Is Miami Beach drowning?

it's considered unique but the watery vistas of Venice could soon be replicated along the u.s. Atlantic coast setting off alarm bells in thousands of communities the Union of Concerned Scientists is warning climate change is raising sea levels dramatically and dangerously the expert panel predicts Miami for instance faces being swamped with tidal flood events increasing to 240 a year there by 2045 Paul hunter visited the area and found a glimpse of the future happening right now Miami Beach with its endlessly sandy vistas smiles on every visitor money like you can't imagine at least for some and all that water on the coast the gloriously warm Atlantic Ocean and to the west beautiful Biscayne Bay it's a big reason why the world comes to Miami Beach but now the water itself has become a visitor the long predicted rising seas of the world have in effect washed ashore in Miami Beach these are the old sea walls you see although they are the tides right at the top of them it's high tide King tide they call this one one of the highest of the year now this is high tide the highest of high tides but it never used to be this high never never 1012 years ago is when this started Dan Kipnis a self-proclaimed climate change Crusader has agreed to help us wade through it like this watch this watch this truck it's engulfed a downtown Miami Beach intersection seawater has inundated a bus stop where commuters save their shoes and climb aboard as it spills over the sea walls and pushes up from below you know you're not dressed in the right shoes but the water is coming out of there from from the canal the world's water has been rising slowly but relentlessly for decades even here you won't see a change day to day but King tide underlines Miami's deluge has begun global warming has expanded the oceans and low-lying South Florida is now paying the price I mean this is supposed to be a bone dry sidewalk but look at it it's flooded and the waters deep I'll show you look here's the curb Dan's been keeping tabs on the rising water for years he shot this during a high tide in 2012 having grown up here he's seen the change on our visit we stopped for a chat while ankle-deep to talk about the future this is going to be gone he and other experts predicted by the end of the century the regular sea level in Miami will be about a meter higher than it is today that means that the regular sea level rise will be here on me without a tide just regular so that means everything that you see here is going to be underwater that means we can't live on Miami Beach to visualize that a Research Center at the Florida International University ran the predicted rate of sea-level rise against Florida's existing terrain the result sobering reminding everyone it's not just Miami Beach that's drowning this is an upscale residential it's a very nice neighborhood these houses are all going to be over a million dollars up to five million and on some of the nearby streets in Fort Lauderdale we met with John Englander an oceanographer who's written a book called high tide on Main Street like this is the road right this is the road this is a very nice road while we talked we set up a camera down the street on time-lapse the water kept coming and coming and coming as it peaked we turned the camera to face the other way yep homeowners we met with didn't want to go on camera worried the attention could hurt real estate values though for now remarkably even here it's still booming even though there's no denying what's at the end of their driveways bottom line says John it's no longer a problem only for the future it's happening we need to face it because this is the reality now so what to do about it the answer in Miami Beach you can't stop the rising water but you can build higher sea walls and so they are everywhere the city's spending hundreds of millions on anti flooding infrastructure just give you a sense of the work that's being done this is a pump station these things are being built throughout Miami Beach the idea is take rain water lands on Miami Beach and pump it out into the bay at the same time the new rule in Miami Beach the sea walls got to come up and so it is here's the old seawall down to here here's the new one they're building the entire length of the seawall so far to this height by the time it's done it's going to be here concrete on the outside dirt on the inside all with one goal keep the rising sea water out there you know there's new technology leading the charge is Mayor Philip Levine this to us is war we are developing our own homeland security which has to do with beating back these floods you know I think when people see action and they see results they come on board so we don't have the luxury debating climate change to us it's all about getting a fix making things work but boat through the old canals of Miami Beach and you'll see the challenge there's a lot of waterfront some walls are already higher others are going up now this this guy's doing his seawall too but even optimists say higher sea walls merely by time putting off the inevitable and yet in the face of it they're still building million-dollar condos so denial I'd say heavy denial it's got Dan Kipnis kind of shaking his head the way he sees it there's no reason to plan for a future in South Florida which in turn leaves him heartbroken I love this place I love it there's no other city in the world like this this is the neatest city in the world I'm gonna have to say goodbye to it and ever so slowly the water creeps upward Paul hunter CBC News Miami Beach

Channel: CBC News: The National

Views: 119,389

Rating: 4.4829502 out of 5

Keywords: Miami Beach (City/Town/Village), climate change, Union Of Concerned Scientists (Nonprofit Organization), sea levels, rising, cbc, the national, cbcthenational

Id: 5fPSYLhx7ls

Length: 7min 8sec (428 seconds)

Published: Wed Oct 15 2014