Sea Level Rise: A Slow Tsunami on America's Shores
208
Sea Level Rise: A Slow Tsunami on America's Shores
208eBook
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Overview
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781478005124 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Duke University Press |
| Publication date: | 09/20/2019 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 208 |
| File size: | 88 MB |
| Note: | This product may take a few minutes to download. |
About the Author
Keith C. Pilkey is an administrative law judge with the Social Security Administration. He is coauthor, with Orrin H. Pilkey, of Global Climate Change: A Primer, also published by Duke University Press.
Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
FLEE THE SEA
· CLIMATE REFUGEES ·
Sea-level rise is the defining issue of the century," declared a May 2018 editorial from Florida's Sun Sentinel newspaper. Ostensibly, the paper's editorial board was sounding the warning about the threat to South Florida, but this declaration applies to nearly all coastal communities in the United States.
As the sea continues to rise, coastal communities will lose territory, and they will lose people. The flow of sea-level-rise refugees is just a dribble now, with the major exception being Puerto Rico where, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, 130,000 people left the island in the year after Hurricane Maria, which struck in September 2017. The post-Maria exodus resulted in a 3.9 percent drop in Puerto Rico's population. A few souls have moved away from Miami and Miami Beach and a number of small towns on the Mississippi Delta, but the dribble is showing signs of acceleration as is the sea level rise.
Flooding from high tides, made higher by sea level rise, has forced the congregation of a Unitarian Church in Norfolk, Virginia, to abandon the church building and move to higher ground. A few Native Alaskans have moved from their tiny beachfront villages into towns because of the rising sea and the loss of protective sea ice along the Chukchi Sea and Arctic Ocean shores. It is likely that the rest will follow. A stretch of the South Nags Head, North Carolina, shoreline has beachfront houses that were third-row houses 25 years ago. The 4,800-ton Cape Hatteras, North Carolina, lighthouse, threatened by erosion, was moved back 2,900 feet from the eroding shoreline — the same distance from the sea that it was when it was built in 1870. After Hurricane Sandy in 2012, a number of houses along the low-elevation rims of Staten Island, New York, were purchased and removed to get them out of the way of future storms enhanced by sea level rise. In Bay Point, New Jersey, a small hamlet on the shores of Delaware Bay, 20 highrisk houses were purchased and demolished in 2018. Farmlands adjacent to the shores of the Delaware and Chesapeake bays and Pamlico and Albemarle sounds are increasingly impacted by salt water. On aptly named Washaway Beach in Washington State, shoreline retreat is very rapid, and as many as five artesian well water pipes can be seen protruding out of the water in a line offshore, each marking the site of a fallen, abandoned (and washed away) house. The U.S. Geological Survey noted that during the 2015 – 16 El Niño, shoreline erosion along the whole Pacific Coast between Mexico and Canada, and especially off Southern California was the worst it had been in 150 years. Much of the dune protection for low areas was lost. All these examples show a creeping loss of property is forcing people to move.
But there is another side to the story. In spite of widespread recognition of the continuing sea level rise, the abundant field evidence that it's occurring, and the dribble of refugees, we still seem to be thumbing our noses at it. Developers still construct beachfront houses along the Carolina and Florida shorelines. In North Carolina, officials allowed new rows of beach houses to be built next to newly nourished but rapidly eroding beaches. Almost without exception, the new houses are McMansions — three-story, multi-bedroom rental palaces. Unquestionably, the bigger the buildings, the fewer the options for response to the rising sea. In Miami, certainly the most threatened city in America, two high-rise construction projects costing more than a billion dollars each are under way. In Waveland, Mississippi, beachfront lots occupied by houses destroyed first in Hurricane Camille (1969), and then in Hurricane Katrina (2005), are once again, for the third time, occupied by new homes. Miles and miles of beachdestroying seawalls in the United States are under construction or repair in an attempt to postpone the date when the occupants must flee.
But in time, the dribble will change to a rush. Just imagine, four million Americans, the majority of them Floridians, forming a stream of refugees moving to higher ground. They will not be the bedraggled families carrying their few possessions on their backs as we have seen in countless photos of people fleeing wars and ethnic cleansing, most recently in Myanmar and Syria. Instead, they will be well-off Americans driving to a new life in their cars, with moving trucks behind, carrying a lifetime of memories and possessions.
There is no conceivable scenario by which we can stay near today's shoreline, with its beautiful sea view, as the sea level rises three feet or more by 2100. In order to do so, we would have to hold the shoreline in place using massive seawalls that would grow bigger and higher every decade, which can't be done while simultaneously preserving the allimportant beach. Retreat is the only answer to a gloomy future of beachless beach communities lined by the rubble of destroyed buildings or by massive seawalls.
Getting individual beach cottage owners to move back to safer ground will be the easy part — everyone has an incentive to get out of the water! Increasingly, those living beside the beach will suffer from storm fatigue as they repeatedly rebuild after floods or hurricanes. The hardest part will be dealing with towns and cities, as there will be large numbers of people simultaneously affected, all asking for taxpayer support, first to hold off the sea level rise, next to help refugees start a new life, and finally to help the towns that will receive the refugees.
It won't happen all at once. This refugee crisis will play out over several decades, perhaps starting in earnest 50 years from now, as coastal dwellers with a fine view of the sea that has risen three feet find they must leave to survive. Or they must leave because their neighbors and friends have already gone. Or they must leave because nuisance flooding frequently floods and closes the roads that lead to schools, churches, hospitals, and businesses. The trickle of refugees will swell, propelled by the intensified storm surges and winds of hurricanes, likely more powerful as a result of both sea level rise and ocean warming.
If the sea rises three feet, the number of moving Americans may exceed 4 million, and if the rise is six feet by 2100, the number of refugees may exceed 13 million, according to a study by Mathew Hauer, head of the Applied Demography Program at the University of Georgia, and his associates. This estimate of American refugees will very likely prove to be conservative, especially in decades beyond 2100.
But it's not just a matter of future inundation of coastal properties. Low-lying lands, especially along the Gulf and Atlantic coastal plains, already are plagued by periodic nuisance flooding — otherwise known as tidal flooding or sunny-day flooding — defined as temporary flooding at high tides that causes public inconvenience. This flooding is also termed chronic flooding or chronic inundation, discussed further in chapter 3. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) says that in 1950 nuisance flooding was infrequent and usually brought about by winds, but by 2010, nuisance flooding began to occur frequently, on sunny days, along American shorelines. The reason? Sea level is higher, and therefore normal high tides are higher than ever. Current nuisance flooding hot spots include Annapolis, Maryland, Norfolk, Virginia, and Miami Beach, Florida. How soon will their residents become refugees?
Refugee numbers will increase as repetitive nuisance flooding and ever more powerful hurricanes and storm surges penetrate their homes or neighborhoods well above the stillwater or high-tide level of the sea. In addition, saltwater pollution of drinking water or intrusion of salt water into farmlands will create refugees as coastal living conditions deteriorate.
Even individual coastal developments at relatively safe elevations may have to be abandoned if surrounding streets at lower elevations become flooded and prevent access and egress. During Hurricane Harvey (2017), the Texas Medical Center was well equipped with generators and floodwalls, but the hospital itself was inaccessible because surrounding streets were flooded. Nobody could come and go (without a boat or helicopter).
American Refugee Numbers
Most American climate refugees will remain in this country and probably flee to nearby cities. The very first climate refugees in America must have been Native Americans who had to flee the rising sea that followed the end of the last glaciation. Relics from Native American settlements have been found under water on all our continental shelves. The rate of the retreat of shorelines over the last 10,000 years when the continental shelves off the Americas were inhabited must have varied widely depending on the slope of the now-submerged land. For example, the continental shelf of the Northeastern Gulf of Mexico, off the Apalachicola Delta, is extremely flat. Native Americans living alongside the shore at that time may have had to move their encampments every few months or so to escape the sea!
W. B. Cronin, in his book entitled The Disappearing Islands of Chesapeake Bay, notes that more than 500 islands have disappeared from Chesapeake Bay since European settlers arrived here. The presence of Native American relics on the remaining small island beaches indicates that the early Americans likely encamped there and on the now-disappeared islands and must have abandoned sites as islands disappeared beneath them. European settlers later inhabited the remaining islands, and their descendants were forced to leave as the islands eroded.
The first "official" American sea-level-rise refugees in modern history are the approximately 60 people who make up the Native American village of Isle de Jean Charles, Louisiana, on an island in the Mississippi River Delta. Its inhabitants, who used to number 400, are mainly from the Biloxi-Chitimacha-Choctaw tribe. The village is in trouble because the island is eroding and has been reduced in area by 90 percent. In 2016, the tribe was awarded $48 million for resettlement to higher ground. This amounts to a cost of $800,000 per inhabitant, a cost that is not likely to be repeated on a national basis in other communities that must eventually move. The hope is that this village will be reconstituted to its former population of 400 inhabitants once it has been moved. Unfortunately, the plan has a hitch, discussed in chapter 2.
In the Hauer study, the numbers of people at risk, mentioned in table 1.1, are rough approximations because:
• The future measures (such as nourished beaches, seawalls, and levees) that communities will take to hold back sea level rise and to reduce storm surge impacts are unknown. Such measures will reduce the number of refugees, but only temporarily.
• The refugee numbers may increase as shorelines retreat in the immediate future at rates that are difficult to predict, which would increase the impact of tidal flooding and storm surges.
• Some communities will be abandoned because, even though the communities themselves are not flooded, rising waters flood surrounding low-lying roads and crucial infrastructure, such as wastewater and drinking water plants.
• Some communities will be abandoned before many of the homes are seriously threatened because, as the more-threatened population flees, the underpinnings of what makes communities livable will be threatened — friends and neighbors leave, along with schools, businesses, and churches, and the tax base that supports local government shrinks.
Global Sea-Level-Rise Refugees
A 2017 Cornell University research report in Science Daily stated this: "In the year 2100, two billion people — about one-fifth of the world's population — could become climate-change refugees due to rising ocean levels. Those who once lived on coastlines will face displacement and resettlement bottlenecks as they seek habitable places inland."
Worldwide, arguably the first modern-day climate refugees are the hundreds of thousands of Indian and Bangladeshi people who have already fled their Ganges River Delta homeland. They leave behind infertile agricultural land (contaminated with salt), frequent floods, the constant threat of devastating typhoons, polluted drinking water, and failed small dikes, all amplified by a rising sea. Some scientists predict that by 2050, 17 percent of the Ganges Delta will have been lost due to erosion and flooding, which could eventually lead to 20 million sea-level refugees.
Estimates of the numbers of climate refugees from around the world in noncoastal areas are also horrific. According to a 2009 report, the Environmental Justice Foundation (EJF) noted that in just 10 or 20 years the number of refugees could number 10 or 20 million. Many of these will be driven out by climate change in the sub-Saharan area, and many will try to cross the Mediterranean Sea to Europe. Whole regions of the world may be rendered uninhabitable as we approach temperatures that are incompatible with human existence. The EJF urges governments to provide new legal frameworks to protect climate refugees and to take strong steps to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. New Zealand is currently considering creating a visa category to help Pacific refugees, mostly from atolls.
The United Nations has pointed out that climate refugees may actually lead to even more refugees. This is because in the competition for limited water, grazing land, and food, shortages could occur that will drive the native citizenry away or produce armed conflict, causing them to flee. Arguably, we have already witnessed climate-based conflicts in Syria and Sudan.
The American Hot Spots
NOAA has identified three sea-level-rise hot spots in the United States: the Inner Banks (the northeastern corner of North Carolina), the Mississippi Delta, and South Florida.
The Inner Banks Hot Spot
This is the lowermost coastal plain region surrounding Pamlico and Albemarle sounds, behind North Carolina's Outer Banks, and includes the corner of southeastern Virginia. The region is mostly very low-lying, often swampy (including parts of the Great Dismal Swamp), with a number of small towns, wildlife refuges, national forests, and superfarms that have closely spaced drainage canals.
The entire North Carolina Inner Banks population of around 280,000 souls likely will be forced to leave their homes, with even a two-foot sea level rise. Not only will such a rise inundate many towns, it will flood many access roads. And those roads that don't flood may actually contribute to flooding elsewhere. Geologist Stan Riggs of East Carolina University has observed that roads in the area, some already elevated three or four feet to keep traffic out of the water, act as dams that cause storm surges and river floods to inundate areas that otherwise would have remained dry. These road dams add considerably to the flood risk of many towns in the Inner Banks and were responsible for much damage in the floods from Hurricane Floyd (1999).
The Union of Concerned Scientists lists communities within the North Carolina Inner Banks that are susceptible to flooding. These are Alligator, Columbia, Croatan, East Lake, Fairfield, Fruitville, Gum Neck, Lake Landing, Lake Mattamuskeet, Pamlico, Swan Quarter, Cedar Island, Crawford, Harkers Island, Kinnakeet, Marshallberg, Salem, Scuppernong, Sea Level, Stacy, and Shiloh.
The Florida Hot Spot
South Floridians streaming to the north will make up many of the American climate refugees. According to Hauer, 6 million or more refugees will flee to the north from Florida in a six-foot sea level rise. This may be a low estimate, because the highly porous and permeable limestone that underlies large parts of South Florida, particularly Miami and Ft. Lauderdale, creates a great hazard. Here, any seawalls, dikes, and levees that may be constructed will have little effect on sea-level-rise flooding. According to Harvard instructor Jesse Keenan, people are already moving away from areas that suffer from tidal flooding in both Miami Beach and Miami. With sea level rise, it is best to be ahead of the wave because if you wait too long your property values may collapse.
America has previously experienced migrations of large numbers of citizens within the nation's boundaries. During the nineteenth century, many thousands of Americans, a lot of them in covered wagons, streamed westward in search of land and wealth, forcibly removing Native Americans from their land in the process. As historian David McCullough described a later migration, "A shift of population that had begun during the war [World War II] grew to surprising proportions over the next thirty-odd years, becoming one of the nation's biggest migrations. Millions of people, black and white and mostly poor, left the rural South for the big cities of the North and West." These migrants, like the westward moving pioneers of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, also sought a better life. African Americans, in particular, fled the "Jim Crow" South for the less blatantly racist North.
(Continues…)
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Table of Contents
AcknowledgmentsPrologue
1. Flee the Sea: Climate Refugees
2. The End of the Inupiat Way of Life
3. Lord Willing and the Creek Don't Rise: Sunny Day Flooding
4. Dirty Waters and Worried Minds: Health Concerns in an Age of Climate Change
5. The Front Line in the Battle: The U.S. Military
6. At-Risk Coastal Environments: Is Resilience Futile?
7. The Environmental Impact of Surging Seas: Life at the Edge
8. Inundated Infrastructure: Imperiled Energy Facilities
9. Coast Catastrophes: Cities on the Brink
10. Under Water: National Flood Insurance and Climate Gentrification
11. What You Can Do about Sea Level Rise
Appendix A. Global Delta Population Displacement Potential by 2050
Appendix B. The Economic and Environmental Price of Holding the Shoreline Still with Hart Stablization
Appendix C. Living with the Shore Book Series
References
Index
What People are Saying About This
“For decades the Pilkeys have been unafraid to provide straight talk about the reality of our tense relationship with the coast, whether it's the nature of our highly dynamic coastal landscape, the impacts of shoreline armoring, or the reality of climate change. Here they provide a clear-eyed and sober view of America's future with rapidly rising seas and how woefully unprepared we are for what very well might be our nation's biggest challenge.”
“This is a compelling history of the near-future. Read it to understand the pressures that will shape our planet as the century wears on—and read it as a reminder that we must act now to keep things from getting worse than they must.”