@jeanne-mayell Glad you liked the article.
Here's another good one that just came out, about the wisdom, or lack thereof, of rebuilding on migrating piles of sand:
Orrin Pilkey at Duke has been writing about foolish coastal development for 50 years now, ever since Hurricane Camille washed away his parents' home in Texas in 1969. The data and evidence are so clear. It is painful to watch the decisions over and over that ignore the folly of rebuilding! Maybe now better decisions will take hold...
Well, having worked with local governments, I wouldn't hold your breath for better policies. If development is curtailed, I suspect the driving force will be the lack of insurance. Now if FEMA would stop supplying flood insurance for new coastal homes, it would help too.
I read an article that said that only 18% of the 10 million homes in FL have flood insurance but many homeowners don't realize it, believing that hurricane coverage included flood insurance--but it doesn't, just wind.
I have spent time on Sanibel and like Jeanne, I have always known that one day it would be underwater. Another potential constraint will be the rapidly melting Thwaites Glacier in Antarctica; it could quickly bring a halt to redevelopment, should it begin. Two to three of quick feet of sea level rise might 'dampen' optimism.
I have posted this link before, but with a fresh hurricane on our minds, it might have more meaning.
https://www.sciencenews.org/article/antarctica-thwaites-glacier-ice-shelf-collapse-climate-5-years
@ana I know you live in Florida, and appreciate your intelligent posts and links about the eco system. I consider how you must feel about this unfolding situation. It is your home state. So it must be hard to watch this unfolding when you know it shouldn't have happened that way.
I grew up loving Florida's incredible ocean eco system.
I grew up loving especially the sand bars just off shore. Wading far off shore into the warm Gulf water, I'd feel for the sandbars with my feet, then feeling them rise up and me rising up way out into the ocean until the water was at at my calves and knees. Magic. Then the next day, the sand bar would be gone.
I think of these barrier islands as huge sand bars. Over the years, we'd watch the tip of Clearwater shift around by many hundreds of feet. I can imagine the love people feel for these places, and the pain of the devastation.
@lovendures, I thought of you as I talked to my cousin the other day. I had spent some time looking for pictures of her street and home to get a clue if she had a home left to better understand how to help. When I first spotted her house from a video and could do a screen grab to enlarge it, she was in tears. Then when I found the pic from a drone where we could see her backyard full of debris, but her house pretty much intact, she was overwhelmed, and relieved. Mom was 13 years younger than her brother, 11 years younger than her sister, so I'm considerably younger than most of my cousins. She's in her 70's and the thought of having lost her home and having to start over terrified her. When she told me that I was the only person she'd interacted with since the storm that gave her hope, I recalled your kind comments to me as kind of an aha moment. LOL I guess I'll always be a Pollyanna- I just don't always see myself that way.
Ahhh! That is so sweet! Thank you for that Cindy.
Cindy, your cousin is blessed. If I just went through disaster, I can think of no better person to help me navigate through the aftermath process.
You will be a very bright light for her.
@jsr78 Loved that story about the sustainable community that sailed through Hurricane Ian. I sent it to a lot of people in my town after you posted it. I want us to do that. Wow. It's encouraging to see that happening in Florida. A possible solution.
@jeanne-mayell I've watching videos of Ian and first comes the rain then the wind then flooding. Houses are moving off there foundations but the palm trees were perfectly fine. Palm trees are amazing. I've been seeing complaints about solar cars during hurricanes that they run out power when you try to get away, which is dumb because every time I was in a hurricane in Texas we ran out of gas and then gas would be astronomically high. These people in this community have power for their electric vehicles.
@jsr78 I saw that too. It's a good model for others to emulate .
Also this morning I read an article about a German town that runs off of wind power and biogas (apparently mostly from agricultural waste). Of course this only addresses the energy part of the problem, not the structure and flooding, but it's still very cool: https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-business-germany-berlin-004aa36a74b44435c3a29cac0fc15b67