Condo King Jorge Perez: "Besides I'll be dead, so what does it matter?" ... by gimleteye

Politicians plan for sea level rise, by Spanish artist Isaac Cordel

The New York Times repeats a quip by Miami Condo King and local billionaire Jorge Perez about climate change and sea level rise.

The report concerns a contemporary home built on Miami Beach by Mr. Hani Boutros. Concrete pilings elevated his dream house ten feet high -- not exactly a new concept in South Florida -- with a "retractable" stairway -- which kind of is. But a retractable stairway to pull up and away from sea level rise begs the question: what next?

The Times quotes Perez from a 2017 book by Jeff Goodell, "The Water Will Come: Rising Seas, Sinking Cities, and the Remaking of the Civilized World." Miami, being Exhibit A for cities at risk from climate change.

“In 20 or 30 years, someone is going to find a solution for this.” He (Perez) added, “Besides, by that time, I’ll be dead, so what does it matter?”

What does it matter?

I can think of roughly 9 billion reasons, including one grandchild who is sixteen months old, why it matters. But I get it, Jorge.

There is a mind-set at work in the United States that is primitive and powerful. It is about circling the wagons, protecting what is yours, insulating from threats. (For the GOP Ten Commandments on climate change, click here.)

The same way that squirrels hoard in the fall for the winter ahead, powerful corporate interests view climate change -- and impacts like sea-level rise -- as a game they can't influence. Florida Senator Marco Rubio often says so. What he doesn't say, is what comes follows: make as much money as you can, right now this instant, because in twenty or thirty years (basically, one mortgage cycle), it's going to vanish.


Note that Perez is a frequently cited Democratic big ticket donor. The mindset that Perez articulated, also helps to explain how the politics and policies governing growth management in Florida have all but disappeared. It is no coincidence: this game of musical chairs requires speed and the elimination of barriers (ie. regulation) to build as much and as fast as possible.

That is the thinking behind Mayor Carlos Gimenez' determination to open the last remaining farmland and open space in South Florida to more suburban sprawl, through the extension of State Road 836 into the far southwest reaches of Florida's most politically influential county. Unleash more construction and development into the face of sea level rise because we can make billions now, but maybe not so much beyond one mortgage cycle.

All those acorns have to be scoured and collected today, and the price of those musical chairs keeps rising.

For earlier critiques of Perez at Eye On Miami, click here.

Florida Kids Sue Gov. Rick Scott On Climate Change ... by gimleteye

NOTE: For 7 years, Gov. Scott used his executive authority to trash state environmental rules and regulations, using agencies like the South Florida Water Management District as political cudgels against conservationists. Now that he's running for Senate, Scott claims no one has done more than him, for the environment. Voters: be informed.

Florida Kids Sue Gov. Scott Over Climate Change: You Have 'Moral Obligation' to Protect Us
The case, connected to the federal Our Children’s Trust climate lawsuit, is one of nine pressuring states to take action on global warming and fossil fuels.
Apr 16, 2018

Eight young Floridians, ages 10 to 19, sued their state and its climate-policy-averse governor on Monday for failing to protect residents from the impacts of a warming climate.

They say they already see signs of climate change around them—from powerful hurricanes to extreme heat waves to tidal flooding that now regularly washes into coastal roads and parks as sea level rises—and they want the state to do something about it.

The lawsuit filed Monday is the latest in a wave of legal cases filed by children against states and the federal government that accuse government of depriving them of the fundamental right to a stable climate.

The Florida plaintiffs accuse the state of violating their constitutional rights by "perpetuating an energy system that is based on fossil fuels."

"The plaintiffs are asking the state of Florida to adhere to its legal and moral obligation to protect current and future generations from the intensifying impacts of climate change," the group said in a statement.

Their lawsuit asks that state officials "prepare and implement an enforceable comprehensive" plan to phase out fossil fuel use and "draw down excess atmospheric CO2 through forest and soil protection so as to stabilize the climate system."

Gov. Rick Scott and Climate Change

The lawsuit names the state, Republican Gov. Rick Scott, state agencies and the heads of those agencies as defendants.

In 2015, journalists in Florida reported that Scott had placed a gag order on the terms "climate change" and "global warming" within state's Department of Environmental Protection—an especially notable move, given the state is among the most vulnerable to climate change, with 1,000 miles of coastline and millions of people living in low-lying areas.

Scott has also ducked questions about climate change, using the response: "I'm not a scientist."

The governor's office responded to questions about the lawsuit in an emailed statement: "The Governor signed one of the largest environmental protection budgets in Florida's history last month—investing $4 billion into Florida's environment," said McKinley Lewis, a spokesperson for Scott. "The Governor is focused on real solutions to protect our environment—not political theater or a lawsuit orchestrated by a group based in Eugene, Oregon."

Florida Teens Fight for Their Future

Delaney Reynolds, 18, a fourth-generation Floridian who has become a prominent advocate and is a plaintiff in the lawsuit, wrote to the state's environmental regulators in 2014, asking what the department was doing to address climate change.

She said the agency response was: not much.

In a blog post Monday, Reynolds wrote that the response was "unacceptable" and a reason she decided to sue the state.

"Our climate change crisis is the biggest issue that my generation will ever face, and it's up to us, today's children, to fix this problem," Reynolds wrote. "It is my hope that the court will rule to require that Florida enact and enforce laws to reduce and eliminate carbon emissions so that our state and citizens can have a future here."

Kids' Federal Climate Case Gets a Court Date

Our Children's Trust, a group that advocates for science-based climate policy, is supporting the federal case and other youth-led legal efforts across the country.

In 2015, Our Children's Trust and 21 young people from across the country sued the federal government on the same legal grounds, saying the government was violating the public trust by failing to protect a common resource. The fossil fuel industry has repeatedly, but unsuccessfully, attempted to keep the case from advancing. (Levi Draheim, a 10-year-old Floridian, is a co-plaintiff in that case, as well as in the lawsuit filed Monday.)

Last week, a federal magistrate judge set a trial date for the federal case: Oct. 29, 2018, in federal district court in Oregon.

Sea Level Rise Sunday. By Geniusofdespair

All this rain had me thinking of Sea Level Rise and the two climate change deniers from Florida - Rick Scott our Governor and Marco Rubio our Senator.

The Miami Herald had an excellent article on sea level rise and I don't usually reprint, they know that, but this one could not be summarized.

Mainland Miami ponders returning neighborhoods to nature in order to survive rising seas

By David Smiley

On mainland Miami, miles away from the pumps that keep Biscayne Bay from slowly swallowing South Beach, the neighborhood around Ray Chasser’s riverfront house sometimes seems like it’s drowning one high tide at a time.

When the moon is full and the bay bloated, a salty soup comes seeping forth from French drains and onto the streets, turning the low-lying peninsula where the southeast corner of Shorecrest meets the mouth of the Little River into a temporary tide pool. During the annual King Tide, when the water level is at its peak, the coastal community floods for days, something Chasser says didn’t happen when he first acquired his property 30 years ago.

“As soon as the tide starts coming up, you can see it coming from the drains. And then the streets are covered,” he said. “And it’s going to get worse.”

Local predictions of up to five feet of sea rise by the next century suggest that the increasing problems created by tidal events are a harbinger of things to come. East of a natural ridge, much of the neighborhood is barely three feet above sea level, making it among the most vulnerable pockets of South Florida real estate not located on a barrier island — and a prime candidate for an existential climate makeover.

In order to save Shorecrest, where million-dollar homeowners mingle with middle-class families and blue-collar renters, government officials across the region are now asking whether it ought to be redesigned rather than simply reinforced. Where climate change poster child Miami Beach is investing $500 million in pumps, streets and sea walls in order to fight for every inch of dry land, municipalities on the mainland are exploring what some communities would look like if they were made to accommodate rising seas rather than simply fight them.

One idea likely to be both controversial and expensive: demolishing properties and returning developed areas back to nature.

“We need to learn to live with water,” Jane Gilbert, Miami’s chief resilience officer, told the Miami Herald. “Raising roads? That will be part of the solution. It will have to be. But we’re going to look for more holistic solutions.”

The earliest concepts are already germinating. In the fall, a group of climate scientists, urban planners and government officials with the Southeast Florida Regional Climate Change Compact met for four days and mapped out the hypothetical futures of several communities, including Lower Matecumbe Key and the Arch Creek area of North Miami.

In Shorecrest, what they came up with was as drastic as it was ambitious.

▪ Most of the southeast corner of the community, a vulnerable residential section where sunny day flooding is most persistent, would be bought by the government and turned into a low-lying park designed to hold water during high tides and rainy seasons. Eminent domain is not on the table, meaning the plan would rely on dozens of property owners selling voluntarily.

▪ Sea walls along finger canals would be elevated and reinforced with fill. At some portions of the Little River, where the city has already begun buying land, high-rising berms with public walkways could be erected and swaths of property left undeveloped to catch overflow. Pumps, which don’t operate in Shorecrest today, would be installed.

▪ The busy roadways of Northeast 10th Avenue and 79th and 82nd streets would be elevated and re-engineered to include new swales with drainage systems.

▪ Zoning laws and building regulations would be changed to lure development toward mass transit corridors on high land and away from low-lying areas, where new homes would need to be “amphibious.” Property owners forgoing building rights in vulnerable areas would receive density and height bonuses elsewhere in the city.

Discussions about the plan to this point have been largely hypothetical and free from the burden of price or politics. “They’re good conceptual designs, good conceptual thoughts, but they’re not something we can sign off on yet,” Gilbert said.

New Delhi Temperature Today: 109 Degrees Expected. by Geniusofdespair

If they had chocolate bunnies over there they all would be melted.

Almost 90% of Americans have air conditioning. In India in 2016, 5% had air conditioning.

Some good Easter reading:

Techrpt83 Global and Regional SLR Scenarios for the US Final(1) by geniusofdespair on Scribd

I am surprised they didn't take this down yet.

There is an article in the Miami Herald today about raising houses in Miami Beach, they mention a potential for a double digit insurances rise.

Favorite EOM Story Of 2016 Is Immodestly Our Own: My Shareholder Resolution to NextEra Energy (FPL) on Sea Level Rise ... by gimleteye

My favorite story of the year was lightly reported. It was mine. About a year ago, my wife and I proposed a shareholder resolution to FPL's corporate parent, NextEra Energy; requiring NEE to report on the risks to markets and infrastructure through a range of sea-level rise scenarios. We pointed out that in its plan for new nuclear reactors at Turkey Point, NEE has already failed to take into account current estimates of sea level rise during the operating lifetime of the planned reactors.

NextEra Energy had an eventful year. Its stock price was as high as $130 in July. It is now at close to $118.

Our shareholder proposal deserves a place in the mix of FPL news.

It was the first in the history of shareholder resolutions to focus on sea level rise risk. (There have been many, on climate change generally.) Of course, NEE strongly opposed the proposal -- its DC attorney wrote a 30 plus page brief to the Securities Exchange Commission why it should be thrown out. The SEC approved our proposal.

As recorded by the annual meeting in May, 35% of responding NEE shareholders approved our non-binding resolution. Although we lost, we didn't lose. According to knowledgable insiders, a 35% positive response was extraordinary for a first-time shareholder resolution.

The best news, though, came in a lightly reported event last week: the Financial Stability Board announced the creation of The Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures, chaired by Michael R. Bloomberg. "The Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD) will develop voluntary, consistent climate-related financial risk disclosures for use by companies in providing information to investors, lenders, insurers, and other stakeholders. The Task Force will consider the physical, liability and transition risks associated with climate change and what constitutes effective financial disclosures across industries. The work and recommendations of the Task Force will help firms understand what financial markets want from disclosure in order to measure and respond to climate change risks, and encourage firms to align their disclosures with investors’ needs."

In other words, the Financial Stability Board -- that reports to the G20 world leaders on economic risk -- basically endorsed exactly the point of our shareholder resolution to FPL/ NextEra Energy.

There is no evidence our modest resolution had any connection to the FSB consideration beyond our shared anxiety about the greatest threat to civilization (irrespective of what Trump and his pack believe). It is likely we just found ourselves on the same path of concern; living in Miami and direct evidence of sea level rise; a trillion dollar threat to coastal real estate and corporate profits.

FPL might not like it, but that's how it is, and it's not just a blogger who says so. For that reason, we are (immodestly) the blog's best story of 2016.

TCFD - Michael R. Bloomberg Recommendations Report Launch Video Message from Secretariat TCFD on Vimeo.

King Tide Saturday October 15th Dinner Key, Coconut Grove. By Geniusofdespair

They expect a 3 foot height of high tide during this King Tide (Sunday and Monday). This is at 2'.8" today, Saturday, at Dinner Key in Coconut Grove. I took these photos at about 9:30 A.M - High Tide. Normal tides are 2.1 to 2.5 inches. What a difference just 3 inches can make! And they expect 4" more?

CG Marina has 3 docks. All 3 are underwater. They are between Scotty's and City Hall.

CG Marina next to City Hall - dock #3

CG Marina still operating during King Tide - dock #2

CG Marina dock #1

Meyers Park near the boat ramp in Coconut Grove.

Again Meyers Park going towards sailing club.

Border of Peacock Park -- Home. You can see the water has been even higher. Looking towards the harbor.

Grove Isle: The two is almost submerged on the seawall.

Beach at Grove Isle during King Tide

Last Night -The Beginning of King Tide in Broward. By Geniusofdespair

We aren't even at the height of the King Tide but flooding is happening. I saw it on Broward County's Intracoastal seawall last night.

Water Over Seawall -- Intracoastal Waterway Sunrise Blvd. Yesterday a6 6:30pm

Business Parking lot off the Intracoastal waterway Sunrise Blvd.

Dinner Key October 19th we will be seeing its highest tide. it is expected to be over a half a foot over the norm. It will steadily get higher till then and will subside after that date. Watch your tide people! I want photos.

On Politico's Top 50 List: Mayor Philip Stoddard and Dr. Harold Wanless ... gimleteye

Politico's guide to thinkers, do'ers and visionaries for 2016.

Well deserved and congratulations. Check our archive to understand the work of both, like Dr. Wanless' efforts to obtain a meeting with Senator Marco Rubio (denied) to discuss climate change.

Wanless, a geologist from the University of Miami and South Florida’s climate change Cassandra, has said for years that much of South Florida would sink; his prediction that the state’s southern tip has only a half-century left above water has earned him the nickname “Dr. Doom.” He predicts that the rate of sea-rise will be much faster than most models suggest—Miami Beach will experience 10 to 30 feet of sea-rise by 2100, he says—and that moving to higher ground will be the only real option for many residents of South Florida. For that reason, he has openly criticized Miami Beach’s program to install flood pumps as a waste of money. “Why would you put $100 million into infrastructure that won’t even survive the next foot of sea-level rise?” Wanless asks.

http://www.politico.com/magazine/politico50/2016/philip-stoddard-harold-wanless

Picture of the Day: Sea Level Rise. By Geniusofdespair

I got this from Facebook - Thank You Peter - and it seemed fitting for Florida. If you can't get them with facts: try humor.

Our EYES are really quite good at Eye on Miami: Heritage Insurance. By Geniusofdespair

Heritage Insurance CEO Bruce Lucas, Greedy Bastard!

As usual, my radar for bad stuff in campaign reports is on target.

Of course you all remember my post of June 29th when I was looking at Joe Martinez's campaign money. Who am I kidding  -- none of you remember. At one point I asked - in bold letters - about all the Heritage Insurance money flowing into Miguel Diaz de la Portilla's campaign AND Joe Martinez's campaign:

What does this Insurance company  want so desperately in Miami Dade County?  

Well don't you know that today, reading the rag (Miami Herald) there was an article about none other than Heritage Insurance. They want to raise rates in Florida by an average of 14.9% (don't look for the article on-line I couldn't find it).

According to the Palm Beach Post, Florida Homeowners would pay 25% more while the CEO Bruce Lucas is making $27.3 Million (quadrupled salary in one year). According to the Post, that is 50 times what the CEO gets paid at Citizens Insurance. Heritage Insurance contributed $110,000 to Rick Scott. So I have now answered my own question of June 29th, on why they are giving to Miguel Diaz de La Portilla's and Joe Martinez's campaign:

HERITAGE INSURANCE WANTS MORE MONEY!
So do NOT vote for who they support.

What do they offer, no surprises here, flood insurance! Gimleteye warned about insurance increase, last week in a Greenland post:

I'm thinking of beach erosion on the east coast, that so far has only put a few communities in harm's way. I'm thinking of extreme weather events that are piling up but have yet to affect the wealthy or insurance rates or forced evacuation of cities. I'm thinking of mass migrations out of sub Saharan Africa and parts of the Mideast, where temperatures are so high and drought so ferocious that whole populations are on the move. 

 

Dear Eye on Miami Readers. By Geniusofdespair

Who am I kidding, we have so many idiots reading our posts, you are far from 'dear.'

Anyway, Gimleteye has written a mind numbing 302 blog posts about global warming and more  if you include  sea level rise. Even I can't read them anymore without my eyes glazing over. But Alan is in Greenland. He walks the walk. He is taking photos FOR ALL OF YOU. And this one is so disturbing, I am speechless.

The POST below is his most important and easy to understand description of what is happening. You will get it. Even you stupid deniers. This is real.

Read it damn it.

Miami Beach Pumping - Because of Sea Level Rise - Pollutes Biscayne Bay and They Try to Justify it and Rejecting Science Also Asking for a Herald Retraction. By Geniusofdespair

 Miami Beach Stinks and Mayor Levine Trashes Hal Wanless. 
Levine is such an ass saying Wanless just wants to sell books. How idiotic is that?

I knew this was going to happen if they allowed pumping into Biscayne Bay. And look at how combative they are for doing the wrong thing: The tests are wrong, the newspaper is wrong, the Scientists are not to be trusted. Bullshit. This sucks. I know Levine is a Dem but I hate bullies and he is one Big Bully.

"Full video of the discussion on pollution in Biscayne Bay. Commissioner Kristen Rosen Gonzalez sponsored the item, to engage the scientist whose study found over 600x the legal limit of fecal matter coming from the new Miami Beach pumps. The rest of the Commission rejected the study and the Miami Herald article, and directed the administration to ask the Herald to retract the story.Full video of the discussion on pollution in Biscayne Bay. Commissioner Kristen Rosen Gonzalez sponsored the item, to engage the scientist whose study found over 600x the legal limit of fecal matter coming from the new Miami Beach pumps. The rest of the Commission rejected the study and the Miami Herald article, and directed the administration to ask the Herald to retract the story."

Miami May 16th Miami Herald Article
http://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/environment/article77978817.html

On Sea Level Rise Shareholder Proposal, FPL and NextEra Energy, Inc. Fog The Mirror ... by gimleteye

April 2016: Beach "renourishment" in Delray, FL

In just over one week, NextEra management will hold its annual meeting in Oklahoma City. The parent company of FPL is required by SEC regulations to include all shareholders of record. The annual meeting provides a tiny window to executive management and executive compensation. The corporation is also obligated to announce resolutions proposed by shareholders according to SEC rule. One of this year's resolutions, filed by my wife and me, concerns sea level rise.

"Shareholders request that beginning Dec. 1, 2016, the Board of Directors provide an annual report, prepared at reasonable cost and omitting proprietary information, on material risks to operations, facilities, and markets based on a range of sea level rise scenarios projecting forward to 2100 based on best available science.” Markets. That means, us.

FPL is the largest business unit of NextEra. Its major market is the eastern seaboard of Florida, defined by low lying topography and extraordinarily vulnerable to sea level rise. The Company's objections, filed in its proxy statement, are not responsive to our resolution.

For example, NextEra writes: "The sea level rise projections for the Turkey Point project under Nuclear Regulatory Commission (“NRC”) licensing review were developed in compliance with rigorous NRC requirements and processes, including relying on peer-reviewed data. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration estimates of sea level were used to project sea level rise over 100 years, and, if approved and constructed, the new Turkey Point nuclear reactors would comply with NRC standards for nuclear plants and be built more than 25 feet above current sea level, well above any predicted rise in sea level."

With only a few feet of sea level rise, the region surrounding the Turkey Point Nuclear Reactors will be under water. Even if roadways are built above the rising seas, it will be impossible to protect farmland, housing subdivisions, and commercial areas that service the immediate environs.

Ten years ago, I was the mayor's appointee to the first iteration of the Miami-Dade Climate Change Task Force, representing Sierra Club. There were over two dozen members of the public included in the advisory group authorized by the Miami-Dade County Commission. I resigned after concluding that thousands of hours of volunteer time in meetings had served the primary purpose of shuffling papers by local elected officials.

A decade later, and climate change has risen to a top-most urgent concern. In January, the World Economic Forum in Davos called climate change the biggest threat to global growth in 2016. Miami is often cited in international press reports as a region with the most to lose from rising seas.

2016 is likely to be the hottest year on record. Photo image: NASA

Our resolution seeks to clarify for investors what will happen under a range of sea level rise scenarios: not just to FPL Nuclear reactors but to its substations, its ability to service overheard distribution lines, and especially to FPL's coastal markets for electricity. To focus, as FPL and NextEra have done, on concrete pads built "25 feet above sea level" is the definition of a red herring if millions of ratepayers cannot withstand a few feet of sea level rise.

The Company writes, "There is no justification for the time and expense of the annual report requested by the proposal, particularly when the possible effect of sea level rise has already been appropriately addressed and the analysis is available to the public.”

FPL calls our resolution a “waste of time and money”. Really?

Some South Florida municipalities, like the City of Miami Beach, have already invested hundreds of millions to fight the significant impacts of sea level rise in the context of protecting billions of dollars of infrastructure serving millions of Floridians; not in 100 years but within the next twenty to fifty years.

A report by the The Southeast Florida Climate Change Compact includes: "In the short term, sea level rise is projected to be 6 to 10 inches by 2030 and 14 to 26 inches by 2060 (above the 1992 mean sea level). In the long term, sea level rise is projected to be 31 to 61 inches by 2100. For critical infrastructure projects with design lives in excess of 50 years, use of the upper curve is recommended with planning values of 34 inches in 2060 and 81 inches in 2100."

FPL's Turkey Point reactors were commissioned in 1973 and are still operation more than forty years later. By that time metric -- forty years from 2020's when FPL's new nuclear reactors would be operational -- South Florida will be staring at 34 inches of sea level rise.

To be dismissive of sea level rise concerns, NextEra management abrogates its fiscal responsibility to shareholders. Management's answer that new nuclear reactors will be built twenty five feet above sea level at Turkey Point is non-responsive. Shareholders want an honest assessment of sea level rise, backed by the full engineering capabilities of one of Florida's largest corporations, not peevish assurances from its PR department.

Who can change FPL's corporate behavior at Turkey Point? ... by gimleteye

FPL and its corporate parent, NextEra Energy Inc., want to get away as far as possible from protesters it has stirred up in South Florida with its heavy-handed corporate behavior. The $20 billion company decided to take its annual meeting to Oklahoma whose own U.S. Senator James Inhofe has called climate change "the biggest hoax in history".

At the May 19th meeting, executives will entertain certain shareholder proposals like the one I filed on sea level rise:

NEE Shareholder Memorandum

AT a time when the science and evidence of sea level rise is piling up, corporate America is unwilling to fundamentally change its orientation and outlook. Two pressure points -- financing and insurance -- still are mostly talking points. There is just too much money being made by maintaining and defending the status quo. In Florida that status quo includes the Rick Scott administration and the Florida Cabinet especially Agriculture Secretary Adam Putnam.

Late last year, Scott deferred to Putnam who lead the Cabinet vote approving the siting of two new nuclear reactors by FPL at Turkey Point. When a state appeals court overturned the decision last week, Gov. Scott and Putnam scoffed.

Voters will have a chance to turn Scott and Putnam, Bondi and the rest from office, starting with state legislative races in November. That would be a beautiful morning. With FPL, the path is not so clear.

Eye on Miami: Climate Change and Sea Level Rise Seminar - Yes you may yawn. By Geniusofdespair

You all yawned when all we wrote about was the housing bubble when we first started. And then when the bubble burst, our predictions rang true. We are way ahead on big issues because we both have big heads full of predictions. Remember that.

James Edward Hansen is an American adjunct professor in the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences at Columbia University.

Every year the University of Miami hosts a 2 day seminar on Climate Change training people like me how to talk about the subject. They have for the last 6 years. I went this year and it is not a jolly-fest that is for sure. I learned a lot and sat next to the charming and intelligent Jose Regalado. The seminar was sponsored by the College of Arts and Sciences and the Department of Geological Sciences, and the Cleo Institute.

Besides the impressive presentations about sea level rise by scientists, there was one by 16 year old Delaney Reynolds who is making an amazing contribution. She founded The Sink or Swim Project.

I give the whole seminar 5 stars (the food was amazing too). Best cookies, lox and bagels, etc. breakfast and lunch were both a feast. I recommend you all go next year, and go without eating first. Join the Cleo Institute and they will announce the dates.

I asked Geology Professor Harold Wanless about the the clay layer 140 feet or so down that Miami Beach folks are talking about. Would that be a stable base for a seawall? You can't hold back the sea water with a wall on limestone, the water will just seep up under it, limestone is too porous. Wanless believes you have to go 1,000 feet at least to find a proper bed for a seawall. I think that would be expensive. So there is your answer to mitigation Marco Rubio. You can't pump, pump, pump water out forever. Have you given the mitigation you recommend any thought whatsoever?  I came away with the belief that: Most of Florida is up shit's creek with our limestone geology and Marco Rubio has given up on his home State when it comes to sea level rise.

Marco Rubio to get Climate Change Petition in New Hampshire from our Pals. By Geniusofdespair

direct to video...
My friends are going to New Hampshire to deliver a Climate Change Petition. Marco you had better take it and heed it.

Now watch the damn video. It is VERY SHORT. WORTH YOUR TIME, especially to hear Dr. Hal Wanless' dire prediction at 52 seconds on the video.

Sign the petition and see same video here too.
_____________________________

Best article yet on Marco Rubio and best illustration:

"Mr. Rubio’s entire public image—the child of poor Cuban immigrants fleeing the repression of Castro’s Cuba who pulled himself up by his bootstraps and even now is a simple José Sixpack and family man—is less tethered to reality than The Wizard of Oz. For example, in his autobiography, An American Son: A Memoir, Mr. Rubio describes how he allegedly grew up poor and mowed the grass and walked dogs to make a bit of spare change. Technically this may be correct, but most poor kids don’t get paid by relatives heavily involved in narcotics trafficking and whose pets double as guard dogs for a drug cartel, as was the case with young Marco, a federal indictment shows."

Want to see what rapid sea level rise looks like? by gimleteye

People read stories like today's in the Miami Herald about real estate values at risk in Miami -- hundreds of billions of dollars -- from sea level rise. For the most part, if and when people read these stories, they believe that sea level rise is "out there" fifteen, twenty or twenty five years from now: ie. someone else's problem.

There is a little place I go to see rapid sea level rise. It is a county trail at Matheson Hammock park, accessed by the parking adjacent to Fairchild Garden's north entrance. Walk down to the salt water pond and along its edge to the right to access a trail carved many years ago at the mangrove fringe that meets up, half a mile or more, at the road into Matheson Hammock Park. Few people use the trail.

The way I observe rapid sea level rise here is the recent erosion and movement of mangroves across the trail to the upland side. This is a subtle place to observe sea level rise. On the Atlantic or Gulf beaches, people see erosion and think to themselves; it is just storms or waves. But here, on this quiet and unused trail, there is no wave action at all because of dense mangroves on the south side of the trail.

The only erosion occurs as a result of repetitive higher, high tides. Here, I observed trail erosion accelerating about three years ago. Sure it is imperceptible, but there is no interpretation other than sea levels are visibly rising.

About a year ago, someone at the county or perhaps an educational institution -- maybe it was Mayor Carlos Gimenez on a global warming fishing expedition -- dug some pitiful trenches on the upland side of the trail and surrounded the trenches with barrier fencing attached by rebar stakes driven into the ground. There were no gauges or anything else. It really looked like someone's less-than-scientific experiment to measure sea level rise: ie. if the trenches filled, sea level rise. If empty, no sea level rise.

Well, ladies and gentlemen of the jury: after some very high Fall king tides I took these photos yesterday. Someone gave up on maintaining the trenches (and someone is going to get hurt falling into one of them).

I'm not suggesting that next year, 20 percent of Miami-Dade homes and businesses will have sea water in their basements. What I am saying is that climate change is here and now if only you take a close look around you. If you care at all about future generations -- fact is, based on our inadequate response to global warming, we don't -- you will vote out of elected office any candidate who refuses to accept the costs of climate change and the imperative to act now while we are still a wealthy civilization. That's a bold conclusion to draw from a couple of trenches and plastic barrier fencing all fallen down, but it is a sober one.

P.S. I added this to your post Gimleteye, Sanibel Island's Red Tide. Now you can collect shells and dead fish. Nice surprise for the height of the season:

More Environmental Failure

Miami Herald FINALLY prints a strong investigative report on sea level rise ... by gimleteye

(A version of the following is on Huffington Post this morning.)

Hey, you! Miami? It's a King Tide around 9:30 AM today, so if you have a hankering to see a glimpse of the future, head down to your nearest watering hole and have a look. The New York Times is reporting that by the end of the century, wide swaths of the Mideast will not be able to harbor human life absent air conditioning because it will simply be too hot, but the way things are going (watch this incredible video of a drone flying over the Greenland ice sheet), it is not going to take even that long.

Along that line, a Miami Herald team led by Joey Flechas, Jenny Staletovich and Emily Michot wrote a fine, lengthy report on "Miami Beach's battle to stem rising tides."

Watching Miami Herald executives and editors struggle with how to report global warming has been an excruciating experience. The region -- with the most to lose in terms of real estate in the continental United States -- and a newspaper -- with a proven track record of rising to the occasion with outstanding investigative journalism -- has been paralyzed by climate change.

We've beaten the drum loudly on the blog, and others in the community have too. (We even went to Greenland a few summers ago to report from there! Here is one of our posts, from July 2013.)

We noted a change in editorial direction toward accepting the urgency of climate change a year or so ago, and this season's evidence by super high King Tides has apparently sealed the deal: The Miami Herald believes in global warming!

The money quote buried what would have been the lede, if Eye On Miami had edited the piece. Here it is:

“Developers have said to me, ‘We will not self regulate. We need leadership from our government,” said Miami-Dade County Commissioner Daniella Levine Cava, who was elected last year and is teaming up with Commissioner Rebecca Sosa to bridge the political divide and move forward on a suite of resolutions Miami-Dade County passed earlier this year.

What’s still lacking, said Levine Cava, who was in Washington this week meeting with lawmakers and the Everglades caucus, is a sense of urgency.

“It’s not so much denial that it’s not true,” she said. “It’s denying the urgency.”

But nature seems to be increasingly making the case. This past king tide, parts of Key Largo were flooded with knee deep water for more than two weeks. One angry resident, a lawyer, is investigating a class action. A recent model by the U.S. Geological Survey shows saltwater intrusion within a half mile of the South Dade wellfields that supply freshwater to all of the Keys.

So let us help decode what Commissioner Levine Cava said and what the Miami Herald printed.

The Miami Herald never published "all the news that is fit to print" because the development industry and supply chain mark the boundaries of what will guarantee ad revenue. Ad revenue = profits = end of year performance bonuses to key Herald executives.



We documented this phenomenon during the housing boom and bust. The Miami Herald scarcely touched stories about overdevelopment and the subprime mortgage fiascos enveloping mainly west and southwest Miami Dade nor the bust. These were very, very low years for the Herald although executive compensation tied to profit performance made out, just fine.

There was a further, unexamined consequence of the housing boom in Florida -- which coincided it is worth noting with the rising political fortunes of two local politicians who built their conservative credentials by helping developers avoid regulations and enforcement, especially those related to the environment: Gov. Jeb Bush and US Senator Marco Rubio -- both contenders for the GOP nomination for president in 2016.

In fact, climate change will unravel in just a few years of super high tides, more than three decades of GOP agendas driven by developers who supported the idea -- embraced by both Bush and Rubio -- that private industry can self-regulate to protect the public better than any regulation. This notion was picked up and embraced by the Tea Party, convinced that government had indeed "over-reached" at every level and that the only answer was to follow Grover Norquist's dictum: shrink government to a size it can be drowned in a bathtub.

But if rising seas overflow the bathtub and the foundations and the house, who then is going to help developers -- or angry homeowners for that matter? The government.

So Commissioner Levine Cava's statement: "Developers have said to me, we will not self-regulate," is an astonishing admission by both developers and their ally, the Miami Herald.

This is consistent with what we are watching in the GOP presidential primary, even though climate change is a very back burner issue for Republican candidates if it even exists at all. Politico reported yesterday from Houston, of the gnashing of teeth in the Jeb Bush campaign.

“I look at this party now, and I hardly recognize it,” one Florida-based donor said. “I never would have thought there would be so much mistrust of the establishment that we would prefer candidates who are angry over those who can actually lead.”

Bush, betraying his own frustration with the state of the race and Trump’s lead, raised eyebrows on Saturday by offering what sounded like an exit narrative. “I’ve got a lot of really cool things I could do other than sit around, being miserable, listening to people demonize me and me feeling compelled to demonize them. That is a joke,” he said in South Carolina. “Elect Trump if you want that.”

The GOP hard drive is damaged. The main part of the drive -- that industry can self-regulate better than government -- no longer reads data, files or anything at all. It is corrupted. Too bad we are pushed to the edge of rising seas, to see we did it to ourselves.

OCTOBER 23, 2015
Miami Beach’s battle to stem rising tides
Miami Herald

The city’s effort, so far a success, is test of engineering solutions to sea rise

Miami Beach has put into action an aggressive and expensive plan to combat the effects of sea level rise. As some streets keep flooding from recent king tide events, the city continues rolling out its plan of attack and will spend between $400-$500 million over the next five years doing so. Emily Michot emichot@miamiherald.com

Pictures of the week. Flooding in a Red State: God must be punishing them. By Geniusofdespair

If not for the water, this looks like a photo right out of the Walking Dead

....Like God is punishing us for being a Swing State:

Which are the animals. Bear Hunt in Florida.

Miami Herald photo.  Now how does this work? The stores and restaurants get flooded but the streets don't? I could just see jumping that curb. Lawsuit.

I just got back from the emergency room -- but I still post. Did you watch my opera video yet? Did you read my famous Saturday Editorial? If not, you are all pieces of shit.

Lots and Lots of Money Will Be Needed Soon As Sea Level Rises. By Geniusofdespair

Infrastructure improvements identified by SFWMD that need to be addressed to deal with modest sea level rise.

Is it any wonder that Governor Rick Scott is in denial on sea level rise?