Guest Essay by Kip Hansen — 19 December 2023 — 1300 words/10 minutes
An article in another of America’s once-great-newspapers, The Washington Post, titled “These yard signs offer an inconvenient truth about sea level rise”, published on 13 December 2023 in the “Climate Solutions” section, is a narrative journalism piece about the efforts of a local artist and Miami-Dade County’s artist-in-residence Xavier Cortada to raise awareness of Miami residents about the elevation of their residential properties relative to local sea level.
Why? Miami has thousands of homes perilously close to local Mean Sea Level. That link goes to my 7-year old piece that concluded, in part: “Miami Beach is at such grave risk of sea water flooding today that it should preemptively be declared a disaster zone – not because of global-warming-driven sea level rise but due to a seeming total lack of sensible civil engineering standards and sensible building codes.”
That statement holds true for the thousands of homes built along sea water canals, just one or two feet above the local high tide line. If building those homes sounds crazy to you, then you are thinking correctly.
It sounds crazy to Miami-Dade’s artist-in-residence Xavier Cortada too. But, you see, Cortada has been an environmental and climate change activist his entire career. And he is absolutely right to be worried about those homes and businesses built so very close to Mean Sea Level, some of them at or below the:
| Max Tide | 5.81 | Highest Observed Tide |
| Max Tide Date & Time | 09/10/2017 17:00 | Highest Observed Tide Date & Time |
[ source ]
The NOAA Tide Gauge for Miami is NOAA ID 8723214, Virginia Key, Biscayne Bay FL:
It is obvious from the Tide Gauge data that unless there are substantial changes in natural Earth-processes, SLR in Miami will rise another 8-10 inches by 2100. Much of that amount of that Local Relative Mean SLR will be due to local land subsidence, Vertical Land Movement (VLM). Shimon Wdowinski, at Florida International University, found that VLM in the Miami Beach area runs 1-2 mm/yr and upwards to 2-3 mm/yr in localized pockets. Along waterways, neighborhoods and islands built on the fill from canal digging and channel dredging have greater subsidence.
Shimon Wdowinski provides a pretty good illustration of the constituents of Local Relative Sea Level Rise:
Subsidence is downward Vertical Land Movement (VLM) and in Miami is a major component of Local Relative SLR (as reported by tide gauges). Tide gauges are scarce in southern Florida – which is an oddity for a place so intimate with the sea – but there are six of them that report Sea Level Trends:
In the upper left corner above is the previously shown Virginia Key Tide Gauge record which is the tide gauge closest to Miami. The Lake Fort Worth Tide Gauge record (West Palm Beach, lower right) is useless, but agrees with the other five that SLR in Southern Florida is linear – not accelerating – not increasing, but just going up at the same rate across the entire length of each record. The Linear Relative Sea Level Trends at each are different, due to differences in local Vertical Land Movement, which adds to Relative SLR if the land is moving downward – subsiding — (and subtracts if the land is itself rising) — but all are linear – they are all linear trends
If this is the case, and it is, then what has gotten into our campaigning artist, Xavier Cortada?
He seems to believe that “By 2100,[according to the Southeast Florida Regional Climate Compact project] … local sea levels will rise somewhere between two and eight feet.” So, he has gone a bit overboard and established the Underwater Homeowners Association in expectation of that event. His project is to have neighbors place signs in their yards showing how many feet above sea level the property is. The home shown with an 8 on the sign is his home in Pinecrest, Florida. (I have doubts, the yard seems to slope several feet up to the house, but at least he is playing his own game.)
And what is the possibility of mean sea level rising by two to eight feet in the next 77 years?
Vanishing small – Miami has seen almost exactly 1 foot of SLR (including subsidence) in the last 100 years – a long a steady rise. And what that means is that, if the past is any indicator, and it is, that Relative SLR in Southern Florida, including the Miami area, is not going to be suddenly doubling or tripling – thus:
Miami will not be seeing 2 to 8 feet of Relative Sea Level Rise in the next 77 years – but rather 8 to 10 inches, maybe as much as 12 inches.
But wait!….does this mean Miami is off the hook? That it is not in danger from rising seas? Not in danger from hurricane storm surge?
Absolutely not – Miami is a disaster zone pre-made and just waiting to happen. Billions of dollars of built infrastructure sits on Miami Beach which is built on a sand-based/ancient-reef barrier island. Some of Miami Beach is built below Mean High High Water (highest high tides). Much of the infrastructure is underground out of necessity and below Mean Sea Level (MSL), requiring pumps to move water up and out – sewage too. And this means, when the storms come and knock out electrical power, the pumps stop working….
But not from the gently rising seas. The real problem is how close to Mean Sea Level the built environment is already. The tidal range in Biscayne Bay and Miami is only about 2 feet, low to high. The highest tide ever at Virginia Key was just over 3 feet. With many homes built on canals with only a foot or two of freeboard above high tides:
The high tide mark is easily seen on the sea walls as the dark water mark shifts to grey concrete. That’s not much freeboard: a foot, maybe 18 inches. If you somehow think that just a few Southern Florida homes are built on canals like this one, use Google Earth and get a good close look.
If Miami was to experience a Major Hurricane [a hurricane that is classified as Category 3 or higher] arriving from just the right (or wrong) direction at the same time as high tide – with the wind relentlessly pushing water up into Biscayne Bay – those lovely homes in the photo above are going to be flooded and all those boats in the canals will end up on people’s lawns or inside their houses. The effects of a Cat 5 hurricane on the City of Miami Beach would be horrific.
Bottom Line:
Cortada is right to be worried, but as with the majority of climate activists, he has been misinformed and blindly accepted exaggerated claims of disaster created out of over-heated climate models.
Miami and its surrounds are at risk from the sea – because they have built too close to the sea and too close to the local Mean Sea Level, with intentionally dug canals letting the sea reach far into the interior. Storm surge is the enemy. Almost any unusually high tides flood roads and infrastructure – a major storm with surge combining with high tides would be a flooding disaster.
# # # # #
Author’s Comment:
Cortada is clever and talented – but pushing misinformation to “inform the public” is not a good idea. The reality is worrisome enough – it needs no exaggeration.
Re-writing building codes in Miami-Dade County would go a long way to improving the situation (and create a building trades boom).
Not one more building should be allowed to be built with less than 8 feet of freeboard above existing Mean Higher High Water.
Thanks for reading.
# # # # #
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Condominium, by John D. MacDonald https://www.amazon.com/Condominium-Novel-John-D-MacDonald-ebook/dp/B00E2RXHUW/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1702922845&sr=8-1
Stiltsville, Biscayne Bay, Miami https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stiltsville
May be a way to protect consumers, or perhaps it could be seen as a way for cronies to obtain, cheap, ttle to valuable beachfront property. Let’s ask former Presidents what they think….
…
dk_ ==> Thanks for the link to Stiltsville and the John D McDonald book. ….there are similar homes in La Parguera, Puerto Rico, and they have the same type of restrictions on building and repair. Passing by by dinghy, one see that marvelous things that can be done and considered “repair and upkeep” — depending on the political connections of the owners.
Sorry to be unclear. I was attempting to point out that land and building codes in the Miami area have been dealing with water levels for a long time. Codes change.
Private lands at Pine Manor College in Boston were threatened to be taken under eminent domain in the name of Climate Change and Sea Level RIse, before succumbing to Covidiocy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pine_Manor_College.
IMO better that a private landowners combine cooperatively establish itself as authority and create codes than leaving it to “public officials,” without any accounting.
Covidiocy
Covidmalignancy, rather.
Denis Rancourt and his group used all-cause mortality and mRNA injection roll-outs to estimate that the mRNA shots have killed about 17 million people worldwide. That’s about one death per 350 injected people.
Covidiocracy, perhaps I should have said, as the abuse of power is itself being leveraged -compounded- to take property from citizens by and for the benefit of, mostly unelected, public “servants.” Governments don’t protect anyone from anything, but they do take from many for the benefit of a few, no matter the form. I am skeptical of the ultimate benefits to anyone from any government action.
Not my favorite but an entertaining read.
Ocean front development in places prone to tropical storms, hurricanes and flooding. What could go wrong?
More Soylent Green! ==> We could shake our heads at the idiocy if it was just millionaires on barrier island beaches….but the whole Miami region is huge and at huge risk…I hear someone playing the violin while Miami faces destruction.
While it was pretty good as fiction, MacDonalds Condominium contained a pretty good snapshot of some of the crimina., economicand political environment of Florida real estate in the 1980s. Those impressions were based on nearly forty years (at the time) of observation and experience. Knowing a host of MacDonald’s contemporaries in Florida at the time, and getting quite similar pictures from them, I take his commentary as being close to reality.
No spoilers, but I thought his description of storm surge and the possible effects were pretty good too. That disaster ‘flic’ genre was in the zetgeist of the time that much of the global warming/global cooling/nuclear winter/ozone hole political fear mongering that was going on at the time, and became more prominent in the next decade after Condo was published.
The threat is real, but the fear of it is bound to be abused.
BBC on saving Venice (again)
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20220927-italys-plan-to-save-venice-from-sinking
Maybe this time, with strong, pseudo democratic-socialist government intervention, Venice will be saved, forever!
Along the north Fort Lauderdale beach there is a stretch of about a half mile comprising all single family homes. The old ones are torn down and replaced with homes costing tens of millions. We have about 6 under construction at present.
All these new homes are designed so that the beach level ‘ground floor’ is just concrete slab parking/storage. The home lowest floor is raised up 8-10 feet on concrete/steel columns anchored in concrete encased polymer coated steel footings down to bedrock some 40+60 feet below the beach sand surface. Above any foreseeable storm surge.
Doing just as Kip advocates.
Somebody had some sense. Although the cynic in me is of the opinion that it is to adapt to climate change SLR rather than for the correct purpose, but still.
Richard ==> This new requirement is not really for Sea Level Rise but for storm surge and just-plain storm driven waves. Along canals, it is for rising storm waters — either rainfall or storm surge from the sea.
Rud ==> Yes, I believe these are the new building codes in force now. saw a lot of this new approach all uo and down the Intracoastal Waterway —
There are similar requirements even 100 miles north of NY City along the (tidal) Hudson River.
Sounds similar to what I’ve seen in rebuilding after Hurricane Sandy.
2,240 feet
I just put the sign on the fence by the county road. 🙂
My father lived about 7 miles west of the Atlantic Coast in Greenacres; a bit south of Palm Beach. A small ditch behind his place was tidal. These small “canals” had an interesting ecosystem (habitat) and the occasional alligator.
To the west is
Loxahatchee National Wildlife Refuge – Wikipedia
This is a northern extent of the Everglades.
33 ft. But I’m not on the coast. And in part of the UK that may be rising slightly so, really, 33 ft and counting!
John ==> I think you are safe from Sea Level Rise (and even storm surge) for the next few millennia.
Our time in Florida was always living a hull’s depth above the sea.
DeSantis will build an ark to save Florida. I’m building one here in Michigan. At the current wild guess of 150 gigatons of melting ice each year, of Antarctica’s 4.4 MILLION gigatons of ice continues, all the ice will be completely melted in 1.6 million years. Start building your ark now before it is too late. This is a serious comment,
not satire.
At that rate of SLR you could probably carve an ark out of a solid block of granite.
With a spoon.
CORRECTION:
That’s 24.4 MILLION gigatons of ice on Antarctica
150 gigatons melting a year
Antarctica has about 90% of all the ice on land
1.6 million years and no more ice there
Penguins won’t know what to do with themselves
Some day I will learn to type.
I didn’t fact check it but some years ago I read an article, quite possibly here at WUWT, that was in response to an alarmist headline about how many GT of ice had melted from Antarctica in the previous 25 years. The author of the response article listed the estimates from 4 recent published studies of total Antarctica ice mass. Picking the largest and smallest of those totals, and declaring the difference to be the current uncertainty, he/she went on to point out that the alarmist claim of the amount of ice “lost” in the previous 25 years was below the noise in the uncertainty estimate of total ice mass.
Richard and Andy ==> Even NASA doesn’t agree on Antarctic Ice Mass Loss or Gain. J. Zwally is the contrarian .
I wrote abut this in 2022.
I doubt it is even measurable.. Certainly not using gravity based satellites.
Too much volcanic activity around.
If we use the Virginia Key tide gauge as applicable to Miami Beach, a trend of 3.1 mm/yr over 77 years would result in a rise of 238.7 mm, or 9.4 inches, by the year 2100. Nowhere near even 2 feet, much less 8 feet.
Two other tide gauges cited by Kip are in Fort Myers (3.48 mm/yr) and Naples (3.27 mm/yr) on the west (Gulf) coast of Florida. Fort Myers received a devastating direct hit from Cat 4 Hurricane Ian in September 2022, in which some yachts ended up in people’s yards even near downtown, and many homes on nearby Sanibel and Captiva Islands in the Gulf were obliterated by the storm.
Miami Beach is probably more vulnerable to a hurricane than either Naples or Fort Myers, since most hurricanes approach Florida from the east, while Ian was unusual in moving northward close to Florida’s west coast, while missing Miami.
The most vulnerable residents are likely those in single-family homes located only a few feet above high tide. Along Miami Beach, most of the residents live in high-rise condominiums, which are built to withstand high winds, and as Kip suggests, the ground floors are mostly parking garages, with a lobby on the next higher floor, and the lowest condos on the third floor. In the event of an approaching hurricane, condo residents need to drive the car to higher ground, but should be able to return to an intact condo after the storm passes.
Steve ==> Many of the older high-rises face the problems that brought down the condo in Surfside. They like to think they are safe, but a major hurricane would blow out windows, flood interiors with rain, destabilize foundations, etc. Not to mention the type of destruction seen in Cape Coral/Fort Myers.
I hope we never have to find out how many of the high rises will survive a real direct hit hurricane.
I am in a north Fort Lauderdale condo high rise completed in 1998 (strick post Andrew building codes) with thick shatterproof windows and sliding glass balcony doors (two layers of glass with a central plastic laminate (in all over 1/2 inch thick) set in extruded 3/16 inch aluminum frames bolted to the reinforced concrete floor and ceiling. Can withstand 150mph cat 5.
The eye of Irma was 110 miles away, yet EVERY unit facing east (the Atlantic) on our 12th floor suffered severe damage—except our unit because of the way it is tucked in. Very heavy Sliding glass doors were blown off the frame tracks. One was blown in completely. Judging from ground damage, we experienced Irma as a high 2 or low 3, with higher gusts.
Our building is well maintained. The collapse in Surfside wasn’t. Lots of those less well maintained older buildings will not fare well in a direct hit from a cat 4-5.
Brings to mind New Orleans and Katrina.
Except that there were even more casual incidents of political misdeeds in and around New Orleans.
“And he is absolutely right to be worried about those homes and businesses built so very close to Mean Sea Level”
Sorry Kip, I must disagree!
Unless this @ssh@t artist actually owns one of those houses so close to high tide level, why does HE have any reason to worry?
And IF he owned one of them, he could probably sell it for a LOT and buy at a higher elevation of cheaper.
BUT then he would no longer be in such a prime location, and as we all know, the three most important things in real estate are location, location and location.
As long as taxpayers are not forced to pick up the cost of the flood insurance or reconstruction of these poorly sited homes if they are damaged or destroyed, then the only ones who need to worry are the ones who own those properties.
BTW: My mom lives within a mile of the bay on Cape Cod. Due to the losses from storms nationwide the insurance industry has raised rates for EVERY home close to water. Even though her homes, one of which has been at its current location for 100 years, the other for over 40, have never flooded or even had any wind damage, her rates went up substantially several years ago. Luckily Massachusetts created an insurance pool for homes under 1 million to reduce costs and NOT use homes in the state to subsidize the insurance of homes elsewhere in the country. People with million dollar plus homes are in the “nationwide” pool, and are screwed. The mountain homes in southern Utah in forest areas are seeing insurance rates go up due to the fires in California and insurance company losses there. Mom’s insurance agent sent me an article from an insurance insider magazine that mentioned the insurance companies had not LOST money for 20 years since Katrina and now that they lost money, they were going to raise rates so they could go another 20 years without losing money. Nice, Not.
Drake ==> Cortada has a home at an elevation of 8-10 feet — so his home is good. I have friends with a home 1.5 feet above high tide on Biscayne Bay. They lost 5 feet of yard to a hurricane that missed them several years ago. They are well aware of the risks involved and do not upgrade their home in any substantial way as they never know when they will lose it. They just enjoy it while they can.
Insurance companies have a right to make a profit, just like any other business. They are gambling every time they let someone take out a policy.
Totally agree on government flood insurance for coastal homes — taxpayers should not subsidize millionaires. Taxpayers should not subsidize insurance for people who build in harm’s way, including people who want to live in the woods but don’t want to pay the price as far as risk goes. Forests in the West burn – that is the climate, that is the eco-system. You can’t beat nature.
Only those who have owned homes on the Cape “forever” can afford them. Along ith rising insurance rates, they have seen HUGE increases in the value of their property. They shouldn’t be crying.
total bollox:”Shimon Wdowinski provides a pretty good illustration of the constituents of Local Relative Sea Level Rise:
Child’s Illustration yes
Leaving aside the maudlin “As the ocean warms” – as if night follows day so ocean warming follows……???
Do explain the mechanism please Shimon……
Anyway: As any of us here can, Shimon could have taken a reasonable pop/guess/estimate at the amount of soil, silt, dirt, sediment, soot, smoke, ashes and random debris/stuff that falls into the ocean.
Even very unassuming & moderate guesses reveal a sea level rise due to Archimedes Principle greater than what is observed.
By time shiploads of burning EVs find themselves in Davy Jones’ locker, its a wonder Florida is still on the map
Peta ==> Water expands as it warms. Fact. Can’t get around it. Water also expands as it solidifies as ice. Fact. The oceans are warming (thank goodness) but not alarmingly — it is partly that warm ocean that keeps the UK inhabitable (as such as it is…).
One thing is clear. By 5100 the Holocene will be over and increasing continental ice sheets will be dropping the sea level by hundreds of feet. Of course, everyone reading this will most certainly be dead by 2100 and certainly by 5100, so the entire premise is a meaningless waste of time.
If you go down to the sea, you will get wet. The only question is how much.
Still the exaggeration is there. Comparing imaginary and observed sea level rise rates. Note the SLR Viewer for South Florida
And then Key West (the longest continuous record vs IPCC model estimates)
Full report:
https://rclutz.com/2023/01/20/observed-vs-imagined-sea-levels-2022-update/
Ron ==> Yep, not gonna see 8 feet anytime soon.
My only concern is as a taxpayer — Do I have to pay the bill when oceanfront property is damaged or destroyed? Who pays when the storms hit?
Here in Florida it is a complicated two part story.
There is a lot of Fed subsidized flood insurance for low lying areas that should not be built. Is a problem especially around Tampa Bay. Same is true for the Mississippi waterway. US Taxpayers subsidizing foolish siting.
For hurricane insurance, many insurers have simply pulled out of Florida completely, or stopped offering new policies. The state therefore has an insurer of last resort, Citizens, but the rates are high—probably not high enough. Florida taxpayers are on the hook. But Florida has no state income tax, it’s mostly property taxes. Aha! Florida also has homestead provisions for state citizens limiting annual PT rise to about 1%. So it is out of state second home owners on the hook for Citizens. Here in Fort Lauderdale, that means New Yorkers and Canadians.
It’s a poster boy. At the end of the egregious Attenborough Blue Planet we had MIAMI STREETS. When Trump pulled out of the Paris Agreement scam, the frightful BBC Shukman gave us MIAMI STREETS
Coeur de Lion ==> Yes, they use the intersection that is underwater at every higher high tide and every King Tide — it was built hat way but makes good photographs.
Kip — would the Dutch strategy resolve the SLR problem in Miami?
Pat ==> Unfortunately, NO. Miami Beach faces the Atlantic Ocean head on. The west side of the Miami Beach peninsula is on Biscayne Bay — which, theoretically could be closed off with barriers but not practically. Take a real close look at the geography with Google Earth — way too many holes leading to the ocean. Miami Beach could e used as an Eastern Barrier, the mainland, with all those holes plugged, as a western barrier, and some very expensive barrage across the southern end of Biscayne Bay, using existing causeways and islands. Only maybe….but I doubt it.
At 1 foot a century, we have some time to think about that — but a Cat 5 Hurricane coming right up the angle of the Keys?
The BBC is on top of this issue.
general ==> What nonsense. little Haiti is tucked in between I95 and Biscayne Blvd, more than a dozen big blocks from the water — it is not waterfront property and falls into that category of older neighborhoods ripe for gentrification.
Yes, doesn’t it.
I notice Archimedes Principle is mentioned almost every time SLR is discussed.
While the concept works and is useful in controlled circumstances, the ocean is not a great place to apply the idea. Ocean basins do not have vertical sides in the nature of an old bathtub.
Florida and many other places slope gently into the interior — have a long run.
Ice volume and thermal expansion might get better estimates, but water spilling on to a nearly flat and uneven surface doesn’t warrant applying Archimedes Principle.
I’ll save yelling “eureka” and running down the street naked for when I win a lottery.
John ==> Buoyancy? Displaced water?
You are right about Florida — it is (grossly) fairly flat and any rising water has a lot of room to spread out. Like New York Harbor (ref Hurricane Sandy), Biscayne Bay could see serious storm surge with winds from a certain direction.
Stories like this must amuse the Dutch. 60% of their country is below high tide. Amsterdam is 2m below sea level.
But there are many lesser known places on Earth well below sea level. Part of the reason Death Valley gets high temperatures is that some is almost 100m below sea level so starts with a 1C heat advantage over the temperature at sea level.
A good portion of inland Australia is below sea level.
Kip,
A quite interesting article you published here some years ago listed the NOAA estimate of uncertainty in the current, most advanced form of acoustically measured title gauges as +/- 2.4 cm per measurement if I remember correctly. Given that uncertainty, why is it worth considering any value even to the nearest mm, let alone to 2 decimal places parts of a mm?
I’ve read the arguments by people who believe the same statistical considerations given to reducing uncertainty by counting the number of individual entities (each value 1) or to making multiple measurements with the same instruments under static conditions of unchanging actual values, such as length or mass of a precision machined metal part, are applicable to a collection of data where each datum is a unique measurement, but I don’t buy them.
Do you really believe the published tidal gauge values are reasonable enough to make useful decade or century long projections? If so, why?
Andy ==> The numerical values can always be brought into question — all numerical values about almost anything. That is covered in my series on Tricky Numbers. But what can be known from the Tide Gauge records? These are physical objects, as it were, mounted on other physical objects, and touch the thing being measured. Think a concrete sea wall on the banks of the Hudson River/New York Harbor, like the Tide Gauge at The Battery in New York. You can have stood there 50 years ago and looked down at the water level at a Higher High Tide and see, with your own eyes, the level of the sea. You could then go today, at another Higher High Tide, and look over the edge at the water level and see, with your own eyes, how high the surface of the sea was NOW. If you had had the insight to chisel a line on the concrete 50 years ago, you could see and measure the difference between then and now.
So, we can reasonably combine pragmatic common sense numerical and visual evidence to see how much the “sea” has risen in the last 50 years. We can see if it was 8-10 inches or 8 to 10 feet pretty reliably. I’m sure you would feel (if it had been you 50 years ago and again today) that you could narrow that window of reliability to maybe six inches one way or the other.
So, we can know the past, as it has already happened and been measured or noted in some way (high tide marks, growth of mussels on pier pilings, etc).
Can we predict the future? In regards the stock market, I wish I could!
The Principles of Forecasting (Scott Armstrong), under deep uncertainty, call for forecast of “more of the same”. If there is not explicit, positively know reason for things to be different, then forecast more of the same.
Thus, with the hundreds of tide gauges showing nearly-perfect linear trends over the last 100 years, all over the world (especially when properly corrected for Vertical Land Movement) — out BEST forecast is that these linear trends will continue as before.
Of course, this could be wrong…things might radically change, thousands of volcanoes could suddenly spring up in the oceans or burst out in Antarctica melting the icecap….
Measurement is a tricky thing. I follow the principles of pragmatism. I have been to many (really, many) islands that sit in the seas….they have shorelines that testify of their relationship with the sea. Wave cut cliffs, ancient reefs, high water lines, signs of past storm damage. Like Nils-Axel Mörner, the best practice to to go and look. Read any of his papers.
I don’t question that there is change nor that it can be seen or measured over long enough tie periods. My query was all about the significant digits presented as fact. somehow “within 6 inches” doesn’t seem the same as 2.03mm/year.
You always want to be careful building too near the coast as you never know what part of the cycle you’re building upon-
At Bengello Beach, longest-running coastal study in Southern Hemisphere finds ‘nature is the best healer’ – ABC News
Then there’s that very popular precautionary principle nowadays-
“We don’t yet see a very clear signal of sea level rise but my sense is that it’s going to appear in the next 50 years.”
Why our elite bedwetters on Sydney Harbour foreshore aren’t yet firesaling their doomed mansions and heading for the Blue Mountains-
Fort Denison data ‘more accurate than satellite’ on sea levels | Sky News Australia
observa ==. Thanks for that link — I may use it for a Post.
I don’t know what to think about this. I have relatives who live in Florida but one family also has a place in Tennessee. Maybe they know something the others don’t.