The Surfside tragedy could be a 'bellwether moment' for managed retreat

[marmar]

(Grist) The Champlain Towers South condo building in Surfside, Florida, collapsed last week, killing at least 18 people with 145 others unaccounted for. It’s too soon to say whether climate change had anything to do with the tragedy. But the collapse has shone a spotlight on Florida’s unique vulnerabilities to climate change and raised questions about whether the state’s coastal infrastructure is equipped to handle the flooding that comes with sea-level rise.

The climate stakes for Floridians are high. By 2050, buildings in South Florida may be inundated by 2 to 3 feet of sea-level rise, plus 4 or more feet of storm surge. By 2100, the flooding will be even worse. Some counties might be able to afford to raise their roads and build sea walls. But adapting to rising seas is expensive, complicated, and, ultimately, unsustainable — especially in coastal states like Florida, which will experience intensifying Atlantic hurricanes in addition to sea-level rise.

Preventing future tragedies means acting now, said Randall W. Parkinson, a coastal geologist at Florida International University in Miami. He thinks it’s already time to start thinking about moving residents away from the sea. A certain amount of sea-level rise is baked in, given current atmospheric carbon levels, he says. The longer Florida waits to organize the systematic withdrawal of people and assets from the coast, the more chaotic that eventual retreat will be.

This retreat-oriented attitude isn’t widely shared in Parkinson’s home state. When he gives presentations on the inevitability of mass migration inland from Florida’s coast, attendees have verbally accosted him and called him “Dr. Doom” — a moniker he rejects. He’s even received threatening messages at his house, he says. “It’s just a terrible, terrible shame in this country how we’ve responded to climate change,” he said. “There’s no leadership.” ............(more)

https://grist.org/climate/the-surfside-tragedy-could-be-a-bellwether-moment-for-managed-retreat/

[EYESORE 9001]

1. ' Preventing future tragedies means acting now...'

Virtually ensuring complete inaction for the duration of the DeSantis administration - and afterward if another repuQ takes his place.

[Scrivener7]

4. I was just going to say this. Buckle up for a lot more of these horrors. Because nothing

will be done to prevent them.

A few hundred lives weighed against he billions of dollars at stake will not change anything.

[Phoenix61]

2. I've never understand why they built on the barrier islands.

What part didn’t they understand, “barrier” or “island”?

[Srkdqltr]

7. They built there so people could be near the ocean.

No one can have the view but them. No one can use their beach. It's a selfish thing. The builders and the owner/renters dont care. It's "I've got mine and I don't care about anything else " mentality. Builders have their money and are probably long gone.

[XanaDUer2]

11. When I was a kid, my mom and I were told by some

factotum from a Surfside condo to leave the beach in front of a condo.

Younailed it. No views. Condo canyon on Collins.

[sop]

8. Blame Carl G. Fisher, known as "Mr. Miami Beach."

He promoted and developed the area in the early 1920s. Built on an unpopulated barrier island, much of the interior landmass at that time was a "tangled jungle of mangroves." The whole place was built using landfill dredged from Biscayne Bay. Once a "1600-acre, jungle-matted sand bar three miles out in the Atlantic, it grew to 2,800 acres when dredging and filling operations were completed." In fifty years it will be reclaimed by rising oceans.

[dixiegrrrrl]

10. or why they can get home insurance, but they do

big expensive homes on Dauphin Island off the coast of Alabama.
every hurricane, the state/county dredged up sand to replace what washed away. Homeowners re-built.
even in the midst of BP's oil flooding, people stayed on that barrier island.

It took Katrina to put a stop to the madness,she cut the Island in two, and conversation finally started about the sense in rebuilding.

[NickB79]

3. The last time CO2 was as high as today, seas were 70 FEET higher

Pliocene era, 3.5 million yr ago.

There was no ice left on Greenland, and trees grew in Antarctica.

[HUAJIAO]

6. Very interesting.

Why was the CO2 level so high then?

[Dreampuff]

5. But, But

Climate change is just a democratic hoax, isn't it?

[Klaralven]

9. Sea walls won't work because the bedrock is porous limestone through which seawater can flow inland

Sea walls, levees, etc are not an option.

The only solution is to dredge more landfill from the bay and raise the barrier islands.

Of course the geography will change because the more westerly suburbs of the Gold Coast will be inundated by the expanding Everglades.