[awestley]

I agree, but to be fair it was also the state that limited them such a silly option. They can't do anything more permanent than sand. Which, I understand has an environmental impact, but the beaches are going to keep eroding so why not "draw a line in the sand" so to speak and help protect the beaches more permanently. Regardless of how lives there now.

* I live in the state but no where near the water. So I'm sure my taxes will be paying for this.

[avidphantasm]

Geomorphology doesn’t see lines in the sand. Development on sand dunes should simply not be allowed (as much as I like visiting the beach too).

[awestley]

I didn't mean it literally. a "line in the sand" is an idiom.

[pixl97]

>help protect the beaches more permanently.

Then you get rid of the houses....

The shape of the shore is an equation. In it you have have a massive pool of energy that is the water and its currents. You have a second smaller, yet still massive in human terms, pool of energy in the wind. Then you have the slope of the land from a few miles on shore to many (maybe even hundreds of miles) offshore. This is the lever of the machine. It weighs billions of tons and is miles long. What exactly does permanent mean when you stick something between an anvil and hammer that grinds down mountains. And in specific, you stick it where it becomes the focal point for that energy?

[awestley]

That is why I said more permanently. 10 years is better than 72 hours. To say "get rid of the houses" as a solution to beach erosion without considering legal, social, and economic implications is a classic case of oversimplifying a complex problem.

[pixl97]

At some point the bill needs paid, and like all moral hazards, this is one that foots the bill to someone else in the meantime.

Physics doesn't care about the dumb economic/political decisions you made in the past. Pushing it 10 years just creates 10 more years of damage to yourself and others and burns money the entire time.

You're acting like you can just science/money your way out of a problem that has grown massively over the last 70 years, but we no longer can. The bill is due with interest. Yea, you can roll over the debt if you want, but the house of cards falls down eventually.

[Veliladon]

The beaches keep eroding because the dune ecosystem that was in place to keep the sand there was destroyed to put beachside housing on it.