FAR Future, Episode 76: Before the Deluge

Maybe we jump the gun, but things could get bad enough this century.

And a hat tip to Odin’s Raven for guessing right…

Monday, September 10, 2035
Before the Deluge

Now let the music keep our spirits high,
Let the buildings keep our children dry,
Let Creation reveal its secrets, by and by…

When the government called for people to take in refugees from the coast, we all looked at each other… then answered the call. It’s not like there’s no time; they estimate it will be several months before the East Coast starts flooding, but we offered to take in two families with kids. This host/guest database they put up is pretty clever. We entered a list of characteristics — families with kids, an interest in gardening, carpentry skills, some familiarity with rural life in general — and it found five exact matches. Unfortunately, we only have room for two. We picked at random.

They sent us some recycled materials (and promised some labor) to convert the detached garage to a duplex. The delivery truck seemed huge, but it certainly wasn’t as big as the trucks they used to haul freight back when. The clattering diesel reminded me of the ambulance that came for Mrs. Fetched a few years ago — sometimes I feel like it came for her last week and other times an eternity ago. She told me to remind them “no extraordinary measures,” although it was too late even for that. She died right where she wanted to, in her own bed in her own house, before the medics got here.

But I’m rambling again. There’s no telling when the labor will arrive. Rene, Serena, and Bobby are doing some of the initial stuff; we cleaned out the garage and they’ve put up some of the framing. Guillermo and I have done a little bit when they’re not looking; they think we shouldn’t be doing anything but we’re just old, not dead, dagnabbit. With any luck, things will be ready when our new guests arrive. The house is pretty well full, which is why we’re converting the garage: Guillermo and Maria are still with us and still working, although they deserve to retire many times over, and Rene and Serena (and Bobby) have the upstairs rooms. The studio is for Daughter Dearest and her family when they move back this month — with the school system facilitating volunteer schooling, rather than trying to get enough fuel to bus the kids into town, they can bring the neighbor kids into the community center and do remote hookups as needed. The Boy would have been welcome here too, but he’s gone again… he’ll come back about the time I decide he’s opted-out, he always does. Kim tells me they’re renovating some abandoned high-rises in Atlanta to take in refugees, and they’re already booked. Things will get a little crowded when they come to visit, but we’ll manage somehow. Maybe we’ll put up a straw-bale house where the cows won’t eat it.

General Freakout seems to have taken charge since that big chunk of ice in Greenland let go. Some of the more delusional types think we can build seawalls all along the coasts (hunh?), and they’re already at it on Manhattan — the game of chicken between the government and private citizens ended pretty quickly, perhaps in time to actually make it work. The running joke, outside of NYC anyway, is that piling up all their garbage along the shoreline would be enough to keep the entire metro area dry. Just about the entire world is jamming the phone lines to the Netherlands, looking for help and advice — but they’re busy trying (and only partly succeeding) to hold back the surge themselves. At this point, a middling storm would flood them out. They should be OK by spring, if they make it that long; the surge is supposed to start receding as the flood works its way around the world. After a couple years, things should settle out with sea levels up around 3 meters.

The loudest outcry for the government to “do something,” not surprisingly, comes from the general direction of private beaches. The rest of us tell them, “it’s ‘your’ beach, it’s your responsibility,” and they just don’t understand why we’re not falling all over ourselves to preserve the property they don’t want us anywhere near. As if we could, given the Restoration-era laws against providing public aid to “fenced” property. They should have gotten a clue when Hurricane Tricia wiped out Daytona Beach back in 2028, and there wasn’t a big government rush to rebuild the rich people’s exclusive playground. Some of that got rebuilt privately, but it will all be under water again pretty soon. A rather rude joke I heard is that Floridians will soon be the new Okies; instead of dust, they’ll be escaping water and wandering the nation. On the Gulf, they’re just abandoning New Orleans to the coming flood. There’s some talk about either moving the Pascagoula shipyard or surrounding it with levees, but if they’re doing to do more than watch it go under they’ll have to get started chop-chop.

The water coming in will be colder than usual — an ice cube that big is going to make a difference even in an ocean — and they’re already predicting a chilly winter. We may even get a significant (1cm) accumulation of snow here, something we haven’t seen since [looking it up] January 2025. Beyond that, ask ten climatologists what the long-term effects are going to be and get 20 different answers. I’m hoping for the “cool and rainy” scenario, since that would fix a lot of problems much of the world has been having with climate change. One of the more troubling scenarios disrupts the Gulf Stream, bringing colder weather to much of Europe, but even that isn’t all bad… that scenario also involves a partial rebuilding of the Alpine glaciers and the Arctic ice cap. I don’t suppose we’ll have much choice in the matter, though. As the kids used to say before things changed, “it is what it is.” One thing’s probably a certainty… hurricane season will be really quiet next year.

continued…