Before you put your Miami home on the market and book a one-way ticket to Peru (or Mars), keep in mind these images—showing a drowning Miami in the year 2100—are reflective of one extreme outcome, which is far from definitive.
That catastrophic scenario where Miami becomes mostly uninhabitable in many of our lifetimes was alluded to in New York Magazine’s recent deep dive doomsday piece on climate change, which should not be digested just before bedtime. An especially troubling snippet actually highlighted Miami:
The present tense of climate change — the destruction we’ve already baked into our future — is horrifying enough. Most people talk as if Miami and Bangladesh still have a chance of surviving; most of the scientists I spoke with assume we’ll lose them within the century, even if we stop burning fossil fuel in the next decade.
A report from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency in January outlined the possibility of chronic flooding crippling Miami under this extreme flooding scenario.
As if the words themselves are not scary enough, research group Climate Central implemented these projections in a Google Earth plug-in that provides a visual for the flooding, circa 2100, all across the United States.
Business Insider took the plug-in for a spin while targeting Miami, birthing the following horrifying visuals.
Downtown/Brickell:
Miami Beach:
Little Havana/Marlins Park:
There is some hope, however.
It appears much of our nation, regardless of where the White House stands, is going to put up a fight against climate change. There’s also the unknown, both in the form of planning and technology, that could shift things in a more optimistic direction.
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