[dohboi]

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles ... stal-plain

Louisiana, Sinking Fast, Prepares to Empty Out Its Coastal Plain

Louisiana is finalizing a plan to move thousands of people from areas threatened by the rising Gulf of Mexico, effectively declaring uninhabitable a coastal area larger than Delaware.

...Rob Moore, a flood policy expert at the Natural Resources Defense Council in Chicago, said that if the state goes ahead with the plan, “then every coastal state in the country should be asking themselves, ‘If Louisiana can do this, why aren’t we?’”

I think parts of Hampton Roads region would be one of the next ones to go...with probably much greater economic consequences...

https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?feature=7010

A new NASA-led study shows that land in the Hampton Roads, Virginia, metropolitan area is sinking at highly uneven rates, with a few trouble spots subsiding 7 to 10 times faster than the area average.

[KaiserJeep]

It's a bad news/bad news sort of thing. The more fresh water you pump up from the ground, the faster it subsides. The most fresh water is pumped in areas where there are the most people.

Oddly enough, the golf courses on Nantucket are sinking pretty fast. They have multiple wells, they pump and irrigate a lot of water growing grass on sandy soils, and use a lot of chemicals in the process. This contaminates the drinking water wells in the area.

[dohboi]

Thanks for those insights, KJ. I didn't know about the golf courses...sad and wasteful...

[dohboi]

Bloomberg thinks the rush from the coasts may be about to hit Florida:

South Florida’s Real Estate Reckoning Could Be Closer Than You Think

Hurricane Irma showed just how vulnerable South Florida—and some of the nation’s most expensive real estate—is to climate change.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features ... -you-think

[Tanada]

I hope Ibon managed to offload his Florida property, otherwise he may be left holding the bag as the bubble pops. Florida property has had insane pricing for a while now so they are long overdue even without sea level rise.

As for Louisiana, they should have done that a decade ago when Katrina proved living in a subsidence zone of a hurricane prone state is a really bad idea. The real screams will come when the retreat reaches its first major population center, not sure if that will be New Orleans or not as they have spent a great sum on land fill and defenses.

[Newfie]

Hampton Roads area could be very expensive given it has the worlds largest navel base.

For those that don’t recall it has a triple whammy
1-Ground water extraction leading to subsidence
2-It’s on the shoulder of a impact crater, and the shoulder is not completely stable, it slumps.
3-SLR

[GHung]

I personally know quite a few South Florida folks who have second (summer) homes in our area. Two I know (so far) have listed their homes in Florida and will relocate here permanently. Many kept their homes there to enjoy no state income tax, but my part-time neighbor says it's not worth it. He said the other day he wants to get out before real estate crashes around Fort Meyers. He's hoping Maria was his last hurricane.

[Outcast_Searcher]

The real screams will come when the retreat reaches its first major population center, not sure if that will be New Orleans or not as they have spent a great sum on land fill and defenses.

Since no one ever wants to pay for their own local issues if they're expensive, I think the real screams will come when the Beltway clown-fest insists on handing the tax bill for such moves (in large part, anyway) to the national tax base.

This is the kind of thing that could inspire many red state voters to vote for another Trump-like figure who promises to change such rulings (whether he/she can credibly do that or not).

And of course, since such issues won't be dealt with until the last possible moment, as our entire society is procrastination-based as far as dealing with real problems, I forsee quite a circus.

And the cost of such issues for an area like NYC could make the $trillion dollar infrastructure bill numbers look like a down payment, if the problem is to be dealt with effectively and for a reasonable timeframe, instead of just a short term patch.

[GHung]

.....
This is the kind of thing that could inspire many red state voters to vote for another Trump-like figure who promises to change such rulings (whether he/she can credibly do that or not).

And of course, since such issues won't be dealt with until the last possible moment, as our entire society is procrastination-based as far as dealing with real problems, I forsee quite a circus.

Red state voters (see Texas, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina ....) never have a problem spending my federal tax dollars after another hurricane hits.

[Outcast_Searcher]

.....
This is the kind of thing that could inspire many red state voters to vote for another Trump-like figure who promises to change such rulings (whether he/she can credibly do that or not).

And of course, since such issues won't be dealt with until the last possible moment, as our entire society is procrastination-based as far as dealing with real problems, I forsee quite a circus.

Red state voters (see Texas, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina ....) never have a problem spending my federal tax dollars after another hurricane hits.

I didn't say it would all be rational. I'm talking about politics and thinking of the huge bloc of square red states in the interior.

Maybe I'm wrong. I'm just making my observation based on how often with a new problem or a problem that is seen (at least at the time) to be a local problem, the real fighting is about the money, regardless of the superficial rhetoric --especially when the bill is very large.

As far as practicality, you're right. This is the same concept as a hurricane or tornado -- EXCEPT that it's forseeable. (Ironic then, that the red state types in denial about AGW will claim the opposite UNTIL they have to help pay for it!)

So since it is forseeable, a legitimate debate might take place on when people should have known to stop buying badly exposed coastal real estate, in, for example, South Florida.

I HOPE that coastal real estate insurance prices would serve to wake everyone up to the financial risks. However, the way such things go in the Beltway, I can also easily predict a big move to have such insurance heavily subsidized by the taxpayer. (That's one as a responsible tax paying KY citizen, I would be very much against.)

[dohboi]

Thanks again, all for good insights into this unfolding story/drama/disaster...

Newf...

....

....

What, oh, um....sorry...I got distracted gazing at my navel base!!

(Sorry, just couldn't resist )

But in seriousness, I wonder if there isn't one more thing to add to your excellent list. Perhaps T or others knowledgeable on such matters could chip in:

Isn't the Hampton Roads area far enough south that it is on the other side of the 'subsidence see saw' it that's a term that is slowly raising the land directly covered by glaciers in the north, but conversely lowering those that were not so covered in the south? So wouldn't that be another item to add to the list, however slight? Or am I just way off here for one reason or the other? Thanks ahead of time for any light, insight or illuminating links anyone can throw on the matter.

[KaiserJeep]

I could be wrong about this, but I just do not see a mass exodus occurring. Oceanfront property is so desirable and so expensive, and all you really need to abandon is that which is near sea level, and most of it is at least a few feet above. It will be decades before SLR impacts most communities, if not centuries.

In 1957 hurricane Audrey killed 416 people and flooded more areas than did Katrina, with a 13 foot storm surge. I lived in a Northern suburb of NO called Metarie. Audrey's winds averaged 126mph when it came ashore, changed into an "extratropical cyclone" that was still registering over 100mph when it traversed the MidEast and hit NYC, after traveling hundreds of miles overland. The death toll difference was that most NO area houses at the time were of brick construction and constructed atop pilings driven with pile drivers down to bedrock. The roads were sunken, the houses bermed at least 10 feet above the road surface with no basements. As a consequence, the roads flooded - I remember boats and canoes in the street in front of my house. I REALLY remember a front yard with dozens of venemous snakes which had been driven out of the swamps by rising waters. We all had canned foods and I developed a distaste for evaporated milk which I was using on my corn flakes.

The real difference was attitude, we expected hurricanes and prepared for them, using hurricane resistent housing design and building housing in low-lying areas was not allowed unless they were filled well above sea level. But in more recent years official corruption allowed low lying areas of NO to be built up, using concrete slabs which commenced sinking immediately because the foundation piles were ommitted. Wooden frame construction was allowed, and even the berms that raised houses several feet above sea level were no longer required. Then Katrina happened, and half the storm surge from Audrey killed 3-4 times as many people, flooded many more low-lying homes, and the lesser winds destroyed many wooden structures outright.

Ask yourselves what would have been different if proper building regulations for the greater NO area would have been in place. To begin with, hurricane-resistent housing would have been much less affordable, and more people would have lived further inland. No development would have happened on vulnerable drained swampland (wetlands were not protected in the 1950s, but we KNEW). Brick homes atop pilings would have resisted wind much better, and everybody would have prepared for days without power, using kerosene "hurricane lanterns" and days worth of non-perishable foods.

People have always built shacks and other housing on beaches. The difference was that they didn't have flood insurance, FEMA, or the expectation of rebuilding after their houses blew down.

[Outcast_Searcher]

I could be wrong about this, but I just do not see a mass exodus occurring. Oceanfront property is so desirable and so expensive, and all you really need to abandon is that which is near sea level, and most of it is at least a few feet above. It will be decades before SLR impacts most communities, if not centuries.

Well, it's already impacting many. (Not destroying, but impacting).

Just look, for example, at all the expense and news replacing beaches is getting. That's definitely an impact, and even with only minor SLR (which is definitely occurring and accelerating) that can only get meaningfully worse -- unless and until government (i.e. taxpayers) stop subsidizing that.)

It's not enough of a problem short term for the fast crash doomers to have another (valid) reason to shriek about short term demise, etc. But it's not reasonable to pretend like it's not a meaningful problem, with an accelerating trend as to the source, for many coastal areas.

So to me, "mass exodus" isn't needed. "Mass expense" is enough to force some serious decisions, even among the clowns who infest Capitol Hill.

[dohboi]

"building housing in low-lying areas was not allowed"

Ahh, so you love heavy government regulation of citizen's activities, then, KJ. I seeee

But really, mostly what OS said, tho I do think once the rush starts in earnest it will quickly become a stampede, no on wanting to be the last sucker holding the worthless bag/property. As GH pointed out, people are already moving out of Florida anticipating just such a rush. How long till word gets around and people start getting more and more nervous?

There will doubtless be busts and booms on the way down, as the KJs of the world sweep in to buy up undervalued properties, as some of them doubtless will be, for the short term anyway. But the long term slope is fewer and fewer people near low lying areas near coasts. "Coastal living" will become a horror to shudder at rather than a highly desirable quantity.

[onlooker]

Not quite analogues to all the above examples but certainly similar in that economic and well being concerns are shared by all those in coastal or Island areas. 100 thousand leaving Puerto Rico is a stark example
https://qz.com/1122679/puerto-rico-news ... ane-maria/

[Newfie]

KJ is likely looking at Nantucket, I grew up around LBI, NJ. They tore down small cottages to build bigger homes that they tore down to build mansions. I’m seeing the same thing here in Vero Beach.

NOLA, yeah sure.

Eventually Miami will have bad issues. It I’m betting the housing price stays up waaaay beyond all reasonableness, if it hasn’t already.

[pstarr]

The sea is rising, we have been greedy, anti-government and shortsighted. We will continue to pay for FEMA and insurance bailouts (repubs and dems be damned). The construction industry likes things like they are, has real influence at the local, state and national level because it accounts for almost 10% of our economy. So nothing will change. But it hardly matters, The seas will inundate us regardless.

Sea level rise has actually slowed over the last centuries, since we have been releasing CO2. Only been about .07 per year during the industrial revolution with little change. It rose much faster previously. It was .216 per year, over most of the last 20,000 years. It now takes 3.08 years for the oceans to rise what used to happen in one year.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/larrybell/ ... 7e22a11946

https://www.skepticalscience.com/Past-1 ... -Rise.html

"Figure 1 - Sea level reconstruction from 150,000 years ago to the present. Relative sea level (RSL) in grey-shaded area, with RSL data in blue crosses. The downward-pointing red arrows indicates peaks in sea level rise exceeding 1.2 metres per century (12mm per year). The break in the record is due to the absence of foraminifera (upon which the reconstruction is based) as a result of excessively salty seawater during the last ice age. Adapted from Grant (2012)."

The world's oceans were much lower during the last ice age . . . hundreds of feet below today's sea level . . . because water was locked up in glaciers. Welcome woolly mammoths and humans to North America! Now the glaciers are melting, water is rising and covering up the last of the land bridge. It's headed back to historical levels. Since the coldest part of the last ice age, warming oceans have risen 360-400 feet already. And will continue to rise, whether we burn fossil fuels or not. Another 100 feet whatever we do.

[KaiserJeep]

No, Newfie, I am not looking at Nantucket, where beachfront (already much in peril from subsidence and storm surge) costs 8 to 20 million $ per acre, and is still appreciating. My 3 acres is a half mile inland and in one of the few forests that survived the clearcuts of the 18th and 19th centuries. The former oak trees were turned into whaling ships and cooking fuel. My property is menaced more by fire than anything else, but fire is so rare there that I am paying far less than I would pay in a forest elsewhere.

I repeat, beachfront remains as much in demand as before, and if you can't afford the insurance chances are that you are Middle Class and should not be living there anyways. The people that do own beachfront in most areas have vacation homes they pay somebody to maintain, and pay whatever the outrageous insurance costs, for a few days to a few weeks of occupancy in the Summer.

The fictional mass exodus is yet another Doomer fantasy. Make no mistake about it, in a short while all the Middle Class pretenders will be squeezed out by insurance rates, and the shacks replaced by the 10,000+ sq ft "cottages" of the one percenters.

[Newfie]

Yes KJ, that’s what I understood and tend to agree with.m
Excepting the effects of financial collapse.

[onlooker]

As some have said here, long before any place is underwater, economic exigencies will trigger an exodus or abandonment
https://www.munichre.com/en/media-relat ... index.html