So, I read somewhere that last year 2012 was a statistical anomaly - in terms of avg earth temperature changes. Apparently most of the recent years the earth's avg temperature is inching up by less than .1 degrees - making all time official records every year. Its a big enough increase to make us more convinced about the global warming but not big enough to make us worry about what will happen to our kids.
Of course 2012 was a full degree warmer - but lets assume that it was a fluke.
What seems interesting to me is that real estate is completely oblivious to all this talk.
So some of the most beautiful homes in altos, CA right at the beach sell at $3M following the patterns of vacation home real estate elsewhere - in no way affected by their up-coming demise.
Is this right?
So, I believe it is just a matter of lack of information dissemination.
So, lets be specific:
Excluding a post singularity technological feat, most probably our kids will never be able to see what is a natural sand beach by the sea.
Sand takes millennia to be created from the waves breaking sediment. Sand only exists where the waves break, so it is an extremely thin zone,
less than one meter above the sea and 1-2 meters below the sea surface. We are currently expecting the sea to rise by 1M by 2100 (double the earlier 2005 estimates). The availability of cheaper natural gases more or less guarantee that for at least a decade more earth will be satisfying its energy needs by converting into c02 the carbons that have been pushed into the ground over the last 10s or 100s millions of years of phyto-plankto photosynthesis.
While it seems (I haven't done that math) mathematically impossible for that mass of ice to melt - it doesn't have to.
To put this into perspective:
Greenland's ice => 6 mtrs.
Antarctica's ice => 60 meters rise.
North Pole Arctic Ocean => 0 meter rise.
The later is the most scary. It is typical for a large iceberg that flows into the ocean to takes years and years to melt - single large iceberg can change aggregate earth level temperature and cause global climate changes. Relevance?
1. Melting Floating ice causes NO sea level rise (its obvious if you think why it floats in the first place)
2. The ice doesn't have to melt. It simply has to flow into the oceans.
3. Massive rivers of flowing ice is our picture of the end of the last ice ages. So that is the picture here as well. The ice caps will start flowing into the sea and while it may take centuries to melt they may affect sea level earlier. Of course they may have cause a first negative effect by cooling down the earth before fully melting delaying the "catastrophe" by a few more centuries.
Still all we need is a single meter of sea rise and practical all the beautiful beaches are beautiful no more.
Today's projections make that a probable reality within a generation.
So the Altos coastal homes in 2050 will have no sandy beach in front of them and they will have clear knowledge of their demise within 30 year later.
So this means that in 30 years from now that Altos home will have significantly lower price than today, right?
So it cannot be thought as a long term investment. That should have affected its price TODAY. It will probably start happening
as soon as the seal level rising rates show some acceleration (from the 20-th century norms) - we can't tell yet.
In my view within 5 years coastal home market is in for a significant swing.
And the Lake Take Sand beach will be even more unique.
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