South Florida Begins To Address The Fundamental Question - What If It's Already Too Late?

[hatrack]

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But beyond the dire warnings, something else is happening in South Florida. Here, for the first time in North America, the conversation is no longer just about what climate-change countermeasures or conservation initiatives to pursue – taking shorter showers or subsidizing electric cars. It’s about a much more existential question: What if it’s too late?

Scientists are starting to suggest that, in the long run, much of South Florida cannot be saved and that policymakers should begin planning for how to best deal with a massive northward exodus in the coming decades, as some of the most iconic real estate on the continent begins to succumb to the sea. “Sooner or later, this city, as you see it right now, won’t be like this,” says Henry Briceño, a water-quality researcher at Florida International University. “Miami and the whole of South Florida is not going to be like this any more. So we have to develop a way to plan and supply services in a changing scenario, and that’s not easy. And then, sooner or later, we’ll have to move. Most of the population will have to move.”

Imagine a prohibition on fossil fuels, effective tomorrow. Every gas-guzzler off the road; every coal plant shuttered; every source of greenhouse-gas emissions brought under control. Even then, by some estimates, the atmosphere would experience residual warming for another 30 years. That, in turn, would continue to heat the oceans for about another century. The warming ocean would melt the ice-packs in Greenland and Antarctica. And, finally, those melting masses of ice would raise the sea level. “We’ve missed the boat, so to speak, on stopping serious warming in a way so we can turn it around real quick,” says Harold Wanless, chair of the department of geological sciences at the University of Miami. “That’s gone, we’ve warmed the ocean too much. So we’re in for it now.”

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But even as experts tried for years to explain these looming catastrophes to South Florida residents, showing them maps of how much land would be lost with every foot of sea-level rise, often they would encounter the same response. “They’d look at a map and say, ‘Oh, my house will still be there,’” Prof. Wanless says. “Yeah, but the infrastructure has totally collapsed, you just happen to be in a little high spot. There’s no sewage, and there’s probably no reliable electricity or anything any more. You’re just camping out there on your little hill.” The response illustrates the central hurdle for climate-change activists: The changes will unfold over the better part of a century. In geologic terms, it’s a blink of an eye. But in human terms, where the standard unit of measurement is often a 30-year mortgage cycle, it’s easy to dismiss rising waters as a problem for a future generation to face.

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http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/come-hell-or-high-water-the-disaster-scenario-that-is-south-florida/article25552300/

[Erich Bloodaxe BSN]

1. Your house may still be there, but no one will want to buy it.

By not moving now, you're throwing the money your heirs would inherit... well... into the ocean.

[phantom power]

5. The interesting thing is, it's now down to *who* loses the money.

If I sell it, then the next owner is the one who eats it. Whoever's sitting on it when the music stops.

[Erich Bloodaxe BSN]

6. Which leads one to the notion of only selling to someone you don't like.

I've put a fair amount of work into my house and yard (and am in a part of the country that isn't going to be borked as hard by climate change), so if/when I get around to selling, I want to sell to someone who will actually harvest the cherries, berries, apples, and not just think of the yard as 'landscape', and who will appreciate the little quirks, and not simply repaint everything in shades of white.

But if I were in an area that's going to be underwater, I'd be looking for a way to sell to some person I wouldn't want for a neighbour.

[Flying Squirrel]

7. I'd approach it differently

I would simply advise every prospective buyer of the possible future situation, and then my conscience would be clean regardless of who bought it.

[riversedge]

2. From what I have read--it is too late.

[HooptieWagon]

3. It's too late.

Much of Florida can't be saved. Dikes and Levees (like NOLA) simply won't work. Florida sits atop porous limestone, the sea will simply come up through the ground. Many of the cities, especially SE Florida, will have to be abandoned.
I live in St Pete. My house is on a ridge, about 50+ ft above sea level, but half the city is less than 15' above sea level. I'll be on an island, idk if there will be any infrastructure here, but the remainder of the city will have to be relocated. All the barrier islands will have to be abandoned, they will be underwater.

[orwell]

4. And yet...

...they keep electing RepubliCons.

DeNile is not only a river in Egypt.

[OnlinePoker]

8. And, yet, people continue to be allowed to move there.

This is from last year, but at the time they had over 100k net new residents per year.

http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/florida/fl-florida-migration-20141017-story.html

When the waters are lapping at their ankles they will be crying to the government for a solution and a bailout (fiscal as well as liquid). The global oceans were 20 feet higher during the last interglacial period. There is no reason to assume it won't happen again, but the difference between then and now is we have ringed the Earth's shorelines with cities and infrastructure and refuse to do anything to stop the growth. Human's only really look at what will effect them in the short term. They may complain about things like climate change, but as the thread on turning off your air conditioner demonstrates, they are unwilling to suffer to effect a real change. The same will be for rising oceans.