coe193_slr.mp3

Speaker1: [00:00:23] Oh, hey, there, cultures of energy, listeners, welcome back into our audio space,

Speaker2: [00:00:30] Into our brain fold

Speaker1: [00:00:31] Called the cultures of energy brain fold. Yes, audiophile like mind, trap of education and inspiration.

Speaker2: [00:00:41] Yeah. And you know, we're facing a little bit of a situation here in our household or our dog. Our small chihuahua mix breed was pronounced by the veterinarian to be within point three pounds of being overweight, which is about one hot dog.

Speaker1: [00:00:58] That's not what

Speaker2: [00:00:59] She said, and I have noticed that I had noticed that some of the furniture she sits on was beginning to crumple. And then I looked under the sofa and I saw that actually the floorboard seemed really strained. So this is a real situation. We have both a kind of an engineering challenge. You know, how do we keep this dog in our house at that density? But then also the health challenge? So what are you thinking?

Speaker1: [00:01:22] So what can we do? Ten pounds and seven ounces of density that we're talking about

Speaker2: [00:01:27] As I was really fun.

Speaker1: [00:01:28] Ten pounds and

Speaker2: [00:01:29] It was really funny. It's like at eleven pounds, she's obese. No, she's not. Nobody's dog.

Speaker1: [00:01:33] She's I mean, I like that. Telling of the story is more interesting, but that's not actually the accurate story. The accurate story is that she takes this pill, which I forget what it's for. She has to take it once a month. I think it keeps the fleas away. And so then it also keeps some other diseases away.

Speaker2: [00:01:51] But isn't she also microdosing LSD now? Isn't that what's in?

Speaker1: [00:01:54] Well, she could be, and I had a really good conversation yesterday about that very topic. Come to think of it. But as far as I know, we're not microdosing the dog. But if she goes over eleven pounds, then her little pill won't be effective anymore. So it wasn't a it was not any kind of fat shaming of the dog or any diagnosis about obesity. Because she's skinny, she's skinny as a rail. It's just that the pill won't work if she gets too big. And the woman was like, very like, I've seen dogs blow up, like I've seen them get really huge. Like overnight they can get really overweight. Like, she had to watch her carefully. And I was like, But she's

Speaker2: [00:02:32] Kidding, did she? She said, Yeah,

Speaker1: [00:02:34] Like, like with weight, you know, and and I was like, But she's really skinny and she's like, No, she's on the verge, so she's on the couch.

Speaker2: [00:02:42] She was on the verge.

Speaker1: [00:02:43] She's on the cusp of being eleven pounds, basically anywhere. It's pretty frightening.

Speaker2: [00:02:48] I agree. I'm just going to handle the the architectural engineering side of this and just, you know, do we have to tie powerful helium balloons to her to reduce her her weight upon the structure of the building? I also think we could set up some kind of that the kind of wire system they used in The Matrix so she can kind of fly around the house that way, too. There's a few things we can do, but also not let her get that last point. Three lbs.

Speaker1: [00:03:13] Well, just not pass. The treats are going to get reduced to bit. It's true. It's going to be straight up kibble for a while. I think, because we're teetering on the edge of unhealthful dog

Speaker2: [00:03:24] The verge dogs on the

Speaker1: [00:03:27] Well, or at least we're on the verge of needing to buy a different container of this pill

Speaker2: [00:03:31] Or possibly get a new vet, get a less judgy vet in the mix today.

Speaker1: [00:03:37] So other than that, we just got off the phone with the amazing Andre Snare Magnusson. Yes, talking about some ideas of potential moments of intervention and art next year in August and the Great Land of Iceland. So we had some good ideas. There's nothing you can't say finalize. This is all secret, but we got we've cooked up several grand and slightly less grand, but still big ideas. So watch this space.

Speaker2: [00:04:07] Yeah, no, we'll keep. We'll keep everybody apprised of that. I think we have to note also, as we frequently do this time of the year when they are devastating cyclones shooting across the Atlantic and the Caribbean, I think we have to send our thoughts and positive energy to the Bahamas, the Bahamas. We got massively fucked over by Hurricane Dorian and

Speaker1: [00:04:32] Luckily the big city is still OK so people can go

Speaker2: [00:04:34] There. But and I just want to point out like again, you know, in terms of the juicing up of these cyclones, you know, we have this very, very good weather site here in Houston called Space City Weather that does a really good job of like honest meteorology without a lot of hype. And it's a nice website to look at when the conventional news is trying to get everybody super freaked out about everything and

Speaker1: [00:04:56] The idea of like weather being hyped up is kind of a hilarious oxymoron if you think about it. Well, how can you hype? Of course you can like the Weather Channel makes its living off of that. But right, the idea of hyped up spun weather is kind of funny.

Speaker2: [00:05:10] Yeah, right? Honestly, they were one of the first conventional cable channels to really start doing climate change coverage, as I recall, because I think it's in the U.S.A.,

Speaker1: [00:05:19] I think it was pretty controversial at first. First, they were like, we're not going to talk about it, we're not going to touch it, we're not going to do it, not going to do it, and then finally, they're like, Fuck it, we're totally going to talk about it all the time and just, yeah, they're going to commit. I'm just going on vague memories.

Speaker2: [00:05:32] So my point in mentioning this website we have in Houston is that they they do cover cyclones that are happening elsewhere in the world, too, because they know Houstonians are interested in this. And I'm just saying this guy is really good. These guys are really good who do this. And they had the early Dorian coverage was like, Oh, you know, I think it's going to be like a Category two, category three still very devastating. But the fact that it warmed up so quickly into Category five is, again, just like it's catching, you know, the experts, the people who really know this stuff by surprise. And I think that's the alarming part is, you know, the way people use to predict weather is just not taking into account the warmth of the ocean in many cases. And so given a little bit of time, it's like any cyclone can become category five. Just like, you know, the ones we've had recently in the Gulf have been. So anyway,

Speaker1: [00:06:21] It's really it's also interesting, too, because maybe I've shared this with you before, but during when I was working on the Icelandic Melt project and talking to these glaciologist, one of the things that they were saying about their own science now trained as geologists and they kind of specialize in glacier glaciology. And what they said is that their science is actually becoming fused more closely and is in much closer conversation with meteorology because that's what they need to understand. But, you know, reciprocally, right, like the meteorologists are looking to people like glaciologists to talk about these different hydrodynamics and how that might affect the weather and vice versa. The glaciologists are needing to look at these kind of weather patterns in order to understand what's going to happen to glaciers and ice sheets. So it's interesting because it's like the slow science of of geology has in a way been sped up through its intersection with meteorology. I just thought it was very interesting kind of outcome that I hadn't. Of course, it makes sense. I just hadn't really thought of

Speaker2: [00:07:20] It, right? I mean, this is kind of what happens when what used to be geological time seems to be catching up with, you know, human time, right?

Speaker1: [00:07:28] So and that's where topics the safe topic used to be like chatting about the weather no longer, no longer. That's no longer longer. That's no longer a a safe space of conversation with your irritating relatives and workmates anyway.

Speaker2: [00:07:44] Folks, please support the recovery in the Bahamas. It's it's really tragic with the images I've seen just absolutely absolute total destruction of Abaco Island especially,

Speaker1: [00:07:56] And we're going to have soonish. I'm not exactly sure when, but as soon as we're going to have Amelia Moore on the podcast again. And of course, she's been doing ethnographic research in the Bahamas for many years, and so she can hopefully give us a good update on what's happening. And I've been in touch with her and she's kind of keeping track of everyone. And so she's she's been in touch.

Speaker2: [00:08:16] But anyway. Well, our guests today, our special guest today is not a hurricane expert, but is somebody who has things to say about islands and coasts. And we are speaking with Orrin Pilkey Jr., who is professor emeritus at Duke University, and he's been working on because I was going back into like looking at all the books he's written, he's been working on sea level rise a long time. Yeah, and one of the couple of cool things about the Pilkey is, first of all, they like to publish together. He published with his dad, and now he's publishing with his kids. So you know this book? His most recent book is published with Keith Pilkey, and it's called Sea Level Rise a slow tsunami

Speaker1: [00:08:54] On America's shores.

Speaker2: [00:08:56] Yeah, and it is a really good, comprehensive look at all the different dimensions of sea level rise. And it's blunt, which is great. It's not. It's not, you know, trying to. It's not overdoing. It's not over dramatizing the situation, but it's being really blunt when it says things like Miami and New Orleans can't be saved for different reasons. These cities have to be retreated out of, and it's just a question of of how quickly we can do it with, as is little emotional and material loss as possible. Yeah, but it's just impossible. There are certain cities that could be saved from sea level rise, but these are two that for a variety of geographic and material, reasons can't be.

Speaker1: [00:09:38] Yeah, and he's got that great. Or they have the great feature at the end of the book, where they have a series of letters that you can write to friends and family who live in these city, not just New Orleans and Miami, because in the book, they go through a lot of different city scenarios and including in the Bay Area, in the East Bay and the kind of inundation that's going to happen there. So as you said, it's a it's a good, comprehensive look at the challenges facing facing coastal cities in the United States and where the reality is now and what the future is known to become. Right.

Speaker2: [00:10:12] So and you really get a sense of like the disconnect between where political culture and even civil society are in terms of like coping with climate change. Sea level rise, coping with.

Speaker1: [00:10:23] Rise and the cost and the cost of these interventions,

Speaker2: [00:10:27] I didn't I mean, I learned some really

Speaker1: [00:10:29] Beach nourishment, nitrification nourish beach nourishment.

Speaker2: [00:10:34] We'll call it

Speaker1: [00:10:34] Nitrification and planned retreat, which people have heard of or managed retreat. But we also talk about what's the inverse of that chaotic retreat, which is sadly is probably what's going to happen. But anyway, the pilgrims are getting the word out there about what we need to.

Speaker2: [00:10:49] They are and they and they're asking the difficult questions, and they are actually giving a lot of very helpful practical advice, both for like living on coast today, as well as how to talk to your friends and family about not living on coasts or if you're going to live there living prudently on coasts. And so I think it's a really helpful book. Actually, I love that part of just like giving people like language to talk to their relatives about. I think that's great. More books should do that anyway. So Oren has a wealth of wisdom to share. He is, I think, just shy of 85. So he is really you have to call him a climate warrior, right? For years and years, he's been on this topic, so kudos to him for keeping up that good fight for so long. Anything else we want to cover before we jump into the conversation? Anything else in your mind, any other animals you want to fat shame like maybe a rodent? How about the squirrels at rice?

Speaker1: [00:11:38] They've always been kind of on the heavy side, but that's just because the students give them all that food from the survey. And they're really, I don't know. Are they aggressive? I guess they're aggressive, like they'll come right up to you and expect food.

Speaker2: [00:11:50] I feel like they're living their best life, though.

Speaker1: [00:11:52] Yeah, they're pretty happy.

Speaker2: [00:11:53] I think they're happy. I don't. And it's hilarious because in this, we're having super hot weather right now. In fact, we're going to likely break Houston's temperature record on Friday, at least for this time of the year. And you know, at this time of the year, the squirrels at Rice's campus just lie belly down. They flopped on their bellies all over campus and stretched,

Speaker1: [00:12:11] So moving just shut their legs. They'll just put all their four legs in the four cardinal directions. And they just, yeah, they splatter their bellies out onto the concrete, trying to cool off.

Speaker2: [00:12:21] The first time I saw it, I have to admit I was a little freaked out because I've never seen a squirrel behave that way before. But it's just because I've never seen a squirrel in 105 degree heat, right?

Speaker1: [00:12:30] Because they've got their first still. So they're just trying to dissipate heat by expanding like the exposure their skin has to air. Yeah, yeah. No, the squirrels here. Remember that squirrel? Did you see that squirrel at Berkeley on the Berkeley campus? That is like the most disturbing squirrel I'd ever seen. I'm sure you must have seen it. It was like three times the size a squirrel should be. That was a big one, like it could bear. And again, it was right near this, you know, eating place on campus where students, I think, were just giving it a lot of food and maybe it was older, but it was literally three times the size it should be. It could barely

Speaker2: [00:13:04] Walk like a groundhog, kind of a

Speaker1: [00:13:06] Huge groundhog. It was like a ball. Yeah, and it could barely walk because its little legs had a hard time with the belly underneath and it was missing a leg. And I had a moment where I was like, Oh my God, it got amputated for diabetes. But of course they don't do that. I don't think maybe, maybe at Berkeley, they do do kind of surgical intervention on their campus squirrels. And then it was also missing its whole tail. Remember, it was kind

Speaker2: [00:13:31] Of like sort of a summer memory. It's kind of sad,

Speaker1: [00:13:33] Really sad,

Speaker2: [00:13:34] Sad situation.

Speaker1: [00:13:35] Not saying that was joyous. I'm just saying that's the saddest squirrel I've ever seen.

Speaker2: [00:13:39] Yeah, so well, the squirrels at rice, folks. Don't worry, they're happy squirrels.

Speaker1: [00:13:44] They are happy.

Speaker2: [00:13:45] They are, they are pretty well socialized, and I think they enjoy their time in an institution of higher learning. Yeah, in a swampy city. Yeah.

Speaker1: [00:13:54] And a bunch of people are going to come to a conference tomorrow on waste where you get to see the squirrels.

Speaker2: [00:13:59] Yeah, if you happen to be in Houston tomorrow, please join us for a conversation on futures of waste, which is going to be held on the second floor of the Moody Center Rice University starting 9:00 a.m. Running through 4:30 p.m. Some great speakers, including Friends of the Pod, Josh Reno, Jim Lee and John Pandian. Really great group. So there's that dog. There she is. She's twenty three point three pounds away from, Oh, she's having a good time.

Speaker1: [00:14:28] That dog is pretty lively.

Speaker2: [00:14:30] She's pretty alive. Well, you know, from that, that vet was on crack. Ok, take us away.

Speaker1: [00:14:35] All right. Go Orin.

Speaker2: [00:14:56] Welcome back, everyone, to the podcast we're so thrilled to have on the line with us from Duke or in Bilkey Jr. Oren, thanks so much for joining the conversation.

Speaker3: [00:15:04] It's my pleasure.

Speaker1: [00:15:05] So Oren, as we were just talking about, you have a new book that's coming out with Duke University Press, which is a really fantastic and important read. And we learn in the beginning of the book that it's writing, and the creation of the book was actually inspired by two hurricanes and one home. And I wonder if you could tell us the story of those hurricanes in that home and how it inspired the authoring and the co-authoring

Speaker3: [00:15:31] Of this book. My my parents retired in Waveland, Mississippi, and that was my father's last job with General Electric. So they stayed there and we're enjoying life. And along came Hurricane Camille, and the house was tremendously damaged in the house and 13 feet in elevation and the storm surge with a full 20 feet. You can imagine that. And we we went there. My brother and I went there to help him. And shortly after that, well, my father had retired and he was a very poor retiree and got nothing. He had no hobby. You didn't go fishing or anything like that. So both my brother and I decided to write stuff with him, and I wrote this book called How to Live with an Island and it was about Boat Bank North Carolina about the risks and thing. And the problem was living on a on a barrier island. And prior to this to writing this book, I was an oceanographer with all of my work with that sea must have been in the deep sea where I was working on abyssal plain. But after this book, when the book was published and it was three eighths of an inch thick and it cost a dollar fifty. That's great. I had all kinds of phone calls and request for four quoting things that were in the book that I never had anything like that happen. You know, nobody asked me about my deep-sea study. So. And that was it was very exciting to actually be doing something that people were really interested in and people and what was important to them as well. And that got me started in on worrying about sea level rise and shoreline erosion, all the politics and so forth.

Speaker1: [00:17:18] And what I should say, I didn't mention the name of the book. The title of the book is called Sea Level Rise, and the subtitle is a slow tsunami on America's Shores. And in the book too, you talk about tsunamis. But and there are juxtaposition with sea level, but I wonder if you could elaborate that more why you decided to call it a slow tsunami?

Speaker3: [00:17:39] Well, I and the way we look at the way I look at it is that a tsunami does damage in a matter of seconds and minutes, but sea level rise, which I think does very similar damage. But it does it in a matter of years and decades. And so I thought that the idea that this is like a false alarm was appropriate. It purists wouldn't like that approach, but I think it does make the point that if it can be very damaging, but in a in a long term sense, that's right.

Speaker2: [00:18:10] And I think, you know, one of the challenges of of getting people to think about sea level rise is that it happens so incrementally it kind of sneaks up on you. And since you've been writing about sea level rise for a while, I wanted to ask you maybe to follow up on your your previous comment a bit. And have you seen that people or have you felt that people have become more attuned to sea level rise over the decades? Are we paying enough attention to sea level rise in the United States now?

Speaker3: [00:18:37] No, I don't think we are. Of course, we have a problem on a national scale with at a national level, with absolutely ignoring sea level rise. But one thing that is happening in coastal areas, we're having a lot of what we call a sunny day flooding. This is where we have high tides on days with no wind and the water is coming right up into the streets and this never happened before, and that's that water rising there. The reason this is just a normal high spring tide, and it's when it's higher than usual because it's being pushed up by sea level right now. Places like Norfolk, Virginia and Annapolis, Maryland, which we have a picture of Annapolis, Maryland, flood and the book cover and a number of other cities both in Gulf and Atlantic Coast, are experiencing these so-called sunny day floods. So that along with increasing numbers of dead trees along the outer rim of the lower coastal plain are the absolute proof that sea level is rising. It's very, very, very clear on that sea level rising, and this is a proof. This is the evidence. And of course, those tiny floods are going to get more and more. And they're going to get higher and higher with time as it is now, often like Annapolis, Maryland, the street might have six inch of the water on it for that, that six inch of the salt water. That's pretty inconvenient.

Speaker2: [00:20:10] No, absolutely. And it seems as though it's only really been in the past decade, at least from my perspective, that we're actually hearing some of those cities begin to to plan for the future. But I think one of the great things about this book and you all are pretty blunt about it, is saying that, you know, there are two types of two types of coping with sea level rise you know, the difficult and the catastrophic. And it may not be the case that every place that's facing it is going to be able to survive it over time. And so that some of what's being put now into building seawalls and so forth might be better spent on thinking about an orderly retreat away from the coastline. And that obviously depends a lot on what city or community you're talking about. But in particular, there are two. You single out Miami in New Orleans, and it seems as though the message of the book is, you know, these cities can't make it because of their particular environments. And so I want to ask you to maybe talk a little bit about that. The cities that you don't think can make it and why.

Speaker3: [00:21:07] Yeah, I think to two cities that absolutely can't make it. I think they're absolutely doomed or Miami and New Orleans for different reasons. Miami is sitting atop on top of the so-called Miami oolleotor, or Miami limestone, which is 50 to seventy five feet thick, something like that. But it's very porous. It's very permeable. Water flows into it very quickly. And so because that's underlying the whole city and there's water in all direction, there's a seawall won't help. A levee won't help. So what's going to happen is very slowly and more and more frequently water is going to come up through that limestone end of the city. Now there is there is one 16 foot ridge or something like that that's going to Miami and a few other high places. But that doesn't help you. If you're sitting on top of that 16 foot ridge and you have and you have a city below you that's all flooded. What are you going to do? How are you going to go shopping? How are you going to go to school and so forth? And in the case of Miami, I'm assuming in the case of New Orleans, they're going to have more Katrina than in the future.

Speaker3: [00:22:19] But the Katrinas don't have to be. It doesn't have to be a big Katrina. It's going to get smaller and smaller storms are going to go over the levees, which are thinking. And so in one case, this Miami is going to disappear or it's going to be have to be abandoned because of the water coming up from below and the and the other water coming over the over the levee. So then but Miami brings up the question of what are we going to do with four million people, maybe as much as six million people that will have to leave Miami? And then when we these are these are basically sea level rise refugees. And but these are not people hungry and starving and so forth. These are well-off people who are going to be driving off somewhere with a moving truck behind them. And the question is where? And it's something that we should be addressing pretty soon. You know, I think in some ways, this can be an economic boon to other other areas, to other other other cities that have a bunch of people coming up that are looking looking for jobs.

Speaker1: [00:23:35] Yeah, I think one of the really interesting points that we read in the book is how some of these climate refugees and that's what you call them. We would call them that too are going to be quite well off middle class, upper middle class people in their retreat. And then you also make the point for Florida, which I found really interesting, is that you also have a different kind of vulnerable class of person that's vulnerable to sea level rise. So while the most vulnerable people to climate change in the United States are children, you write pregnant women, people who don't speak English as a first language and immigrants, these are the most vulnerable in general. In the case of Miami, I mean, I'm sorry. In the case of Florida, you have a different constitution of people who are threatened, and these are older folks who are retired who may already have health concerns, who are affected by rising sea level and other factors that come with that. He may in fact have economic resources but may be vulnerable in other ways. And so I think there's a really I mean, Florida is just it's going to be a fascinating and perhaps devastating story to see unfold in so many ways.

Speaker3: [00:24:43] Yeah, you know, Florida is by far the most threatened state on all sides. It's very low. And it's as you say, as you point out, it's a very diverse kind of society. One thing that's happening, for example, a little Haiti is a community in Miami that is sitting on top of a relatively high ridge, which I think is around 10 feet that's called high in that area. And and they're being displaced. If the gentrification going on, well-off people are coming and are buying land in Little Haiti because the land is fairly cheap still and displacing the Haitian because people are beginning to recognize the need to build a higher elevation than elevation. Elevation elevation is the key to good, good real estate in Florida, as opposed to the more normal location, location, location.

Speaker1: [00:25:43] Hmm. Yeah, that's a good, a good point by necessity, it sounds like, and people are finally are starting to figure that out, but unfortunately they're displacing these other populations. I thought we might switch over to the other corner of the country of the United States. When you describe in the book The Case of Shishmaref in Alaska. And as you point out, this is a pretty mediated indigenous village up in Alaska on the coast that both has sea ice or regularly has had sea ice. Also has permafrost that is melting and causing all kinds of collapsing spaces. That and houses are sort of dropping onto the beach, and the sea walls haven't lived up to their expectations in many cases, too. And you you overview a couple of other cases, and you point out to readers that in fact, indigenous people are being quite adversely affected by sea level rise in general and not just in Alaska. And you bring up the point of what's called the threatened thirty four. These are near subsistence villages that still remain in the United States. They're not fully subsistence, but they often rely on hunting and fishing and more subsistence lifestyles. And then you write to ignore their serious plight. One that's caused by our own heavy consumption of fossil fuels and is no fault of their own is to continue with the same contempt shown indigenous American people throughout U.S. history. And I thought, this is a really important point how you're connecting a long history of settler colonial violence to the climate violence we might call it that we're seeing now and how indigenous people, though they may not be huge in numbers, are actually undergoing or being forced to undergo a change to lifestyle and tradition and their own life practices. That's quite devastating, potentially having to move and having to completely change one's way of living in terms of how it's been done in the past and how people have learned to do it in their own lives.

Speaker3: [00:27:46] It is a real tragedy. What's happening? There are thirty four native villages, most of whom are on the coast the Bering Sea, the Chukchi Sea and on the Arctic Ocean proper, and they're all suffering from the same problem the beaches. These are coastal villages, and the beaches are no longer. The permafrost is melting so the beaches can be moved by storms. And there are more storms now because the sea ice is no longer what it used. The storms continue in particular and up into November and beyond, but they, the sea ice, would come in in September. That's what it is. And now the sea ice has is gone until November, so storms are affecting the shoreline. And yes. And if they want them to move back, but the government required probably a good thing. The government requires that you have something resembling sewers and water, drink good drinking water and heated homes and so forth. And you have if you're going back, you've got to build houses on permafrost, and the hull can't be very far from the from the ocean because these are people who gain most of their living is from fishing or or going to sea in one way or another.

Speaker3: [00:29:07] And so one one view of this is that, well, why not just let them go to the villages? Why not go to the big city, go to Nome or talk to you or, you know, any, any any of the other town? There's a big problem there, and it's kind of hate to bring it up. They know about this. They have a severe problem with alcoholism, and that's why most of those villages prohibit the use of alcohol within the villages. So how if they are sent to the villages or to the other towns of Anchorage? What does somebody who was skillful in hunting and fishing do in town? And the answer there nothing left for them to do. Mm hmm. So all in all, it's a really sad situation and. It turns out that it's very costly. The Corps of Engineers estimated the cost of moving Shishmaref, and as I recall, it was more than 50 thousand dollars per individual who lived, who lives in Shishmaref. I think maybe more than

Speaker1: [00:30:10] I think, yeah, I think you have 250000 per person.

Speaker3: [00:30:14] Yeah, OK. Yeah. And that's what a serious well. And after a village of five hundred and eighty, a number of go up and down. But most of the villages are very small because they need to be small, so they won't use up all the resources and nature, all the fish and so forth, the reindeer and so forth. So I think that's that's the most desperate situation in North America, in the United States. Same thing is happening in Siberia and in northern Canada. It's a very serious and very serious situation, and there's not enough money to save it.

Speaker2: [00:30:51] That's right. As you as you point out, I mean, you might be able to get two hundred and fifty thousand dollars per person now. But what happens once we're talking about tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of displaced people instead of just a few hundred per year? You may find that inland people don't want to bear those costs. We've had the same conversation in Houston about the the bankrupt National Flood Insurance program, which also makes some interesting remarks about too. How much longer will people be willing to pay for Houstonians to live in the floodplain? But, you know, I had this. I wanted to ask, and I think this will be interesting to folks who don't know as much about some of the strategies that are being proposed right now for combating sea level rise or staving it off. And and you know, there are places like Miami where, you know, no one is saying Miami is doomed, at least, you know, not in the political class. They're saying, Well, we're going to elevate our streets or we're going to build new infrastructure, we're going to build seawalls or we're going to add more sand to the beach this term. Beach nourishment that I learned from your book. And I just wanted to ask if you could talk a little bit about where those strategies might work and where they definitely won't work and why, and what the environmental costs are of things like seawalls and beach nourishment that may be kind of invisible to most people.

Speaker3: [00:32:03] That's a very good question. The the only solution that's not going to be environmentally damaging and and will last for a long time is retreating and moving back. I point out in other parts of the world, for example, in France, after this 2010 storm, they had they they demolished more than two hundred buildings that were beachfront because they decided they didn't. They weren't going to put up with this business of having to defend these houses. And but we haven't gotten to that point yet. Although we are moving, some people are moving. There really are. I guess you can say there are four solutions. One is to retreat. As I mentioned, you could also demolish buildings, which is what France is doing and what. Which is another form of retreat. You can abandon the building that that's happening in a small village in the Olympic Peninsula, by the way that belongs to the Native Americans there. They've decided to just abandon them, let things fall in. That leaves the shoreline of the course covered with junk and so forth. And we can use armoring bill seawall. Or we can we can nourish the beach. Building a seawall is the naturally, that's an intuitively the thing to do. Build a massive seawall and the shoreline is not going to go past that for a long time.

Speaker3: [00:33:23] But like like the Galveston seawall, which was built in nineteen in nineteen ten after the hurricane that killed 6000 or 8000 people. The problem with seawall, though, is very serious. The reason that we are built, the reason we have some sort of such extensive development along our shoreline along our barrier island shorelines in particular is because of the beach, because of the desirability of living after the beach of walking and swimming and so forth. But all seawalls built on an eroding shoreline will will take out the beach. We first learned this in New Jersey, which went there in the in the twenties and 10 1910 1920 seawall, much of their shoreline and then much of their beach disappeared. So that's a pretty severe price to pay. And of course, you're saving the houses of a small number of people wealthy and influential usually and taking away the the beach that used by a much larger number of people so that that becomes a social social problem. And many, like in nineteen eighty five, the state of North Carolina forbade seawall construction and so did I think Maine. In North Carolina in particular, that law is being picked out. I mean, they're making exceptions an exception, which is kind of sand beach nourishment is the major thing.

Speaker3: [00:34:52] The primary way of holding. Shoreline in place now and in the United States, and it amounts to pumping up from the continental shelf sand onto the beach and usually at a cost of anywhere from one million to $10 million per mile. Wow, that's a lot of money. And then the problem is that the beaches don't last very long. The average typically an exception in both direction. Typically, the beaches in North Carolina last three years in New Jersey, three year in Florida, seven to nine years because of different lower waves. It's the function of how frequent storms occur, but it's very, very costly. And we're running out of sand in some places to pump up on the beach and we're bringing sand in by truck. But that's very that's much more costly than pumping it from the continental shelf. And then, of course, it also kills and kills everything on the beach and the and it kills everything in the continental shelf where you do it, where you've done your dredging. Most of the biology will recover in a period of years, but unfortunately about the time it's recovering, but when they pump up another beach. So there are many ways, many things to do, but they all they all have a lot of side effects to put up.

Speaker1: [00:36:15] And these ecologies, as you point out, that are being affected by pumping sand, for example, are also undergoing rising temperatures of the ocean as well certification and acidification. So they're having to really cope with a lot of different traumas to their ecosystems. I mean, you know, just hearing you talk about the numbers of beach nourishment and how costly it is per mile, you said between one million and 10 million per mile and it lasts for three years. That's really expensive sunbathing and swimming, if you will, or walking on the beach. And as you point out, the seawalls aren't very effective or not for very long, and they have their own environmental impacts. So it seems that the only I mean, it's kind of begs the question. The only logical, relatively cost effective solution to sea level rise in this country is planned retreat. And yet there seems to be a lot of resistance to it. And these sort of it makes you want to shake the politicians or the real estate agents or I'm not sure who and say, like, what part of retreat don't you understand? And I wonder, what do you see from the point of view of doing this research? Why is there so much resistance to simply moving in an organized manner to new places, as opposed to trying to preserve the shorelines that are clearly fated for utter disillusion into the ocean?

Speaker3: [00:37:47] You know there recently, there was a study on North Topsail Beach in North Carolina and where they came up with the unique. This is done by the program for the study of developed shorelines in Western Carolina University. And they came up with a pretty unique solution. They did some figuring there the severe erosion problem on this island, and they figured that how much it was going to cost with sandbag seawalls and beach nourishment and all that for the next five or 10 years. And it turns out that for that same cost, they can either demolish the building that they would buy the buildings that are in trouble and that will be in trouble. And also they would and probably demolish a lot of them, just get off that part of the island that's eroding so rapidly. And so they could. So it would be economically feasible. Looking at the long term to actually do this would be a form of managed retreat, and the funding makes sense because it would cost less than the expected cost of holding that island and play. And I'm sure that's going to be the case in a lot of places. We, instead of nourishing the beaches, why not move the house?

Speaker1: [00:39:03] Yeah, I mean, it's it seems like such the clear response to this. Do you want to talk about because we read about planned retreat or managed retreat? What is the opposite of that unplanned, unmanaged, arbitrary, arbitrary and chaotic retreat? What would that look like

Speaker3: [00:39:21] In a chaotic retreat? A good word. That's that's one form of retreat. Don't build building back after they've been damaged by by a storm, and both North Carolina and South Carolina tried that. But of course, there was a huge hue and cry from the wealthy and influential people living on the shoreline about we want our building back. And the rule was that if something like 50 percent of the building was destroyed or whatever, then you would not be allowed to build it back. And that was a relative. A painless way. Considering all the other ways, that's a relatively painless approach to manage retreat in South Carolina, it turns out that they they made the rule that if you could find the roof of your house, then then you could rebuild it. So could. They were desperate to turn that, get rid of that law, and they and both states have effectively gotten rid of these regulations.

Speaker2: [00:40:24] I wanted to ask you or and if you talk a little bit about the other side of when we're thinking about sea level rise, often the land is also lowering. I mean, this is a problem in Houston and Galveston. We've had a tremendous subsidence problem over the years from mostly drinking water, but also oil being pumped out of the Earth. And it's soft and the Earth doesn't replenish its water very quickly and and we seem to be pumping it too fast. So there are parts of Houston where there is still two centimeters a year of subsidence. Some of the heavily flooded areas, not surprisingly, and even along the coast, Galveston gets us drinking water elsewhere now, but it's still losing about two millimeters per year, and the sea level rise is about seven millimeters per year, so the subsidence is a significant part of it. How much is that impacting communities across the U.S.? I mean, should we people be thinking about the management of kind of the human use of taking water from the soil at the same time, they're thinking about the way in which the waters of the oceans are rising?

Speaker3: [00:41:23] You know, there are other ways that's that's a good idea that the the extraction of water, especially in the Mississippi Delta and extraction of oil, is also causing some of the substance, a lot of substance there. But in some places, you know, the sea level is rising. I mean, is lowering as the land rises, like in Juneau, Alaska, like in parts of Maine and other parts, when when the glaciers came down from the high latitudes from Canada eighteen thousand years ago. In front of them is where the so-called form for gold, where it might have been several hundred miles in front of the glacier. And in those areas, the the the land is thinking as these foreclosures go down the land and sinking even further, even faster than in most places. But there is a little bit of raising and lowering, but for the most part, it's the lowering that's really causing the problem. And there's not much we can do about that, except to make people aware, the forward thinking, nothing you can do about that. And and the reason for the main changes in Juneau, Alaska, is because the very heavy glacier that moved back. And so the land is rebounding from that. So. So I don't know what you can do except to say that the public, the public should be very aware of what's happening. It should be explained and understood by all. And those areas where water extraction of water is causing a problem. We should look into other sources of the water from more inland areas, perhaps.

Speaker2: [00:43:08] Absolutely. That's a great point. Another another interesting point you make in the book is you talk about how much critical infrastructure, energy infrastructure, wastewater infrastructure has been built by people who obviously didn't think the seas would be rising because they're in pretty vulnerable areas. And you mention that, you know, a report that said there are 287 energy facilities in 22 coastal U.S. states that are at less than four feet above the current sea level. So that's a that's a huge issue. Do you want to talk a little bit about that and how you see that vulnerability of infrastructure being an important, important challenge going ahead?

Speaker3: [00:43:48] That is so important. The I was talking with the nuclear power plant, especially the two, the two that I two in Florida, one is the the one in Miami and the other one is halfway up the peninsula on the Atlantic side. Both of them are low elevation. As far as I can see the one on, I can't remember the name of the island in the central part of the peninsula of Florida. On the Atlantic side, it's only three feet high.

Speaker2: [00:44:17] I'm sorry to interrupt is that the is that the Turkey Point?

Speaker3: [00:44:20] Turkey Point is the one in Miami. Oh, OK, south of Miami. And the other one is I remember Hutchinson Island got it, and Turkey Point is perhaps the most threatened one. And they've had some close calls there where they've had to shut down the reactor or shut down part of the reactor because of heavy rains and flooding. And it's going to get worse, for sure. Another thing that's fascinating is our port. You know, all docks are going to have to be replaced all over the world and. That's going to and that's a pretty costly procedure. But if you look at a typical major port like the Long Beach, California, New York and so forth that they not only do they have docks, of course, but they have large areas where the cargo that the cargo carriers are stored and these are a lower elevation than than the knockout usually. So these these big ports are really, really a major problem for a rising sea level. The U.S. Navy have docks and ports all over the world, and their biggest naval base is in Norfolk, Virginia, and the Navy is very, very aware of sea level rise. I'm very impressed, and they and in fact, the military in general is very well aware of sea level. Rise of sea level rise is going to create problems, perhaps even war and in the future.

Speaker3: [00:45:57] In Norfolk, the recently they raised two docks, and they said that the reason for raising it because the cables underneath it were deteriorating from occasional high tide. And and that's the way we explained it in the book, if you might have seen that they. But in fact, it turns out that there's a good chance. The reason they did that, the reason they they the real reason they did that was because of sea level rise. And and the reason they didn't use that justification is that they were afraid that Congress wouldn't give them the money if they said, enforce the law. That's a very, very sad. That's really a sad thing that really bothers me a lot. Anyhow, the the you mentioned wastewater plant there, there the big thing. Almost all city wastewater plants are very low in elevation or close to the shoreline if they're if they're on on the ocean north because these are less power required to generate to move the waste water down to the down to the plant. So these facilities are very, very, very, very vulnerable and they'll be the first to go and look now. There's you're right, there are so many things right along the fringe of the continent and our continent, and it's really that's going to we're going to suffer because of that.

Speaker1: [00:47:26] I mean, reminds me too, it's hard to keep track of all the hurricanes, but the hurricane that hit was it South Carolina, where there's a lot of industrial hog farming, and they had these sort of waste pools that were really adversely affected during the storm and then leaked everywhere. And then we multiply that, you know, times the human contamination that we're putting into these facilities. And it's kind of frightening. And you know, I think the things that you're pointing out here around infrastructure are super important because I feel like most of the conversation when it happens in the United States is about private real estate or or maybe commercial real estate. That's it's always about, you know, the sort of the Miami question, and we really need to be thinking a lot bigger. As you said, we need to be thinking about these ports in the United States and all over the world that are going to need to be restructured and that are going to have it's going to have an impact on shipping and trade, which maybe is a good thing to slow that down. But still, it's going to have an effect. And then the kind of knock on effects that happen through these health vectors. And I was struck by the kind of the sort of health effects that we see with sea level rise as well in addition to storms, you know, more frequent storms or more intense storms.

Speaker1: [00:48:42] So we all know about, you know, the concentration of mosquitoes and how after a flooding event, you have a higher concentration or number of mosquitoes and of course, their disease. They can be very powerful disease vectors for things like chikungunya or Zika, most recently dengue. All of these, you know, pretty, pretty devastating diseases. But you also bring up the issue of cholera, which is something that we see in parts of the less industrialized world, but that we may come to see here and the contamination that happens when we have flooding events and toxic chemicals, including the things that people keep in their garages, right, cleaning fluids and oil, and paint thinner and pesticides. I mean, when we have these flooding events and as sea level rise has its effect on those, all that stuff is leaching and leaking into our our biotic systems, into our own bodies and into the environments that we live in. So, you know, it's I think what your book really does and a really important way is it expands the range of conversation that we can have about sea level rise and its many, its many, many potential impacts.

Speaker3: [00:49:53] You know, I really like the way you put it that that we are we are focused on on building near the shoreline and and the houses of important people because they're squawking. I mean, they're they are powerful with a lot of influence. And but the thing that may be most impactful are the things that you describe the potential for pollution and the potential for even even danger from the nuclear power plant and the water facilities. I was thinking another another wastewater plant at very low in the the wastewater plant in Los Angeles and the wastewater plant in Boston. Both of them are right on the water. Both of them are protected by a seawall, but they're right on the water there. So it's just a matter of time. And the amount of, you know, one thing that seemed to be common with hurricane in coastal areas is mosquitoes. Hmm. After after a hurricane is gone by, mosquitoes come out. That seems to be a good generalization, and some of those mosquitoes aren't good character. Of, I guess, a pain in the neck, but others are dangerous to us.

Speaker2: [00:51:04] One of the things I really liked about the way the the book wraps up is that you have a really long and detailed set of advice for people who are thinking about moving to the coast, who are already living on the coast. And some, you know, very, you know, moving poignant messages to what you call super cautious advice to our family members. You know, letters. Essentially, you could copy paste and and write to people who are living in places on barrier islands or even in places like Malibu. So how did you come up with those set of recommendations and do you want to say anything about what you think some of the most important recommendations are to people who are living on the coast right now?

Speaker3: [00:51:45] Yeah, you know, I was particularly aware of the problem with my family. I mean, I have right now, I have a son who lives just south of Myrtle Beach at low elevation, who I think is about to evacuate, but because of the coming storm. But that made me realize that I mean, I I've been urging him to go. I don't I'm not sure he'll go, but I think he'll go and I can't really force the issue anymore. But I think how important how when it comes to your family, you, you, you have a higher standard for half, maybe even too high. But the thing the important thing escape is a really important part of living in the coast when we're subjected to a hurricane. I was impressed, strangely enough, by the Paradise Fire in California and their problem with the state, and they had the problem that I've seen here and we'll see maybe someday in the outer banks of North Carolina, where the escape is almost impossible. When cars got stuck along the road, your car ran out of gas tar that flat tire, they had fender benders and so forth. They actually took a bulldozer and push those cars off the road. They were blocking blocking traffic and was very, very impressive. But we've had so many hurricanes now, four or five that I know in recent years where people escaped out on an interstate and they kept one half of the interstate open for so-called a miracle. But today, now I saw on TV a interstate coming out of Charleston, South Carolina, with all the lanes open. I was so, so pleased to see that and they're not going to have the last time they had a storm hurricane go by. Most of the roads eventually became parking lot.

Speaker3: [00:53:45] And so the the story is or the advice is to get the heck out of there, even if you're worried about to get to get out before you get before your order to evacuate. But that's a little bit of a problem because sometimes there are people some people are evacuating that really don't don't need to evacuate and they cause the system to get crowded. I think if I was living on a barrier island now, I if I was at that imprudent, I would I would raise my building. If it's a beach college, I wouldn't want to raise it. So the overwash on the island during storm can go right right under the house, and I would want to make sure the roads coming from the ocean side are curved so they just don't go straight into the island all the way across the island. And these have these are proven to be overwash sites where a lot of water goes right over the island. I'd I'd be very careful about building code. I would follow the building code carefully. And if you're not an expert, I'd get someone to look at your house if you didn't build it. You're buying a second. How second? Owner mate, you you start looking at things to see, see if things are tied together well and if they're not fix them, and I had a friend recently who built a house on Figurent Island in North Carolina, and he designed it so he could just drive a flatbed truck right under the house. And the house was fixed with a couple of days worth with somebody that they could just lower the house onto the flatbed truck. Well, off they go.

Speaker1: [00:55:22] Wow, that's innovative. I don't think I've seen that yet.

Speaker3: [00:55:26] It's just lock it up and move it. That's brilliant. There's a problem. And he hadn't answered that at this time. The problem is, can the nearby bridge handle it if he wants to go to the mainland? Or will the bridge cave in under, you know, so anyhow?

Speaker1: [00:55:47] Well, well, I hope he never has to find out whether the bridge caves out underneath. Yeah, but Oren, we wanted to thank you for taking the time to for writing the book. Sea level rise a slow tsunami on America's shores again coming out, I think in about a week or so. Is that right with Duke?

Speaker3: [00:56:06] That's right. It should be coming out in a couple of weeks, I think, right?

Speaker1: [00:56:10] Great. So everyone can. It'll be hot off the press and thank you for taking the time to talk with us about it. Such important work that you've been doing over the years.

Speaker3: [00:56:18] I'm really honored that you asked me to do this. I thank you very much.