1/ As it happens, last November I was in Miami Beach, which is just north of Fisher Island. What I saw and heard there was wild.
https://twitter.com/zoe_samuel/status/1019329622675247110
2/ People there are ALREADY really stressed about rising sea levels. It's not a future problem. It's a today problem, because the water is already flooding streets.
3/ You can see what it looks like in this supremely silly video from six years ago of a man paddleboarding down Alton Road, the main drag on the island.
4/ As you've probably heard, Miami Beach has been undertaking a huge initiative to lift roads by two feet, so Alton Road actually doesn't flood as badly anymore.
5/ But the people I talked to were pretty stressed. They seemed to worry all the time about bad traffic caused by those construction projects -- and by the floods that still happen despite the construction efforts.
6/ I talked to one guy who was trying to sell his house not just because he's worried about it going underwater someday, but because his quality of life has already decreased as a result of flooding and construction. yaleclimateconnections.org/2017/12/life-s…
7/ So to answer your question more directly, I would say that I don't know exactly when your friend's house will go underwater.
8/ You and she might find it useful to play around with this interactive map from @ClimateCentral. ss2.climatecentral.org/#15/25.7623/-8…
9/ But the key, as you allude to in your question, is that long before houses actually go completely underwater, people will start selling, if only because it won't be such a great place to live anymore.
10/ And your friend doesn't have to take it from me. She might respond better to mortgage giant Freddie Mac, which had this to say in April 2016:
11/ "While technical solutions may stave off some of the worst effects of climate change, rising sea levels and spreading flood plains nonetheless appear likely to destroy billions of dollars in property and to displace millions of people.
12/ "The economic losses and social disruption may happen gradually, but they are likely to be greater in total than those experienced in the housing crisis and Great Recession.
13/ “A large share of homeowners' wealth is locked up in their equity in their homes. If those homes become uninsurable and unmarketable, the values of the homes will plummet, perhaps to zero.
14/ "Unlike the recent experience, homeowners will have no expectation that the values of their homes will ever recover.”
15/ Source: freddiemac.com/research/insig…
16/ Final thought: There is some evidence that home values are already being affected.
17/ This study, for example, found that home values in low-lying areas of Miami-Dade have been appreciating more slowly than those at higher elevations. iopscience.iop.org/article/10.108…
18/ If you and your friend really want to dig into this, I recommend the excellent book "The Water Will Come," by @jeffgoodell, which focuses to a large degree on South Florida. littlebrown.com/titles/jeff-go…
19/ <FIN>
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