Rising sea destroys homes, erases beaches in California

Coastal erosion =/= sea level rise.

This is textbook expected behavior on a high energy deep water coast (eg cliffs, not mangroves)

It's annoying for coastal areas, and a problem for beach houses, but California isn't really that vulnerable to rising sea levels. The Pacific Coast is mountainous and the ground slopes upward in short distances.

Here's the US topo map.[1] Look at vulnerable spots, such as Malibu and Oceanside. Three blocks inland you're 20 feet above sea level. Almost all problems are on the ocean side of the Pacific Coast Highway, which was a marginal place to build anyway.

Cliff edge erosion is an ongoing problem. That's why CALTRANS gave up on Devil's Slide as a road route and built the Tom Lantos Tunnels further inland. Small changes in sea level don't affect hundred-foot cliffs that much, though.

The places that really suffer from rising sea level are river deltas, sitting on deposited sand just barely above sea level. In the US, New Orleans has the worst problem. New York City has problems, and they're building coast defenses against storms. China's coastal cities are mostly on river deltas with really flat terrain. That's why China has to build ports way off shore, reached by miles of bridges, to get to deep water.

[1] https://en-us.topographic-map.com/map-9t5k57/Venice-Beach/?c...

The Seattle Times ran an article maybe last year that measurements of sea level at Seattle had increased 8 inches over the last century.

The flaw in that is what is the reference frame? The tectonic plate Seattle is sitting on is going down under the cascade mountains.

And beaches have been eroding for millions of years.

Gonna be interesting when that Kelvin wave overlaps with king tide…

[Insert HbomberguyShoutingAtBenShapiro.gif here]

tbh maybe it's good and changes something quicker and on the long term that rich people experience it firsthand before the Maldives or Bangladesh

(probably nothing just me being optimistic but the rich always have a get out of jail card, like X more properties)

I would think the dominating factors in Oregon and California are their uplifted soft geologies. The orogenies that lifted the West have resulted in an elevated, cliff-bounded sandy coastline along the Pacific that has been aggressively eroding for a lot longer than humans have been there.

The city of Santa Barbara painted a line through the town 25 years ago saying if we don’t stop global warming, the town will be under water to that line in 25 years…