Local real estate markets are starting to notice the danger of sea level rise from global warming. And you start to think that in Massachusetts we’re sitting on a pretty large asset bubble.
““It’s been a challenge along the Quincy waterfront,” said McGue, who owns Granite Group Realtors in Quincy. “People got flooded and are fighting with the insurance company, and they want to sell the house. What happened here in March certainly underscores what a 100-year flood map is all about. Quincy Shore Drive was closed — I’ve never seen it closed since the Blizzard of ’78.”
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A recent analysis by the Union of Concerned Scientists, a Cambridge science and environmental advocacy group, pinpoints several Massachusetts coastal areas that now flood 26 times or more annually—not only due to storms, but as a result of higher tides reaching farther inland. They include parts of Marshfield, Scituate, Cohasset, Quincy, Revere, Lynn, Winthrop, and large swaths from Ipswich to Salisbury. In Boston, parts of South Boston, East Boston, the Seaport, the North End, downtown, and Charlestown are in the scientists’ frequent-flood zone.
UoCS is a great organization. They made a map of chronic flooding scenarios under “moderate sea level rise”. You will notice that the vulnerable areas by the year 2100 will make much of the Greater Boston region unrecognizable.
There’s much talk about a “carbon bubble” — assets in the ground “owned” by fossil fuel companies that will be stranded in a future economy. (Citi puts that valuation at $100 trillion — this figure gives you an idea of why those companies fight so hard to keep doing what they’ve always done.) But less discussed is the asset bubble of real estate, of everything else that’s affected by global warming — which is, after all, everything. Lest we imagine that asset markets are effective at pricing in large-scale risk … we have some recent history to suggest otherwise.
We’re on the bubble.
SomervilleTom says
Perhaps it is worth clarifying the meaning of terms like “100-year flood map” and “100-year event”. These do NOT mean that no such event has happened in the past 100 years or is expected in the next 100 years. Most importantly, the fact that “100-year event” happened a few years ago most emphatically does NOT mean that it won’t happen again for another 90-odd years.
This term says that likelihood of such an event is 1% or less in any given year. The term comes from inverting the “1/100” percentage. The odds against getting 10 heads in a row while flipping a fair coin are astronomical. The odds of getting heads on the next toss after 9 heads are still 50/50.
The reason these terms are so misleading in today’s climate is that such percentages assume — incorrectly — an unchanging “normal” climate (based on some lookback period). A plain fact — though disputed as “fake news” by tens of millions of delusional right-wing Fox viewers — is that our climate is changing at an unprecedented rate. The data we already have shows that most of the observed error in predictions from the early days of James Hansen is that those predictions are far too conservative.
When the probability of such an event is calculated using the hockey-stick of actual changes, the result turns from a “100 year” event to something more like a “5 year” event or even a “1 year” event (in other words, a near certainty) — depending on how the calculation is done and what numeric assumptions are made.
We most certainly are in a coastal asset bubble. We can only hope that our too-big-to-fail institutions are more realistic than their GOP government counterparts in evaluating the risk of mortgages and other financial instruments in these areas. Such hope worked out really well in 2008.
marcus-graly says
Changing conditions are the main reason why “100 year” or “500 year” floods happen more frequently than even a correct understanding of probability would indicate. We’ve seen this problem even in Somerville. Our current zoning ordinance, (which the city is in the process of rewriting,) calls for a ridiculous amount of parking per unit and requires it to be non-tandem. While existing structures are grandfathered in, when multi-families are condoized, which has been happening a lot lately, they have to comply with the parking requirements. This inevitably means paving over the yard and replacing it with a parking lot, which means the city has a lot worse drainage than it did even a decade ago. This, in turn, increases the frequency and severity of flooding, but is not generally reflected in flood risk maps.
johntmay says
And the question is: will capitalism save us? I say no. We’re going to have to make seismic to our approach to economies and social structure before anything changes for the better with regard to climate change and the elimination of human inhabitable areas of the planet. Trump is not a odd minority of our culture. He is a large segment of it.
seascraper says
Like so much eco-hysteria, the main effect will be to exclude the middle class from buying coastal property, to cut the price for those who buy in cash with inherited money. Then Quincy can become like the cape with only Kennedy s living there and their servants a few miles onshore.
SomervilleTom says
Like the utterances of so many delusional right-wing climate change deniers (such as the current head of the EPA), this comment performs Olympian verbal gymnastics. It simultaneously stands truth on its head, beats several dead horses, compresses a multitude of angels onto a pin-head, and nails the landing well over the line into utter absurdity.
The “main effect” of the climate change we’re talking about will be to cause multi-digit TRILLIONS of dollars of loss in Massachusetts alone. Hyannisport, Quincy, the currently developing Seaport District, all of the Back Bay, much of downtown Boston, and pretty much every coastal city and town in Massachusetts be destroyed. The “Massachusetts Miracle” will be a distant memory.
There will be no federal help because the same calamity will be occurring along the entire East, Gulf, and West coasts.
This comment is a videotape closeup of a single blade of grass being consumed by a forest fire — intentionally ignoring the inferno surrounding it as far as the eye can see.
Charley on the MTA says
Ha – made roughly the same comment as Tom. This comment is a classic of the form — even squeezed the Kennedys in there.
Good job, buddy.
seascraper says
Please let me know when the Democratic donors with 50 acre estates in Cohasset and Weston are going to invite those forced out of Quincy by your policies to build middle class homes on their land.
seascraper says
Humans like to live on the coast. Water is life. After the Indonesian Tsunami did the Indonesians move away? After so called superstorm sandy did they abandon Manhattan?
There are large costs to living by the sea. But your terrified reaction to risk would be much worse if you manage to force it on the rest of us who are not anxious and depressed all the time.
It’s simply cheaper to rebuild on the rare occasions when your home gets destroyed than to restrict building to castles only.
SomervilleTom says
I encourage you to learn more about how much Hurricane Sandy cost Manhattan (and New Jersey, and all of us in terms of federal emergency relief). Then add in Harvey, Maria, and Irma.
You are apparently in utter and complete denial about the impact of the climate changes that we have already unleashed. I invite you to spend a little time with an interactive mapper of Manhattan looking towards, say 2100.
You are whistling in the dark.
seascraper says
You are afraid and anxious. I understand why. But Manhattan is worth trillions of dollars, made by people who were not afraid. If you were in charge then, it would never have been built, the money it generated would never be, and millions of lives that were lived in a thriving economy would have been lived in poverty and starvation and brutal gangsterism.
You are working as a maidservant for those who are living at the top of the pyramid now, and fear being displaced by new competitors. You are stopping the next Manhattan from being built.
Christopher says
I think the point is that we should be smart and willing enough to either not build the next Manhattan in such a vulnerable spot or get really serious and aggressive about preventing sea level rise through sound climate policy.
SomervilleTom says
It is already too late to prevent catastrophic sea-level rise. That ship has already sailed.
SomervilleTom says
You have your head buried so deeply in …. the sand … that you steadfastly refuse to confront the facts that surround all of us. I am reminded of the 3-pack-a-day smokers of the 1960s coughing blood and bits of tissue into their handkerchiefs while loudly arguing that cigarette smoking is perfectly healthy because they’ve been doing it their entire lives — the guys who screamed at the top of what was left of their collective lungs that government efforts to reduce tobacco use were an anti-American conspiracy led by godless communist patsies..
Anybody who attempts to build the next Manhattan on the ocean side of the 20-foot high-water mark is as foolishly suicidal as you apparently are.
Feel free to blow whatever smoke about you like. It doesn’t change the facts nor does it do anything except demonstrate the growing disconnect between your commentary and anything like facts or reality.