posted by
martyb
on Sunday February 24 2019, @01:29AM
from the I've-got-a-sinking-feeling-about-this dept.
from the I've-got-a-sinking-feeling-about-this dept.
The far-flung Marshall Islands needs to raise its islands if it is to avoid being drowned by rising sea levels, President Hilda Heine has warned.
Plans are underway for national talks on which of the 1,156 islands, scattered over 29 coral atolls, can be elevated in a dramatic intervention to ensure safety on the islands.
...
Most of the islands are less than two metres (6.5 feet) above sea level and the government believes physically raising the islands was the only way to save the Marshall Islands from extinction.
Is the solution a viable one, or are the Marshallese more likely to join the Sea Gypsies?
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Marshall Islands Consider Radical Measures to Survive Rising Sea Levels
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(Score: 3, Insightful) by Snotnose on Sunday February 24 2019, @01:35AM (10 children)
And I'm old, 90% chance I'll be dead in 20 years. So I should care because......
Grabbing popcorn, this should be fun :)
When the dust settled America realized it was saved by a porn star.
(Score: 4, Touché) by JoeMerchant on Sunday February 24 2019, @03:31AM (2 children)
Nope, you shouldn't care - neither should you be allowed to make decisions which shape policy about this kind of topic. No cheap oil for you.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by isostatic on Sunday February 24 2019, @08:25PM (1 child)
Votes should be weighted to how many years you have to live with the decision - so a 20 year old gets 3 times the voting power of a 60 year old.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday February 25 2019, @02:46AM
Ah, so the rich should get more weight on their votes than the poor, because they can afford the healthcare...
That one gets really dramatic when immortality comes around.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 4, Informative) by captain normal on Sunday February 24 2019, @04:01AM (1 child)
Depends on where your 150' above sea level your house is. If it's between Cape Flattery and Point Arena, the Cascadia Fault could go at any time. A resulting tsunami could very well top 150' (50 meters). Around 1700 there was a big slip: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1700_Cascadia_earthquake [wikipedia.org]
Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not to his own facts"- --Daniel Patrick Moynihan--
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday February 25 2019, @05:42AM
But only if he happens to be on that weird bit of shoreline that funnels the tsunami into a constricted space. And it's not going to matter whether there is "climate change" or not. The killer is going to be a 50 meter tall tsunami not a few centimeters of sea level rise.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Sunday February 24 2019, @06:38AM (2 children)
We're already seeing them here in Portland: contributing to our skyrocketing rents are displaced Phoenix residents who come here specifically to escape the heat.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 24 2019, @08:14AM (1 child)
Care? It's not reversible anymore.
Pretty soon they will migrate from Portlandia to the North Pole.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 24 2019, @11:52AM
Yeah? Well, the jokes on them because that shit is gonna melt.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 24 2019, @05:19PM
If you got out o the basement once in awhile you might have children and grand children you care about.
(Score: 2) by Snotnose on Monday February 25 2019, @12:13AM
I love how an obvious smart assed comment designed to piss people off pissed so many people off. I'm gonna need more popcorn :)
When the dust settled America realized it was saved by a porn star.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 24 2019, @01:38AM (3 children)
Time for piracy! Ah, life on the open sea, preying on the weak landlubbers, taking all their jewels and doubloons! Aye, that's what they should to, lest they be swallowed up and sink to Davy Jones' Locker!
(Score: 2) by captain normal on Sunday February 24 2019, @04:05AM (1 child)
Pirates had a tendency to not live very long.
Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not to his own facts"- --Daniel Patrick Moynihan--
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 24 2019, @11:55AM
Now, now. Don't discourage the lad. Let him go live his dream.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by The Mighty Buzzard on Sunday February 24 2019, @04:54AM
"Every normal man must be tempted, at times, to spit upon his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats." - H.L. Mencken
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by dltaylor on Sunday February 24 2019, @02:36AM (4 children)
There is now an airfield and shipping dock in an area that was mostly below sea level in the South China Sea. It is not a question of "if", but of "how is it funded".
(Score: 3, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Sunday February 24 2019, @03:37AM (3 children)
There are plenty of questions of how, as well. The most "economically efficient" approaches have nasty unaccounted for environmental costs, particularly in the surrounding sea where the residents get most of their food.
There's a guy in Mexico who has built a couple of islands out of old wooden pallets and mesh bags filled with plastic bottles - he then encourages mangroves to grow on the structure and tie it together with their roots. His is a near-zero-capital, use mostly recycled trash island building scheme, but it wouldn't take much more capital to adopt the approach using more carefully engineered materials and designs for larger scale floating islands. The super-cool aspect of the floater approach is that it doesn't really matter how much sea level rises, costs are the same (though an increase in hurricane activity would be a bummer...)
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by captain normal on Sunday February 24 2019, @04:14AM (2 children)
Sounds good until you consider how you are going to anchor them. I've seen Mangrove swamps torn apart by a big storm,
I don't know if the Chinese are dredging up the coral around the South China Sea atolls they are claiming, or if they are hauling large rip-rap from the main land, but they definitely seem to have a process down.
Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not to his own facts"- --Daniel Patrick Moynihan--
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 24 2019, @08:18AM
It's a shame china has damaged so much of the south china sea islands in its attempt to claim ownership
they may be in for a huge bill when an actual owner takes them to the international court for settlement
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Sunday February 24 2019, @01:55PM
Florida had an approach down for dredging canals to make ocean accessible waterfront real-estate. It was so very very damaging to the surrounding environment (and, incidentally, oversupplying the market with waterfront real-estate driving down the value of powerful groups' holdings) that they eventually slapped a moratorium on all dredging that held close to 100% for almost 40 years... the environment does recover, eventually, and they have started to allow limited dredging through an onerous permitting process in the last 10 years or so in areas that can demonstrate minimal environmental (and maximal positive tax revenue) impact.
Dubai recently repeated the same basic approach with their Palm islands, and South Bimini in the Bahamas did a dredging development that turned "worthless" mangrove swamps into a golf resort, but the underwater impacts were similar to Florida - pretty much destroyed the ecosystem for an underwater area much larger than the dry land improved. Give them 50-100 years and the underwater ecosystems will recover, sometimes better than they were before, if you can avoid a constant input of petroleum and other contaminants to the water...
China may not care about the negative "short term" environmental impacts as much as solidifying their sovereign claims against wandering aircraft carriers.
As for anchoring floating islands - that's relatively easy - it's preventing them from breaking up in a storm that's the problem. When mangroves can develop in the shallows, they form a very effective wave-energy dissipation system that preserves the land behind them from storm erosion. Not sure how well they might work while floating - certainly not too well in the open-shallow ocean where large waves break, but I could imagine converting a coral atoll to a more or less vertical breakwater wall and floating a city inside.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 24 2019, @02:42AM (9 children)
Put GOP headquarters on the islands. After all, they claim climate change is fake news so in theory they are safe.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 24 2019, @03:43AM (6 children)
I always voted left yet I think climate change predictions are bullshit. 30 years ago they were predicting these islands, a third of Florida, and most coastal cities in the world were going to to be underwater by 2020. If you take climate change "science" at face value and never question their predictions, then I have a fantastic homeopathic "medicine" cure-for-everything to sell you.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 24 2019, @05:41AM (2 children)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 24 2019, @02:43PM
You do know that sea levels have been rising for 10000 years, right?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 24 2019, @03:02PM
You are just making stuff up. TFA doesn't say anything specific or definitive or time-dependent. As usual it's just another fortune-telling, doom and gloom, climate horror story full of ambiguous "IF A happens", "then IF B also happens", "aaaand then if C also happens", "then I predict with conviction that D may or might or could happen".
More drivel for the spoon-fed facebook/twitter public to consume and blindly believe in.
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Sunday February 24 2019, @06:42AM (1 child)
that their predictions are steadily getting more accurate is due to scientists steadily and iteratively questioning their assumptions.
For example there's not as much CO2 in the atmosphere as we anticipated because the old models were not built to consider CO2 being dissolved in seawater.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 24 2019, @01:31PM
What are you talking about? Climate models have taken dissolved CO2 in seawater into account since at least the 1970s (if not earlier), as the oceans have basically been recognized as the largest carbon sinks since anyone tried to model the carbon cycle in details.
Now, because the oceans are so important and such a large contributor (and a complex one -- since they store a lot of CO2 in deep water and circulation currents can churn some of that to the surface and thus contribute MORE CO2 sometimes) -- there has been considerable refinement of the models for oceans over the years.
For example, there was a lot of churning in the 1990s due to changes in ocean circulation, so they weren't absorbing as much, but some of that changed in the early 2000s and they started absorbing more again (and that shift wasn't predicted... I still don't know if it's completely understood as a natural cycle or not).
But the idea that the oceans hadn't been included at all in climate models is preposterous.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday February 25 2019, @05:53AM
Seriously, who is "they"? I think we have better things to do than consider bad predictions [climatecentral.org] from hysterical idiots.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Sunday February 24 2019, @05:14AM
Three hundred species of fish, average monthly temperature about 80F, don't need a passport because it's more or less part of the US, English as an official state language, and you don't have to have a license for subsistence fishing? Shit, I may have to start up a Libertarian party headquarters there one of these days. I'll even bring a few hundred pounds of sand with me so nobody can say I didn't do my part to help.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 24 2019, @05:31PM
Can the islands withstand the influx of that many lizards?
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Sunday February 24 2019, @06:36AM
You'll need a clearance [soggy.jobs].
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 2, Insightful) by bradley13 on Sunday February 24 2019, @06:41AM (12 children)
As shown in lots of research, [researchgate.net] coral islands are not a n danger from sea level increases.
This is just aoney-grab.
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 24 2019, @11:58AM
That's an unfortunate typo. How hard is it to type "abalone-grab"?
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Sunday February 24 2019, @02:02PM (10 children)
Whose research? What's their agenda? Where's the counter-research done by groups with the opposite agenda? Who are you going to believe?
I believe that neighborhoods in South Florida, including the one I lived in from 1991 through 2001, are already having to "raise their roads" sooner than they otherwise would have - not only is the ocean rising, but the land is also subsiding - due to the already measurable rises in ocean levels. These kinds of operations aren't cheap even on the mainland, but the alternative is devaluation/abandonment of some of the most valuable real-estate in the city.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday February 25 2019, @05:59AM (9 children)
Land subsides even in the absence of climate change.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday February 25 2019, @02:30PM (8 children)
Yes, it does, particularly when the "land" is mud pumped up out of the local bay. However, in Miami it is a combination effect, subsidence accounted for 90%+ of "rising water levels" through the 1960s, but rising ocean levels are now being given credit for roughly 50% of the overall rate in most places. Rising ocean levels may have only accelerated mitigation projects in my neighborhood from the mid 2000s to the early 2000s, but other neighborhoods that might have been "dry enough" through the 2050s are going to need mitigation in the 2020s, and it continues to accelerate.
Now, as to whether or not the political will of the people is driving sensible mitigations... let's just say I'm glad I'm not living in it anymore.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday February 25 2019, @04:05PM (7 children)
Will those neighborhoods even exist by the time they need mitigation? Even in the absence of climate change, Miami would see powerful hurricanes. While this is an modest example of the harm of rising sea level, it's also an example of people building in harm's way. I don't think we should care about people chasing the nuisance, particularly if some other nuisance gets them first.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday February 25 2019, @04:54PM (6 children)
Andrew, 1992, qualifies as a highly powerful and destructive hurricane. Everything (of value, which is most of it) that was destroyed in Andrew was replaced, rebuilt bigger, stronger. Some time around 2005-6 Miami got 3 significant hurricane strikes in a single year, again - all rebuilt.
Building in harm's way? No more than the rest of the tropics / Caribbean, Pacific islands, Oz, NZ, Indonesia, Japan. And, where there's not Hurricanes there are other significant hazards: tornadoes of the Midwest, earthquakes, volcanoes, blizzards, etc.
Maybe you live under a rock in Montana and think you're safe - but there are hazards there too.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday February 25 2019, @05:23PM (5 children)
Where did the money for that come from? It's not climate change that caused that effect.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday February 25 2019, @09:57PM (4 children)
~30 named tropical storms in the Northern Atlantic basin one year (one of the bad ones in Miami was named Wilma) - that's an outlier by any measure, and it's too early to tell exactly where the inflection point in "average hurricane severity" will be placed, but it's quite possible that in the future that year with all those storms might be named the beginning of the significant increase.
As for: was it just a freak outlier? If you go by cost of damage, the 2017 season was even more costly.
As for: money for the repairs? Insurance. The national pool, because after Andrew the "Good Hands People" and everybody else in the private sector dropped hurricane country like they just learned it was a radioactive skunk.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday February 27 2019, @11:50AM (3 children)
Bingo. Don't blame climate change when you publicly fund dumb behavior. Notice that it gets worse each time the rebuild happens.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday February 27 2019, @01:07PM (2 children)
Having been born, and lived all my life, within 30' of sea level and 20 miles of a beach, I don't call living near the coast "dumb behavior." So far, my family has sustained 1 65% house rebuild required due to hurricane activity, and maybe another 80 hours of cleanup, total, in the last 60 years of owning an average of 4 homes in the most hurricane active parts of the U.S. Putting up shutters and evacuating from large metro areas are almost as much PITA as the one rebuild was.
I do call shoveling snow up to 3 months a year dumb behavior. Take all the labor of that snow shoveling for 240 years and compare it to rebuilding one house. Compare the overall lifestyle impact to productivity and enjoyability. Similarly, compare the risk to the risk of tornado strike in 240 years in Kansas, or earthquake damage for 240 years in California, or Civil War for 240 years in Appalachia.
Now, if (when) climate change quadruples the effective risk of Hurricane damage, that does start to suck.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday February 28 2019, @02:41AM (1 child)
So what?
For your locations and data points, that means that hurricane insurance for your sort of house should be at least 1% of the value of the house per year. Get closer to the beach where the actual storm surges happen, we should see higher replacement rates for that property.
You'd be replacing more than three homes worth just from hurricanes in 240 years at your current rate. That buys a lot of snow shoveling (at $200k per house and say $15 per hour for snow shoveling, that would buy 20 full-time man-years of snow shoveling).
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday February 28 2019, @03:21AM
In flood zones, it's on that order of magnitude - particularly when you combine standard homeowners' with NFP, and it does increase dramatically in the V zones. I believe most low lying property in the V (for Velocity - where storm surge wave action is expected) is self-insured these days. Even 20 years ago, a $100K structure in the Florida Keys was $12,000 per year to insure.
You misunderstand the math: an average of four homes for 60 years required 0.65 homes worth of storm damage rebuild - that single event was the only time any house lost a window or had any water damage inside. That's 370 years per total rebuild, which probably explains why net insurance costs run on the order of $1500 per year for a $200K structure: inefficiencies of insurance administration, profits, greed, etc.
Houses built "on the beach" in the V zones tend to be owned by people who can afford whatever comes, they also tend to cost 5+x what an equivalent home without the open water view costs.
If you like shoveling snow for $15 per hour, sure... I call that stupid, too, but go for that: 13,000 hours of snow shoveling rebuilds one house. Some folks I knew who tried to live in Boston were screwing with the snow for 100+ hours per year, so that would be 130 years per house. Even if you get by with only 35 hours per year of snow shoveling, that's working as hard to shovel snow as people who have our luck in Hurricane country do repairing storm damaged houses - on average - which is why storm damage is handled with insurance.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 24 2019, @07:14AM (1 child)
This report comes too late for the Marshall Islands as research shows that they are already gone.
From https://www.pacificclimatechangescience.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/8_PCCSP_Marshall_Islands_8pp.pdf [pacificclimatechangescience.org]
Odd that on page eight it has a graph showing sea level relative to 1990 has their best fit line showing a ~1.75" increase between 1990 and 2010 but 1993 to 2010 should have been 5.4 inches according to their .3" claim from page four.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 24 2019, @11:13AM
Much like Bangladesh, the problem isn't that the ocean is rising, it is that the land is sinking.