Quite a lot of real estate is going to be impacted by shifts in the ability to occupy coastal land, by 2050. This isn't a South Cal. problem. It's a worldwide problem.
There are towns in the UK with words meaning Harbour, Sea, Coast which aren't at the coast because it retreated. Thousands of years ago. There are also archeological finds in the Dogger bank out in the North sea because it was above land, in human time.
Houses have been affected by coastal change since forever. Arguably, some people inland of the coast NOW in South Cal are about to find they own shorefront property and arguably, might win: assuming the remediation costs of dealing with the retreat don't become theirs by default as everyone else leaves.
Longterm insurance rates for coastal property will be very interesting. London has a problem, Amsterdam had a problem and knows how to fix it, Brisbane where I live has a problem which has been written about: "the river with a city problem"
i think the more interesting modern implications is that now in 2024 we have large layers of insurance companies that are now holding the bag, whereas before it was just kind of "get fucked." to probably the landlords and definitely the serfs.
at least in the US it's basically impossible to get a mortgage without home insurance iirc. but the banks and the insurance companies are already exposed via existing mortgages, so does that mean we start seeing insurance-instigated foreclosure and resettling?
No, the insurance companies are going to go bankrupt, and tell their customers get bent while their executives fuck off to the Alps. Hopefully the hoi polloi have a government that's capable of bailing them out of such dire straits but the way things are going, that's been pillaged too and the only thing remaining for them is a fuckton of guns and ammo. But hey, Fort Knox is full of gold; that'll make for a raucous time until the looters figure out it's worthless once it's all circulating.
No, you’re going to see insurance become more expensive and/or more difficult to get if you’re in an affected area. Some have stopped writing policies in Florida and California, for different reasons, but both climate change-related. (In California, it’s partially due to local rules that make it difficult for them to factor the actual risk of the property into their pricing, but those rules are supposedly going to be fixed soon.)
It's my understanding that Close to elections, governments (state and federal) sometimes offer to underwrite the risk so the un-insurable can continue to live there (no insurance? no mortgage)
The end result is massive unfunded Civil Engineering burdens the corps of engineers have to design, and try to get built without stuffing up the hydrology for somewhere else. I think New Orleans may be an example of this: If there was will, then "forced depopulation" of the floodzones would be kinder and cheaper but I suspect there isn't will, and so instead the levee system.
In Australia, government mandated buybacks are immensely painful. People who want to stay have to leave. People who want to leave are 10cm above a threshold and have to stay.
In NZ, during the Christchurch earthquake aftermath, The state allowed stayers and goers to swap assets and payout, so a stayer in a condemned region could give their payout to a goer in a stay region, who didn't want to stay. Not a bad model.
"For different reasons" is doing a lot of heavy lifting here; Florida's and California's situations are completely different. Significant fractions of Florida depend on the National Flood Insurance Program which has been bailed out by the Federal government to the tune of tens of billions of dollars since Katrina and will only get worse. The California FAIR plan on the other hand is completely funded from premiums and has recently survived several years of catastrophic fires without needing a single penny of state support. The power distribution companies have also completely overhauled the infrastructure state wide, reducing the probability of uncontrolled fires near populated areas.
The politics behind California's insurance regulator are a bit of a shitshow at the moment, but the insurers are leaving because of artificial price controls. In Florida, they left long ago because much of the state is fundamentally uninsurable.
Even if they take that particular risk into pricing, it will still lead to an increase of insurance prices for everybody because that's how stuff works. So everybody will contribute financially to subsidize at least in part the insurance price for the affected properties.
Not what you were asking, but the Adriatic sea, between Italy and the Balkans, takes the name from the town of Adria, which is now 10+ km from the sea (though that is mostly due to the work of the Po river).
Not quite seaside -> inland, but the area around Ely is still called the Isle of Ely because Ely used to be an island surrounded by marshy fenland, often flooded by the wash from the North Sea. The fens were drained in the 17th century onwards with the help of some Dutch engineering and Ely is now just a hill.
What is the base number they are comparing to when the study says 5x more expensive?
It’s already outrageously expensive to live near the beach in Southern California (and strangely completely desolate in Baja California), so an extra assessment might not be that material (but I have no idea!).
The article seamed to base the 5x number on the cost of sand increasing.
Yes. That's correct. The houses overhanging the cliffs in Corona Del Mar have a big problem ahead.[1] But that's only one row of houses. There's 20 meters of cliff, and then everything else is much higher up and not at risk. The cliffs will erode over time, of course. This provides more sand.
California is in good shape for rising sea levels. Most of the coast has a cliff. Even seemingly flat places like Venice Beach slope upward inland. The San Francisco bay area may have some problems in areas built on fill.
The places that really suffer are the ones that are very flat. Miami. Many coastal East Asian cities. Shanghai had to build 30km of bridge to get to deep enough water for large seagoing vessels.
The study is solely about sand and nothing else. They’re saying the amount of sand needed will go up 2x, and factor in 3% of inflation per year from 2018 to 2050 for another 2.5x.
A better title could be, amount of sand needed to maintain beaches will rise 2x by 2050. This is the only claim the study makes - it’s literally about the cost of buying sand to replenish the eroding coastline.
And the 5x number? They assumed 3% inflation and calculated the cost increase based on that. I don’t even know where to begin with that one…
Luckily the communities most heavily impacted by this are typically very wealthy and capable of shouldering the cost burden - what is more concerning is the ripple effect this will have on house prices and rent on more inland areas.
This article mentions corona del mar being the subject of study - very nearby is a small but extremely densely populated community called balboa island [0] - it is one of a series of man made islands built in the early 1900’s out of what was a sandbar in a coastal marshland.
The problem is, balboa island has always barely been above sea level. Very early on, a sea wall was built to prevent high tides from flooding the island. A few years ago it had to be raised another few feet, and it is impossible not to notice that the island still experiences increasingly frequent flooding. The houses are worth millions of dollars each, and it’s so ironic that it’d be comedic that many of the residents (you can guess at its demographic without looking at voting maps) don’t even believe in global climate change or sea level rise, even as the evidence is literally on their doorsteps.
Communities like this won’t and cannot exist by the end of the century if not much earlier. I’m not really sure you can engineer your way out of this problem, mother nature can be a bitch.
I wonder how effective those communities can be at making their problem everyone else’s. Will we be seeing more “public” projects to reinforce the coast?
Given the frequency with which local, state, and federal legislation is passed that objectively benefits a minority of ultra-wealthy individuals, I'd say the wealthy's collective effectiveness at farming out their problems to the public is not in question. See Also: the recent 1B USD subsidy to the shareholders and execs of PFAS producers in the form of EPA funding allocations for PFAS remediation projects around the country.
I mean, I guess you'd have to read and know about the island and its surrounding geography to understand how this isn't really that feasible. For one, the island and the harbor is tiny. The dutch system is vast and includes stuff like sand dunes, jetties, dams, etc that simply would not fit in the space that the island occupies. The houses are worth millions of dollars precisely because of the access to pseudo-private beaches and boat moorings. Even if you could do it, I cannot fathom the cost of building something like a large levy system that would only crater the price of homes on the island. Additionally, it would render services that provide convenient access on/off the island untenable. I could go on for a while about this, but it really isn't practical or feasible for this particular case.
Wouldn't enough walls, dykes and pumps be an engineering solution? The problem is cost. How much money are people willing to throw at keeping the land above water?
"do something"? The whole issue is that each "thing" has both pros and cons, anything universally agreed to have more pros than cons is already being done.
The rest of the "something" have cons, and people disagree on the relative value of the cons.
It’s mostly that people don’t value the pros (the thing helps to mitigate climate change) enough, because they don’t care, don’t truly understand how it will affect them, or are selfish.
See every thread on HN about EVs - people won’t accept the most minor compromises (cons) to day to day driving.
I think the question about that kind of geoengineering is really going to be a "who cracks first and just goes for it".
My guess is it'll either be India, suffering under heatwaves incompatible with human life, or China beating the sea back from some of its biggest cities.
No Western country will be able to have the political ability to do anything like that as a first mover, though I imagine they'll eventually quietly be on the bandwagon if it works, if for no other reason than it would allow more carbon emissions, which are going to be highly correlated with economic growth for quite some time to come. Whether or not it's actually a good idea, I guess we'll find out in a few decades.
There is! See "Stop the Beach Renourishment".[1]
If the government adds sand where there previously was water, the resulting beach is public. Beachfront property owners hate that.
My house is 2 miles from the ocean because that's where I could afford. Looks like I might have beachfront property within my lifetime and not have to move.
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[ 0.17 ms ] story [ 168 ms ] threadThere are towns in the UK with words meaning Harbour, Sea, Coast which aren't at the coast because it retreated. Thousands of years ago. There are also archeological finds in the Dogger bank out in the North sea because it was above land, in human time.
Houses have been affected by coastal change since forever. Arguably, some people inland of the coast NOW in South Cal are about to find they own shorefront property and arguably, might win: assuming the remediation costs of dealing with the retreat don't become theirs by default as everyone else leaves.
Longterm insurance rates for coastal property will be very interesting. London has a problem, Amsterdam had a problem and knows how to fix it, Brisbane where I live has a problem which has been written about: "the river with a city problem"
at least in the US it's basically impossible to get a mortgage without home insurance iirc. but the banks and the insurance companies are already exposed via existing mortgages, so does that mean we start seeing insurance-instigated foreclosure and resettling?
The end result is massive unfunded Civil Engineering burdens the corps of engineers have to design, and try to get built without stuffing up the hydrology for somewhere else. I think New Orleans may be an example of this: If there was will, then "forced depopulation" of the floodzones would be kinder and cheaper but I suspect there isn't will, and so instead the levee system.
In Australia, government mandated buybacks are immensely painful. People who want to stay have to leave. People who want to leave are 10cm above a threshold and have to stay.
In NZ, during the Christchurch earthquake aftermath, The state allowed stayers and goers to swap assets and payout, so a stayer in a condemned region could give their payout to a goer in a stay region, who didn't want to stay. Not a bad model.
The politics behind California's insurance regulator are a bit of a shitshow at the moment, but the insurers are leaving because of artificial price controls. In Florida, they left long ago because much of the state is fundamentally uninsurable.
aka Doggerland
Can you give examples of this?
New Romney? It's riverine, but I think they had to dredge it to keep it alive.
Kenfig in wales.
Dunwich.
Rattray in Scotland. covered in Sand, like Skara Brae maybe?
Faversham may have been, The isle of thanet is no longer an island
Tenterden -once part of the cinque ports. Also Lydd.
I would agree "meaning seaside" was a strech. I think most of these have mixed etymology.
It’s already outrageously expensive to live near the beach in Southern California (and strangely completely desolate in Baja California), so an extra assessment might not be that material (but I have no idea!).
The article seamed to base the 5x number on the cost of sand increasing.
California is in good shape for rising sea levels. Most of the coast has a cliff. Even seemingly flat places like Venice Beach slope upward inland. The San Francisco bay area may have some problems in areas built on fill.
The places that really suffer are the ones that are very flat. Miami. Many coastal East Asian cities. Shanghai had to build 30km of bridge to get to deep enough water for large seagoing vessels.
[1] https://earth.google.com/web/search/Corona+Del+Mar,+Newport+...
And the 5x number? They assumed 3% inflation and calculated the cost increase based on that. I don’t even know where to begin with that one…
This article mentions corona del mar being the subject of study - very nearby is a small but extremely densely populated community called balboa island [0] - it is one of a series of man made islands built in the early 1900’s out of what was a sandbar in a coastal marshland.
The problem is, balboa island has always barely been above sea level. Very early on, a sea wall was built to prevent high tides from flooding the island. A few years ago it had to be raised another few feet, and it is impossible not to notice that the island still experiences increasingly frequent flooding. The houses are worth millions of dollars each, and it’s so ironic that it’d be comedic that many of the residents (you can guess at its demographic without looking at voting maps) don’t even believe in global climate change or sea level rise, even as the evidence is literally on their doorsteps.
Communities like this won’t and cannot exist by the end of the century if not much earlier. I’m not really sure you can engineer your way out of this problem, mother nature can be a bitch.
0: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balboa_Island,_Newport_Beach
This is not how this works. The wealthy resources are used to lobby for use of public funds for restoration.
Force multiplier, beaches are public etc.
Do Californians live on a different planet to the Dutch?
The rest of the "something" have cons, and people disagree on the relative value of the cons.
"signs" has nothing to do with it.
My guess is it'll either be India, suffering under heatwaves incompatible with human life, or China beating the sea back from some of its biggest cities.
No Western country will be able to have the political ability to do anything like that as a first mover, though I imagine they'll eventually quietly be on the bandwagon if it works, if for no other reason than it would allow more carbon emissions, which are going to be highly correlated with economic growth for quite some time to come. Whether or not it's actually a good idea, I guess we'll find out in a few decades.
I had no idea there was such demand for beach erosion.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stop_the_Beach_Renourishment_v...
We built all of this stuff in the first place - how can it be so hard to do it again in places that are more resilient to change?
It strikes me that we built entire cities like London with far less technology than we have now, we just seem to be mired in politics.
It's like the equivalent of trying to repaint a room without taking the furniture out first.