Don't Live In Florida

[dr_tectonic]

Just got back from a coffee talk about sinkholes and related hazards in Florida. Now, in the course of my job I've been exposed over the last couple years to a lot of information about hazards, natural and otherwise, and while I'm no expert (and this is just my opinion, and should not be considered in any way an official statement by anybody), I have come to the following conclusion:

Do. NOT. Live. In. Florida.

Seriously. The place is freakin' DOOMED. Aside from the hurricanes (which will just be getting worse in the future), the natural resource limitation issues (too many people, not enough groundwater), and the fact that most of the peninsula will likely be underwater in a century or two as sea levels rise from global warming, the entire damn state sits on a carbonate platform.

Carbonates dissolve in fresh water. And when you remove part of the ground beneath you, eventually the rest of it collapses into a big sinkhole.

The anthropogenic influences on sinkhole development are HUGE. People pull fresh water out of the water table to bathe, drink, clean, irrigate (lawns are evil!) and so on, and all of that water, "dirty" but still fresh (i.e., not saline) ends up getting pumped deep into the ground to flow back to the ocean -- dissolving the rocks as it goes. Adding more people makes it worse.

Guess where all the baby boomers are moving?

And there's not a damn thing that can be done about it.

The basic problem, the really fundamental problem here, is that in the U.S. (as in most places), people are allowed to go anyplace they want, build a house, and live there. Whether or not it's bad for the environment, or the economy, or society, or civilization in general. I'm coming to the conclusion that this was a bad societal choice, design-wise.

Comments

[nehrlich.livejournal.com]

Okay, Mr. Natural-Hazard-Man, I have a question. Out of morbid curiosity, how freakin' doomed is the Bay Area in your estimation? We're a little higher than Florida, but we have the same overpopulation problem, and that whole earthquake thing instead of hurricanes. But I don't think we have the carbonates, so maybe we last a bit longer.

And I think it's okay for people to go where they want and live there. We just need to have sensible rules to protect places when they do. You want to live in Florida? No lawns. Required use of low-water-usage facilities when building. Low-impact architecture. Things like that. Plus, it'd be cool if stuff like that were government-mandated because then maybe buildings wouldn't all suck.

[dr-tectonic.livejournal.com]

Not that much, actually.

Yeah, there's the earthquakes, but that's mostly a solved problem, honestly. Y'all have decent and enforced building codes. There'll be a really big one someday, and there will be lots of property damage and sad insurance companies, and a few people will be killed (but, really, very few compared to some places), maybe some highly inconvenient but temporary infrastructure disruption, but really, overall? It's not that big a deal. Californians are pretty well adapated to that hazard.

You're built on giant hills, so even with severe sea-level rise, you wouldn't lose that much land area. The overpopulation is actually less of a problem because it's contained by geography and not sprawling everywhere (at least it seems that way to me), which prevents lots of problems. Sure, it could be better, but it's not bad. I don't think you guys are having horrendous water problems, are you? It's a drier climate, but not like, say, Palm Spring or Las Vegas. (Or here.)

Overall, I'd actually rate the Bay Area fairly high. But I might be biased because I think it's a nice place and lots of people I like live there.

We just need to have sensible rules to protect places when they do.
I totally agree, but that actually means people can't go wherever they want. Because finite carrying capacity will mean that among all the other rules will also be ones saying "And no more than 300 people in this location." Regardless, we need those rules. We currently err way way WAY too far on the side of letting landowners do whatever they want.

[melted-snowball.livejournal.com]

And we're back again, apropos of our earlier discussion in my LJ about Key West, to the question of who gets to live in Paradise. My understanding is that the Keys are extremely restricted in terms of building permits, because of hurricane evacuation issues. But the much, much bigger problem is that if you start to make the obvious limitation rules, then that makes paradise expensive, because of supply/demand issues. Florida could be nice, I guess, if I liked strip malls and hot weather. Why should the only people allowed to live there be rich, and if that's not the rule, what should it be?

Don't you live in a place that's totally screwed up about water? I actually think I'm living in a place almost entirely void of natural disaster issues except for the awful winters: we have the continent's largest supply of fresh water 100 km from here, very few tornadoes, no earthquakes, and even lots of farmland to provide local food if transport costs go nuts. Too bad it's so damn cold.

[dr-tectonic.livejournal.com]

Yeah, it's a dilemma. I think that probably the only really good solution involves smaller populations and better distribution of wealth.

We aren't quite screwed when it comes to water... yet. Planners are worrying about it, but people still want to move to Colorado and it's almost impossible to prevent. The really big problem is that the agreements divvying up the water from the Colorado River basin were made during a 40-year anomalous high, so they actually allocate more water than exists normally, let along during droughts.

Oh, and have I mentioned that lawns are evil? Lawns and golf courses.

[melted-snowball.livejournal.com]

Smaller populations are tough when it basically summarizes to putting a "we didn't really mean it" sign on the base of the Statue of Liberty. What to tell the equivalents of your ancestors or mine?

[melted-snowball.livejournal.com]

Oh, and yes, golf courses are evil.

Lawns...well, they're stupid in places with water issues. Here, they're not so much of a big deal that way; they mostly exist to keep up the idea of living in a park, and they're very convenient as a place for the dog to do her business...

Oh, yeah, and they exploit middle class people's leisure time so they do less volunteering. So that's bad.

But I think they're really freaking stupid in places like New Mexico, or [shudder] Palm Springs...

Doomy-doomy-doom

[dr-tectonic.livejournal.com]

Okay, I take it back. California is doomed, because global-warming-fueled El Niño storms are going to dump eight feet of water on y'all, and the whole damn state is just going to wash into the ocean. This is just the beginning! You're all doomed! Doooooooomed, I say!

Re: Doomy-doomy-doom

[nehrlich.livejournal.com]

Dude, that's just Southern California. Which is a modern day Sodom and Gomorrah anyway, so we knew it was doomed. I just watched Day after Tomorrow where it said that global warming is going to cause LA to be destroyed by tornadoes!

[ocschwar.livejournal.com]

Well, in New Mexico you're required to account for where you'll get water before you get a building permit, and some droughted towns have declared permit moratoria, so it isn't completely impossible for people to get a handle on the problem. But when the oil runs out we'll all have to live in the boring but easy to move things on Midwest anyol'how.

Bwahahaha

[bryree.livejournal.com]

The plans of my homeland are coming to fruition!!!

Boring lives FOR ALL!!!!

ummm, er, so sorry...

Re: Bwahahaha

[ocschwar.livejournal.com]

Don't just stand there, do something! You're in the vanguard, no?

Hurricanes

[drdeleto.livejournal.com]

Are hurricanes going to get worse because the hurricanes themselves will literally more powerful/destructive, or because the way/where we build puts more assets and lives in the way of them? And what are the indicators?

Re: Hurricanes

[dr-tectonic.livejournal.com]

Both. Migration trends in the U.S. are putting more and more people on coasts exposed to hurricane hazard. But there are also long-period climate fluctuations that affect them. We're coming out of a 25-year low-activity phase and moving into a high-activity phase. (And that's completely independent of the effects of global warming.)

It has to do with Atlantic sea-surface temperatures that drive tropical winds. There was a paper in Science in 2001, I think.

[flwyd.livejournal.com]

And just a little bit higher than the ground comes the other major features of Florida disinclining one to live there. Bugs and people.

Having just witnessed the latter, I would expect an astonishing number of drunks to experience death by falling into a sinkhole. Maybe that will get them to do something with their lives.