Boston’s Seaport District may be a testing ground for climate change adaptation | Hacker News Reader

Boston’s Seaport District may be a testing ground for climate change adaptation

bloomberg.com

54 pointsoftenwrong56 comments

“We’re proposing infrastructure that we believe will protect the city,” says Richard McGuinness, a senior planning official working on Boston’s response to climate change. “How do you retreat from billions of dollars of assets? It’s not practical.” [...] The city still needs to raise as much as $1 billion for Seaport defenses.

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Having lived in the city during the Big Dig, I'd wager that's a lowball estimate.

bureaucrats tend to underestimate costs and durations of projects

Call me cynical, but, that's because they own a stake in the parties executing the project; it's in their interest to make sure the contract passes, then gain financially from it and how much it goes over budget.

It's not that they literally own a stake. It's that the people in their social circles have a monetary interest so perpetuating boondoggle pork projects results in people around them appreciating them more which results in campaign donations and all sorts of other perks. It's not quite quid-pro-quo, it's just far enough away to maintain plausible deniability.

And of course there's all the people who aren't indirectly connected to politicians but who stand to benefit and the politicians will see that they benefit because votes. Look into the rules for billing hours for state police traffic details during the big dig if you want to see a good example with this. Now imagine that kind of fat in every industry that is related to a project and it's easy to see how costs go crazy.

Not just bureaucrats. People generally -- it's the Planning Fallacy.

If you ask someone how long something will take, they tend to give roughly the same answer as if you asked how long it will take in the best case scenario. Estimating project time is hard, and people are bad at it in general.

The best method seems to be to instead ask "How long did the most similar project you've done take?" but that does require the estimator to have done a somewhat comparable project.

Hofstadter's Law: It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take into account Hofstadter's Law.

I typically double my estimate for how long something will take me both in personal and work-related projects. This allows for all manner of unknowns to happen and seems to be more realistic.

For me and with projects that I have worked on, I take the estimate, double it, and then move it up a time unit. So 1 day becomes 2 weeks. 3 weeks becomes 6 months. 1 hour becomes 2 days. 1 year becomes 2 decades.

Is this overkill? Oh heck yes. But it seems to really put a fire into me to make sure that these things run smoother.

This is not always overkill. In fact it's sometimes insufficient. Breaking down a project into tasks and doing the math is the only hope for any semblance of accuracy, and even that doesn't always work.

> "How do you retreat from billions of dollars of assets? It’s not practical."

Many of those assets didn't exist ten years ago. You can go back in time using Street View in Google Maps. Look for the Seaport Hotel, and check out the difference between 2007 and now.

I can't read the article, but last year I saw a presentation by a local Boston architect demonstrating how her firm uses 3D modeling software to simulate flooding scenarios not just for the client's building but the surrounding neighborhood. I think that's typical for most projects near sea level nowadays.

For photos and video of Seaport flooding: https://expo.masslive.com/erry-2018/06/b4cac6d9df3737/is_it_...

With water levels going up and climate change patterns, I find it counter intuitive that lot of luxury/premium properties are built close of water. This not only results into higher insurance rates on these properties but in-case of any natural disaster premiums of regular properties around the area would also take a hit because someone decided to construct a fancy build right next to waterfront.

As a Masshole (I don't care if this pronoun offends you, it's what I call myself) who doesn't own waterfront property I'm not going to lose a nanosecond of sleep over the rich Bostonians who their investment in waterfront property tank or lose their Cape Cod vacation houses. Those people are rich enough to deal. If they don't deal in time well then they're paying the stupid tax.

Edit: Sorry, I haven't had my coffee any my cynicism isn't up to normal levels yet. As mentioned, of course they'll get the state to bail them out. There's a chance they might not but as a group they're the ones with the power and the influence. Every few years some houses fall into the sea. It basically always winds up in court with the owners suing the town and/or state. I can't imagine it not going in their favor if the places underwater are in the Boston area. The cumulative political clout would be insurmountable.

That said, so what if they bail them out? If they don't bail them out then it's not like the state won't still take everyone's money and spend a large percent of it on other cause that benefits approximately nobody. As far as I care paying state cops to game the overtime system isn't any better or worse than bailing out people who's property is underwater. The difference is just hair splitting because neither of those should be happening.

They will expect to be bailed out, both literally and financially.

It's nice to hear the original meaning of that. I almost forgot it! Good pun.

I'm not super convinced about that. While it's true that we're ahead of schedule to so speak, Cape Cod has always been a bit of sand pushed up by an old glacier. It's been eroding at an average of three feet every year. Buildings get moved back or left to be swept into the sea constantly. Nantucket used to show visitors a video about how the island was slowly sinking and would eventually disappear. Again, things have accelerated recently, but people in the area already knew that this was all temporary.

Just to give an idea of some of the properties there, Pier 4 is slated to have 1 bedrooms < 1k square feet start at 1.2 million, with an HOA of 1.4k/month -- and it goes up from there.

They will make sure that the state will pay for their flood insurance and disaster relief.

The Fed already heavily subsidizes flood insurance and has for decades, so that part's already done

Luxury/premium properties make the most sense actually: they are not expected to last. When someone spends 200k on a normal 4 bedroom house they expect to live in that house more or less as is for a long time (they often move sooner and may have plans for minor remodeling but no major changes are expected because they can't be afforded). When someone spends $3 million on a large mansion as soon as the ink is dry they call the bulldozer operator (who is already parked outside) to start knocking it down so they can build the mansion they want. In short they are buying location and the cost of the building is a rounding error.

If the ocean goes up - well they just build higher, it isn't a significant expense.

Some of these luxury properties are condos in already very tall buildings (see South Florida for this).

And what happens when the first floor of your building is now under water? Sure your 30th floor condo is safe but is it really practical to live there at that point?

Not an expert but I highly doubt they are building them so they can be used with them first level underwater. I am pretty sure such a building is a complete loss.

In my neighborhood (New England coast) there are a number of buildings that are built on pillars, with the area underneath used for parking. Sometimes there are nonloadbearing wall panels installed around them to give some weather protection, sometimes not. They're meant to survive storms, and I think at least some of them could be used if the water was permanently at today's storm surge levels.

Most of these buildings were built that way from the start, but at least one on my street was raised on jacks while pillars were put underneath. I wish I'd thought to take pictures of the process.

Is there any evidence of that in Boston's waterfront or in the wider market? Your comment sounds purely speculative.

This is my experience in Minneapolis. Rich people live where the view is great, and they want the home they like not the home someone else wanted.

The exact dollar amount changes from location to location though.

I'm not sure you can just "build higher" to avoid the impact of ocean water destroying your building; otherwise they would likely be building in the ocean already.

Seawater is highly corrosive, but the methods are there to withstand it.

More importantly: if your whole neighbourhood is 2 feet underwater, even if you're fine, the neighbourhood is toast and you're in the middle of nowhere with limited access (boats?).

Not very practical.

Has sea level on the easy coast of the continental US changed materially over the last 100 years? I’m asking seriously. All of the googling I’m doing turns up doomsday scenario articles or high tide observations but not changes to measured sea level.

Yes.

https://phys.org/news/2017-05-differences-east-coast-sea.htm... https://www.nature.com/articles/nclimate1597

Yes, here are a few articles from Tamino's blog. Note the first one is #1 in a 7-part series

https://tamino.wordpress.com/2018/12/28/sea-level-rise-u-s-e...

https://tamino.wordpress.com/2017/07/24/boston-sea-level/

https://tamino.wordpress.com/2015/11/04/moon-over-miami-bost...

The last one (and related posts) is worth a look even though it isn't what you asked for because it discusses how an apparently small increase in sea level can lead to a surprising increase in flood frequency.

Just what I was looking for. Thank you!

The article does mention that the Boston Seaport District now floods a dozen times a year instead of 2-3 times in the 1960s.

I found several articles on flooding. Specifically I wanted to know if the sea level is actually rising, which should be something easy to measure.

https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1029/2017...

"trends in flood risk are driven by RSL rise", RSL = Relative Sea Level.

A hundred years ago in most parts of the US the rich people lived up on top of a hill. Poor people lived on the waterfront where they had to be near industrial facilities and occasionally got flooded out. Now the situation is reversed.

That’s an important point. Hurricanes and flooding used to damage cheap buildings. Now the most expensive real estate is right at the water.

But people are richer. All other things equal people find it pleasing to wake up in the morning and look out over the water. If you have the money to build safely right up against the water people will pay it.

Perhaps these cities should raise money to convince the US government that climate change is manmade and a real threat and urgent, massive action is needed to prevent it from becoming even worse. A few billion here and there for lobbying might in the end be cheaper than building ever higher berms.

I suspect this is an unpopular opinion but I think the idea that we'll stop climate change with global collective action is just wildly contrary to how human beings work at that scale.

Unless we get lucky with some natural carbon negative feedback loop, we're probably stuck engineering our way through it. Whether with climate engineering (unlikely), or just muddling through (very likely).

If, say, the US or the EU set up a proper carbon tax that is also levied on imports, the rest of the world would probably follow suit.

William Nordhaus won the Nobel prize for his efforts flushing out this idea into a workable plan.

There are no longer any excuses. We have a reasonable, viable plan to limit greenhouse gas emissions. It's expensive and hard, but a lot less expensive and difficult than the alternative of doing nothing.

Broke: import tariffs motivated by short-termist trade war one-upmanship and bigotism.

Woke: import tarrifs motivated by long-termist climate change reduction.

We swear they're not the same thing so they can't have similar effects! This time it will be different and those unenlightened non-Westerns will listen to our thought leadership!

Are they the same thing? It seems to me they'd be targeting different products, so yes, different effect.

When the US puts import tariffs on foreign cars for being foreign, there is nothing the other party can do other than putting up their own tariffs in retaliation. If the US puts import tariffs on the embodied carbon emissions of foreign cars, the foreign party can join the carbon tax scheme to get around the tariffs. That seems like an important difference to me, but I'm not an economist. Better economists than me seem to also support a carbon tax or other forms of carbon pricing like cap&trade.

Exactly - with a carbon tax, the importing country says "The carbon emissions embodied in this product are going to be taxed, we can collect the money or you can, it's up to you." Will that result in a general reduction in the consumption of carbon-intense goods? Of course! They're now more expensive, that's the whole point.

With an import tariff on foreign goods (for, as you described, being foreign), it makes foreign goods more expensive (with nothing the other country can do about it), so it will lead to a reduction in the consumption of foreign-produced goods (whether or not that is a benefit to you as an American is probably heavily dependent on what you consume and what you produce).

For the imported good buyer, there's a price increase. It does not matter to him who collects the tax that increased the price - an import tariff imposing government or an enlightened carbon-scheme participating foreign government. This will reduce demand like any other dead weight loss, and yes, depress economic activity, employement and thus wages.

BTW, most countries already have carbon taxes on fossil fuels, they just don't bother calling them that. They call them fuel excise taxes. Around 60% of the price a consumer pays for fuel in the EU is fuel excise tax, in other words, a 150% tax. In the US, it's only about 20%. Here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuel_tax#China

What's your estimated impact of this already huge tax ? Think about the demand elasticity of fuel and energy products.

If you read the literature about carbon taxes, virtually everybody recommends a scheme where the carbon tax is paid out again, so there is no effective price increase for the consumer if they have an average carbon consumption, but everybody still has an incentive to switch to less carbon intensive alternatives.

Right, that would be different, but I feel that's the kind of detail that gets lost in translation when it becomes government policy. Given the average EU government greatly enjoys the already 100%+ tax on fuel they have, why would they bother with this complicated, not even revenue raising scheme ? They can just crank that 100% lever to 200% or whatever.

Can any of the economists proposing this scheme ask for a guarantee of any kind that if they help push this scheme, details like this one won't get left out ? Of course not. They'll cheerlead it and then blame the government, forgetting their complicity.

Is that true though? I think it's at lest an open question as to what's cheaper - mitigation or avoidance.

Since predicting the future is hard, the cautious approach of not fucking with complex systems we don't understand fully until the effects are so bad that we need to expend significant effort to mitigate them seems best to me.

These big cities will be fine. They can easily afford to protect from rising flood waters. Its the smaller cities and towns all down the coasts that can't afford to do anything or are literally built on sand. Cities in poor countries are going to have trouble too, but that is a different issue.

Most of modern Boston is built on trash dumped into the harbor to make more land, so I can imagine that they are going to have some issues with any sea rises.

https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2017/06/Boston-landfill-...

One side-effect of all this land-filling is that it is really difficult to get a feel for what the place would have been like historically. For instance, the campaigns of 1775 don't make a lot of sense if you are reading about them and trying to look at a modern map.

An amazing talk by Bud Ris about the challenges Boston faces from climate change: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MToNKd6RQhk

Why does that video not have more views?

Sad but popular != quality. I found the talk very informative.

that's one way to fuel economic growth :)

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