Har Har Har Global warming crap

[Seth]

It's just so unfair the Gubment letting those people live in the flood plain. Tear all those houses down and put the people in FEMA trailers. We tax payers can afford that.

That's a gross oversimplification. Worthless.

A better one would be that Seth just doesn't cotton to the idea that the Federal government should do anything worthwhile save for national defense, that any other good things like flood insurance should fall on state government and private enterprise. This determination is mostly aesthetic, since the practical difference is who his checks are styled to, and he assumes private sector efficiencies will keep things profitable at the same prices he's used to paying for given services.

One can assume that under Libertarian social engineering, a lightly regulated private flood insurance solution would take up the slack in Mississippi and Arkansas. Who needs cheap cotton and soybeans anyway?

Um, nobody said anything about prohibiting agriculture in the flood plain. That's what it SHOULD be used for...exclusively.

The routine flooding of the Mississippi is what created the fertile delta. The problem is not agriculture, the problem is residential and commercial occupation of the flood plain that expect to be bailed out whenever it floods, as it does every couple of years.

The solution is simple: Don't rebuild any residential or commercial structure damaged by flooding and, if any federal assistance at all is provided, use it to relocate people living in such areas to higher ground, but let them keep and farm their land as long as they like. Flooding might destroy a crop or two, but overall flooding restores the soil that flooding created in the first place, so letting the natural cycle work is beneficial.

And if someone WANTS to live and build in such an area, then they do so at their own risk. No governmental agency will assist them financially if they are damaged. Private charity can do as it pleases, as can the private insurance industry.

[Pappa]

It's the same here. Lots of residential areas built on floodplains. The Government are attempting to negotiate an agreement with insurers that will enable people living in floodplains to get affordable insurance. I know it's not really their fault for living there, but giving people access to affordable insurance at the expense of everyone else is probably going to make the problem worse in the long run. There won't be any financial incentive to build new houses away from flood risk areas.

[Tero]

Want us to send you a few FEMA trailers, Pappa?

[Pappa]

Want us to send you a few FEMA trailers, Pappa?

Like videos?

[Tero]

No they are "homes" for flood victims. Thry have a slight formaldehyde smell but you can air that out. For your Welsh flood evacuees.

[mistermack]

Whenever there are floods in Britain, they nearly always send a film crew to the same two or three streets in Gloucester.
They are just next to the river, and they have been flooding for years. Anyone who buys a house there knows that it's going to flood. And they go cheap, because of that.

But when they interview people down there, there is never any mention that the place is ALWAYS flooding, and has done for the last two thousand years. They treat it as if it was a brand-new one-off. Gloucester people know this, and treat it as a joke. But anyone else, would believe that crap that they are fed.

It would be criminal, if insurance companies were forced to cover these places. But that's exactly what they are trying to bring about.

The reason is that if people can't get insurance, their house-values become blighted. And people are starting to get the idea that they can sue the local authorities, for granting planning permission, in these flood-prone areas.
So rather than end up in court, they are just passing the buck, and the cost, to the average insurance-buyer.

[Pappa]

No they are "homes" for flood victims. Thry have a slight formaldehyde smell but you can air that out. For your Welsh flood evacuees.

Hehe... yeah, Rachel just showed me. Thankfully we don't have problems with flooding much in Wales. My town in particular is mostly a series of hills leading down to the sea.

[Jason]

I know it's not really their fault for living there

Exactly how are they not at fault for building on a flood plain? They built on a geologically unstable area. It's like investing hundreds of billions of dollars in a scheme doomed to fail and then looking for the public to bail you out. How can you justify stupidity of that nature? If it was ignorance, then it's bad luck. I see no onus to insure them or give them aid or succor should their homes fall down. Sorry, that's the price of being stupid and/or ignorant.

[piscator]

I know it's not really their fault for living there

Exactly how are they not at fault for building on a flood plain? They built on a geologically unstable area. It's like investing hundreds of billions of dollars in a scheme doomed to fail and then looking for the public to bail you out. How can you justify stupidity of that nature? If it was ignorance, then it's bad luck. I see no onus to insure them or give them aid or succor should their homes fall down. Sorry, that's the price of being stupid and/or ignorant.

We're talking about 100 to 500-year floodplains here, not creek channels. To put that into perspective, a large part of London qualifies as freeloaders in Seth's tax and forced Socialism book, as it is as protected by seawalls and other public flood barriers as New Orleans...

The 1928 Thames flood was a disastrous flood of the River Thames that affected much of riverside London on 7 January 1928, as well as places further downriver. Fourteen people were drowned in London and thousands were made homeless when flood waters poured over the top of the Thames Embankment and part of the Chelsea Embankment collapsed. It was the last major flood to affect central London, and, particularly following the disastrous North Sea flood of 1953, helped lead to the implementation of new flood-control measures that culminated in the construction of the Thames Barrier in the 1970s.

And ground hydrological data as well as paid insurance claims indicate that floodplains are rising in elevation and storm surges are becoming worse.
But things are so politicized in the US that FEMA doesn't want to address it as climate change, and so omits valid climate predictions at taxpayer peril...

When the federal government released updated flood maps for the New York City region last week, residents were shocked to find that the number of houses and businesses in the region's flood zone had doubled since the maps were last revised, in 1986.
But it now appears that those maps might have underestimated the extent of New York's flood risk, because they don't factor in the effects of future climate change. Scientists say that by the 2080s, sea levels off the city's coast could rise by as much as five feet from melting glaciers, making storm surges more severe and causing floods much further inland than the new maps indicate.

The maps also don't incorporate data from Hurricane Sandy, which caused catastrophic flooding in the nation's financial capital. Many structures destroyed by the superstorm are not included in the newly drawn flood zones.

If future sea level rise had been taken into account, the flood zone would likely have been much larger, said Philip Orton, a physical oceanographer at the Stevens Institute of Technology in New Jersey, who served as a technical reviewer on the updated maps.

...

The omissions mean the maps already may be outdated—or will be very soon—some scientists said, with implications for Hurricane Sandy rebuilding efforts, as well as the city's plans for adapting to long-term climate change. The flood maps, which are produced by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), are used to set insurance requirements and building codes. If the New York maps are too conservative, property owners might be wasting their money by rebuilding in especially vulnerable areas or by adapting structures to meet standards that will have to be revised in a few years.

"Old statistics on flood risk are obsolete," said Kevin Trenberth, a distinguished senior scientist in the Climate Analysis Section at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR). "Increasingly, [FEMA] should be looking ahead."

FEMA officials who spoke on background to InsideClimate News said future sea level rise wasn't included because the agency has traditionally used historical storm information to determine where flood zones should be set. Incorporating impending climate change simply wasn't part of the process.

In the summer of 2012, however, Congress passed the Biggert-Waters Flood Insurance Reform Act, which requires FEMA to at least consider using the "best available science regarding future changes in sea levels, precipitation, and intensity of hurricanes" in its flood zone maps. But because the New York City region's FEMA maps had been underway since 2010, they were exempt from the law.

...

http://insideclimatenews.org/news/20130 ... level-rise

[Pappa]

I know it's not really their fault for living there

Exactly how are they not at fault for building on a flood plain? They built on a geologically unstable area. It's like investing hundreds of billions of dollars in a scheme doomed to fail and then looking for the public to bail you out. How can you justify stupidity of that nature? If it was ignorance, then it's bad luck. I see no onus to insure them or give them aid or succor should their homes fall down. Sorry, that's the price of being stupid and/or ignorant.

I'm talking about people who bought homes that were already there. Many places may not have flooded for decades, so potential buyers may not have been aware there were problems.

[piscator]

It's just so unfair the Gubment letting those people live in the flood plain. Tear all those houses down and put the people in FEMA trailers. We tax payers can afford that.

That's a gross oversimplification. Worthless.

A better one would be that Seth just doesn't cotton to the idea that the Federal government should do anything worthwhile save for national defense, that any other good things like flood insurance should fall on state government and private enterprise. This determination is mostly aesthetic, since the practical difference is who his checks are styled to, and he assumes private sector efficiencies will keep things profitable at the same prices he's used to paying for given services.

One can assume that under Libertarian social engineering, a lightly regulated private flood insurance solution would take up the slack in Mississippi and Arkansas. Who needs cheap cotton and soybeans anyway?

Um, nobody said anything about prohibiting agriculture in the flood plain. That's what it SHOULD be used for...exclusively.

The routine flooding of the Mississippi is what created the fertile delta. The problem is not agriculture, the problem is residential and commercial occupation of the flood plain that expect to be bailed out whenever it floods, as it does every couple of years.

The solution is simple: Don't rebuild any residential or commercial structure damaged by flooding and, if any federal assistance at all is provided, use it to relocate people living in such areas to higher ground, but let them keep and farm their land as long as they like. Flooding might destroy a crop or two, but overall flooding restores the soil that flooding created in the first place, so letting the natural cycle work is beneficial.

And if someone WANTS to live and build in such an area, then they do so at their own risk. No governmental agency will assist them financially if they are damaged. Private charity can do as it pleases, as can the private insurance industry.

The NFIP will pay a max of 2 claims on a property. Barring the erection of a flood control structure, the property becomes ineligible for flood insurance.

But let's say you find a way to relocate Greenville, Ms and all the roads and railroads to someone else's land on higher ground 100 miles away and the farmers keep title to their Mississippi Delta farmland with 22' of topsoil.

Are they gonna helicopter in 16-row turning plows and cultivators and cottonpickers and bale compressors? Fly cropdusters for all their application? Heli out the crop?
Cotton's pretty infrastructure-intensive. And back before FEMA, the big houses were on the river bluffs and everyone else sang the blues. That was the organic free enterprise solution.

Map of the Lower Mississippi River, showing plantations by type and owner, ca. 1858:

[piscator]

I know it's not really their fault for living there

Exactly how are they not at fault for building on a flood plain? They built on a geologically unstable area. It's like investing hundreds of billions of dollars in a scheme doomed to fail and then looking for the public to bail you out. How can you justify stupidity of that nature? If it was ignorance, then it's bad luck. I see no onus to insure them or give them aid or succor should their homes fall down. Sorry, that's the price of being stupid and/or ignorant.

I'm talking about people who bought homes that were already there. Many places may not have flooded for decades, so potential buyers may not have been aware there were problems.

A 100-year floodplain represents a 1% annual risk of flood damage. A 500-year floodplain represents a 0.2% chance of flooding in a given year. Like you've pointed out twice now: In many cases, we're not talking about obvious wetlands.
But a lot of greedy American land developers can't resist subdividing land and building golf course communities and high-end homes with docks on salt water canals.
And there are places like Cape Cod or Mystic, Connecticut. Loaded with both historical landmarks and zoning and construction codes and covenants. There are local setbacks from FEMA flood and surge zones. A quaint local inn may have been relatively flood-free since it was built in 1831, but it's now facing a large new tax burden in the form of flood insurance and local variances. If part of an improvement on its lot encroaches on the new line formed by a new FIRM, it may now violate the town's ordinances as well as become subject to different local tax rates and historical districts and of course, flood insurance premiums. So now the cost of living and doing business includes paying lawyers and surveyors and new taxes and attending planning committee meetings. The family that runs and lives in the inn has done nothing to bring this on themselves.

But I would contend a completely private system would be no more convenient, and would lobby for laws to protect themselves, and you'd have a similar situation, only probably even more expensive.

[Jason]

Simple enough then really.

If you're claiming a 100 year floodplain represents a 1% annual risk then I'm sure they've been paying 1% more for home insurance to cover that risk and will continue into the future, possibly adjusting for increased risk in the future, so when the floodplain floods (which it assuredly will eventually) and causes hundreds of millions of dollars of damages it will have been paid for by the premiums collected over the past 100 years and insurance companies will come out of it making a profit - they are in business to make money after all. Oh wait, that isn't the case.

A 1% annual risk (stupid way of looking at it) is 100% more risk than, you know, not building or buying in a geologically unstable area. These people are not entitled to special dispensation.

ETA: I'm talking about private insurance, obviously. There is simply no reason why tax dollars of non-residents of the area should be used to compensate losses from stupid investments.

[Seth]

So now the cost of living and doing business includes paying lawyers and surveyors and new taxes and attending planning committee meetings. The family that runs and lives in the inn has done nothing to bring this on themselves.

Well, this is what insurance companies call an "act of God."

The taxpaying public did nothing to bring it on either, so why should they be responsible for bailing out the inn owners?

Did you know that the remains of Indian villages have been found in Puget Sound three-hundred feet BELOW sea level?

Should we compensate that tribe for the effects of "global warming."

Land use law is very clear on the subject, if beach erosion takes the property in front of your home and submerges it under the ocean you lose title to that submerged land and it becomes property of the United States because it lies beneath "navigable waters."

If you live along a river and the centerline of the river defines your property boundary, and the river erodes a new channel on your land, your property line still ends at the centerline of the river, wherever the river decides to move and your neighbor gets title to the newly-revealed lands.

If you build near a coast line one of the perils you face is avulsion or erosion of the shoreline. If it happens, well, too bad you're just screwed because that's how life is.

[piscator]

So now the cost of living and doing business includes paying lawyers and surveyors and new taxes and attending planning committee meetings. The family that runs and lives in the inn has done nothing to bring this on themselves.

Well, this is what insurance companies call an "act of God."

And they exclude them from coverage under most policies. This is why the US government offers flood insurance, an unprofitable part of disaster relief, to promote the general welfare and help provide for the common defense against floodwaters and other acts of God. Secularism FTW.

The taxpaying public did nothing to bring it on either, so why should they be responsible for bailing out the inn owners?

A Sandy rolls around, who's gonna clean up the taxpayer's roads and sewage systems when what's left of your home is plugging them up and you're broke?
The taxpayers will pay one way or another. A private insurance with a smaller pool of policyholders would be more expensive both before and after. And look at BP and Exxon fighting in the court system for years to lower damage payments. Do you think the representatives of insurance companies don't work as hard for their employers?
What's to stop insurance companies from raising their auto liability rates to compensate for the hit of a big storm in the property and casualty or homeowner's departments? Laws and courts?
What do the taxpayers collect in taxes from a business wiped out by a flood or the people who used to work there? The opportunity cost of a big flood disaster is epic. Better to help rebuild the cotton gin and its tax stream once every hundred years than to let it fail.

Did you know that the remains of Indian villages have been found in Puget Sound three-hundred feet BELOW sea level?

Did they have earthquake insurance?

Should we compensate that tribe for the effects of "global warming."

Do they have insurance against that? The wording of the contract would typically prevail.

Land use law is very clear on the subject, if beach erosion takes the property in front of your home and submerges it under the ocean you lose title to that submerged land and it becomes property of the United States because it lies beneath "navigable waters."

Guffaw. Riparian law is anything but clear. Boundaries usually don't change by avulsion, but may in cases of accretion and reliction they do. Then again, state laws vary. Sometimes, the federal government has to come in and build levees to help end the legal, as well as personal and economic chaos of water.

If you live along a river and the centerline of the river defines your property boundary, and the river erodes a new channel on your land, your property line still ends at the centerline of the river, wherever the river decides to move and your neighbor gets title to the newly-revealed lands.

Maybe. Maybe not. But it's best not to call a land boundary to something like that if you can help it. Usually judges decide, and they have lots of precedents for any call they want to make. States along the Mississippi have entire bodies of legal arcana devoted to state riparian boundary issues, and there's still some intra-state hostilities related to certain islands and other parcels in and along the Mississippi.

If you build near a coast line one of the perils you face is avulsion or erosion of the shoreline. If it happens, well, too bad you're just screwed because that's how life is.

Unless you live in certain parts of Washington. Then you retain title to a fee holding that has avulsed or relicted into tidal submerged land. And one of the rights accrued by the avulsion or reliction is control of not only the surface, but the rest of the water column as well.
So you can farm geoducks and oysters, and you can have a private surf break, because you own it in fee. You can also fill it or put a cofferdam out there, assuming you comply with other federal and state laws.
Then there are cases of senior boundary lines along a waterway. Then a whole parcel can move onto land someone else owns. Then it's a real legal mess, and a judge will decide.
Ft Adams, Ms. has some original city lots that were staked from the street to the river by Elicot,the same guy who surveyed and staked the Washington Mall. They started out roughly 40x100'and are now 40' wide by ~6.5 miles deep. The river took a big bend into Louisiana back before they built the levees and fixed the river. Louisiana lost the Supreme Court case by virtue of the language of the conveyances back in the 1820s.

Then there's my property called to the high tide line of Shelikof Strait on the west side of Kodiak. One of the first 200 US Surveys in Alaska, it ostensibly calls for 10.5 acres between 2 corners and a handful of meanders along a curved high tide line. But the ground rose a bit during 2 9+ earthquakes and a 30" volcanic ashfall since 1899, and the original stone monuments which demark the back and sides of my parcel are now further away from the high tide line than originally. Now in Texas, the state might hold title to the new gap formed by accretion and avulsion, but in Alaska, I still own to the tide line and so the parcel has gained acreage. Even though there is an Avulsive Act in this state that fixes the high tide line for properties at a certain date for other local properties, mine is grandfathered to the actual MHW and original monuments.
But I haven't had any need to test this legal opinion in the courts, so it's anyone's guess.

Not to muddy the waters, but anyone who claims riparian law is clear in the US is clearly talking out his ass.