\nsea-level rise, first happened upon Maryland’s disappearing beaches 15
\nyears ago while looking for a place to windsurf. “Having the name
\n‘beach,’” he discovered, “is not a very good predictor of having a
\nbeach.” Since then, he’s kept an eye out for other beach towns that
\nhave lost their namesakes—Maryland’s Masons Beach and Tolchester Beach,
\nNorth Carolina’s Pamlico Beach, and many more. (See a map of Maryland’s phantom beach towns here<\/a>.)
\nA 54-year old with a thick shock of hair and sturdy build, Titus could
\npass for a vacationer in his Panama hat, khakis, and polo shirt. But as
\nhe picks his way over the rocky shore, he’s anything but relaxed.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
For nearly 30 years, Titus has been sounding the alarm about our
\nrising oceans. Global warming is melting polar ice, adding to the
\nvolume of the oceans, as well as warming up seawater, causing it to
\nexpand. Most climatologists expect oceans around the world to rise
\nbetween 1.5 and 5 feet this century. Some of the hardest-hit areas
\ncould be in our own backyard: Erosion and a shift in ocean currents
\ncould cause water to rise four feet or more along much of the East
\nCoast. Titus, who contributed to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
\nChange’s Nobel Prize-winning reports, has done more than anyone to
\ndetermine how those rising seas will affect us and what can be done
\nabout them.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Like his occasional collaborator, NASA climatologist James Hansen,
\nTitus has decided to speak out. He’s crisscrossed the country to meet
\nwith state and local officials in coastal areas, urging them to start
\nplanning now for the slow-motion flood. Yet his warnings have mostly
\nfallen on deaf ears. “We were often told by mid-level officials that
\ntheir bosses did not want to plan for anything past the next election,”
\nhe says.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Neither, it seems, does the federal government. Over the past
\ndecade, Titus and a team of contractors combined reams of data to
\nconstruct a remarkably detailed model of how sea-level rise will impact
\nthe eastern seaboard. It was the largest such study ever undertaken,
\nand its findings were alarming: Over the next 90 years, 1,000 square
\nmiles of inhabited land on the East Coast could be flooded, and most of
\nthe wetlands between Massachusetts and Florida could be lost. The
\nfavorably peer-reviewed study was scheduled for publication in early
\n2008 as part of a Bush Administration report on sea-level rise, but it
\nnever saw the light of day-an omission criticized by the EPA’s own
\nscientific advisory committee. Titus has urged the more
\nscience-friendly Obama administration to publish his work, but so far,
\nit hasn’t-and won’t say why.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
So Titus recently launched a personal website, risingsea.net<\/a>, <\/p>\n Titus gazes at Chesapeake Beach’s jagged shoreline, where two Living near the ocean has always come with the risk of getting wet. <\/p>\n The rising waters can be kept at bay by constructing dikes and bulkheads<\/a>, <\/p>\n So are developers getting ready for the water? The National <\/p>\n Nor is there any evidence that the issue has much traction with <\/p>\n What about government? Most coastal states have done little or <\/p>\n A few state and local governments have taken more constructive <\/p>\n A handful of developers have also started to seriously grapple with <\/p>\n Most coastal dwellers are focused on riding out the next surge, not <\/p>\n Case in point: Beyoncé‘s dad. Matthew Knowles has been locked in a <\/p>\n Last year, after Knowles started reinforcing his property with tons <\/p>\n Historically, the 51-year-old law has been used to prevent property <\/p>\n Titus views the Texas Open Beaches Act as one of the more promising <\/p>\n With additional reporting by Kate Sheppard.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n Related Links:<\/strong><\/p>\n What climate change means for the wine industry<\/a><\/p>\n Burning oil rig sinks into Gulf of Mexico<\/a><\/p>\n
\nto publish his work. “I decided to do my best to prevent the taxpayer
\ninvestment from being wasted,” he says. The site includes “When the North Pole Melts<\/a>,” a prescient holiday ditty recorded by his musical alter ego, Captain Sea Level, in the late ‘80s.<\/p>\n
\nchildren scramble over the barrier of large grey boulders known as a
\nrevetment. “The children of 21st Century Chesapeake Beach, what do they
\ndo?” he asks. “They play on revetments.” A generation ago, these kids
\nmight have been skipping through the waves. A generation from now, many
\nof the rocks they’re playing on will almost certainly be underwater.<\/p>\n
\nYet coastal dwellers whose homes got swamped by the occasional storm
\nsurge could rely on the water to eventually recede. That certainty is
\ngone. Titus has calculated that a three-foot rise in sea level will
\npush back East Coast shorelines an average of 300 to 600 feet in the
\nnext 90 years, threatening to submerge densely developed areas
\ninhabited by some 3 million people, including large parts of New York City, Philadelphia, and Washington, D.C<\/a>.
\nAs Margaret Davidson, director of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric
\nAdministration’s Coastal Services Center in Charleston, South Carolina,
\nputs it, “Today’s flood is tomorrow’s high tide.”<\/p>\n
\npumping sand to fill out receding beaches, and elevating existing
\nbuildings and roads on embankments or pylons. But such efforts may
\nprove prohibitively expensive—Titus says that in the lower 48 states
\nalone, they could cost as much as $1 trillion over the next century,
\nand he estimates that in the process, 60 to 90 percent of the East
\nCoast’s wetlands could be destroyed as bulkheads and other defensive
\nmeasures restrict the movement of estuaries and marshes, drowning them
\nwhen the ocean rises.<\/p>\n
\nAssociation of Home Builders, the housing industry’s largest trade
\ngroup, has no policy on adapting coastal projects to account for rising
\nsea levels. “While sea level rise may be a real issue in some areas,”
\nSusan Asmus, NAHB’s senior vice president of regulatory and
\nenvironmental affairs, told me in an email, “it is but one of many
\nconsiderations that are likely already taken into account during the
\nplanning process.” Mother Jones contacted the nation’s 10
\nlargest homebuilders, including D.R. Horton, Pulte Homes, and Lennar;
\nnone would say how they are responding to sea level rise.<\/p>\n
\nhomeowners—and why should it? Property insurance is readily available
\nin most coastal areas, if not through private insurers, then through
\nstate governments and FEMA’s National Flood Insurance Program. Though
\nthe NFIP requires policyholders to live above the 100-year high-water
\nmark, it doesn’t account for how that line may creep inland in the
\nfuture. Besides, most people would plan to resell their beach houses
\nlong before they expect them to be swallowed by encroaching waves.<\/p>\n
\nnothing to regulate shoreline development, often for fear of
\nlitigation. In 1988, South Carolina’s Beachfront Management Act
\nrequired new beach homes to be set back far enough from the water to be
\nprotected from at least 40 years of erosion. A property owner named
\nDavid Lucas sued, and the U.S. Supreme Court eventually ruled that the
\nconstruction ban had deprived him of any “economically viable use” of
\nhis coastal properties, a “taking” that required the state to
\ncompensate him. “After Lucas, fewer people spoke seriously about
\nstopping development,” Titus says.<\/p>\n
\naction. Several states limit development near tidal waters (Maine and
\nRhode Island have done this specifically in response to sea-level
\nrise). Chatham, Massachusetts, cites sea-level rise as one reason why
\nit prohibits new homes, even elevated ones, below 100-year flood lines.
\n(State courts have upheld those limits in Chatham and Maine because
\nthey still allow property to be used for recreation, farming, and other
\nprofitable activities.) In California, where erosion and winter storms
\nroutinely knock multimillion dollar homes off seaside cliffs, the
\nstate’s Coastal Commission has long required anyone who builds on
\ncoastal bluffs to submit a geotechnical report proving that their home
\nwon’t fall into the ocean. Three years ago, it began requiring the
\nreports to account for sea-level rise. And in a groundbreaking 2008
\nexecutive order, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger directed state agencies
\nto plan for sea-level rise in their construction projects.<\/p>\n
\nsea-level rise. A residential high-rise project on Treasure Island, a
\nformer naval base in the San Francisco Bay, is being built far from the
\nshoreline and is reserving funds for a protective berm if the water
\nrises even higher than the three feet that’s anticipated. And in the
\nwake of Hurricane Katrina, the insurance industry drew up standards to
\nfortify houses for stronger hurricanes and higher waves; so far,
\nthough, only 200 houses nationwide have been built to comply with the
\nstandards.<\/p>\n
\nthe next century. You can’t really blame them—nobody really wants to
\nhear that their days on the beach are numbered.<\/p>\n
\nbitter struggle to save his beach house in Galveston, which now sits on
\ntop of the high-tide line thanks to Hurricane Ike. In most states,
\nKnowles would be allowed to shore up his home, but not in Texas, which
\nis known for one of the most progressive laws in the country on beach
\naccess. The state’s Open Beaches Act provides that beach as a public
\nresource that must be protected from “erosion or reduction caused by development<\/a>.”<\/p>\n
\nof cement, the Texas General Land Office informed him that paving over
\nthe beach is illegal. Even so, he continued and then surrounded his
\nhome with sod, planters, and sandbags. In March, the agency notified
\nKnowles that it was preparing to fine him up to $2,000 a day for
\nviolating the Texas Open Beaches Act by interfering with “the right of
\nthe public to use the beach.” Knowles did not respond to a request for
\ncomment.<\/p>\n
\nowners from walling off the beach in front of their homes. But
\nofficials say the law clearly applies even when the beach comes to the
\nhouses, rather than vice versa. “Even if you make $80 million a year,
\nwe don’t care,” says Jim Suydam, a spokesman for the Texas General Land
\nOffice. “The beach is the public’s.” Incorporated into the state
\nconstitution last year and vigorously supported by the state’s
\nconservative, gun-packing land commissioner, the Open Beaches Act is
\nremarkably popular, in part because it can guarantee beach access for
\nATVs.<\/p>\n
\ntools for preparing for higher water. It has unintended environmental
\nbenefits, ensuring that beaches can migrate inland instead of being
\nwalled off—and at the same time, it sidesteps any
\ndebate over climate change. “Developers who deny that the sea will rise
\nwould view the policy as costing them nothing,” because it wouldn’t
\nprevent them from building near the shore, he notes. Only the diehard
\nbeach dwellers would stand to get soaked.<\/p>\n