The California Coast is Disappearing
by John Lawrence, July 10, 2019
Woe be to the people who built million dollar houses right on the shore line. The LA Times reported:
"Elsewhere, Miami has been drowning, Louisiana shrinking, North Carolina’s beaches disappearing like a time lapse with no ending. While other regions grappled with destructive waves and rising seas, the West Coast for decades was spared by a rare confluence of favorable winds and cooler water. This “sea level rise suppression,” as scientists call it, went largely undetected. Blinded from the consequences of a warming planet, Californians kept building right to the water’s edge.
But lines in the sand are meant to shift. In the last 100 years, the sea rose less than 9 inches in California. By the end of this century, the surge could be greater than 9 feet."
So some of the priciest real estate on the planet is doomed to fall into the sea. Gone will be the beach communities of Ocean Beach, Mission Beach and Pacific Beach. Gone will be the controversy about how fast birds should scooter on the boardwalk because there will be no boardwalk. Those fortunate enough to live inland will have no problem unless the next big earthquake disrupts the water lines coming from northern California.
The article continues:
Wildfire and drought dominate the climate change debates in the state. Yet this less-talked-about reality has California cornered. The coastline is eroding with every tide and storm, but everything built before we knew better — Pacific Coast Highway, multimillion-dollar homes in Malibu, the rail line to San Diego — is fixed in place with nowhere to go.
But the world is getting hotter, the great ice sheets still melting, the rising ocean a slow-moving disaster that has already swept past California’s front door. Seaside cliffs are crumbling in Pacifica, bringing down entire buildings. Balboa Island, barely above sea level, is spending $1.8 million to raise the wall that separates it from the ocean.Winter storms pummeled a Capistrano Beach boardwalk, turning the idyllic shoreline into a construction zone as bulldozers rushed to stack boulders into a barricade. From San Diego to Humboldt counties, homeowners scramble to fend off increasing erosion and storm surges, pleading with officials for bigger seawalls that can hold back the even bigger ocean.
Mother Nature will win here. The California coast will be reconfigured. The beach will recreate itself several miles inland and people will build luxury estates on the new beach front property. The port of San Diego and the Embarcadero will likely be spared since the inlet to the harbor could be controlled with a sea wall if necessary. It's narrow enough. Coronado Island, however, will not likely be spared. That very expensive real estate could sink under the sea since it's basically at sea level today.
