Every Eighth Home in Miami Beach Will Be Underwater
Scientists currently estimate that sea levels could rise more than six feet by the year 2100. If that comes true, American homes worth nearly $900 billion could be underwater. Not just in the financial sense.
A new report from Zillow estimates that with a six-foot sea level rise, “almost 1.9 million homes (or roughly 2 percent of all U.S. homes) – worth a combined $882 billion – are at risk of being underwater by 2100.” That is the current value of those homes—by the end of the century, the number will be much higher.
And that risk is not evenly distributed. The state of Florida is by far the most at-risk, with a full 1/8th of the state’s homes potentially ending up as scuba sites. In this estimate, Florida alone accounts for more than $400 billion in home value at risk. Furthermore, the city of Miami Beach has more home value at risk than any other city in America.
Either stop denying climate change or stop building, buying, and insuring beachfront homes, but not both!
Climate change is a change in the statistical distribution of weather patterns when that change lasts for an extended period of time (i.e., decades to millions of years). Climate change may refer to a change in average weather conditions or in the time variation of weather around longer-term average conditions (i.e., more or fewer extreme weather events). Climate change is caused by factors such as biotic processes, variations in solar radiation received by Earth, plate tectonics, and volcanic eruptions. Certain human activities have been identified as primary causes of ongoing climate change, often referred to as global warming.[1]
Scientists actively work to understand past and future climate by using observations and theoretical models. A climate record—extending deep into the Earth’s past—has been assembled, and continues to be built up, based on geological evidence from borehole temperature profiles, cores removed from deep accumulations of ice, floral and faunal records, glacial and periglacial processes, stable isotope and other analyses of sediment layers, and records of past sea levels. More recent data are provided by the instrumental record. General circulation models, based on the physical sciences, are often used in theoretical approaches to match past climate data, make future projections, and link causes and effects in climate change.
