Who would have thought that cliffs in a seismic zone would crumble? That the seas would cause cliffs to erode? This never would have happened if you weren’t driving a fossil fueled vehicle
California’s cliffs are crumbling as climate change reshapes the coast
Among the coveted places to live in this city, if you have the money, is West Cliff Drive. How much longer that will be true is the question.
The cliff-top road is falling into the Pacific in large chunks, leaving gaping holes and closing lanes along a normally busy street. A process that has taken place over centuries is quickening after a rare series of winter and spring storms that brought abnormally high tides, potent surf and lots of rain.
The sea is taking back the land. It is happening at various speeds along much of California’s coast, changing the ragged western edge of the country and threatening neighborhoods, highways and ways of life.
For decades, California has built to the brink of the continent, a risk-reward calculus where the reward of a sparkling Pacific Ocean with your morning coffee easily trumps some future risk of a collapsing cliff. The cliffs, some more than 300 feet straight up, star in car commercials and TV shows, the edge-of-seat finales of action movies and, in real life, serve as the perfect takeoff point for paragliders.
If you build in places that are not stable, don’t be surprised. Or blame it on witchcraft, er, ‘climate change’.
But today it is some of the state’s most famed cliffs, overlooking about 500 miles of California’s coast, that are among those most imperiled by rising sea levels and more potent storms.
In Isla Vista, the site of University of California at Santa Barbara, apartment buildings regularly lose front patios and facades to the encroaching ocean, sliding down 200-foot cliffs toward the beach. A major coastal railroad track between Orange County and San Diego is closed frequently — most recently in April after new slides — as erosion undermines the ground beneath it. Repair costs for several sliding sections have reached $14 million so far.
Santa Barbara’s gauge, which is short term, shows barely any rise. Port San Luis, 90 miles away, which is long term, shows just .31 feet per 100 years of rise. Santa Monica shows .50 feet. That’s well below where a warm period should be. LA goes back to 1923, just .34 feet of rise. How is this Doom?
A year ago, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration predicted that sea level would rise 8 inches in California and along the West Coast within the next 25 years. At the same time, though, the state government is trimming funds for and discouraging cities from strengthening weak bluffs and cliffs with relatively short-term measures.
There’s one gauge that shows even a foot of rise per 100 years, North Split, and it has to be an outlier, because the next northern gauge, Crescent City, shows negative .27, and it goes back to 1933. San Francisco goes back to 1897, showing .64 feet. It’s all just apocalyptic Scaremongering, expecting weak minded cultists to just buy into it with zero evidence.
Read: Your Fault: California Cliffs Crumbling Faster Or Something »
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