America’s Great Climate Exodus Is Starting in the Florida Keys

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2019-09-20/america-s-great-climate-exodus-is-starting-in-the-florida-keys

by woofyman • 7 years ago

161 204 7 years ago

bloomberg.com

isomorphic• 7 years ago

The article is paywalled.

outline.com and archive.org do not seem to work; Google's cache returns 404. Are there any other such sites that work?

pwg• 7 years ago

It is only paywalled if you let your browser run the javascript served from the site. Blocking all the JS with NoScript results in being able to read the article with no paywall.

siberianbear• 7 years ago

In Chrome, you can also do per-site Javascript blocking. Blocking Javascript from [*.]bloomberg.com in preferences will let you read Bloomberg without problems.

stretchwithme2• 7 years ago

They will get wise to this eventually and start loading their articles using javascript. Business Insider already loads their images with javascript.

stretchwithme2• 7 years ago

Weird. I didn't run into that with Firefox.

I do turn off javascript for specific sites using Chrome. That does defeat some paywalls.

ethbro• 7 years ago

Half-load + Firefox reader mode

joe_the_user• 7 years ago

I clear cookies on Chromium and see it. But Bloomberg is getting as annoying NYTimes (where I also clear cookies).

ForHackernews• 7 years ago

Where are the insurance companies on all this? Shouldn't it become increasingly more expensive to insure a low-lying property? Are they not including climate risks in their modelling?

whatshisface• 7 years ago

Insurance policies aren't typically bought 100 years into the future. Often, rates change from year to year.

baking3• 7 years ago

Also, a 100-year flood is a misnomer. It is a flood that has a 1% chance of happening in the current year. It does not attempt to assess what the probability of a flood will be in 50 or 100 years.

all2• 7 years ago

From what I recall, high risk events are typically separated from policies and require the home owner to carry 'normal' insurance and they can optionally have the high-risk event policy.

hansthehorse• 7 years ago

You can buy a separate wind damage rider on your homeowners but if you want flood coverage it's a government run game.

bhuga• 7 years ago

The private insurance companies have gotten out of the flood insurance game long ago, leaving the government-backed US flood insurance program as the only game in town. And it's got a lot of bad incentives.

A quick summary is in https://www.apnews.com/d6a3852a6dd34a8c90a5a1acc0d0afaf, but that's just scratching the surface.

erichurkman• 7 years ago

One of the largest insurers in Florida is Citizens Property Insurance. It's run by the state.

On top of that, Florida has a state-run fund (Florida Hurricane Catastrophe Fund) for times when the private/commercial reinsurance market is insufficient.

dghughes• 7 years ago

A few weeks ago a 60 minutes segment compared flooding in The Netherlands vs the USA.

In The Netherlands if an area floods homes are not built there and measures are taken to control the water in those areas. In the US people get insurance and build in the same place using the same style.

New Jersey hired a man from The Netherlands to tell them how to break out of that process. This was due to the Sandy Hurricane that devastated the coast.

It boils down to if something keeps getting damaged stop doing the same thing over and over expecting different results.

edit: https://www.cbsnews.com/video/storm-water-management-dutch-s...

zaroth• 7 years ago

Building codes have changed dramatically for hurricane prone and flood prone properties in the US. Homes are built on stilts/pillars and with roofs designed to withstand Cat5 winds. It’s night and day to how they were built even 20-30 years ago.

baking3• 7 years ago

A few years go, I heard that Florida was updating its flood maps from the 1970s. Having a number of family members living in Florida I checked out the updated maps only to find that they had only made relatively minor adjustments to the property elevation, but no adjustment to the flooding scenarios. The end result was that one property might be added to a flood zone but a neighboring property might have been removed from the flood zone. There was no accounting for climate change or even normal sea level rise in the 40+ years since the previous version of the maps.

JohnJamesRambo• 7 years ago

They peaced out long ago on something they could be useful on and you actually have to buy flood insurance separately I believe. That’s how it was when I bought my last house.

wolfspider• 7 years ago

While doing a gig for Nationwide years ago I got to see how difficult insurance is for coastal areas. Flood insurance has paid out way more claims than money they had in the tank long ago. Alternative capital investors rushed into this market the last few years causing enough competition that rates barely moved but now these rates are being adjusted on a risk basis which means things are about to get a whole lot more expensive. It’s simply a delay in the movement of the market but the damage has been done and there is no turning back now. So yes, you are correct.

jgmjgm• 7 years ago

I briefly worked in the insurance industry in Canada. FWIW in my experience the industry is incredibly backwards. I wouldn't expect their prices to reflect anything meaningful about climate risk. Quite the opposite. I rather think that the industry is jumping on the climate change band wagon precisely because their analytics are so poor. (Don't get me wrong, climate change is happening. I just think industries are going to profit from it any way that they can. In this case, this is a cover-your-ass move because the industry hasn't invested in this analytical research. Labeling bad policies that should never have been written at a certain price as climate change is a convenient excuse.)

This is anecdotal, but the one I worked at had no weather/climate modelling and was only just beginning to leverage even the most basic analytics across the company. From what I heard from people in pricing was that their pricing was also a mess for property. They basically just gave up on selling insurance to anyone within 100 meters of water. They did account for elevation to some degree so that they wouldn't insure people in a flood plain, but much of the process was kludgy and ad hoc. The company is a reasonably big player and is (laughably) considered to be very technically advanced in the broader market. Even the biggest players are just moving out of manual data entry so I am not overly hopeful about the broader industry in this country.

On the other hand, Canada has a very sheltered insurance market and it desperately needs more competition. It's very protected though so I don't expect that to happen any time soon. If there was more competition, I would expect the analytics to be better and yield a more accurate picture of the real climate change costs based on the existing science.

olivermarks3• 7 years ago

'By the end of the century, 13 million Americans will need to move just because of rising sea levels, at a cost of $1 million each, according to Florida State University demographer Mathew Haeur, who studies climate migration.'

I couldn't find any concrete evidence to validate this, it seems more of a prediction? Mr Hauer is a sociologist so this seems a bold claim https://coss.fsu.edu/sociology/mhauer

'his research has focused on how migration induced by sea level rise could reshape the U.S. population distribution'

godzillabrennus• 7 years ago

The claims I’ve seen start at 8 million and rise from there. Doubt anyone knows till it’s over.

olivermarks3• 7 years ago

Claims and predictions are one thing but where are the facts?

Merrill• 7 years ago

Major built up areas in Florida were swamps before they were raised by landfill from dredging.

Add more landfill.

jumelles• 7 years ago

Mr Hauer is a sociologist so this seems a bold claim

He also has a PhD in geography from the University of Georgia.

maehwasu• 7 years ago

You can, quite literally, find someone from a university in the social sciences who say anything that you want.

The practice of inserting quotes from random "experts" in news stories is one of the worst journalistic practices out there. It's fundamentally dishonest in very obvious ways, and forms the basis of many articles.

WillPostForFood2• 7 years ago

Including the landscape architecture professor in the article who said, "If we don’t, it won’t matter, because much of America will be underwater or on fire."

No hysteria at all there.

Simulacra• 7 years ago

I don't think this article presents enough evidence that climate change, or climate in general, is affecting a person's desire to move to a new area. Florida has always had hurricanes, and it will continue to have hurricanes. Our response should not be to say the climate has changed so much its forcing us to leave, but rather what can we do to adapt to the new climate forces?

electic2• 7 years ago

The issue isn't the hurricanes or the strength that is associated with them, it is the water content. In the past, hurricanes main threat was the wind. With wind, you can mitigate that with stronger building techniques and since the flooding was minimal, it was easy to recover from.

The new issue with these hurricanes is that they are bringing significantly more water with them because of global warming. The net result is you are seeing once in 1500 year floods happening every year.

It is very hard to recover from those. Especially if you find yourself doing it every year. At some point, you have to move.

The net loss is property and economic activity to name a couple.

propogandist• 7 years ago

once in 1500 year floods happening every year.

Source?

fromthestart2• 7 years ago

The net result is you are seeing once in 1500 year floods happening every year.

This is the same kind of cherry picking that denialists have been using for decades. Locally rare events appear frequent if you gather trials from enough localities. The fact is that there has been no increase in storm intensity or frequency over the last 100 years which correlates with greenhouse emissions. There was an increase starting in the 1980s [1] but this is simply not enough data for climate prediction, which normally changes on scales of hundreds of years at the quickest - even if you assume that we are expecting catastrophic temperature increase over the span of a century.

Its worrisome that proponent hysteria is driven by the same kind of fallacious reasoning as that of denialist.

1. https://www.gfdl.noaa.gov/historical-atlantic-hurricane-and-...

mrfusion3• 7 years ago

Do you have a source on that? (I’m just curious to learn about it, I’m not denying that it’s not a terrible development. )

kls21• 7 years ago

The deadliest part of a hurricane (really only major ones) is the surge, you survive that you are pretty much good.

todd82• 7 years ago

SLR (sea level rise) is a problem, but this article promotes a kind of alarmist version of SLR, in my admittedly inexpert opinion.

SLR has been going on for 20,000 years, and it may be accelerating in the last few decades due to global warming; however, if your property is threatened by a 3mm SLR per year you probably didn’t make a wise purchase in the first place. 2+mm SLR per year has been going on for at least 150 years. See [1].

[1] https://www.flseagrant.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/SLR-Fa...

H8crilA• 7 years ago

People, en masse, rarely react to a problem till it hits them in the face. Florida does get flooded already - Sunny Day Floods, what a beautiful name. Meanwhile real estate prices keep ignoring the issue:

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MIXRNSA

ozborn• 7 years ago

Yes, you are correct.

Of interest though is this study: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3073842 which indicates that prices are 7% than they would be otherwise.

nealabq2• 7 years ago

The paper you cite is dated 2013 and says SLR has been 3mm/year since the 1990s. It mentions the possibilities of more dramatic rises by 2100 but doesn't go into much detail.

If we're talking about a meter of SLR in the next 80 years, thats 12.5mm/year.

todd82• 7 years ago

I'd like to understand this better. Do you have a scientific citation for 12.5mm yr until 2100?

Here's the latest from the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration[1]. It is a graph that shows with 95% confidence there has been a 2.42mm/year SLR for Key West from 1913 to 2018, the most recent information on their site for sea level trends.

When I look at the graph, it looks quite linear over that time period, that spans from before significant anthropomorphic CO2 to the current period of hockey-stick temperatures. I don't see the evidence for expecting 12.5mm/yr, but I'm not a climate scientist.

I'm ready to call BS on the Bloomberg article, but I'm open to hearing more information on this.

[1] https://tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/sltrends/sltrends_station....

baking3• 7 years ago

This is the opposite of alarmist. A 3mm/year SLR is pretty much the best-case scenario. An alarmist but still possible scenario would be 3 meter SLR from the collapse of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet.

mrfusion3• 7 years ago

I don’t think regular people can appreciate that level of increase though. It’s better to focus on exceptional examples that drive the harm home. If we want action on the issue that is.

tempsy• 7 years ago

For some reason I just assumed that Miami Beach real estate was all luxury condos, so I was shocked to see how affordable some condos could actually be in 200-300k range. Not a luxury high rise, but a condo in the heart of Miami Beach nonetheless.

watertom• 7 years ago

Why is the government buying these people out?

The homeowners weren't forced to purchase these properties, so it's not the government's responsibility to remediate the situation.

AtlasBarfed• 7 years ago

Rich people own beach property.

This is a government for the rich.

readhn2• 7 years ago

if you bought today - yes, you'd have to be rich. houses in coastal area weren't always this expensive.

refurb4• 7 years ago

That explains why more than half of the US federal budget pays for low income social programs. Because it’s a govt for the rich.

harimau7773• 7 years ago

If the government failed to hold corporations that emitted greenhouse gasses accountable for their externalities then I'd say that it becomes the government's responsibility.

refurb4• 7 years ago

What about the consumers who benefited from the greenhouse gas emissions?

manfredo• 7 years ago

* An oil company pumps oil out of the ground, and sells it to a petroleum company.

* The petroleum company refines that oil into gasoline.

* An auto company builds a truck that runs on gasoline

* A shipping company buys said truck, as well gasoline to power it.

* A store contracts that company to ship their goods.

When a consumer buys something from that store, and has a gasoline burning truck move the goods from the warehouse to their residence who was responsible for emitting those greenhouse gases?

justinhj• 7 years ago

The money is coming from disaster relief funds. The alternative is to pay to repair the home over and over

awinder• 7 years ago

Because it’s the right thing to do, costs a pittance in the grand scheme of things, and is the cheapest course of action compared to continuing to rebuild. The article begins with a woman who can’t afford to get out and just got running water for dishes for the first time in 2 years, these aren’t all people living high off the hog.

acdha2• 7 years ago

Think about who owns waterfront property, yacht clubs, etc. and ask whether those rich people are likely to be well-represented in the legislatures. Government agencies do what the law makers tell them and it’s really hard to roll back decades spent ignoring the problem for short-term profit, especially when there’s a large and effective propaganda machine which will attack anyone who suggests policies which realistically accept the scale of the problem.

toomuchtodo2• 7 years ago

The woman profiled in this Bloomberg piece is 60, likely is not wealthy (her insurance settlement is a bit more than half of what remains on her mortgage, and she cannot afford to bring her house up to code due to the extent of the damages), and could possibly be homeless without a relo buyout. If it was me, I’d buy a new home in Florida (far above sea level!) with my settlement, and default on the shack she’s stuck with (Florida law is very strong when it comes to protecting debtors; as long as her new home is her primary residence, all of her equity would be protected from creditors, as well as her social security when she begins to collect). But that’s not a solution that works at scale.

As long as the properties are bulldozed and never allowed to be developed again, it’s reasonable policy.

Should people know better? Perfect information is hard. I’ve bugged Redfin several times to include these models in their property search interface with no reply. You need legislation to better assist real estate buyers to fully understand what they’re getting into.

kls21• 7 years ago

This would actually be closer to the realities in Miami, Ft. Lauderdale up to Palm Beach (Mara Lago), than the Keys. Most of the people in the Keys are not heavily politically active and have moved here to fall of the face of the earth or where born here. A decent amount of waterfront property is still family owned and used in family businesses such as shrimp, lobster or stone crab operations.

Funny enough, waterfront property in the keys is rather affordable when compared to other areas of Florida.

smadge• 7 years ago

Because the government is interested in minimizing future economic losses from repeated flooding. It's not charity, it's rational planning.

chiefalchemist4• 7 years ago

It's not even that. It's votes and party donations.

I'm in NJ. A few years back we had hurricane / super-storm Sandy. Not only did the GOP gov at the time ( Chris Christie) find the money to rebuild. The state actually ran adverts with the tag line "Stronger than the storm." It made no sense to me.

The people living at the shore (as we call it in NJ) aren't in denial. They don't even see it.

nitwit0052• 7 years ago

People keep demanding they spend money on disaster relief and flood insurance. At a certain point it's better (cheaper) to demolish the houses in places that keep getting hit.

Yes, it'd probably be better if the government let people face the damages for the most part. Unfortunately it's consistently portrayed as a huge failing if, say, a president fails to respond to a hurricane quickly or decisively enough. Partly because of the usual partisan nonsense, but also because the local governments want the aid.

sjg0073• 7 years ago

FEMA lets you rebuild at most once. After that you are SOL.

clumsysmurf• 7 years ago

This is discussed in a book called "The Geography of Risk"

"The chief beneficiaries of the land boom at the coast have been the beach towns and property owners who perversely shoulder little of the risk of building in harm’s way yet enjoy most of the wealth, the report added."

https://longreads.com/2019/09/03/the-geography-of-risk

Animats• 7 years ago

The biggest flood insurance beneficiary is the Houston TX area. "More flood insurance funds have been paid here than in any other National Flood Insurance Program-participating community."[1]

"After the 1940's, the Harris County area did not suffer what would be considered a widespread, regional flood, that is, until June 2001." Since then, 2001, 2006, 2008, 2009, 2015, 2016, and right now.

Houston way overbuilt in flood plains. That area has had floods for a century, but the impact was lower when the big losses were herds of cattle. They need higher flood insurance premiums to discourage building.

The Florida Keys, Greater Miami, New Orleans, and Houston are just too low-lying for today's hurricanes. New Orleans has everything going wrong - the Mississippi River, hurricane country, and sinking land.

[1] https://www.hcfcd.org/flooding-floodplains/harris-countys-fl...

crazygringo• 7 years ago

Because why should the current homeowner happen to be the one caught with a total loss, rather than another one in the previous 30 years or the next 30 years?

If the government is making it policy not to be able to live on land you purchased, then it should compensate you.

(The exception being if everyone who bought property had always known there was an e.g. 80% chance of the government taking it without payment and thus bought their property at e.g. 20% of what would otherwise be the market value... but that doesn't seem to be the case.)

DoreenMichele3• 7 years ago

That isn't why the government intercedes in stuff like this. It intercedes because if it says "Welp. Not My Problem." and these folks say "Fuck it. Not Mine Either." and just walk away from their properties, declare bankruptcy, whatever, and become basically refugees within their own country, you have worse problems.

My sister had a break-in at her home one year. She told me something like "Well, the benefits for Katrina survivors ran out last week. That's probably not coincidental."

If you have people who, through no fault of their own, cannot make their lives work and the entire rest of the world takes the attitude "Well, too bad, so fucking sad, chump. Not Our Problem." then people have a tendency to say "Welp. The system doesn't work for me, so why should I care about little details like you expecting me to respect your property rights? It's not like you care about my inability to eat through no damn fault of my own."

When stuff like that happens on a broad scale, it leads to serious problems. Entire industries/cities/regions can be negatively impacted if enough people walk away from their problems and just go elsewhere.

cheez• 7 years ago

The more I read anecdotes like these, the more I think Andrew Yang's freedom dividend is the way to go.

AdamJacobMuller• 7 years ago

Government is buying her out because government is the cause of her problem.

Buried all the way at the bottom of the article is this little gem:

Her insurance payout of about $100,000 would cover repairs to the 640-square-foot house. But the county requires that when more than 50% of a home is damaged, that it be completely rebuilt to meet modern storm-resiliency codes and — in her flood zone — on stilts. That would cost at least $200,000, money she doesn’t have.

So, effectively, she can rebuild her home in a way that would (presumptively) make her happy but government legislation forces her to spend double the money to rebuild it in way she probably isn't a fan of. Simple solution is to limit the ability of local building codes to force people to completely demolish/rebuild in situations like these. She had a non-elevated non-flood-proof home before, she should be able to keep her home the way she likes it at a cost she can afford, assuming the people financially invested (mortgage company, insurance company) agree, why shouldn't she be allowed?

ryansmccoy• 7 years ago

Why do people buy beach front houses when they know they'll be under water in just a few years? Doesn't make sense to me.

itronitron• 7 years ago

I remember as a child going on vacation to the beaches in Virgina and the Carolinas and always seeing the remains of multiple beach front houses that had been destroyed by waves. The unpredictability of which houses were wiped out made quite an impression.

eanzenberg2• 7 years ago

Because science says sea level rise is 10ft at the worst case in 100 years? In other words, its alarmism and I don’t appreciate blaming (and compensating) everything because the big boogeyman, climate change.

kajmagnusmobile• 7 years ago

House prices will fall long before that, so buying those houses doesn't seem like a bright economical move, to me.

Consultant324522• 7 years ago

Barrack Obama just bought a multi-million dollar beachfront home. If any major public figure has the most accurate info about pending sea level rise, even classified level information that might not be released to the public, surely it's him.

belltaco• 7 years ago

He also has 'fuck you' money so he doesn't care. It's not like the 60 year old woman quoted in the article who might become homeless.

paul_f2• 7 years ago

This is an interesting fact related to the discussion, yet downvoted. Weird.

sumedh• 7 years ago

Is the home literally on the beach, if not it should be safe even if the water rises a bit.

mcculley• 7 years ago

Because a mortgage is only for 30 years. Our whole economic system is incapable of planning beyond 30 years.

I have lived in Florida for all of my 47 years. It is clear that some land is unsuitable for development when taking a long term view. That does not stop the mortgages from being approved.

rgrieselhuber• 7 years ago

I've always wondered why banks would finance the deals and insurance companies would insure them.

PKop• 7 years ago

A counter-argument to climate alarmist statistics, shows use of selective presentation of statistics to portray specific conclusion on climate change:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8455KEDitpU

devoply2• 7 years ago

Billions of birds dead, insect apocalypse, amphibian populations decimated, etc... But yeah people are just being alarmist, it's the end of the world and I feel fine.

perl4ever2• 7 years ago

The thing is just that people continually present opinions that require numbers in proper context to validate, but seemingly reject the concept that numbers in context are socially appropriate, at all.

dwaltrip3• 7 years ago

Tony Heller is a sham.

https://climatefeedback.org/claimreview/hosted-by-former-aus...

https://www.reddit.com/r/ClimateOffensive/comments/cm9l2q/to...

readhn2• 7 years ago

the problem is that they keep building using outdated technologies!!!!

why do they keep building these "paper" houses? average american house is too poorly constructed to handle these things. honestly its just a few sticks and plywood in between most of the time! what hurricane??? Government should force contractors to build using ICF technology, hurricane proof houses on high stilts in coastal areas and problem solved!!!

this is a crucial comment: "She dreams of resettling in Key West or Homestead, a safer spot on the Florida mainland.

“I’d like to take the money and run,” Rittel said. “But I’ll have to buy something on stilts. I’m not buying anything on the ground down here ever ever again.”"

tito• 7 years ago

The sea is rising more slowly today than any day in the foreseeable future.

Sea level rise is accelerating. This angle may spark some smart thoughts here.

mmaunder2• 7 years ago

A little late if hurricanes are your benchmark for climate change.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1900_Galveston_hurricane

What's sad is that most reporters know that climate change is measured in decade long trends. Small yearly increases in sea level, gradual increases in global temps and slow changes in atmospheric composition. But that doesn't get clicks.

Associating climate change with outlying catastrophic events is as short sighted as the environmental abuse that causes climate change.

qqqwerty4• 7 years ago

I am completely fine with it. We need to convince low information voters that climate change is a serious issue, and the opposition likes to point at snow storms and bring snowballs to congress as proof that climate change is a hoax.

solidangle• 7 years ago

At some point they will figure out that we're lying, and then they will elect another Trump.

WillPostForFood2• 7 years ago

Two sides of the same coin, which deserve the same judgement.

“It’s snowing - climate change is a hoax”

“It’s 100F, - climate change proof”

mmaunder2• 7 years ago

Lie because the other side is lying. The bigger bolder lie wins. The truth is considered weak medicine. This is how we got here. It's a disaster.

kls21• 7 years ago

People are smarter than you think, the CRU was fine with it too and it set environmental research back years if not decades. It's called political activism when scientist wade into policy and people smell it from a mile away.

You can thank the CRU and all the other alarmist for implementing exactly what you propose and it's is absolutely the reason the populous does not buy it. Never assume people are idiots, it is a fatal mistake.

domnomnom• 7 years ago

For those who want something a little more current regarding warming and hurricanes:

"In terms of detection and attribution, much less is known about hurricane/tropical cyclone activity changes, compared to global temperature. In the northwest Pacific basin, there is emerging evidence for a detectable poleward shift in the latitude of maximum intensity of tropical cyclones, with a tentative link to anthropogenic warming. In the Atlantic, it is premature to conclude with high confidence that human activities–and particularly greenhouse gas emissions that cause global warming–have already had a detectable impact on hurricane activity. A recent study finds that the observed increase in an Atlantic hurricane rapid intensification metric (1982-2009) is highly unusual compared to one climate model’s simulation of internal multidecadal climate variability, and is consistent in sign with that model’s expected long-term response to anthropogenic forcing. Reduced aerosol forcing since the 1970s probably contributed to the increased Atlantic hurricane activity since then, but the amount of contribution, relative to natural variability, remains uncertain. There is some evidence for a slowing of tropical cyclone propagation speeds over the continental U.S. over the past century, but these observed changes have not yet been confidently linked to anthropogenic climate change. Human activities may have already caused other changes in tropical cyclone activity that are not yet detectable due to the small magnitude of these changes compared to estimated natural variability, or due to observational limitations."

https://www.gfdl.noaa.gov/global-warming-and-hurricanes/

chiefalchemist4• 7 years ago

"By the end of the century, 13 million Americans will need to move just because of rising sea levels, at a cost of $1 million each"

13M feels low. Given the "of $1M each" then perhaps they means households. At an average of 4 heads per, 52M individuals feels closer.

That said, what goes into a $1M move? Does beachfront property average out that high?

Finally, is that $1M in current dollars, or adjusted for inflation estimates?

chiefalchemist4• 7 years ago

Lol. Down voted for simple and obvious math. God bless HN. Keep the hate coming. I love it.

shadowprofile77• 7 years ago

Presumably I'll get downvoted for this but here it goes.. I know that news sites like to link anything they can to climate change in the global human-caused sense because it might create more clicks but how is this a "climate exodus" in that sense? It's more a case of people having built homes in a very flat, easily flooded place that has always been really, really shitty for living due to the dangers of extremely bad hurricane damage (something that has been the case since Europeans settled the region). Way too tenuous for a title like that, but it fits the more hysterical narratives of climate change so in it goes. Note, i'm not doubting or denying the very real global dangers of human-caused climate change, but we should be careful in ascribing just anything to them. Some regions of the world have always been unsafe for human habitation due to persistently unfriendly weather, that we have colonized them with our technology doesn't mean that something has fundamentally changed about their climate whenever things go wrong and nature reasserts itself.

MuffinFlavored• 7 years ago

It's more a case of people having built homes in a very flat, easily flooded place that has always been really, really shitty for living due to the dangers of extremely bad hurricane damage (something that has been the case since Europeans settled the region).

I don't know how to say this politically but this is something that took me back when the call-to-arms came about for the Bahamas recently given the latest hurricane.

Isn't it kind of a broken system? Every hurricane season, the Bahamas stands to get absolutely hammered. It's devastating, but... almost on a schedule?

kls21• 7 years ago

See my post below, Bahamas is no different, most of those houses that where destroyed where built pre-codes. I have a lot of family in the Bahamas, there houses are all on stilts and cat 5 rated. All of their houses survived.

Hurricanes are nothing new, we have endured them all of our lives, they are not getting worse or more frequent.

My family has been in Florida and the Bahamas for 14 generations along the way it just became second nature to instruct the next generation on what to look for in a house that will survive the storm. My original family homestead is still standing and was built in the 1700's, it has seen many storms some worse that Irma and Dorean.

enraged_camel• 7 years ago

Dorian was the most powerful hurricane recorded in the history of the Bahamas, and the worst natural disaster in the country's history.

Last year, Hurricane Harvey caused catastrophic "500-year" floods in Texas. Just this past week, remnants of tropical depression Imelda dropped unbelievable amounts of rain along the Texas Gulf Coast - more than 40 inches in some areas.

As these types of extremes become more frequent, you need to ask yourself if this stuff is just what is on the schedule, or if things are getting worse.

kls21• 7 years ago

I live in the Keys (Summerland Key), so I think I have some skin the the game here. These is not and climate change exodus happening there is a real economic issue in the keys with workforce affordability, the average rent in the keys sits very near the average rent for San Francisco. A decent home for rent will run you between $3500 to $4000 a month. Meanwhile the average non-skilled job pays about $10 an hour in the keys. This has been going on long before Irma hit us. Irma exacerbated the problem by destroying most of the ground level homes built before 1979 as well as Mobile homes and RV's. The exact homes that where the most affordable to the workforce. These people are leaving due to economics not because Irma was somehow a freak of climate change.

Article on work force housing issue and how Irma made it worse: https://therealdeal.com/miami/2019/07/21/many-residents-of-t...

I have lived in Florida for 44 years and have seen storms far nastier than Irma long before climate change was a thing. It's the nature of the beast here, and homes can and are being built to withstand these storms. They do a lot of damage, but they are not these cyclones of death that the media makes them out to be. At CAT 4 or 5 storm is a serious storm don't get me wrong. I took a lot of damage from Irma due to a roof hatch failing, but it was all water damage, structurally my house is fine. But it also sits 9 foot above sea level as far as ground and then 14 foot pier foundation above that. Storm surge here can be up to 15 ft. If you are not above that your house is going to flood in a serious storm. If you are above that, and your house is built to code, it is going to survive the storm. If you are ground level, anywhere on the islands other than by the cemetery in Key west, which IIRC is 15 to 20 ft above sea level, you are going to flood.

Take a look at the 1935 Labor day storm that hit us, look at the devastation, compare it to Irma and you will see that these storms come and go, The 1935 storm was the worst storm to have ever have made landfall.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1935_Labor_Day_hurricane

It was horrific, my grandparents and great grandparents went thru it, all of them said they would never live to see another one like it, and they where correct.

I wish people would focus more on ocean pollution and preservation, I have seen the decline in ocean stock first hand in my life. Killing the ocean is what is going to kill us, and it has to do directly with what we are pumping into the water.

Edit: Forgot to note outside of commercial shellfish, fishing and fishing guide occupations there is no industry down here other than the service industry.

holler• 7 years ago

what's it like living down there? do you work in tech? remote? went jet skiing off Key Largo recently and really enjoyed the area...

sjg0073• 7 years ago

Climate change has been a thing for longer than 44 years.

kls21• 7 years ago

Another article that just popped up in the local news:

https://www.flkeysnews.com/news/local/article234300792.html?...

Waterluvian2• 7 years ago

I visited South Carolina for a wedding and we had a house on the ocean. Every house was on stilts. I asked locals and they said that it was so the houses survived storm season. One also said that they still get obliterated every 20 years or so but you just budget that in.

20 year rebuilds turning into 1 year rebuilds is what I think first world "climate exodus" looks like.

Yes, they know the location is pretty bad. But the numbers had worked for that ocean side Vista. They won't anymore.

paul_f2• 7 years ago

Homes on stilts are designed to survive major storm. Cat 1 and 2 hurricanes. What is a 1 year rebuild? Are you saying a major hurricane will make landfall everywhere, every year? Because that's what you are implying.

DoreenMichele3• 7 years ago

It's being linked to climate change because small, low-lying islands are seeing serious losses of land mass. From the article:

Fifteen years after Hurricane Katrina, Louisiana is trying to relocate the Native American settlement of about 100 people on the Isle de Jean Charles, a narrow island that lost 98% of its land over the past six decades to climate change.

My best understanding is that this is, in fact, a new phenomenon related to global warming, the defrosting of permafrost, etc.

Some regions of the world have always been unsafe for human habitation due to persistently unfriendly weather

There is no place without some kind of disaster. I've looked. It's a case of pick your poison.

Hurricanes in the Southeast. Tornadoes in the Plains States. Earthquakes and the ever-so-lovely Fire Season on the West Coast.

Etc.

But much of Florida is not far above sea level and some of the issues they are seeing can legitimately be linked to climate change. That's not just hand-wringing in this case.

This is especially true for low-lying islands, which are seeing new problems around the world. It isn't the norm for islands to simply disappear to rising sea levels.

rjbwork2• 7 years ago

Yes, but some places are far worse than others. Down here in Atlanta we get some pretty bad thunder storms (and accompanying low lying land floods), and rare but not unheard of hail. We're pretty far from any real faults, though we have gotten tiny tremors from east Tennessee and north/south Georgia before, they're at most 4-5, with everything in Georgia around a 3. We're far enough away from, and high enough above the ocean for sea level rise to not impact us. Tornados are exceedingly rare. We hardly ever get any real hurricane weather, usually just some rain from the outer reaches of it as it hits the coasts.

I'd choose this over my former South Louisiana digs any day. We had to evacuate for hurricanes multiple times when I was a kid there. For hurricane Andrew we were driving north in the pouring rain and wind so high nobody could close the car doors except my dad. I've never been even close to that scared of weather in Georgia.

mirimir• 7 years ago

But much of Florida is not far above sea level and some of the issues they are seeing can legitimately be linked to climate change.

Yes. And also on very porous limestone and coral. So ocean and groundwater levels are linked. Seawalls won't help, and even building on stilts, the groundwater goes saline.

There was a recent article about finding a decades old car and skeleton in a pond in a Florida gated community. Zooming out on Google maps, you can see how they transformed huge areas of ~swamp. They used the classic islet and pond approach. But I bet that all those ponds are tied to sea level.

bobthepanda• 7 years ago

What’s the poison in the Great Lakes region?

CydeWeys2• 7 years ago

The obvious connection to the climate crisis is that global warming is causing ice to melt and thus sea levels to rise. Rising seas are catastrophic for buildings and infrastructure in low-lying coastal areas, which because of its geography Florida has more of than anywhere else in the US.

The world is on the way to becoming uninhabitable for modern human civilization, and we're the cause. It happens that the majority of humanity lives in coastal areas that will be put underwater by the amount of sea level rise that's going to happen by the end of this century at current rates of warming. The current retreats from the most vulnerable areas in Florida are just a tiny, tiny taste to come of the massive climate refugeeism that is on the horizon.

It's not hysteria, this is what is going to happen unless we make massive changes.

BurningFrog2• 7 years ago

I looked it up, and current sea level rise is around 3mm/year, which adds up to a foot per century.

More than I thought, but hardly a non outrunnable flood.

https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/sealevel.html

em3rgent0rdr• 7 years ago

Humans used to settle near water when it made sense technologically and for their economy. The risks from flooding have always been strong, but back when those areas were settled the risk management made settling there a reasonable tradeoff. Nowadays when we no longer need to be reliant on settling near bodies of water, it probably makes more sense to move inland to lower-risk areas.

tmaly• 7 years ago

I saw worse in the Philippines several years ago. Bodies were piled like sardines after a category 5 typhoon. Its the nature of flat land to flood with bad storms

ilamont• 7 years ago

About 6 million Floridians will need to move inland by century’s end to avoid inundation, according to Hauer, the demographer, in a 2016 paper. By then, about 80% of the nearby Keys, the archipelago that includes the tourist mecca of Key West, will be underwater. About 3.5 million people would be flooded in South Florida’s Miami-Dade and Broward, the two counties with America’s biggest exposed populations.

The article then shows a chart predicting population displacement caused by a 1.8-meter sea level rise.

Is that the accepted consensus, that the sea level is rising ~6 feet?

brohee• 7 years ago

It's not rising 6 feet permanently, but it does during storm surges. Hence the stilts. (which only partially solve the problem), your road network, water distribution network, electrical network etc still suffers)

wutwutwut77• 7 years ago

"The Great Climate Exodus Is Starting In The Texas Gulf"

https://timedotcom.files.wordpress.com/2017/08/galveston-hur...

1891 July 6th 80mph from the south 1900 Sept 8th 145mph the great galveston hurricane kills 8,000 people with a 15ft storm surge even though it was low tide while hitting it traveled 6 to 10 miles inland from the ESE .The pressure at landfall was 27.55inches with winds of 110mph.Half of Galveston destroyed with 2,600 buildings destroyed & 10,000 people left homeless would have been much worse if not moving so quickly. It is said that a one inch steel hull of an ocean going freighter was pierced through with a piece of lumber.According to the hurricane research division winds were of Category 4 strength at landfall. Newspaper headline | max wind map | Monument | surge animation | Interview with Julie Lake summer of the storm 1909 july 21st a 10 ft strom surge with 110mph winds from the ESE 41 killed in texas. 1915 AUG 17th a cat 3 120mph kills 275 ,12' tides flooded Galveston 5' to 6' in the Business District. Winds at Galveston were 97 mph gusts to 130mph putting this in the cat 3/4 range.Press 940 mb,.Seawall prevented a repeat of the 1900 disaster.Causes 50 million in damage max wind field 1932 Aug 14th 145mph winds from the SE direct hit 1934 july 27th, a storm surge of 5.9ft with a cat 1,80mph that passes just east while moving south 1942 Aug 21st 80mph from the ESE 1943 July 27th a storm surge of 4 ft ,nineteen killed,86mph winds. 1945 Aug 27th 140mph from the south just west of here 1947 August 24th 80mph from the S.E 1949 oct 4th 130mph from the south 1957 June 27th 110mph(hurdat) Hurricane Audrey well east from the south. Newspaper article 1959 July 25th hurricane Debra hit with 85mph winds bar 29.07 14.42 inches of rain. NHC Wallet 1983 hurricane Alicia on aug 18th causes 2 bill damage as a cat 2/3 with 71 to 98mph winds in Galveston moving at a forward speed of 8mph. 21 killed 1.2 billion dollars in damage,a 10 to 12 ft storm surge at normal high tide.90% of Dwellings on Jamaica bch destroyed.Many highrise glass buildings sustained heavy damage. Pressure in Galveston was measured at 989mb 29.20 inches at 2:00AM. From NOAA GPST2 - GALVESTON PLEASURE PIER (PORTS) - TX 29.29 max gust 020/076kts Damage photo | #2 | max wind field | Dr Ted Fujita wind map | Newspaper headline | Newspaper headline #2 1989 Oct 15th Jerry 3 dead over 8 million in damage ,85mph winds.The latest a hurricane ever hit the upper Texas coast NHC Wallet 2001 June 5th T.S Allison hits with 60mph winds dumping extremely heavy rain especially inland in the Houston area. Over a 120 hr period houston recorded 36.99 inches of rain.Only 3 tropical systems have produced more rain in this area. T.S Amelia 46.00",T.S Claudette 45.00",unamed 1921 40.00". 41 deaths related to flooding & 5 billion in damage. Allison was finally retired in July of 2002 as the only T-storm to be retired. NHC Report 2008 Hurricane Ike hits Galveston on Sept 13th with 110mph winds causing extensive damage in entire area by 15 ft storm surge.From NOAA GALVESTON G GPST2 11.19 ft storm surge MAJOR 29.29 GALVESTON STATE PLEASURE PIER.A high gust for the Houston area was 92mph at Hobby airport.Gust at pleasure pier 86mph.Deaths reported in Texas at 22 with several missing. Hurricane Warning Show | Before & after aerial shot | Bolivar Peninsula just north | Ike model history | SAR Helicopter refueling over Galveston | Newspaper headline | Newspaper headline 2 days later | Neil Frank describing landfall video | Ike aftermath story video | surge animation | USGS surge info | Radar animation | NHC Final report 2017 Aug 29th tropical storm Harvey just offshore while moving north by 32 miles with 50mph winds. Galveston Scholes Field (KGLS) 22.87 inches of rain gust's to 59mph. Galveston Pier 2.7ft water inundation. Inland counties report upwards of 60inches of rain in some locations most rainfall ever for tropical system in U.S. NHC Final report

mrfusion3• 7 years ago

Disclaimer. I have unwavering faith in climate change.

But I do wonder why are banks writing mortgages on houses in these kind of areas? Shouldn’t they be more worried about losing their investment over 30 years?

hyperbovine• 7 years ago

You mean the same banks who were underwriting NINA mortgages as fast as they could print them out back in 05-07? (That's "No Income, No Asset", for those of you who do not recall.)

cortesoft• 7 years ago

"Banks" don't write mortgages, bankers do, and they worry about making their money now. They aren't on the hook for the long run.

Even banks aren't, they are going to package up the mortgages and sell them to someone else.

We know mortgage writers don't care about the long term viability of their loans, just look at the subprime mortgage crisis from last decade.

jellicle• 7 years ago

As long as you've got a reasonable downpayment (or paid for some sort of default insurance), or you at least paid on the mortgage for a few years, the bank has little chance of losing their money. It's YOUR money at risk, not theirs.

If you default and your property value has dropped 20% due to rising seas - but you had a 20% downpayment - the bank will end up whole, only you will be wiped out.

In a well-constructed mortgage, the bank has essentially zero risk of loss.

justsubmit4• 7 years ago

I have unwavering faith in climate change.

That sounds like a religious statement, not a scientific one.

Synless• 7 years ago

This actually started in Louisiana:

https://www.cnbc.com/2019/04/24/louisiana-town-moves-to-high...

lulu592• 7 years ago

Great news Mr Bloomberg, about time some of these bozos left the islands, maybe we can finally enjoy the place without being flooded by tourists. We used to have September to ourselves now not even that is quiet. The Florida Keys are being purchased by conglomerates and wealthy people like never before in history. Housing is blooming, and tourism is also. The exodus is happening, but that is New York City. They are all moving down to Miami and the Keys. You want to play alarmist? Then include Miami sir, because ALL OF FLORIDA will be affected by weather changes and patterns, like LA, like the coastal Carolinas in about 100 years or so. Until then I doubt Amazon would HQ in S FL if there was fear of submersion. Until the great flood will happen, get the heck out of our islands!

kls21• 7 years ago

LOL I absolutely know you are from the islands! What key are you on. This September has been busy, if it had not been for Doreen threatening us, I don't thing it would have slowed down at all. All my favorite restaurants closed shop for the month though.

lulu592• 7 years ago

About time New Yorkers stopped their exodus to come and bug us in the keys.

America’s Great Climate Exodus Is Starting in the Florida Keys

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