I'll turn the lights back on at Notes From the Underground ("It's darker here.") this weekend. But for now, a brief mention about sand and rich people's property built too close to the ocean.
The problems rich people face, and the county governments that rely on their property tax revenue, isn't one solely of sea level rise. We wouldn't be shoveling billions of dollars into the sea to "raise" the elevation of beaches.
The problem is beach erosion. Now, sea level rise can exacerbate that, and likely does to some extent.
But the real problem is wave action. Energy is the capacity to do work. Eroding sand (moving it from the beach here to someplace over there) involves work. Power is work per unit of time. Wave power, the stuff that's moving the sand, varies with the cube of the wave's height. (The energy is contained in a volume of water.)
Wave height varies with wind velocity, linearly. Most waves are wind-driven.
In a warming world, average wind velocities have been increasing. So if the average wind velocity increase 10%, then the average height of a wave also increases 10%; but the power of the average wave increases 33%! It does 33% more work (moving sand).
And there is evidence that average wind velocity is increasing. Good news for windmills. Not so great for rich people with houses built too close to the ocean.
But they're rich people, so our government(s) will spend our money to help protect their property, even though they were the dumbasses that bought property too close to the ocean. And they'll likely permit them to install artificial features along the shoreline to trap sand here, and keep it from being deposited over there. Where Nature needs it.
Now, maybe I shouldn't be "other-izing" rich people. It's not their fault they're successful. They're just people too. But aren't they the ones always going on about "personal responsibility."
Well, I didn't tell them to buy a house too close to the ocean!
Originally posted at Nice Marmot 06:01 Thursday, 21 March 2024