Macro trends in nature are strong, humans can try and mitigate but we’re ultimately takers on the trend. There might be cases where sea walls provide compelling protection along specific parts of the coast, but as a grand plan to save the existing coastline, it’s a waste.<p>We studied Pacifia’s cliff side/coastline degradation in hydrology class. What’s happening is that waves erode the bottom of the cliff and the rest sloughs off, like pulling Jenga blocks from the bottom of the pile. A massive sea wall could slow the rate of cliffside erosion on the time scale of a generation, But the risk/hazard will remain. I don’t see the the benefit to society for not retreating development here.
A good friend used to rent a house overlooking the ocean in Pacifica. That was 2000, and that house is gone now. Amusingly, she lives in Manhattan now, and might get to see Chapter 2 or 3 of this epic saga we are living through. My kids will hopefully get to the end of the first book, if we get lucky and avoid a serious war somewhere in the middle. We moved from 8’ above sea level to 700’ above sea level last year. I still expect to help pay for saving the SF Bay Area, which will actually be able to engineer its way out of this thanks to a combination of fortuitous geographical circumstances and an economy large enough to sustain the trillion dollars it will cost to protect the area.<p>Ocean Beach will be history soon enough, though...
For most who do not own a home near a shore or in a flood plain, the answer is obvious, and the game reinforces this (it only allows this as a long term success) - do not attempt to change the advance of rising sea levels at sandy beaches and buy back the threatened homes for a managed retreat, every other option essentially is short term stop gap solution for the threatened home owners.
For those interested in data from the World Meteorological Organization (WMO 1233) Published by: WMO ; 2019<p>"Over the period January 1993 to December 2018, the average rate of rise was 3.15 ± 0.3 mm yr-1, while the estimated acceleration was 0.1 mm yr-2. "<p><a href="https://library.wmo.int/doc_num.php?explnum_id=5789" rel="nofollow">https://library.wmo.int/doc_num.php?explnum_id=5789</a><p>There are of course debates relating to the well-known discrepancy between land-based and satellite observations of sea level rise.
Why are you all responding as if the information in this article is true? It's obviously false to anyone who has been to the same beach for the last 30 years. Have you all lost your minds? Have your eyes stopped working? GO LOOK FOR YOURSELVES.<p>Go watch the compelling video from Tony Heller regarding this article.<p>I thought my friends on Hacker News were smarter than this
If the Netherlands managed to reclaim land through dikes. Why couldn't California do the same in their coastal affluent neighborhoods? California doesn't get bad storms and it rarely gets a hurricanes / tornadoes / tsunamis...etc.<p>For the bay area...Why not just drain the bay. There was a proposal previously and cost wise it'd easily pay off given the land gains. Heck could easily solve our housing and transit issues
Not mentioned at all are the big winners, at least for a time, of managed retreat: Owners of the properties just inland, who suddenly acquire whitewater views. These can now charge rent to vacationers at some multiple of what was formerly possible.<p>Admittedly it's a bit of a puzzle how in practice either their former seaward neighbors, or the public, could lay claim to a share of that increase in value.
Let me preface this by stipulating that I believe the evidence that humans have contributed to a warming climate in the last few centuries with all of our carbon emissions, primarily from energy production. I'll further add that it's entirely possible and even quite likely that we are in and have either caused or massively contributed to a mass extinction event.<p>That being said, I really wonder at the thinking of what I would call "climate alarmists". I mean the Pacifica cliffs are a story about erosion. Ok, sure.<p>But some like to push this narrative that unless we drastically do something the Earth will turn into Venus, basically.<p>Thing is, these "boy who cried wolf" type narratives don't really help change perceptions or habits around climate change. What's more, they don't really pass the smell test.<p>The Earth has been around for billions of years. It's also been much hotter than it is now (eg [1]). The smell test is basically this: a lot can happen in 5B years and if the Earth has been much hotter than it is now and it hasn't turned into Venus yet, why is now different?<p>There's actually a pretty natural limit to how much carbon we can add to the atmosphere. Eventually we'll just run out of fossil fuels, at which point, we'll just start making them out of thin air and that, by definition, will be carbon neutral.<p>Honestly I just don't believe we'll fundamentally change human nature here. While that might be fatalistic, even pessimistic, personally I'm optimistic. And I'm optimistic because with not much more automation than we already have the Earth can grow enough food for 10 times as many people as we have now and possibly much more than that and that everything changes once we get sufficiently cheap energy (and obviously I'm optimistic about that happening in the not too distant future). Some here will write that off as naive futurism. Whatever.<p>With regards to sea level rise, let me add some more context. Over the span of ~5000 years 9000 to 14000 thousand years ago the sea levels rose SIXTY METERS [2]. And we're still here. That's also a blip on the timeline of Earth's geological history.<p>Whose to say the sea levels won't recede with the next Ice Age? Or are we now arguing the Earth is done with those too?<p>[1] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paleocene%E2%80%93Eocene_Thermal_Maximum" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paleocene%E2%80%93Eocene_Therm...</a><p>[2] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_Holocene_sea_level_rise" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_Holocene_sea_level_rise</a>
The ocean is literally inundating your town, and you're worried about home values and 30-year-mortgages? These people all need some kind of loss and grief counseling. Can't wait for the federal bailout money to start pouring into these areas over the next few decades as localities deny and delay until they have no choice but to up and relocate in a hurry.