Thread for discussing climate change

[Atlanticmike]

What will the islands that make up the outer Banks look like in 30 years? Will I be able to drive a vehicle there, get out and enjoy the beach or will it all be under water? I mean, you guys seem to have all the answers, when will the islands be covered in water? I'll say it again, I'll be surfing in the exact same place, in front of the exact same houses on the exact same beach in 30 years. You guys are brainwashed. Cult much??

Mike, are you trying to tell me that climate change and sea level changes don't happen because you can still surf along a particular stretch of shoreline?

I think that there’s some brainwashing here, but it might be much closer to you than you believe. : D

I'm trying to get one of you really really smart guys to tell me when my favorite surfing spots won't be surfable anymore because the beachfront houses will be in the way of me riding a wave. What I'm saying is, I've been surfing the same spots for 40 years and I guarantee you I'll be surfing the exact same spots in 30 years from now, exact same spot. The beach houses I surf in front of won't be moved in 30 years and they won't be moved in 60 years either. Can you prove me wrong?

[canpakes]

Ask Atlanticmike. What the hell is personal anecdotal evidence? That seems like an oxymoron. If anything, he is railing against the self-told stories and affirmations.

By telling us a self-told story and affirmation that he can still surf at a beach, and didn’t notice any climate change or sea-level change.

[canpakes]

Mike, are you trying to tell me that climate change and sea level changes don't happen because you can still surf along a particular stretch of shoreline?

I think that there’s some brainwashing here, but it might be much closer to you than you believe. : D

I'm trying to get one of you really really smart guys to tell me when my favorite surfing spots won't be surfable anymore because the beachfront houses will be in the way of me riding a wave. What I'm saying is, I've been surfing the same spots for 40 years and I guarantee you I'll be surfing the exact same spots in 30 years from now, exact same spot. The beach houses I surf in front of won't be moved in 30 years and they won't be moved in 60 years either. Can you prove me wrong?

Neither will the houses in North Dakota be moved.

Climate change doesn’t guarantee that any particular house needs to be moved, especially considering how and where a house is placed. And climate change effects aren’t limited to seal level changes anyway.

[Atlanticmike]

I'm trying to get one of you really really smart guys to tell me when my favorite surfing spots won't be surfable anymore because the beachfront houses will be in the way of me riding a wave. What I'm saying is, I've been surfing the same spots for 40 years and I guarantee you I'll be surfing the exact same spots in 30 years from now, exact same spot. The beach houses I surf in front of won't be moved in 30 years and they won't be moved in 60 years either. Can you prove me wrong?

Neither will the houses in North Dakota be moved.

Climate change doesn’t guarantee that any particular house needs to be moved, especially considering how and where a house is placed. And climate change effects aren’t limited to seal level changes anyway.

But but but but, I saw Greta thunberg crying the other day and she was saying that the polar ice caps are melting and soon us weirdos that live near the oceans shore will be moving inland. Where is all that water going to go?

[canpakes]

https://www.scientificamerican.com/arti ... ost-towns/

Holland Island, MD -

For years, the spookiest place on Maryland’s Eastern Shore was not a ghost town, but a decrepit white house in the middle of the Chesapeake Bay.

The two-story house, built in 1888, was all that remained of Holland Island, one of a string of ever-shrinking towns where “watermen”—and women—have struggled to stay afloat as sea-level rise and wave action chew away their beloved marsh islands.

Scientists forecast that climate change will take all of the bay’s island communities by the end of the century. Holland was simply the first; its last home collapsed in 2010, days before Halloween.
At its peak, Holland Island supported roughly 70 homes, a post office, a school, a church, a dance hall and a traveling baseball team, according to the 2005 book “The Disappearing Islands of the Chesapeake” by the former Johns Hopkins University marine scientist and historian William Cronin.

Early islanders began leaving in the mid-1910s. A century of storms and rising tides hastened its end.

Its sole champion, a retired Methodist minister and former waterman Stephen White, spent years trying to save the island by ringing it with rocks, planks and sandbags. Nothing worked. In 2010, he sold the white house to a private foundation. Later that year, it collapsed under its own weight.

White blamed elected officials for failing to address the bay’s environmental ills.

“That’s a bitter pill for me to swallow,” he told The Baltimore Sun in 2010 from his home on Deal Island, another sinking bay hamlet (Climatewire, June 15, 2017). “It’s like I lost a loved one, but at the same time, I’m angry about it.”

[Res Ipsa]

Mike, are you trying to tell me that climate change and sea level changes don't happen because you can still surf along a particular stretch of shoreline?

I think that there’s some brainwashing here, but it might be much closer to you than you believe. : D

I'm trying to get one of you really really smart guys to tell me when my favorite surfing spots won't be surfable anymore because the beachfront houses will be in the way of me riding a wave. What I'm saying is, I've been surfing the same spots for 40 years and I guarantee you I'll be surfing the exact same spots in 30 years from now, exact same spot. The beach houses I surf in front of won't be moved in 30 years and they won't be moved in 60 years either. Can you prove me wrong?

Nope. Assuming you’re surfing at Canova Beach, it looks like there’s a ridge of dunes that parallels the beach at about 25’ above sea level. So, you can rest assured that your little slice of haven won’t be completely be submerged before you die.

I don’t know about access. I’m assuming you access the beach from the north, and the main problems with highway seem to be the south. But it all depends on what the fine taxpayers of North Carolina will continue to be willing to shell out for, given the parts of the state that are already being affected by flooding during the highest tides and the damage to the Outer Banks caused by storms. So, can’t help you there.

[huckelberry]

I'm trying to get one of you really really smart guys to tell me when my favorite surfing spots won't be surfable anymore because the beachfront houses will be in the way of me riding a wave. What I'm saying is, I've been surfing the same spots for 40 years and I guarantee you I'll be surfing the exact same spots in 30 years from now, exact same spot. The beach houses I surf in front of won't be moved in 30 years and they won't be moved in 60 years either. Can you prove me wrong?

Mike, I think you realize that climate is complicated and green house gas collection of more heat from the sun is not the whole story. There are variables which make any prediction nothing more than a estimate based on probabilities. We never know the future for sure. Perhaps something we do not see now will happen and block some heat from the sun and stop global warming. Perhaps a hazy cloud from outer space. Perhaps repeating big volcanic explosions which cloud the skies causing cooling. Perhaps the sun will go into a bit cooler a phase.

Of course nothing like that will prevent the greenhouse effect. Instead such surprise events would delay or slow the warming of the total globe.

So of course there is a possibility that unknown factors will slow the warming enough that the beach will be in the same place. On the other hand your guarantee is just a sand castle waiting for the tide to come in.

[canpakes]

I would wager that if any of the homeowners of those houses sold them today, the banks would offer a 30-year mortgage to the buyer and they would be able to get insurance. The money is on Atlanticmike in this wager. I would be long Mike and short Alf.

You’ll always be able to find someone who will insure you at some cost. But that cost is increasing quickly for folks in coastal zones.

So, wager freely. But hold back a handful of cash for your increased premiums. ; )

Florida’s version of the American dream, which holds that even people of relatively modest means can aspire to live near the water, depends on a few crucial components: sugar white beaches, soft ocean breezes and federal flood insurance that is heavily subsidized.

But starting Oct. 1, communities in Florida and elsewhere around the country will see those subsidies begin to disappear in a nationwide experiment in trying to adapt to climate change: Forcing Americans to pay something closer to the real cost of their flood risk, which is rising as the planet warms.

While the program also covers homes around the country, the pain will be most acutely felt in coastal communities. For the first time, the new rates will also take into account the size of a home, so that large houses by the ocean could see an especially big jump in rates.

Federal officials say the goal is fairness — and also getting homeowners to understand the extent of the risk they face, and perhaps move to safer ground, reducing the human and financial toll of disasters.

“Subsidized insurance has been critical for supporting coastal real estate markets,” said Benjamin Keys, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School. Removing that subsidy, he said, is likely to affect where Americans build houses and how much people will pay for them. “It’s going to require a major rethink about coastal living.”

The government’s new approach threatens home values, perhaps nowhere as intensely as Florida, a state particularly exposed to rising seas and worsening hurricanes. In some parts of the state, the cost of flood insurance will eventually increase tenfold, according to data obtained by The New York Times.

For example, Jennifer Zales, a real estate agent who lives in Tampa, pays $480 a year for flood insurance. Under the new system, her rates will eventually reach $7,147, according to Jake Holehouse, her insurance agent.

…

In 2019, FEMA said it would instead price flood insurance based on the particular risks facing each individual property, a change the agency called “Risk Rating 2.0.” After a delay by the Trump administration, the new system takes effect next month for people purchasing flood insurance. For existing customers, rates will rise starting next April.

The change has won applause from a grab bag of advocacy groups, including climate resilience experts, environmentalists, the insurance industry and the budget watchdog group Taxpayers for Common Sense.

“With a rapidly escalating threat of natural disasters, Risk Rating 2.0 is a much needed and timely change,” said Laura Lightbody of Pew Charitable Trusts, which has pushed governments to better respond to climate threats. Higher insurance costs, she said, were “a reflection of our new, wet reality.”

But the financial consequences of that new reality will be staggering for some communities.

The flood program insures 3.4 million single-family homes around the country. For 2.4 million of those homes, rates will go up by no more than $120 in the first year, according to data released by FEMA — similar to the typical annual increases under the current system. An additional 627,000 homes will see their costs fall.

But 331,000 single-family homes around the country will face a significant rise in costs. More than 230,000 households will see increases up to $240 in the first year; an additional 74,000 households will see costs rise by as much as $360. For about 25,000 single-family homes, addtional costs could reach as high as $1,200.

Almost half of those 25,000 households are in Florida, many of them along the string of high-risk barrier islands that run from St. Petersburg south to Fort Myers.

In the tiny hamlet of Anna Maria, on the tip of an island at the mouth of Tampa Bay, one ZIP code leads the country in the number of single-family homes facing an increase of more than $1,200. Other nearby towns, including Siesta Key and Boca Grande, face similar jumps.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/24/clim ... -cost.html

[canpakes]

More for Cultellus -

…
Every homeowner, of course, needs property insurance. If hurricane winds destroy your roof and rain pours into your house, then you can file a claim under a standard homeowner’s policy. Wind coverage has traditionally been part of standard policies sold by private companies such as State Farm and Farm Bureau.
But if water rises from below—from a flood or a storm surge—and damages your home, then you would have to file a flood-insurance claim. The federal government manages the flood-insurance program, and any property owner can buy it at relatively modest prices.

By contrast, homeowners’ insurance, including wind coverage, is increasingly costly in hurricane-prone areas and difficult to find. In 18 states along the Gulf Coast and the Atlantic seaboard, most major insurers are in retreat, selling fewer policies or not renewing them at all.

In Florida and Louisiana, more than 600,000 homeowners’ policies, which include wind coverage, were canceled in the wake of Hurricane Katrina and other 2005 storms. Companies have ratcheted up premiums and deductibles for coastal homeowners, narrowed terms of deductibles, or turned away new customers.
…
Four of South Carolina’s largest property insurers indicated that they wouldn’t renew homeowners’ coverage for about 20,000 policies along the South Carolina coast. In addition, many homeowners from Myrtle Beach to Hilton Head have experienced premium increases. South Carolina’s coastal-insurance market, like that of Florida, is experiencing a “near meltdown,” notes Kevin M. McCarty, the Florida insurance commissioner.

“We’ve never had to deal with what we’re dealing with now,” says Scott Richardson, the South Carolina insurance commissioner.

https://www.scseagrant.org/will-climate ... insurance/

[canpakes]

Atlanticmike, your limited surfing range could expand a bit, and then you’d see some problems.

Along Arctic shores of Alaska, shoreline erosion and habitat loss are accelerating due to increasing permafrost thaw and sea ice forming much later in the year, leaving the coast more susceptible to waves and storm surge. Alaskan government agencies and land-use planners are relocating some Native Alaskan villages and critical airstrips farther inland from eroding shores, such as Kivalina on the northwestern coast.

The U.S. west coast is vulnerable as well. In California alone, roughly half a million people and $100 billion worth of coastal property are at risk during the next century. In highly developed coastal areas such as San Francisco Bay and Puget Sound, hundreds of millions of dollars are being spent on restoration of nearshore ecosystems, which protect shorelines from erosion by waves and provide habitat for socially and economically important species. But resource managers remain uncertain whether outcomes of these efforts will be resilient to projected sea-level rise.

https://www.usgs.gov/centers/pcmsc/scie ... er_objects