Miami could be underwater within 80 years, but rich people keep buying luxury waterfront homes (closing, military)

[gixxer1000]

Originally Posted by BNBR

It should tell you something when banks and insurance companies seem totally non-concerned by the sea level rise.

Originally Posted by Corrie22

well exactly....and no one would be building new sky scrapers, developing Brickell, everything that's going on on the river....Miami is booming and handing out building permits like they are candy

These are a bit of red herring arguments.

As someone who manages the development process the parties involved get paid in the short term and don't have the long term risk. People don't develop and hold projects for 80 years. Condos are essentially pre-sold. And project that are built to be held as investments are looked at usually from a 5 year perspective. So the risk isn't going to come into play until you are 10 or so years out and no one wants to buy the building from them.

Insurance companies don't write policies that are in place 80 years. They can simply revise the policy and payment terms every year, so they have no risk. Also insurance companies have already started labeling the firsts floor of building depending on their elevation as basements and essentially not covering them. So when the king tide floods the firsts floor they don't have to pay anything. So the process of them shifting the risk on to individuals has already started.

So the perspective of most developers I work with is that currently this is a 100+ year problem that were are working on. Playing musical chairs when the music last 100 years and could possibly get extended even longer is a risk everyone is willing to take.

[Marc Middleton]

Originally Posted by BNBR

It should tell you something when banks and insurance companies seem totally non-concerned by the sea level rise.

Yeah because Banks and insurance companies have a great history of being responsible

[Corrie22]

Originally Posted by gixxer1000

So the risk isn't going to come into play until you are 10 or so years out and no one wants to buy the building from them.

My dock is ~ 3 ft above King Tide.....36 inches....that's ~400 years

...the house won't even last that long

[BNBR]

Originally Posted by Corrie22

My dock is ~ 3 ft above King Tide.....36 inches....that's ~400 years

...the house won't even last that long

No, that's about 6 - 12 years when measured by AOC's.

[BNBR]

Originally Posted by gixxer1000

These are a bit of red herring arguments.

As someone who manages the development process the parties involved get paid in the short term and don't have the long term risk. People don't develop and hold projects for 80 years. Condos are essentially pre-sold. And project that are built to be held as investments are looked at usually from a 5 year perspective. So the risk isn't going to come into play until you are 10 or so years out and no one wants to buy the building from them.

Insurance companies don't write policies that are in place 80 years. They can simply revise the policy and payment terms every year, so they have no risk. Also insurance companies have already started labeling the firsts floor of building depending on their elevation as basements and essentially not covering them. So when the king tide floods the firsts floor they don't have to pay anything. So the process of them shifting the risk on to individuals has already started.

So the perspective of most developers I work with is that currently this is a 100+ year problem that were are working on. Playing musical chairs when the music last 100 years and could possibly get extended even longer is a risk everyone is willing to take.

Bank routinely write 30 year mortgages.

[GreggT]

No worries, the world is going to end now in eleven years due to Global Warming.....Per AOC

[boxus]

Yes, and even sooner, maybe in the next five years. So please everyone, stop buying coastal property, and sell what you have.*

*Disclosure, I am soon in the market for purchasing coastal property.

[gixxer1000]

On the commercial banks usually do 5 or 10 year terms amortized over 25 or 30 years. So they are really only exposed for 5 - 10 years.

On the residential side, sure you can get a 30 year mortgage. But they are generating the vast majority of their return upfront and the risk drops during the life of the loan. So for example if the area is going to be underwater in 30 years why would the bank care? Heck lets say it becomes a problem for the area 20 years from now. They write a 30 year mortgage at 90% LTV on a $300k house, so $270k. 20 years later the bank would've already gotten $328k in payments, hardly catastrophic.

So the real risk is with the borrower that has made payments for 20 years for an asset that is worth noting. But then again they would've had to pay rent anyway so it's really just the difference between rent and a mortgage payment. But oh yeah they get tax deductions for mortgage payments.

So again unless the problem is 10 - 20 years away with a high degree of certainty everyone is has incentive to continue on business as usual. And the issue is the problem will never get that close out of nowhere. Which is why I don't agree with the alarmist. This isn't a problem that is going sneak up on us. Sure we may go past the point of no return and this turns into an 80 year problem. But we would know that for sure in the next 10 years so we would have 70 years to prepare for it.

[Corrie22]

Originally Posted by BNBR

No, that's about 6 - 12 years when measured by AOC's.

..LOL...every 3-5 years....we've only got 10 years left

10 is the magic number

My grandparents house is on the next island over....their house is ~100 years old....the dock and seawall is still high and dry

...if these loons would just stick to the truth....a few more people might fall for it

[WRnative]

Reality check:

Carefully scrolling over the NASA satellite sea level chart linked below provides the following readings: 5/31/16: 82.5 mm; 6/2/17: 82.3 mm; 6/4/18: 86.5; 11/29/18: 89 mm; 5/27/19: 94.4.

https://sealevel.nasa.gov/understand...mean-sea-level

NASA apparently doesn't provide an online table listing the sea level for each month, and pulling data readings off this chart is admittedly cumbersome.

As indicated by just the above readings, sea level rise can vary greatly by year. The average for the last 3 years is close to 4 mm, or 0.157 inches.

What is especially disconcerting about the above readings is that over the 6 months ended in May, GLOBAL mean sea level has risen 5.4 mm. This six-month change is important because it reflects ice melt in Antarctica during the Antarctic summer. In the last decade, temperatures in the world's cryosphere (icy regions) increasingly have exceeded the melting point of ice. There is about 10 times as much ice in Antarctica as in the Arctic region, which in the past has accounted for much of the global ice melt. This six-month reading, combined with recent research, suggests that ice melt in the Antarctic now is rapidly accelerating. If Antarctic glaciers begin calving more rapidly, as for years has taken place in Alaska and Greenland, sea level rise could reach inches per year.

<<Researchers expected to find some gaps between ice and bedrock at Thwaites' bottom where ocean water could flow in and melt the glacier from below. The size and explosive growth rate of the newfound hole, however, surprised them. It's big enough to have contained 14 billion tons of ice, and most of that ice melted over the last three years.>>

https://sealevel.nasa.gov/news/152/h...ls-rapid-decay

<<Much of Thwaites rests below sea level, which means that as warm Circumpolar Deep Water melts it from beneath it could enter into a phase of irreversible retreat, which could in turn destabilize the entirety of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, causing sea levels to rise as much as twelve feet.>>

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/e...arctica/#close

<<And that ice loss is accelerating. The researchers found that West Antarctica's two biggest glaciers — Thwaites and Pine Island — are melting away five times faster now than they were at the beginning of the survey, in 1992.>>

https://www.livescience.com/65524-an...-unstable.html

Ice melt in the Arctic, especially Greenland, also is accelerating as temperatures rise there with disastrous consequences.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/scottsn.../#5c7f7eeb4894

However, due to greater thermal expansion, sea level is rising faster in oceans closer to the equator, including the ocean areas surrounding Florida. Gravitational impacts as ice melts in the poles also is increasing sea level closer to the equator.

Harold Wanless of the Univ. of Miami has considered these impacts when projecting the amount of sea level rise impacting Florida. Wanless emphasizes that over 90 percent of the excess global warming associated with fossil fuel consumption has been captured by the oceans, which now is accelerating ice melt in the cryosphere most impacted by ocean temperatures.

<<Only about 2 percent of this excess heat remains in the atmosphere.
Over 93 percent of this excess global warming heat has transferred to the oceans, 2 percent has warmed the land, and about 2 percent has gone to warm and melt ice....

Most disconcerting, half of the excess heat buildup in the oceans has occurred since 1997....

This means that South Florida should add 35 percent to 72 percent additional rise to the GMSL projections. The total relative sea-level rise for South Florida by 2046 could thus be 2.7 to 3.4 feet, and within 50 years could be 5.7 to 7.2 feet.>>

https://www.sun-sentinel.com/opinion...620-story.html

<<Initial NOAA projections had the ocean rising 0.5-2 feet by 2050 and 4-6.5 feet by 2100. The 2050 estimate is now 1.5-2 feet, and the 2100 projection has been boosted to 5-8 feet. Wanless said many scientists are predicting an 8.5-12.5-foot rise by 2100, with outliers as high as 30 feet. >>

https://www.news-press.com/story/opi...da/3541452002/

Southeastern Florida governments in 2015 projected 6 to 12 inches of sea level rise by 2030. Obviously these projections are dated and are due to be updated in 2020.

https://www.theinvadingsea.com/2019/...e-projections/

Significant vicious feedback loops are developing which could massively influence global warming. These vicious feedback loops notably include increased methane and carbon dioxide emissions associated with thawing of the Arctic permafrost and reduced reflectivity of the earth's surface, and therefore increased absorbance of solar radiation as ice and especially snow cover is reduced. Projections of sea level rise generally don't comprehend yet these vicious feedback loops.

https://news.yahoo.com/its-already-b...090000011.html

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/2...arctic-on-fire

Empirical evidence in the years immediately ahead may document the reality of accelerating sea level rise as temperatures warm in the cryosphere. NASA satellite data may allow the development of an exponential curve that globally will impact the actions of coastal real estate developers, lenders, insurers and owners. Rapidly rising sea levels will impact governmental finances, most significantly for coastal communities and for low-lying states, but also for national governments with significant coastal areas.

Most immediately, accelerating sea level rise increasingly will inundate Florida's beaches and coastal nature preserves, then coastal communities.

Some politicians worry about the combined threat that accelerating sea level rise and hurricane intensification pose to southern Florida's nuclear plants.

https://www.miamiherald.com/news/wea...234556862.html

https://newrepublic.com/article/1549...risk-fukushima