A new Associated Press report warns that key properties in President Donald Trump’s real estate empire are at an increased risk of being swallowed by sea level rise.
Why? Because Trump decided to withdraw from the Paris climate accord, of course.
AP reported Thursday that Trump’s decision “could accelerate damage to his family’s real estate empire in the coming decades, especially his properties that lie just feet from the encroaching sea in low-lying South Florida” based on NOAA and South Florida Regional Climate Change Compact. projections.
Trump announced he would withdraw the U.S. from the Paris accord over the next two to three years. The Obama administration joined the accord in 2016 to cheers from environmentalists and many in the media.
The commitment made by the Obama administration to fight global warming was only estimated to avert 0.03 degrees Celsius of projected global warming by 2100. And that’s assuming the climate models are right.
As of right now, most climate models have warmed twice as fast as actual observed temperatures.
Despite this, the AP is arguing that Trump’s decision to ditch the Paris agreement would threaten his properties. AP reported that 2 or 3 feet of sea level rise “would push seawater onto the mansion’s western lawns,” referring to Trump’s 123-room Mar-a-Lago hotel.
The AP also claimed Trump’s National Doral Miami could flood as well because “[a]s seas rise and Florida’s water table rises, state geologists predict that Florida’s porous limestone geology will allow water to easily percolate upward, flooding inland and coastal areas alike.”
“The Trump International Hotel & Tower in Waikiki Beach, Hawaii, is vulnerable too, as is his golf course in Ireland,” AP reported. “The president also has business interests in properties near the ocean in Vancouver, Canada; Panama City, Panama; Uruguay and Mumbai, India.”
Then we get into some dire predictions. AP reported in “the worst-case prediction of a 6-foot sea rise” for “Palm Beach, which includes Mar-a-Lago, about 51 percent of homes worth a total of $10.9 billion would be underwater,” according to data from Zillow.
Sounds scary, but the rate of sea level rise hasn’t changed much in the last century or so. Satellite sea level observations show a rise of 3.4 millimeters per year going back to the early 1990s.
That could change, but assuming the current rate continues it would take nearly 269 years for sea levels to rise the 3 feet AP says would harm Mar-a-Lago.
It would take twice that to rise 6 feet, but of course this doesn’t take into account local factors, like erosion, subsidence and human development. All those can increase or decrease the effect long-term sea level rise has on coastal regions.
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