Nobody’s living there, right?
What’s the worst that could happen?
If you watch closely there actually several houses with people in them.
Nice view, but you couldn’t pay me to live there.
I used to think it would take video of glaciers breaking off into the ocean, coasts being eaten away, flooding, drought draining lakes to 1/5 their former selves, heat records being broken, and the like for people to realize how entirely fucked we were regarding climate change.
But I guess people would rather talk about Donald Trump.
OMG! What did Donald Trump do today???
why are they trying to stop the erosion? this is nature doing its thing. why screw with nature?
shouldn’t build on cliffs. you do, you face the consequences.
Not really erosion. Coastlines are living systems and they always retreat when ocean levels rise. The material being “eroded” here is what produces the beaches further down the coast. Stop it here and the beaches go away.
The east coast has to deal with the same problem as everyone wants to live at the beach and no realtor is ever going to tell you that the beach moves.
The Corps and the Shore, by Duke University geologist Orrin Pilkey is worth reading. You can’t stabilize the shore.
Building on cliffs is fine. But when people do, they need to maintain those cliffs and not let them wash away. It’s a serious ecology fail.
but like i said, then you’re interfering with nature, which in california you would think would be a no-no.
Even simply living interferes with the local ecology. For those who refuse, dying interferes with it also. The options then are to participate in the system with awareness, or with ignorance.
No, I don’t think there’s any way to preserve sandy cliffs like that. There’s places where erosion IS due to mismanagement, but this shoreline, like the sandy bluffs of Long Island on the Sound, or the barrier beaches all along the east coast, are as ephemeral as a sandcastle. It only looks permanent in the very short term.
Sucks to live in one of those apartment buildings, but the real estate investment is finally about to pay off for those who own buildings one block inland. The trick is to time the sale when it’s “oceanfront property” instead of “oceanfloor property.”
I was not suggesting any active mismanagement, just that there appears to be no management at all.
I am not sure about that. Living on or in the ocean might have more of a future to it.
I lived near there in the late 80’s. That said it was a bit of a walk from those units to the edge, no longer apparently. Nice view from the top, not so much from the bottom.
There’s still the “supply & demand” factor. There’s an awful lot of ocean floor available if that’s what you’re in the market for. Know one crisis they DIDN’T ever have to deal with in “SeaLab 2020?” Gentrification.
I think it’s a great example of how a “demand” for stability can be impotent. It’s better if people constantly reorganize with the land/sea-scape instead of wishing to nail it down. Notions of territory seem quaintly unworkable.
I think it’s more of a calculated risk. People like having a view overlooking the ocean, so they build or buy property there in the hopes that they’ll have adequate time to enjoy it before the inexorable march of time catches up with the local geology.
Sometimes that bet pays off. Sometimes it don’t.
Humans are part of nature. Why is a beaver dam natural and a human dam not?
