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Comment by jazzyjackson | Hacker News Reader

I guess you mean the shape of the countries doesn't change much? iirc the majority of Earth's population lives on coastlines, most major cities will be inundated

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They'll have a _long_ time to migrate though, no?

The rise in sea level is something of a misnomer, because the real damage comes in storm surges. Even a 1cm rise increases the amount of water that can pushed inland by *checks notes* a whole helluva lot. So while manhattan isn't going to be put underwater even after a whole foot of sea level rise (predicted by 2100), the storms it has to survive will be much worse.

People won't move just from a little water in the roads (just look at Miami), I think even in the year 2099 you'll have a hard time getting new yorkers to move to ohio, but once a storm comes through and destroys their housing they will have to find somewhere else to live.

Housing is super expensive for people now. All of that coastal infrastructure will need to be rebuilt.

But housing isn't expensive because it's hard to build. It's expensive because building it isn't allowed. If it all had to be rebuilt, that would be much cheaper than trying to build it under existing conditions.

Yeah, I was looking at this and thinking "At 20m, basically the entire Eastern and Southern Seaboard of the US is gone."

Not at all. Those living along the shore have flood insurance which will continue to pay for restoration of the coastline.

Insurance isn't an endless bucket of money, and it's also going to adapt. Eventually you just won't be able to get insurance for properties in areas like that. Just look at the floods in New Orleans or the current flooding along the east coast of Australia, I doubt there's enough money to make all those affected whole again.

I think insurance may be the main driver for when people actually decide to move. People are pretty resilient, but if you can't get a home loan because you can't get insurance, people won't keep living there.

I live in NJ. As I understand it, the state gov - via taxpayers, obviously - subsidizes property insurance at the shore (as NJ calls the beach).

That generosity isn't endless.

These communities are wealthy and influential. Places like Buffalo will go bankrupt keeping places like NYC above water.

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