[synctext]

Great article on the disconnectedness and short-term-ism:

> She said the main thing is just that Miami was being very forward thinking. She mentioned Amsterdam, and how they were making it work, and how the Dutch were just the poster child for how this worked, and that they were sorting out a way to make this work. “I think the takeaway is just that Miami is doing something about it.”

Guess this will take a few floodings, billions dollars write-offs, and giant cultural shift to sink in. We Dutch people have "dry feet tax". Some of the organisations that collects those taxes have been founded in the 13th century. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_board_(Netherlands)

[barry-cotter]

As far as I know Florida is basically all limestone, which is porous, so dams don’t work. The water will seep through the bedrock so you can’t do the same thing in the Netherlands in Miami.

[danmaz74]

Yes, the article mentions this problem.

[EliRivers]

Although Miami can do what synctext mentioned, just like in the Netherlands; raise money, appoint responsible bodies and do something about it.

[rayiner]

Politicians can’t do anything about physics and geology conspiring to wipe your city of the map. Only scientists and engineers can. (And if they don’t have a solution for you, it’s like having cancer circa 1650. You’re SOL.)

[selimthegrim]

Say what you want about New Orleans, at least the drinking water isn’t screwed.

[scurvy]

Is this a joke? We have water boil advisories on a quarterly basis because the drinking water is totally screwed by neglected infrastructure.

[selimthegrim]

A boil advisory because of short periods of low pressure is one thing, needing RO because saltwater has infiltrated your aquifer (like what will happen in Miami) is another can of worms

[barry-cotter]

If your city is built on a sponge and in the flattest state to boot your solutions look like seasteading, not dams and pumps. From an engineering point of view Miami should be looking to Venice, not Amsterdam. You can’t save Florida land by pumping so the only way to go is to make your own taller land or to build what amount to boats or oil rigs.

[ethbro]

This is what annoyed me a bit about the article. Sea level rise doesn't seem like that much of a problem.

If the foundations will still be tenable, and the buildings are built appropriately (e.g. parking garage for first level), they're going to be there.

For older ones? Hell, Americans were lifting entire buildings 6' in the 1850s: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raising_of_Chicago

Miami already has canals, so swapping transportation from roads to waterways isn't a huge leap. Where you really need a road, loft it up above the water. Roads are probably the lightest / easiest thing to lift.

That said... the real killer of the city is likely to be drinking water access. Groundwater in porous limestone means saltwater infiltration doesn't just flood, it mixes with freshwater.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-08-29/miami-s-o...

Reconfiguring height is a one-time problem. Desalination of all your drinking water is a much more expensive problem.

[kaitai]

Adding some fun science: pumps are particularly unsuited to FL because of the "sponge" that makes up its land. As freshwater is taken up from the soil for human use, saltwater slowly follows it in (contaminating Fl's freshwater source). If there's a mismatch in the rate of percolation, you can get sinkholes -- the land collapses because there isn't water in the cracks holding it up. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/science-behind...

[HillaryBriss]

this also happened in Orange County, California years ago. they'd pumped so much groundwater that some of the wells near the shore saw saltwater infiltration. nowadays, Orange County replenishes its existing aquifer by pumping purified, recycled waste water back in.

[opportune]

I don't think seasteading would be an easy sell in an area susceptible to powerful hurricanes. Though, I do think seasteading is an underrated idea. I think the best place in the US for it is the western part of the SF peninsula

[jniedrauer]

> From an engineering point of view Miami should be looking to Venice

I might consider moving to Miami if this ever happens...

[ianai]

Who’s going to pay for that retrofit?

[maehwasu]

If the problem looks imminent, as opposed to "we'll deal with it in 50 years", you will suddenly have a lot of VERY incentivized landowners to contribute money.

Is this the ideal way to do things? F* no. Is it what's likely to happen? Yeah.

[kibwen]

Even with effectively infinite money, "do something" might be able to raise the entire city above sea level but it won't be able to stop hurricanes, which the Netherlands doesn't have to worry about.

[veryworried]

Miami doesn’t worry much about hurricanes either.

[jfk13]

That may be politically more difficult when a substantial portion of the population insists that lower taxes and less government/regulation are an absolute good, to be pursued in all circumstances.

[mannykannot]

The vast majority making that argument only do so over issues where they think it is in their own interest. Where spending or legislation is in their interest, it's just common sense.

[kevin_thibedeau]

Many of them advance such arguments because someone else may benefit.

[mannykannot]

Well, of course you are going to say that the things you want are good all round.

[hyperbovine]

The repeated self-comparisons with the Dutch, were, as the Dutch themselves apparently used to say, droll. I did a bike trip along the northern coast of the Netherlands recently. If you want to appreciate the level of concerted, society-wide effort needed to address flooding and storm surge, look no further than https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oosterscheldekering. (Which is itself part of the even larger https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delta_Works.)

I had no idea whatsoever that this thing existed or what it was for until it simply hove into view one day while biking from town to town. It is a truly spectacular sight and worthy of the title of "8th Engineering Wonder of the World".

Compare the $billions and $billions and centuries, literally centuries, that the Dutch have invested in tackling this problem with, as the TFA puts it, some pumps the size of a large airedale. It drives home the point of how utterly fucked Miami, and the rest of the coastal world that is not the Netherlands, really is.

[AJ007]

I would question how many of the buildings and infrastructure in South Florida will still be usable/habitable 50 years from now, even without a sea level rise.

In California both the San Francisco Bay area and Los Angeles have a significant amount of near term risk in terms of water and seismic risk. The absolute worst case scenarios probably make Miami in 2069 look mild.

During the cold war, the assumption was that any major US or European city could become un-inhabitable in moments and most of the humans would be dead. That provided a pretty strong incentive not to build in a dense urban areas, but it was balanced out with the sense of total annihilation for everyone. Some still chose to put their money in to fallout shelters than "prime" Manhattan real estate.

I don't know much about cities and populations outside of the US. I suspect a lot of them are at risk. In Iraq, if the Mosul dam failed, most of the major cities would be wiped out. This is probably true in many other places with questionable hydrology infrastructure.

It would be interesting to build risk models of geographical areas that are at risk of instant destruction (dam failure, earthquakes, nuclear power plant failures, nuclear weapons) and longer term risks. What parts of the world will humans live in 500 years?

Also I'd like to hear from people who are living in the Millennium Tower in San Francisco.

[taurath]

And you can bet the coverage and bailout money will both be a lot larger than Puerto Rico despite a 15 year warning period.

[philjohn]

The Dam the Delta project was very impressive, and having seen it up close doubly so.

Am I right in thinking that some areas have now been designated as "we'll flood those to protect other areas, because the cost of compensation is less than the cost of adding ever more complex defences"? I recall hearing that somewhere.