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They are not used to the ocean in their houses permanently, which is what we’re talking about. We ARE talking about large portions of cities (and in some cases entire islands) just being underwater.
Climate change is real and causing problems as we speak. There are already millions of climate refugees, including within the US. This is a serious problem that the whole planet needs to pay attention to and fix, or we’re all fucked.
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java east of Krakatoa apparently has regular waters in the street
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At least in SoCal, the beach is all at the bottoms of cliffs, pretty much. I used to live down there, and despite being only a mile from the beach, my elevation was something like 200 feet. To access most of the beaches, you have to climb down a lot of stairs or walk down a long slope to get to the water. For whatever geological reason, there’s a natural elevation at the water in much of the west.
The coast all pretty much looks like this:
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I am reminded of when Chicago was lifted up over 6’ to get it, literally, out of the swamps. I know I’m too much of an engineering type, but I still believe that so long as we have dirt and clean fill around and the ability to move it, we’ll just lift up the cities as they flood – at least the trendy and expensive parts.
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It could be possible to spend billions upon billions to lift all of these places out of harm’s way.
Or we could address climate change and try to save them that way.
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You came out of two years of self-exile for this?
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The problem is that our infrastructure is all underground and it can’t handle being in seawater-soaked ground either. Sewers and utility tunnels in Florida already regularly flood with seawater and it’s a nightmare.
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Lol I just couldn’t help myself. I hear it from people all the time and I’m always mystified by their urgency and lack of context. Someone call the governor! The water is rising by nearly an inch a year! We need a hero! Or possibly a small berm of dirt and sand! Who will answer the call?
you don’t actually live close to the Atlantic or Gulf of Mexico, do you? that “mere” 1 inch/year (and getting worse, btw) adds a lot of water and energy in a tropical storm, regular high tides become flooding events while king tides become real threats to people and property. yes those of us that do live with the ocean as our yard are very aware of rising sea level. one day this island i call home, sitting as it does between the Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico, will be swallowed up when the two bodies of water become one.
that doesn’t mean abandon ship and run screaming into the hills of the mainland, no. it means doing everything possible in the very short time period we may have left to lessen or possibly mitigate total destruction that would wipe out trillions of dollars worth of infrastructure, property and many lives.
stay dry, captain…
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Probably where the last gigantic earthquake broke a piece off…
I have a similar thing, live on the east coast of England, and on a very clear day, we can see the white cliffs of Calais (or nearby), which follow a pattern very similar to the cliffs we’re standing on, on the other side of the English Channel.
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Downtown Charleston SC is like that, flooding was something that happened with those once every 5 year storms/hurricanes, Now it just takes a slightly heavier rain, and that’s always been quite common in Charleston.
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Actually, I live in New Orleans, which has its struggles, but when I introduce where I am from, I’m often faced with weird reactions, like, isn’t that city underwater? Do you have to take a boat to work? Do you ever get to see Kevin Costner?
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Landslides are common, it doesn’t take a big earthquake—in fact, isn’t it the other way around?
Earthquakes make the mountains higher, earthquakes are where the mountains came from, and then random erosion events wear everything down again
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I thought the San Andreas Fault was a place where plates were sliding in opposite directions making them move past each other, not one on top of another?
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just coincidentally on the exact top of the ridge
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Especially over the 30-80-year time frame being discussed by the article. The urgency re: drowned cities isn’t about preventing this year’s inch of sea rise (which, as you say, adds to frequency and intensity) but several feet (which means an even bigger effect even on a linear progression).
Or we as a society can continue denying the problem in the name of preserving real estate values and keeping taxes low and keeping fossil fuel companies in business, pretending that “it’s just weather” and that “we just have to keep raising the levees by an inch a year”, and let more frequent and stronger Katrina-like events wash over multiple coastal cities.
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I just find this idea pretty goofy: why would a city worth billions of dollars not like, notice the water coming in and move some dirt around? And how is this harder than, you know, getting into a thermonuclear conflict with coal and oil dependent nations or whatever the current carbon mitigation scheme is these days?
You do realize that many of the cities we’re talking about here were built years before the climate crisis started, right? And that many human civilizations have been built on or near water, because we kind of, you know, need water to live. And that many places are built on the coast because the oceans have long been an effective means of travel and trade?
Maybe look into the history of cities that indeed have been lifted up out of the water and managed to exist for hundreds of years on the water (Amsterdam is a great example). This is very much an emergency of a different kind.
Once again, climate change is real and we need to address is now (since we’ve been ignoring it for the past 40 years). Once again, it is already causing a major refugee problem (I live in ATL, and know quite a few Katrina refugees who live here now). Denying facts will not solve these problems. Addressing them in a variety of ways (everything from shoring up cities to moving us off oil dependency to renewables) will benefit all of humanity. If you believe that making the world healthier, cleaner, and less dependant on a product that is known to cause a variety of problems is “goofy” then you maybe need to examine your priories a bit.
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What on the warming globe are you even talking about here?
Not that the rest of your comment makes much sense to anyone who can think beyond the next fiscal quarter or has even a basic idea of how a disaster like Katrina unfolds, but I’m really curious what you’re getting at with that bit.
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