Researchers analyze benefits of considering retreat as a proactive option in the face of climate change
UNIVERSITY OF MIAMI ROSENSTIEL SCHOOL OF MARINE & ATMOSPHERIC SCIENCE
MIAMI–In a new analysis on managed retreat–the climate adaptation response of moving people and property out of harm’s way–researchers explore what it would take for managed retreat to be supportive of people and their priorities. A key starting point is considering retreat alongside other responses like coastal armoring and not just as an option of last resort.
In a new paper in the journal Science, University of Miami (UM) Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science researcher Katharine Mach argues that managed retreat should be viewed as a proactive option that can support communities and livelihoods in the face of climate change.
“Managed retreat can be more effective in reducing risk–in ways that are socially equitable and economically efficient–if it is a proactive component of climate-driven transformations,” said Mach, an associate professor in the Department of Environmental Science and Policy at UM Rosenstiel School. “It can be used to address climate risks, along with other types of responses like building seawalls or limiting new development in hazard-prone regions.”
In the review paper, Mach and her colleague A.R. Siders from the University of Delaware reviewed the existing literature on the subject to argue that societies will be better prepared for intensifying climate change–such as more frequent and severe storms, flooding and sea-level-rise–if they consider the potential role of strategic and managed retreat.
“Communities, towns, cities and municipalities are making decisions now that affect the future,” said Siders, a core faculty member in UD’s Disaster Research Center and assistant professor in the Biden School of Public Policy and Administration and geography and spatial sciences. “If we’re making these decisions now, we should also be considering all the options on the table right now, not just the ones that keep people in place.”
Retreat is already happening in the U.S. and many parts of the world in the face of relatively moderate climate change and has happened throughout human history.
“Early conversations about managed retreat–and where, when, and why its use could be considered acceptable or not–substantially increase the likelihood that future climate retreat will promote societal goals,” said Mach.
VIDEO:
In a related study in the Journal of Environmental Studies and Sciences, Mach and UM doctoral student Carolien Kraan conducted the first comprehensive overview of equity concerns that have been raised on voluntary property buyouts and provide policy options for addressing these concerns.
For example, they suggest that local governments involve residents in the buyout process from the start and provide homeowners with professional support to guide them through the process to reduce frustration.
“The article provides practitioners and researchers with a synthesis of policy options that are aimed at improving social justice outcomes in voluntary property buyout programs,” said Kraan, a doctoral student at the UM Abess Center for Ecosystem Science and Policy.
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The review paper, titled “Reframing strategic, managed retreat for transformative climate adaptation,” was published on June 18 in the journal Science.
The study, titled “Promoting equity in retreat through voluntary property buyout programs,” was published May 11 in the Journal of Environmental Studies and Sciences. The authors include Jennifer Niemann from the UM Rosenstiel School, A. R. Siders from the University of Delaware and Miyuki Hino from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Funding for both studies was provided by the Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science and the Leonard and Jayne Abess Center for Ecosystem Science and Policy.
About the University of Miami’s Rosenstiel School
The University of Miami is one of the largest private research institutions in the southeastern United States. The University’s mission is to provide quality education, attract and retain outstanding students, support the faculty and their research, and build an endowment for University initiatives. Founded in the 1940’s, the Rosenstiel School of Marine & Atmospheric Science has grown into one of the world’s premier marine and atmospheric research institutions. Offering dynamic interdisciplinary academics, the Rosenstiel School is dedicated to helping communities to better understand the planet, participating in the establishment of environmental policies, and aiding in the improvement of society and quality of life. For more information, visit: http://www.rsmas.miami.edu and Twitter @UMiamiRSMAS
All this ‘so called’ Climate Change Management is totally 180 degrees in the opposite direction. It is Global Cooling that we will have to confront. Currently the planet is at the tail end of this current “Interglacial” warm period, and ready to enter a 100,000 year glaciation phase. Its gonna’ get cold, sooner than you think. Get ready for the next chapter of this current Pleistocene Ice Age.
If you own property north of the Mason-Dixon Line, time to sell and move south,…ahead of the crowd.
I’d more anticipate a continuation of multidecade warming and cooling cycles, just as it’s been for centuries if not millennia. I am hoping that we’ve a multidecade cooling cycle, but no matter if the earth continues to warm or cool, I’ll be dead within the next three decades so temperatures aren’t going to change enough for me to notice.
As for the oceans, I’d expect the rise to slowly continue through the rest of my life. But a significant amount of what’s blamed on the ocean’s rise is really due to subsidence.
Not to mention century and millennial warming and cooling cycles.
Parts of Scandinavia have undergone Isostatic Rebound (IR) over the years as a result of melting ice relieving millions of tons of weight pushing down on the land mass, causing local sea levels to effectively fall!!! One reason overlooked by warmists/doom-sayers for apparent rising sea levels in southern UK, is IR whereby Scotland’s land mass is rising & England’s southern land mass is sinking, the Ice Age southern boundary lies on a roughly east-west line (as the UK land mass tilts), between London & Bristol!
Even if global sea levels do rise at the rate reported for the past few decades, the amount is so little and the rate is so slow it will never be any more pressing than it is right now.
IOW, except for people telling lies and misrepresenting things like erosion, ground subsidence, and historically low lying areas, as indicative of global sea level rise due to “climate change”, there is no issue whatsoever.
No one ever acts like there is a problem anyway, no matter what they say, as evidenced, for example, by prominent climate change activists continuing to buy pricey beach front real estate.
But note what happens whenever a storm surge or flood wrecks property, infrastructure, or real estate: No one talks about abandoning those places, since obviously anyplace that is flooded once will be flooded again, as will any storm surge that has occurred once, be just a matter of time before it happens again.
Instead, it becomes a make or break political issue to throw massive amounts of money at rebuilding efforts.
I doubt there is one inch of real estate in the US that will be impacted by sea level rise, if such even happens anywhere at all, before storms and floods have inundated those area at least once and more likely many times.
That is the warning I have been trying to get across for two decades. The Holocene has been cooling steadily for over 7 – 8000 years and as you say, as interglacials go; it’s getting long in the tooth. The increased CO2 might be some help (provided any part of their AGW hysteria is correct), but the geological tendency is a sudden increased cooling into re-glaciation. If there is a “tipping point” it will be glaciation, not extreme warming.
Grand solar minimum, 2030. We’ll see.
I do find it rather fascinating that many maintain the claim that whilst past climate changes were due to variations in Solar output, the big shiny ball thingamajig in the sky, a massive fusion reactor possessing in excess of 99.9% of the mass of the Solar System, cannot possibly have an effect of the Earth’s climate!!! Well, we will see over the coming years where climate decides to go. Still heard nothing from anyone regarding just how much “Global Warming” there has been in the last 20+ years!!! Have we peaked? Is the apparent reduction in Solar activity going to make us all stop & think?
???
Very old news.
Just which South of the “Mason-Dixon Line” states are you suggesting has not had a flood of
Yankeespeople moving into it over the last two decades?Ground level homes in Miami Beach are available at rock bottom prices due to the threat of SLR.
https://www.realtor.com/realestateandhomes-detail/130-Palm-Ave_Miami-Beach_FL_33139_M51096-38671
Somebody, with a need of a humor transplant, gave you a negative for that. griff?
I bet I can get that place for $38 million.
Are you nuts?!? It only has 9 bedrooms. $34 million, tops.
It does have 11-1/2 bathrooms, though. Somebody with a bad prostate must have had it built.
Point well taken. I’m good with the bathroom count, though!
Are two half baths counted as a full bath?
If you wash from the waist up on Tuesday and wash from the waist down on Wednesday, then yes. Two half baths count as a full bath.
From the University of Miami, eh? Has she looked around at South Florida? Any sign of retreat, managed or otherwise?
My grandfather was one of the first settlers of Miami, and I grew up there 65 years ago. When I was in high school, I asked my Father “If we were here first how come we are not rich?’ He laughed and said “Everyone knew that land on Miami Beach was just mangrove swamp and not worth anything.”
Places that were mangrove swamp in the 1950’s are now filled with high-rise condos.
Of course, the sea level isn’t going to rise significantly in the next 80 years, so this is just one of the innumerable studies done by academia to pretend they are doing something useful.
I remember visiting the Castillo de San Marco in St. Augustine as a child. I imagine it’s under water now.
National Park Service must be doing scuba tours, then, eh?
I live about 15 minutes south of the fort and I can assure you it’s as high, dry and as beautiful as ever.
That’s a beautiful place to live!
Seems like the fort was built to last, 349 years and counting. The Spanish design engineer, Ignacio Daza, was very good apparently. I wonder what his thoughts were about elevation placement relative to sea level.
I visited it a few years ago. Great historical site.
Its amazing the number of people making lucrative careers out of mental masturbation.
Over 100 years ago, Henry Flagler dredged the Miami River and dumped the sand, called a spoil pile, near the mouth of the river in two huge heaps.
Over the subsequent decades more sand was added.
Eventually the pile of sand was deemed “property”, and so of course someone had deed to it.
It changed hands and names, (Burlingame Key, Claughton Island, and now Brickell Key) several times in the past century, but today that pile of sand is some of the most expensive real estate in the world.
Here is Burlingame Key in 1923:
Here it is in 1930:
Here it is by the 1960s:
http://fksa.org/gallery3/var/resizes/Florida/Admin-File/album346/album348/2014-Orange-Bowl-Paddle-Championship/3%20Claughton%20Island%20s.jpg
And 1970:
It does not look like that anymore. Now it is worth billions of dollars, many billions, and no one is retreating, they are coming up with ways to build more and more expensive real estate there.
Here is what it looked like in 2013:
http://fksa.org/gallery3/var/resizes/Florida/Admin-File/album346/album348/2014-Orange-Bowl-Paddle-Championship/3%20Claughton%20Island%20s.jpg
And more recently still:
People take land from the sea, we do not give it back.
Large sections of Boston were once open water, as was most of lower Manhattan.
Lower Manhattan in the post WWII years:
And now:
Fantastic pic collection!
Going back a few more years:
Block the water or move away. What a concept. Until this study, they had other studies that showed that 100s of millions would helplessly drown in place after the water started entering their nostrils.
A study of topics chronoligically in the clisci literature would show big disasters, followed by several repetitions of same, then filler items like sheep are banding together to hunt wolves (took a while to exhaust this genre of evermore quirky nature), to now needing planners help decide whether we should run away from sea level rise, build a dyke (can I still use this term?) or let the water pour into our nostrils. And its got to be managed socially equitably (this is a worry for toxic white males).
Reminds me of this temple.
One person with a shovel, wheelbarrow and horse drawn cart can reclaim over an acre a year from the ocean, given even a modest effort.
I have watched a single dredge pump move enough sand from offshore of Boca Raton to the beach in one night, to expand a mile of beachfront by over a hundred feet seaward and two feet up.
It took a fleet of bulldozers to keep up.
Moving earth around is trivial for modern machinery.
The Dutch protected their entire country, and reclaimed land from the sea on top of that, using, IIRC, what was available in the 19th century. IOW, muscle power and hand tools.
Now do it with a solar panel or two.
Did they just demonstrate that adaptation is not only possible, but cheaper than eliminating CO2?
Yep, they seem to have demonstrated that normal people can do what normal people do.
Amazing stuff.
Eliminating CO2 will kill everything. It has minimal,effect on SLR.
Please recall that Chicago was once raised several feet above Lake Michigan’s level using the advanced technology of the 1850’s.
Like a comment above, Mostly muscle! Some of the buildings required thousands of Jack Screws with thousands turning these jacks. Different buildings required different heights as the buildings were raised to have sewers. There are some good accounts on the internet and some not so good.
Most of the solutions are delayed in arrival due to the waist deep horse manure clogging the streets of New York City.
Sea level rise, especially any acceleration, is an imagined ‘problem’. It isn’t a real threat anywhere, especially where they said it would all be under water by 2000, or 2020 from previous predictions. Not. At least this century.
All the Pacific Islands are doing fine, and even building new airports and hotels on the Maldives, just a few feet above sea level. They wouldn’t be doing that if it was going to be all under water in 10 years. So they obviously don’t believe it.
All the rich and famous people buying up all the best ocean front, all the while preaching to us climate change and sea level rise right around the corner, or already in full swing, causing the ‘climate’ emergency. Not. And they are the hypocrites and liars that are in on this scam.
But if it were a threat, or if we wanted to expand our horizons and our living spaces, then we only need to look at the Dutch. They took land below sea level, and made it arable, producing more agriculture per capita and per km2 than anyone else in the world. Floating houses made out of 8 cm thick reinforced concrete shells filled underneath with flotation for a floating home that will last 150 years or longer. They even have floating barns filled with milk cows, and right in the city harbour. Same for floating vegetable farms, chicken barns, and anything else you could think of. If the Dutch can manage much of their land below sea level, then most of the rest of the world should be able to manage their land above sea level.
There are a few buildings/churches in Delft that are hundreds of years old, each leaning a little one direction or the other, but they are floating exactly as you say, though I was told that they used cow skins for flotation shells.
Supposedly Irish Monks used cow skin boats and arrived in Iceland and North America even before the Vikings, around the 6th century. No wonder cows and especially bulls, were worshipped from time immemorial. One of the first domesticated farm animals, and so much was provided for by the bovine beast of burden.
Interesting. I had never heard that before but it appears that the Vikings drove the Monks from Iceland is substantially documented.
https://premodernexplorationatstfx.wordpress.com/tag/st-brendan/
Supposedly St. Brendan and his companions wandered around West Virginia, leaving traces of their passing. Those cow skin coracles were pretty impressive little boats.
retreat is a bad defense, the plan should to advance and charge the ocean.
So some idiots in government decide how much of your land could be lost in say next 200 years, and government gives you 10 times as much “land lost” as land area on ocean. And also allow people to buy ocean “land”.
Once people can buy ocean land, you will get ocean settlements.
Well, I don’t want to live in one of those places. I prefer to be able to avoid cities at all costs these days.
I agree. That’s why I live at 900 ft. in the Sierra foothills NE of Sacramento, CA.
BTW, after the great inland flood of 1862 that had the city under 8 ft of water. They decided to fill in the first floors and raised the streets 10-12 ft. The 2nd flood became the ground floor…flood problem solved.!
That is precisely why my cozy little house sits on the top of a very ancient dune and the shore of Lake MichiGamu is 8 miles away.
Retreat is already happening in the U.S. and many parts of the world in the face of relatively moderate climate change and has happened throughout human history.
Where in the U.S. is this happening? News to me but I’m willing to be informed.
Millions of people are on the march, especially to states like Florida and Texas. Just doesn’t match up with this narrative though, as those are dangerous places in hurricane season. Sure couldn’t be the reason why these people would leave their own states for such a high risk place that gets a few hurricanes every decade or so. It must be some other climate in these other states that people are retreating from. Probably all the lies and BS of the ‘climate emergency’. Well I guess it would be a climate emergency in North Dakota on a cold January 40 below day. I would flee too.
It seems that no one even questions this sort of unmitigated horse pucky any more … never mind the current crop of university “students” who write it and whose teachers approve it. It’s now such a monstrous lie, of such impressive vintage, entire schools in once great universities are now dedicated to inventing such “theories” from whole cloth.
I suspect it’s a result of mentality, whereby a student/post grad must write a paper saying something profound, & foretelling Human caused disaster is always a best-seller in the campuses!!!
I understand your point, but wouldn’t that be more appropriate from journalism or creative writing students than the sciences? Learned can also be “profound”, don’t you find? I can’t understand why human causation and self hate has become so popular.
Indeed, people of age are retreating from the North to Florida and Arizona. LOL
What a joke
Normally alarmists cant get past simple qualitative might/may be discussions.
This isnt even that.
Lets do pretty pictures and call it science.LOL
Wow, this reads like one of my Sunday night – due Monday English Essays. “Hamlet was a tragic figure whooo…. died very tragically.” Except they got paid, I got an F.
So many paragraphs to choose from. I’ll take this one:
What the h#ll does that mean?
“involve residents in the buyout process from the start” – So 10 cents on the dollar, but at least we told you right away.
“Professional support…to reduce frustration” – Be calm, these nice solders will escort you from your home (you see, the police can’t do it since they’ve all been defunded).
Let me translate:
In pursuit of equity, the poorest people on the least valuable land should get lawyered-up early and at taxpayer expense to ensure they extract the maximum settlement for abandoning their property, which they would do anyway.
I promise to retreat as quickly as I can over the next ten thousand years!
I doubt you’ve got more than a thousand before sea levels begin to decline rapidly due to polar glaciation. The Holocene is already old by interglacial standards. It could last a millennium or more but could also reverse itself well within the next 1000 years.
Even the most basic discussion about adaption must include real case studies about coastal engineering actually happening.
For example the 2011 Japanese Earthquake/Tsunami have changed some coasts by up to 1.0m. (not 2mm/yr SLR).
Japanese coastal engineering for earthquake and Tsunami cost $Billions.
Consider the Status Quo of no SLR
Developed cities such as Miami still need to spend $ on coastal protection.
Developing cities such as Dhaka still need to create proper urban planning guidelines to limit development in flood areas.
The extra cost or effort to adapt SLR is minimal.
These papers are nesting dolls. To see where they get the numbers, one must follow the chain of references.
The minimum of 4 million people at risk assumes a sea level rise of 90 cm by 2100 – 35 inches, .44”/year – an increase of 3x or 4x from the current rate. It’s nuts that the paper doesn’t bother to guess at the probability of this scenario. We can’t rationally devote resources to a project without a guess of its likelihood.
They get the 4 million number from a 2016 paper:
https://www.nature.com/articles/nclimate2961
That paper uses sea level rates from Vermeer and Rahmstorf (2009), using scenarios from AR4. Given the massive funding and flood of climate science papers, couldn’t they find more recent estimates?
https://www.pnas.org/content/106/51/21527
The fun of an invented exponential rise is that if you wait long enough you can make up a really scary scenario. (that is the the trick revealed)
Problem is that sea level rise is linear and not scary at all.
Because people are too stupid to do this themselves. Obviously we need bigger governments, and more taxes, to be able to ‘manage’ the poor ignorant folks.
I wonder what people did before socialists? Did they just stay still and drown
I think this “managed retreat” is a brilliant idea, and the first people to be compensated should be the Obamas, who have made the terrible mistake of buying very expensive beachfront property and then thinking that they could protect it by enhancing the sea wall which their neighbours wanted removed because, while it protected the Obamas’ property, it was thought to be damaging for the neighbours. Clearly a few billion dollars in compensation for the Obamas should be paid right now – no need to wait for the sea level to actually rise, “the science” is settled and the Obamas’ property is definitely doomed. I’m confident that the ordinary citizens of America who have not bought beachfront property would be happy to pay enormous amounts to ensure the comfort of their ex-president.
Nice colored drawings with buildings, fields, forests, and mountains.
Not South Florida then!
And the tax payers were charged how much for these?
John
Egads.
Next they will write a long a learned diatribe as to their next great discovery..People have feet.
Of course adaption is the logical and only economical answer to climate change/sea level rise/delta subsidence.
Which makes all their Catastrophic Climate Change Garbage even more obvious for the Con that lies in their hearts.
Yes, she does “argue”, but not very well and clearly from a lack of any real research. The authors of those “studies” appear to have only passed their courses on “writing important sounding study titles”.
“Managed Threat” or “Managed Retreat” associated with CO2 SLR is non-existent.
An example of a “Real Threat” to go with a “Emergency/unplanned Retreat” would be the Mt Pinatubo Eruption. In a matter of days in excess of 1 cubic km of Lahar was dumped on the surrounding area, filling in valleys rivers, lakes and towns. The homes of 50,000 families essentially disappeared.
No such comparable climate disaster has occurred.
It angers me when alarmists BS about small things that might happen in the future when people are suffering real things that are happening now.
This is more build back better BS. Two things are certain. One is that we face no threat of rising seas and therefore there is no reason for any mitigation this century. And secondly, the call to relocate and rebuild will be purely a Marxist exercise in wealth redistribution based on race, gender and equity BS.
What is all this fuss about ?
Don’t they know that Obama healed the planet and stopped sea level rise years ago ?
Well, I guess you’ve gotta give him credit for putting his money where his mouth is. He obviously believes he solved sea level rise.
Need I apply /s?
Cnut.
“Our findings show that an increasing concentration of greenhouse gases leads to significant changes in atmospheric circulation and tropical rainfall patterns,”
Your ‘findings’ should show that a trace gas has increased by 1 molecule in 10,000 over the last 150 years. Special words like ‘findings’, ‘increasing concentration’, ‘significant changes’ are all magic words that imply something special and all the self righteous (self deluded) have to do is use them.
already in use at multiple places on the UK coast…
for example:
Managed realignment at Steart, Somerset | Institution of Civil Engineers (ice.org.uk)
Griff-
The take-away part of your reference is this:
“National and European directives dictate that the Environment Agency must offset intertidal habitat losses, as caused by coastal squeeze…. Proposals for projects such as The Bristol Port Company’s development of its Avonmouth container [facility] identified Steart as an ideal location for compensatory habitat. The site at Steart is in fact large enough to compensate for 40% of the total losses in the region.”
You can bet the residents of Steart weren’t asked if they wanted to give up their homes so the Bristol Port Company could build a container ship port somewhere else along the coast.
Despite all the wonderful sounding virtue signaling in the referenced article, it boils down to this: a small village was destroyed, without the residents consent, so that a large and powerful company could build a container ship port.
Are you saying that’s what “managed retreat” is all about?
The inhabitants of Steart village are now better protected against coastal flooding and tidal surge as part of this scheme: that was a key element.
Loss of natural habitat and compensation for it is a separate issue, but one addressed also by the managed retreat scheme
The hysteria is only getting worse: Here is the latest from the Guardian:
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/may/29/johan-rockstrom-interview-breaking-boundaries-attenborough-biden
I love one of the delicious ironies of this debate.
The answers are so often right in front of our faces.
A for instance. Has anyone ever heard of the Dutch battle against the sea?
They have been building land forms successfully for centuries.
Maldives, and others – pay attention!!!
Have you heard about the palm islands in Dubai built by the Dutch?
Where I live, neighbourhood crime levels are actively driven by “real estate developers”. While I have plenty evidence, my only proof was a confrontation with a developer that wanted my land. Thusly I pronounce that, in my personal opinion, I see a larger, international pattern of violence and crime instigated by people who profit by our need to trade and use land.
This entire schpiel of a “study” above, looks to me like a SuperPAC of land developers joining the drive for “rules-based governance”, or to be more precise: government in the hands of the criminal mafias ruling as a kakastocracy of scum. Their ‘solutions’ revolve around population containment and control, with maybe a bit of insurance-driven caution. The land mafia and the insurance mafia joining hands around the udder of the bankster mafia’s bitch, the political mafia.
I used to get so irritated with the old folk back when, they used to see the Commies behind every bit of progress.
Today I know the difference between progress and improvement, but the youngsters don’t want to listen…
I still believe the best response to climate change is to regulate car emission. Laws should be put in place to push car makers to transform themselves. Supercars like nissan gt-r falls onto the crosshairs.
What do climate change and car emissions have to do with each other? What effect would it have? Got any proof!
I executed a managed retreat from the frigid Oregon Coast to Subic Bay, PH. Have only worn shorts and flip flops for 6 years but other than that no great sacrifice!
Come to the Netherlands to learn about walled resist. (And that land subsidence is a far bigger threat than sea level rise.)
All methods of flood protection and alleviation are well known, easily costed and mostly pretty simple to implement.
Except of course to politicians and climate activists.
We alsos have – at leats in Europe – a massive landfill problem We have waste we are not allowed to burn. Or bury.
We could be creating useful land out of salt marsh. You probably wouldn’t build on it because of methane, and subsidence, but it would make perfect sea walls and dykes. (levees). Or airports
Equitable managed retreat ?
East Anglia
or even the cliffs of the English channel, loosing houses every year or two into the sea and thats from the top of the 30 foot high cliff.
San Andreas anyone ?
this is what passes for higher learning these days
pathetic
Managed Retreat => the wussification of the West.
They must have had global warming due to CO2 during the Hellenistic Period. I mean nothing else causes sea rise, right? https://www.jpost.com/archaeology/israel-sea-level-rose-2-m-in-hellenistic-period-could-explain-decline-671173
So these brilliant researchers probably propose using government funds to buy out ocean-front land from their owners and move them farther inland. Did they ever consider the price of ocean-front land these days?
For people who own multi-million-dollar homes near the beach, how many of them will just pack up and move inland, because maybe the sea level might rise by a few inches before they’re dead? These people are probably used to driving to higher ground if a hurricane is approaching, but they do enjoy the nearby ocean most of the time.
Besides, for the “managed retreat planners”, if they do manage to “buy out” a homeowner along the beach, where would the evicted beachcombers re-settle? Most of the intervening land is owned by other people, who won’t want to move, so the “bought out” people would have to move several miles inland, where land values per square foot are probably less than 10% of those near the beach. Would they need 10 times as much land to get their money back?
If “managed retreat” planners needed an example of the futility of their plans, they should consider the man who said he would “stop the seas from rising”, who bought a $14 million ocean-front estate on the island of Martha’s Vineyard after retiring from the presidency. Somehow Barack and Michelle Obama aren’t very worried about sea level rise!
In other words sell before the sea level rise, get ahead of the rush.
Shouldn’t the U of Miami be moving.
And why would selling property be socially equitable?
What part of BELOW sea-level don’t you understand?
I’ve been asking that question for decades, along with asking Hollywood types, “What don’t you understand about EROSION?” as their Malibu homes slide off the cliffs.
While Holland has held the sea back for hundreds of years, most humans have figured out that it isn’t a good idea to LIVE in a flood-plain or below sea-level.
Matthew 7:24-27 NIV The Wise and Foolish Builders
Even children learn common sense building practices.
Any why are so many Pacific islands inhabited and many others abandoned? I’m guessing it doesn’t take more than waking up ONE morning with seawater sloshing around your feet to call a Realtor.
No one has a “right” to live anywhere at MY expense.
All that said and this: We learn from illegal aliens to MOVE AWAY from danger and toward safety and opportunity at any cost to improve the lives of our family.
OK, I’m rambling. Hopefully, some of this is relevant to the discussion.
How about showing the USCRN temperature chart occasionally?
University of Miami (UM) Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science should buy some land, build their ‘managed retreat’ response to climate change into the structural design, cost being no object, then see who chooses to live and work from there, cost being no object.
If you build it they will come… no!
I lived in the Cayman Isands for a while. Up until the 1990’s NOBODY would ever build at the water. It was well understood that building next to the ocean was a stupid idea. Then, inextricably, companies started buying up and developing waterfront property. They built MASSIVE hotels right next to the water on an artificially sanded beach.
Now, the hotel owners are up in arms because, gasp, the beach is eroding.
I would say stupidity is someone else’s problem, except that rich people tend to make these things OUR problems and walk away with the money in their pockets.
And who would the property buyers be? Investors willing to take the risk and develop the land into something of greater value, or taxpayers forced to fund these purchases who then watch their cities sell the land to developers after nothing happens anyway?