Beach erosion will make Southern Cal. coastal living 5* more expensive by 2050
phys.org
phys.org
This article mentions corona del mar being the subject of study - very nearby is a small but extremely densely populated community called balboa island [0] - it is one of a series of man made islands built in the early 1900’s out of what was a sandbar in a coastal marshland.
The problem is, balboa island has always barely been above sea level. Very early on, a sea wall was built to prevent high tides from flooding the island. A few years ago it had to be raised another few feet, and it is impossible not to notice that the island still experiences increasingly frequent flooding. The houses are worth millions of dollars each, and it’s so ironic that it’d be comedic that many of the residents (you can guess at its demographic without looking at voting maps) don’t even believe in global climate change or sea level rise, even as the evidence is literally on their doorsteps.
Communities like this won’t and cannot exist by the end of the century if not much earlier. I’m not really sure you can engineer your way out of this problem, mother nature can be a bitch.
0: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balboa_Island,_Newport_Beach
This is not how this works. The wealthy resources are used to lobby for use of public funds for restoration.
Force multiplier, beaches are public etc.
Do Californians live on a different planet to the Dutch?
There are towns in the UK with words meaning Harbour, Sea, Coast which aren't at the coast because it retreated. Thousands of years ago. There are also archeological finds in the Dogger bank out in the North sea because it was above land, in human time.
Houses have been affected by coastal change since forever. Arguably, some people inland of the coast NOW in South Cal are about to find they own shorefront property and arguably, might win: assuming the remediation costs of dealing with the retreat don't become theirs by default as everyone else leaves.
Longterm insurance rates for coastal property will be very interesting. London has a problem, Amsterdam had a problem and knows how to fix it, Brisbane where I live has a problem which has been written about: "the river with a city problem"
at least in the US it's basically impossible to get a mortgage without home insurance iirc. but the banks and the insurance companies are already exposed via existing mortgages, so does that mean we start seeing insurance-instigated foreclosure and resettling?
The end result is massive unfunded Civil Engineering burdens the corps of engineers have to design, and try to get built without stuffing up the hydrology for somewhere else. I think New Orleans may be an example of this: If there was will, then "forced depopulation" of the floodzones would be kinder and cheaper but I suspect there isn't will, and so instead the levee system.
In Australia, government mandated buybacks are immensely painful. People who want to stay have to leave. People who want to leave are 10cm above a threshold and have to stay.
In NZ, during the Christchurch earthquake aftermath, The state allowed stayers and goers to swap assets and payout, so a stayer in a condemned region could give their payout to a goer in a stay region, who didn't want to stay. Not a bad model.
The politics behind California's insurance regulator are a bit of a shitshow at the moment, but the insurers are leaving because of artificial price controls. In Florida, they left long ago because much of the state is fundamentally uninsurable.
aka Doggerland
Can you give examples of this?
New Romney? It's riverine, but I think they had to dredge it to keep it alive.
Kenfig in wales.
Dunwich.
Rattray in Scotland. covered in Sand, like Skara Brae maybe?
Faversham may have been, The isle of thanet is no longer an island
Tenterden -once part of the cinque ports. Also Lydd.
I would agree "meaning seaside" was a strech. I think most of these have mixed etymology.
It’s already outrageously expensive to live near the beach in Southern California (and strangely completely desolate in Baja California), so an extra assessment might not be that material (but I have no idea!).
The article seamed to base the 5x number on the cost of sand increasing.
California is in good shape for rising sea levels. Most of the coast has a cliff. Even seemingly flat places like Venice Beach slope upward inland. The San Francisco bay area may have some problems in areas built on fill.
The places that really suffer are the ones that are very flat. Miami. Many coastal East Asian cities. Shanghai had to build 30km of bridge to get to deep enough water for large seagoing vessels.
[1] https://earth.google.com/web/search/Corona+Del+Mar,+Newport+...
I had no idea there was such demand for beach erosion.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stop_the_Beach_Renourishment_v...
We built all of this stuff in the first place - how can it be so hard to do it again in places that are more resilient to change?
It strikes me that we built entire cities like London with far less technology than we have now, we just seem to be mired in politics.
It's like the equivalent of trying to repaint a room without taking the furniture out first.
And the 5x number? They assumed 3% inflation and calculated the cost increase based on that. I don’t even know where to begin with that one…
The rest of the "something" have cons, and people disagree on the relative value of the cons.
"signs" has nothing to do with it.
My guess is it'll either be India, suffering under heatwaves incompatible with human life, or China beating the sea back from some of its biggest cities.
No Western country will be able to have the political ability to do anything like that as a first mover, though I imagine they'll eventually quietly be on the bandwagon if it works, if for no other reason than it would allow more carbon emissions, which are going to be highly correlated with economic growth for quite some time to come. Whether or not it's actually a good idea, I guess we'll find out in a few decades.