I’m going to be putting out a lot of stuff that kind of backed up in the aftermath of Election Disaster 2016.
Here’s more from Jeff Goodell, explaining the ground level realities of sea level rise and flooding in Miami Beach. I met with Jeff as the sun was setting in one of Miami Beach’s most threatened neighborhoods.
Mankind’s capacity for self delusion is nearly limitless. Goodell lays it out beautifully in just 2 minutes—-there is no arguing with what he says, and yet the fools in Miami are pouring $400 million down a rat hole (with much more to follow) and are proud of it?. Raising the freaking sidewalks is a solution?
Miami needs to be the sacrificial lamb and go under ASAP in order to put an end to the self-delusion. The shock waves from that would send a message to the insurance industry, the politicians, and the rest of the country that times-a-wasting on dealing with climate change. Daily waves of tornadoes across the states that have given us Inhofe, Pruitt, Lamer Smith, Gohmert, Cruz, Sessions, et al would add an exclamation point.
Apologies to Miamians and Red Staters for putting you in the foremost skirmish line, but in wartime somebody has to do it as well as “walk point”. A lot of you DID vote for the morons who have delayed action on AGW, so maybe there’s a bit of karma there too.
The hardest part of watching it unfold is the people who can’t afford to get out of harms way who will be the ones who will still live in these areas long after the ‘smart money’ the ‘not so smart money’ and the ‘product-of-brother-and-sister-relationship-level-stupid-money’ disappear. It’s going to be gut wrenching once reporters go to these near derelict ruins in the next decades and ask, “why are you still living in this decaying dying place?” And hear them reply, “because I have no where else to go”, knowing they won’t be able to afford to live out of harms way because the land value prices on elevated lands near the coast were pushed up by speculators who enticed development in these low lying areas in the first place.
They will do the same thing New Orleans did and is doing. They will bitch and moan and get the Federal taxpayer living in Kansas to pay for their nice new levees and storm pumps. That is the american way. Rather than fix the ground subsidence problem they will get you to pay to protect them.
I see the denialist of reality are hard at work. Miami has a problem, it is not ocean rise. It is ground subsidence. They even have an agency to handle the problem,. The ground is sinking because Miami is busy pumping out all the fresh water for the millions of people living in that part of the state and to make a place like Miami more than a swamp, diverting surface flows away. Both of those things make the ground sink. Ocean rise is no more than 3 inch trend in the next 100 years per NOAA tidal gauge data.