From the University of Southampton and the department of potential assorted threats and sundries, comes this claim.
New research predicts that coastal regions may face massive increases in damages from storm surge flooding over the course of the 21st century.
Yes, and a asteroid could hit us, and some errant jihadist might get a nuke and set it off. I worry about those things more than I worry about coastlines and the affluent who build there, especially since Global Tropical Cyclone activity is at 33-year lows.
According to the study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, global average storm surge damages could increase from about $10-$40 billion per year today to up to $100,000 billion per year by the end of century, if no adaptation action is taken.
The study, led by the Berlin-based think-tank Global Climate Forum (GCF) and involving the University of Southampton, presents, for the first time, comprehensive global simulation results on future flood damages to buildings and infrastructure in coastal flood plains. Drastic increases in these damages are expected due to both rising sea levels and population and economic growth in the coastal zone. Asia and Africa may be particularly hard hit because of their rapidly growing coastal mega-cities, such as Shanghai, Manila and Lagos.
“If we ignore this problem, the consequences will be dramatic,” explains Jochen Hinkel from GCF and the study’s lead author. In 2100, up to 600 million people (around 5 per cent of the global population) could be affected by coastal flooding if no adaptation measures are put in place.
“Countries need to take action and invest in coastal protection measures, such as building or raising dikes, amongst other options,” urges Hinkel. With such protection measures, the projected damages could be reduced to below $80 billion per year during the 21st century. The researchers found that an investment level of $10 to $70 billion per year could achieve such a reduction. Prompt action is needed most in Asia and Africa where, today, large parts of the coastal population are already affected by storm surge flooding.
However, investment must also occur in Europe as shown by the recent coastal floods in South West England. Professor Robert Nicholls from the University of Southampton, who is a co-author of the paper, says: “If we ignore sea-level rise, flood damages will progressively rise and presently good defences will be degraded and ultimately overwhelmed. Hence we must start to adapt now, be that planning higher defences, flood proofing buildings and strategically planning coastal land use.”
Meeting the challenge of adapting to rising sea levels will not be easy, explains Hinkel: “Poor countries and heavily impacted small-island states are not able to make the necessary investments alone, they need international support.” Adding to the challenge, international finance mechanisms have thus far proved sluggish in mobilising funds for adapting to climate change, as the debate on adaptation funding at the recent climate conference in Warsaw once again confirmed.
“If we do not reduce greenhouse gases swiftly and substantially, some regions will have to seriously consider relocating significant numbers of people in the longer run,” adds Hinkel. Yet regardless of how much sea-level rise climate change brings, the researchers say careful long-term strategic planning can ensure that development in high-risk flood zones is appropriately designed or avoided. Professor Nicholls says: “This long-term perspective is however a challenge to bring about, as coastal development tends to be dominated by short-term interests of, for example, real-estate and tourism companies, which prefer to build directly at the waterfront with little thought about the future.”
Wow, what glittering generalities! I missed a prediction of how much the sea level will rise sometime in the distant future. One of the things they seem to ignore is the fact that humans have adapted to real climate change for 200,000 years. If the worry is the water rising over the next 86 years, I bet even a fat old man like me can walk or wheel his way ahead of it.
If Jochen Hinkel ever needs another job, he could write copy for National Public Radio and Public Broadcasting Service (gov’t radio and gov’t TV in the US.) Hinkel’s work sounds exactly like some of their programming.
This is the religion of could, might, maybe, if.
Want to stop weather related damage along the coasts? Stop building by the coasts.
Interesting numbers they have. 60,000,000 people affected? 5% of the population? Thats 12 billion people.
100,000 billion damages? Thats 20% of total GDP by then.
The IPCC, in its projections (which Castles and Henderson showed to fatally flawed), had global population at 7 billion in 2100. GDP is 522 trillion.
Wow. Talk about inflation. These guys need Bernanke to control it.
At least this study is calling for improved infrastructure to protect against flooding and storm surge. Such steps would have real value, even if the frequency of flooding remains where it is today. By comparison, many carbon schemes have virtually no value at all. The amount of CO2 reduction would have negligible effect even if the catastrophic models are correct.
Only “trillions” ??!! Seems to me Obama flushed a coupe of trillion down the drain in a couple of years.
Hmmm…does Barbara Streisand have government flood insurance? Who pays if her beachfront is flooded?
Duh! You built at the ocean edge and then act surprised when ocean storms rage and floods y’all? But the bad news – obviously this was the first time the UK ever experienced storms in their long history? Oh – you’re flooding over there because you built on low level former swamp, and your government never dredged the rivers. But they did collect all your green taxes – for the climate change people doing this study – how’s that for bang for the buck?
Man, this is a really BAD cookie-cutter alarmism presentation. How many time have we heard this, nearly word-for-word? Reduce it to a dull roar, won’t somebody…Puh-leeeeeez
Sandy is the best-named storm in history, moving around goodly amounts of sand that beach-lovers chose to build on. Ship captains don’t typically build their homes on sand. Why is that?
Why aren’t Dutch people alarmed?
In areas that may be prone to flooding they should build floor levels higher than the expected high water level.
This simple plan of mine will save 600,000,000 lives and possibly save the human race from extinction.
Beaches are great and who wouldn’t want to have a home on a great beach in a nice warm location.
So yeah, these homes are expensive because most people want to own one and, every now and again, a storm from the ocean or the lake comes in and does damage to them.
Why isn’t insurance coverage based on this risk? Its not like the people who can afford these expensive homes and real estate cannot afford to pay much higher insurance premiums.
If some people think those premiums should be even higher because of global warming or sea level rise then so be it.
It is not more complicated than that.
My latest cartoon is a comment on this kind of scare-mongering:
http://itsnotclimatescience.com
(cartoon number 17)
My Real Science comment:
“We are on the brink of disaster. Urgent action by the government is needed.” -Econuts and Democrats, 1960s
“We are on the brink of disaster. Urgent action by the government is needed.” -Econuts and Democrats, 1970s
“We are on the brink of disaster. Urgent action by the government is needed.” -Econuts and Democrats, 1980s
“We are on the brink of disaster. Urgent action by the government is needed.” -Econuts and Democrats, 1990s
“We are on the brink of disaster. Urgent action by the government is needed.” -Econuts and Democrats, 2000s
“We are on the brink of disaster. Urgent action by the government is needed.” -Econuts and Democrats, 2010s
Did they just say we could lower the damages from $100 Billion to $80 Billion a year if we just spent up to $70 Billion a year to fix things?
WIthout Global Warming, cavemen would still be isolated around the equator, so I guess the cost is non-existent. No people, no damage. More people, more damage.
It might be helpful if these people put a sock in it and started paying attention to the REAL experts who have been working on these problems for decades/centuries. With some success in many places. Even if these expectations were realistic, the changes would take decades to be apparent. (Of course,”stop building near the coast” provides no answer to what is already built too close.)
Oh, my mistake. That was $100,000 Billion, not $100 Billion a year. I didn’t catch that since it’s a patently ridicules number.
I was laid back in a lounge chair on my neighbor’s nice dock, drinking an excellent English tea he smuggles in past the gaggle of government agents from his family back in Yorkshire. The subject of AGW came up as he’s a greenie believer. I told him to simply look across the Ashley River to the 1820’s steamboat cypress dock that used to deliver rich Charlestonians from downtown to Magnolia Gardens Plantation’s mansion when it got too hot in Summer back then. “Take a picture with your digital camera, once a year, from now on at ebb tide when all the flow stops.”, I told him. “Make it a closeup of where the water level is on the closest cypress leg, then compare all the pictures from all the years.” We’ll see in a few years if it changes…..
“You’re really lucky, you know.”, I quipped. “You’re dock is a floating dock so we can have our teas out here for a few more years, at least!”….(c;]
Flew into SFO yesterday and noticed that the San Mateo bridge is mostly a causeway at just above sea level. If the US gov’t or CA state were that worried about sea level rise, they would be raising it up well above sea level.
And sun-caused skin cancers will cause millions of deaths and trillions in health care expenses over coming decades. Oxygen-caused damage to humans will cause DNA mutations, premature deaths and cost trillions over coming decades. Oxygen-caused damage to fresh foods like fruits and vegetables will cost food producers billions to mitigate over coming decades. Coastal flooding, sun, oxygen and oxidation; all part of life on earth. Deal with it and stop putting arbitrary and meaningless price tags on it.
love this bit: “That some are planning to get rich from the warming world only underscores the reality of climate change”:
3 Feb: Time: McKenzie Funk: The Big Business of Global Warming
Corporations are betting on climate change — and primed for a big payday when things really heat up
(McKenzie Funk writes for Harper’s, Outside, National Geographic and Rolling Stone, and is the author of Windfall: The Booming Business of Global Warming (The Penguin Press, 2014).)
The pharmaceutical giant Bayer has made a remarkable — and lucrative — discovery. Allergies are on the rise…
Bayer mentions this in its annual response to the watchdog CDP, formerly the Carbon Disclosure Project, which surveys the greenhouse-gas emissions of the world’s largest corporations…
One of Bayer’s latest products is “a new generation of mosquito net,” the LifeNet. It also has two advanced bug sprays in the pipeline. These will be lucrative because mosquitoes and the disease they carry are expected to thrive in a warmer world, leaving another 40 million to 60 million people at risk of malaria in Africa alone. “In light of an expected climate-change-related increase of malaria incidents in further regions of the world (e.g., Northern Europe), we expect a growing demand for Bayer mosquito nets,” the company writes…
Bayer is not alone in seeing opportunities in a hotter planet. In Australia’s climate-stressed bread belt, the Murray-Darling basin, and its analog in the American West, the Colorado River basin, hedge funds have bought up millions of gallons worth of water rights. Other funds, convinced that commodity prices can only keep rising, are part of a new scramble for Africa in which as many as 100,000 sq. mi. of farmland — an area larger than the U.K. — have been leased or purchased by foreign investors…
In the Netherlands, the stock of the seawall-building company Arcadis jumped by 6% the moment New York City — a potential client — was struck by Hurricane Sandy…
That some are planning to get rich from the warming world only underscores the reality of climate change: its impacts, though mostly bad for most people in most places, are deeply uneven…
This unevenness suggests that self-interest, however rational, may never be enough to jump-start real climate action in the wealthy countries where it’s most needed. It’s hard to scare people into cutting emissions if they’re not actually all that scared…
http://ideas.time.com/2014/02/03/the-big-business-of-global-warming/
In 1870, 70-80 percent of the US population was employed in agriculture. As of 2008, less than 2 percent of the population is directly employed in agriculture.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agriculture_in_the_United_States#Employment
When people realized that there was no future in agricultural rural America, they moved away. If people see no future living near the ocean then sometime in the next 100 years, they will move away. Problem solved and no taxpayers were harmed.