a canoe and paddle down a bayou the coast, don't see the rotted off foundation posts, collapsed concrete, rusted out steel.

The sea does a lot of the hiding for us; when it eats something, it EATS it, its really gone. metal disolves like a Popsicle, concrete collapses under its own weight and sinks into the mud and goop. usually the eating happens with a storm; something was there, then its not; it doesn't get rebuilt, it gets put somewhere else. Whole subdivisions just washed away; shorelines sinking, changing, dredgers constantly waging war against an unbeatable opponent.

It is a very good point though; long term, nothing East of the confluence of Buffalo and White Oak bayou can last. It was doomed to a mortal life the moment it was located there. And that's OK. Humans are mortal. The works of our hands need not claim a desire for immortality. They will live, make their money, and die; just as the folks who build them. And after they die, the flounder, trout, and redfish; along with the crabs will put the broken pieces to good use.

Safe in the knowledge that when AgentR goes fishing, only catfish are dumb enough to bite.

[Lore]

The step function is when coastal areas get hit by mega storms with nothing in the way to slow them down any longer and no help to rebuild from them.

Storm surge is a normal factor of building decisions. We know where the Cat5/Katrina-esque marker is. The cost to insure is based upon such things. Houston will get Katrina scale surges in the future. Each time it happens, large slices of marginal flood zone properties will get zoned out of economic viability; nothing will be rebuilt on them; the displaced companies either go out of business, or set up shop higher up; either is fine.

Katrina is in the rear view mirror and the marker changes with time. Each time it happens it cost millions and banks and insurance companies are not going to foot the bill for it every time. As sea levels rapidly rise it won't take much to cause havoc in areas which would have brushed off milder storms in the past.

If there are no financial markets capable, then industrial civilization is over; all the cities will be dead within a few months; and whether Bob's Engine Maintenance shop got flooded or not, is irrelevant.

How did you think it was going to be otherwise? In almost every one of my replies I stated there will be no insurance or financial backing for these regions. if anywhere once the markets get torn apart by this. We're talking major changes in decades, not centuries.

Houston is only one spot on the map. There are going to be millions more people which will be severely impacted before then along with the all the accompanied costs. Banks and insurance companies will have no choice but to close shop. Right now for places like Florida it's just a short term fools game of musical chairs. Somebody soon is going to say the jig is up and then lookout.

As far as SLR, Houston, and flooding; I'm obviously not interested in the question after the point in time where industrial civilization is dead. That's a pointless argument.

That is exactly the point because it's not that far off. What I'm talking about will be detrimentally affecting the generation born today, if not sooner.

Make no mistake, if the financial markets die; billions of people will starve to death; and quite quickly. I don't think most folks have any clue how dependent the food CALORIE system is on modern financial systems.

With that I agree.

[dohboi]

Good points, Lore. Even among those who pretty well accept AGW, there is a tendency to look at the worst storms that have hit in their general region and to see that as some sort of maximum that they may have to deal with in the years going forward.

When in fact those storms pretty much all occurred in a world that was still below 400 ppm CO2 atmospheric concentration, and a world that was still less than 1 degree C above pre-industrial levels of global warming.

We're already in a whole different world, and we will be in yet another whole different world on many, many fronts in just a few years...or even months, if the we reach virtually ice free conditions in the Arctic Ocean in September (or sooner!).

The atmosphere is not only :

--on average hotter with more energy for mayhem,

--it is also juiced with more water vapor (up now by something like 10% above pre-industrial levels),

--and we also have a whacked out jet stream that will be pummeling some areas with storm after ever-more-intense storm while leaving other areas beyond desiccated,

--and we have Hadley Cells that are already in the process of shifting, which will move zones where rain has reliably fallen for millennia onto other areas, some of which will not be able to support ag (mountains, lakes, oceans....), creating in the meantime new areas that are ever more parched...

The last shift in particular can be an example of locally very abrupt and permanent climate change. If you move from one cell to another (or rather, the cells shift above and around you), you will suddenly see major shifts in your local climate, even if the movement of the cells itself is relatively gradual.

So all of this means that however confident we think we are in knowing what the worst is that can come ate us, we just don't.

As, for example the people of Leyte in the Philippines found out with Haiyan, the "strongest storm recorded at landfall." Towns and cities on that whole island were "largely destroyed," with death estimates ranging up to "10,000 by the victims from Tacloban City, Leyte alone," and many thousands more beyond that in the rest of the archipelago.

I can imagine a confident native Filipino 'Agent' of that island before the storm confidently proclaiming "We have strong storms all the time" and "We can just move our infrastructure, which is mostly made of bamboo anyway, that has to be regularly replaced, and that bends with the wind" and "We mostly already build our houses on stilts, so we're pretty much prepared" and "SLR is a gradual thing, so we don't have to worry about the sea coming on to the land..."...

But then the storm came, with inundating rains, winds measured at up to 180 mph that flattened everything, and storm surges up to nearly 20 feet that overwhelmed much else.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Typhoon_Haiyan

But not to fall into the same mistake I started with--that is not the worst that the planet has to offer, even though it was the strongest up to that point to make landfall.

We will see yet higher surges across even broader swaths driven by even faster and more destructive winds.

The storms will be like nothing humans have ever experienced, and almost beyond imagination in their destructive force. And yes, they will mostly catch everyone by surprise.

[dohboi]

Since this has been part of the discussion, let me just make it clear that I am not claiming that there are not other places at more risk than Houston. In general, the US fares pretty well on this study of overall (not just GW) risk assessment: http://www.theguardian.com/global-devel ... ?CMP=fb_us

Vanuatu, though, not so well.

[AgentR11]

Since SLR impact isn't really about the static level, but about the maximum levels of storm surge which cause a property to be inundated and potentially destroyed, I present for your amusement:

http://noaa.maps.arcgis.com/apps/Storyt ... 59635a82ee

Instructions:
center Houston in your map,
set the scale so that you have Katy on the West edge, and Anahuac on the East edge.
place mouse on NW corner of Loop 610.

Pretty much everything new and spiffy in recent years has been built North and West of your mouse pointer. Most everything East and South of that point is fairly old, with of course a few exceptions with unique characteristics that really aren't expected to last long compared to the speed of SLR anyway. The number of large commercial buildings constructed N&W far, far exceeds the number of new buildings S&E of that marked point. (mentally include down to Sugarland in your arc, and over to Humble, though activity seriously falls off E of I45.)

This is what I'm talking about when I suggests that cities without physical barriers, move, as economic and climate effects make one side more profitable than the other. Houston *is currently* moving; and moving much faster than SLR encroaches and will encroach. It will continue to move and adapt to SLR and climate change, naturally until the end of industrial civilization.

The only fly in this ointment, is again, the refinery area of Pasadena, but that is a federally caused problem, not a climate change caused problem. How that gets dealt with is a problem for Washington DC, not Houston. I suspect in the end, DC will write a check for cleanup of the flood result before they allow new siting on any scale. The only thing that could interfere with the check, would be the end of industrial civilization, which is beyond the scope of my interest in cities. Past there, THERE BE OMGZOMBIES!!! (which is a shame, because I have a good anti-zombie Katana, but my aging body is slowly losing the ability to put enough power into the cut to eliminate OMGZOMBIES! Such a pity. lol)

Also offer this to consider as flood control note:


What you see here, is the Bayou at normal (note daily tidal ebb and flow, station is right at the edge of where the bayou becomes tidal, kayaked there many times) at Apr 5th'ish; then the rain events start, followed by the weird tracking storm that fed into all the real small drainages to the bayou. Peak is very high (and acceptable), but integrate for area, and you can see, the bulk of the water of the event is captured by the control system; and was then (and continues to be) released; keeping the bayou high, but well within its banks for a very long time. Lots and lots of water, enough to annihilate downtown, peacefully pouring out into the bay.

That is what happens when you spend many years and billions of dollars adapting to Climate Change.

[ROCKMAN]

Nice data, Agent. I don't really pay close attention to this thread: so did anyone bother to point out that those heavy rains didn't shut down "Houston". Of course there was some local disruption most in low lying areas. But work on the edge of downtown and made it to work by 0600 with no problem. It was only later that morning that I got an email that we closed the office for the day. There was no problem working the rest of the day; electric and Internet kept on working. Of course some of the employees living in low lying areas would not have been able to make it in due to high water on some roads.

And note: I live on the east side at Baytown right across the highway from the second largest refinery (ExxonMobil) in the western hemisphere. From what I could tell most if not all the units kept functioning. And the plant sits near sea level on the Houston Ship Channel which is directly open to the Gulf of Mexico. Interesting that ExxonMobil has had a huge new unit in the plant under construction for about a year. ground level varies from a few feet below SL to 35' above SL. The municipalities have been built on reclaimed marshes, swamps, and prairies, which are all still visible in undeveloped parts of the Bay Area. Baytown is bordered by water on three sides. Along the south and west is Galveston Bay. On the east is Cedar Bayou. The city is roughly bordered along the north by Interstate 10. Portions of the city to the east of Cedar Bayou lie in Chambers County. Flatness of the local terrain and proximity to the bay have made flooding a recurring problem for the area. Baytown and surrounding communities once relied on groundwater for its needs, but severe land subsidence has forced much the city to turn to ground-level water sources.

And again notice the increased flood potential is mostly from subsidence and not SLR.

I suspect XOM has a long term plan to just increase the height of the existing levees. Given their huge power generating plant they can pump as much water out of the plant as needed...Justas they have done for decades. And of course there will be areas more severely impaced by SLR. But folks really don't need to run around like their hair is on fire over Houston's future. LOL.

[AgentR11]

Agree with your suspicion about refinery mitigation; one thing we're almost as good as the Chinese here is pouring concrete; there's no reason to believe anyone would have any trouble building a meter or two of additional levee protection for any economically viable refinery; especially here in the US where its essentially impossible to go to a blank spot and get a permit to build a new refinery. Given the rate of SLR I just don't see how it could be an issue; at least until the point that might arise should some really large ice sheet just slide right off into the sea and raise levels by meters in a few days.

That'd pretty much wreck everything, everywhere; but Houston would be no worse off than anyone else.

Lots of people just don't get Houston, and its kinda hard to explain. Climate Change, or no climate change; it floods; flood control engineer asks modeling dude how much annual rain goes where, modeling dude says X, engineer says OK and make the pond this deep and that wide. No one ever said "climate change"; but the modeling dude's model uses current data and accepted methods; so its "cooked in" at the beginning. The county doesn't need or care why, the engineer does need or care why, the back hoe operator doesn't need to know why. Just.. how many acre feet do we need to catch. The end.