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Glendon is wrong because it is an opinion with no facts.
This ”Florida will be under water soon” has been going on since I got here decades ago. My former home on a sea wall, the water has not moved at all on that sea wall 30 years later. My home now, even in the so called flood zone, when Irma hit which was one of the biggest rain events in recent history here, not even standing water on my property.
What I see is taking every little thing that happens, and turning into a ”its climate change” issue, as if hurricanes, flooding, etc, never happened in history. Did Brickell get flooded by Irma? Yes, has the area been flooded before? Why yes, going back even before the industrial revolution. Roads getting flooded by heavy rain? Why yes, when you pave over every little square inch, and yet still have a drainage system designed when half of it was paved over, you are going to have issues.
Bottom line is it is all nonsense, and everyone knows it except the few who really believe in it like a cult, and like good cult members, they love spreading the word.
Yea, I am all for reducing pollution, my next car is going to be electric, I live as it is pretty environmentally sound, but the moronic ”everyone should move from Florida now” is absolutely sensationalist garbage. I am sure people like him would love to see a price dip, swoop in and buy, and see the prices go back up to make a profit. So basically, follow the money...
Glendon is an investment person, he works at an organization in which its purpose is this climate change stuff. With out climate change hype, this organization has no money, so its purposes is to keep driving it, it only exists because of it. So, a biased resource is what it is.
I get it. There are some individuals who won't acknowledge the reality of climate change despite empirical evidence ascertaining rapidly rising ocean heat content, rapid intensification of hurricanes, accelerating ice melt in the cryosphere, accelerating sea level rise, more frequent and massive wild fires globally including in boreal regions, a slowing Gulf Stream and the ocean circulatory system in general, permafrost thaw releasing massive amounts of methane and carbon dioxide, increased sunny day flooding in low-sea level regions in Florida and elsewhere, rising atmospheric heat levels, increasing drought conditions, etc.
So anyone who makes reasonable projections based on scientific analysis are "alarmist." Just because projections are alarmist doesn't mean they are false. Scientists such as Harold Wanless who postpone their retirements in order to sound the alarm should not be discredited for their efforts. Yes, Wanless is being alarmist when, as explained in post 6, he notes that there is a significant correlation between global carbon dioxide levels and ocean sea levels. Now, the issue is whether he is right or wrong. His observation is nothing new and I've never seen it disputed, so IMO Wanless is doing a service by bringing it the attention of the public. Surely you don't advocate that Floridians should live in scientific ignorance???
As noted also in post 6, regional scientific climate change panels are projecting significant increases in sea level rise in the coming decade (as much as a foot or more by 2030) and in subsequent decades, again not disputing Wanless' warnings.
The issue immediately may not be mortgage availability, especially as long as Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae accept risky coastal mortgages and don't even charge a cost penalty. The issue may be affordability, compounded by increasing wind insurance premiums.
While Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac will accept mortgages, they require flood insurance.
FEMA flood insurance is heavily subsidized, especially for more risky flood zone areas. At some point, premiums are expected to rise significantly. These increased premiums will be passed along to owners through escrow account charges.
<<Typically, “the maximum amount of coverage available through the NFIP for a residential home is $250,000,” says Drew Scott, vice president of Personal Lines at Stratford, Connecticut-based Scott Insurance.
Zeornes says the NFIP “pays replacement cost loss settlement on primary dwellings insured to 80 percent of the replacement cost or at the maximum limits. Otherwise, all building and contents loss settlement guidelines pay actual cash value.”>>
Wind insurance is more problematic as insurers may raise prices more substantially or even stop offering, especially if their capital reserves suffer large reductions due to a powerful hurricane striking a major population center.
Climate change economic and investment expert Spencer Glendon explains the risk here:
<<Insurability is the main issue. Thirty-year mortgages come with the condition that a borrower have insurance, which is renewed annually. But insurers can choose to stop offering insurance at any time, or make prices prohibitively expensive, which would cause a homeowner to violate their debt. Eventually, lenders would be forced to stop lending, causing prices to plummet.
In Florida, where many parts of the state are increasingly under risk of flooding and infrastructure erosion, both insurance companies and reinsurance companies have begun to sound the alarm and suggest they will not be working in Florida markets in the coming years.
“Things that are a 1 in 20 year event, or a 5 percent risk, are essentially uninsurable in most parts of world. That’s too often for an insurance company to want to intervene and have to want to deal with claims,” he said. “In most of coastal Florida, that threshold has already been breached.”>>
No. Sadly, or stubbornly, you don't get it. Carry on with your campaign of misinformation, exaggeration, false projections, worst case scenarios and lies. You're not making your, or any other life better by wallowing in your self-created misery. I have better things to do than look for the muddy lining in every silver cloud.
Banks keep lending outrageous money for these properties because after the down payment and interest collected, they can still foreclose on the borrower make repairs resell at a profit. Its when the market turns and they start taking hits, they have to make the decision to tighten up or keeprolling the dice on borrowers... we've seen this movie play out before.
Facts are repeatedly presented in various threads in this forum, and the climate change deniers ignore them and claim that they aren't facts, just opinions.
For those capable of objective thought and scientific reasoning, and who don't want to indulge themselves in self-delusion and spread deceit, read post six in this thread carefully. The climate change deniers dismiss the conclusions of the various science advisory boards operating throughout the state. E.g., while sea level rise has been measured in fractions of inches annually in recent decades, it will accelerate to an inch or more annually within the next 10-20 years.
<<Take out a 30-year mortgage on a house in the Tampa Bay area, and by the time it is paid off the sea level will have likely risen 1 or even 2 feet, according to the Tampa Bay Climate Science Advisory Panel....
The Tampa Bay Climate Science Advisory Panel says that the water levels have increased by 7.8 inches since 1946, when they were first recorded at the St. Petersburg tide gauge. That’s cold comfort, because the projected rise is now being measured in feet, not inches.
The group says that actual measurements, not just models, show that sea-level rise is accelerating. By 2100, the sea level on the Tampa Bay area’s nearly 700 miles of coast could be 8½ feet higher than it was at the turn of this century. Numbers from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the U.S. National Climate Assessment and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration are similarly alarming. Carbon dioxide levels have risen by nearly a third in just the past 50 years. There is a lag, but hotter temperatures and faster-rising seas will follow.>>
The above editorial from the Tampa Bay Times likely is dismissed as "fake news" by the handful of posters who repeatedly dismiss efforts to assert reality into this discussion as mere opinion. They would have us believe that Hurricane Sally was an illusion or an aberration. See the last paragraphs of post 33 in this thread, and read post 44.
Spencer Glendon and other highly experienced economists and investors are relying not only on the scientific consensus of the accelerating impact of carbon dioxide atmospheric levels above 400 ppm, they are merely anticipating the consequences of a major hurricane impacting a major metropolitan area or sweeping across the expensive developments on barrier islands off the west coast of Florida that even now sit on just 2-3 feet of elevation. Will persons want to own expensive properties sitting ony 1-2 feet above sea level within 20 years, especially when the beaches on these islands have been inundated, or at least greatly diminished? Persistent sunny day flooding, as experienced by the Florida Keys, will be the norm in many coastal areas. Certainly, insurance costs will be much more prohibitive. The residents of Pensacola who lived through Hurricane Sally likely better understand Glendon's reasoning than the climate change deniers who litter this forum.
Investors and insurers certainly are aware of the combined ratios even now experienced by Florida insurers and are weighing the inevitable impacts of rising insurance rates needed to reflect these loss experiences.
The question is when do rising insurance rates collapse the ability to obtain mortgages, and, more directly, when does the availability of reinsurance for Florida coastal risks dry up.
Potential home buyers in Florida should consider paying 99 cents to read this Sun Sentinel article about the existing Florida insurance crisis, and then contemplate the impact warned about by Glendon of a $500 billion to $1 trillion catastrophe.
Will solar cycle 25 be a catalyst for accelerated sea level rise?
For those interested in actual facts, consider carefully post 11 in this thread and contemplate the impact of increased solar activity as we enter a new solar cycle.
We've just lived through one of the weakest solar cycles in a century, and scientists are debating whether we'll experience a similarly benign solar cycle 25 or a much more intense cycle that will accelerate ocean thermal warming, expansion and global ice melt.
<<The last Solar Cycle 24 was a historic under-performer, starting from early 2011 (based on the termination of Cycle 23). This lackluster cycle produced a sunspot number of just 116, and featured a year (2019) with over 281 spotless days (that’s 77% of the year) for the Earthward face of the Sun, the longest dearth of sunspots in over century.
Many solar astronomers thought Solar Cycle 25 would follow suit… or be absent all together, in a new sort of profound lingering solar minimum. In September of last year, NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) convened the Solar Cycle 25 Prediction Panel and echoed this sentiment, using solar physics models to predict that Solar Cycle 25 would be a weak one as well.
Or will it? A new study entitled – Overlapping Magnetic Activity Cycles and the Sunspot Number: Forecasting Sunspot Cycle 25 Amplitude published in the November 2020 issue of Solar Physics shows that all may not be what it seems when it comes to our host star. Specifically, National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) scientists in the study looked at 270 years of sunspot numbers, using a mathematical analysis. What they found is that the earlier a cycle terminates, the stronger the next cycle tends to be, once it’s in full swing. With a solar minimum occurring just under nine years later for Cycle 24 in December 2019, This new analysis suggests that Solar Cycle 25 may see solar and sunspot activity returning with a vengeance. The last time we had a short nine-year termination was Cycle 18 in the 1950s, which was then followed by Solar Cycle 19, one of the strongest in the 20th century.>>
Whatever the strength of solar cycle 25, solar scientists agree that the sun's activity level will accelerate to a new peak in 2025, as also discussed in the above article.
Spencer Glendon, like it or not, is guiding investor perception of climate change and of Florida
For those who have an hour and want to understand how the investment community is evaluating climate change, this is a very good listen in which Spencer Glendon and Harvard University Professor Rebecca Henderson (author of the highly acclaimed "Reimagining Capitalism in a World on Fire") explains the interaction of climate change and capitalism. Glendon contemplates "wealth destruction" due to climate change and focuses on Florida over the next two decades as an example. This interview was published on the NASDAQ website within the last week.
Rebecca Henderson, a Harvard Business School professor, is new to me and to this forum:
<<Rebecca Henderson is one of 25 University Professors at Harvard, a research fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research, and a fellow of both the British Academy and of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Her research explores the degree to which the private sector can play a major role in building a more sustainable economy. Rebecca sits on the boards of Idexx Laboratories and of CERES. Her most recent publication is Reimagining Capitalism in a World on Fire, which was shortlisted for the FT/McKinsey 2020 Business Book of the Year Award.>>
Again, this is a "must listen" interview for potential Florida home buyers. I learned in this interview many things including the impact of a "heavy ocean" (a new term to me) and that Glendon's view of wealth destruction was inspired about the Detroit experience of Glendon's youth.
Rebecca Henderson says the Florida outlook is worse than Glendon's dire outlook as she discusses her experience working with a Florida financial institution about pricing climate change into mortgage issuance, the focus of this thread.
Consider that Spencer Glendon is the former director of investment research for Wellington Management, which has over $1 trillion in assets under management. In his semi-retirement, Glendon now works at Woodwell Climate Research Center, arguably America's foremost climate research center. Arguing that Glendon doesn't deal with facts is akin to arguing that Tom Brady doesn't understand football; both are superstars in their respective professions. Glendon explains in this interview that he is "too close" to the science to be sanguine. Glendon specifically mentions the vicious feedback loops resulting from accelerating permafrost melt.
Glendon anticipates that persons will stop making investments in assets that will have zero terminal values (think low-lying coastal real estate) and fossil fuel resources.
And, thanks to this thread, and updating my research of Glendon's opinions, I discovered this excellent resource -- NASDAQ's "World Reimagined" podcast/website.
There are a few places in the Big Bend like Cape San Blas and St. George Island where IIRC the feds will not underwrite flood insurance because they feel like those places are way too prone to coastal erosion even for them, and those properties do price lower than other coastal areas to account for much higher unsubsidized private flood insurance costs.
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Will solar cycle 25 be a catalyst for accelerated sea level rise?
