It's even stranger when you see advocates for climate change buy houses by the sea. For instance: https://www.houseandgarden.co.uk/gallery/obamas-new-house-ma...

It does seem at odds with the predictions they are popularising.

FWIW, NOAA's Sea Level Rise map says there needs to be a 2'-3' rise to noticeably affect their property, and probably 5' to affect the house. (House is at https://www.google.com/maps/@41.3607964,-70.5465745,146m/dat... .)

https://sealevel.nasa.gov/ipcc-ar6-sea-level-projection-tool says it will take about 100 years to get to the 1 meter sea level rise for that area.

They'll be long dead.

Or to spin it another way, they are hopeful that people will respond to the dire predictions, stop contributing to global warming, and as a result sea level rise won't exceed about a 1 meter.

I wonder what the correlation is between their dire predictions, and the actuality of sea level changes where they live?

https://tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/sltrends/sltrends_station.... shows the relative sea level trend for Boston. Eyeballing it, looks like a 10 cm rise in the last 20 years, with no sign of slowing down.

That alone suggests another 40 cm by the end of the century.

Why do you think the predictions are wrong?

I don't think the predictions are wrong. I think the rhetoric is hyperbolic.

Then perhaps I misunderstood.

Michael E. Mann wrote "Dire Predictions: Understanding Global Warming". He lives in Amherst, at about 90 m elevation.

The "the actuality of sea level changes where they live" is zero for him, as there is no sea where he lives, and it would take a very large increase for it to reach him.

How is that data point relevant?

Perfect explains Al Gore’s investment on an San Francisco oceanfront property.

Just follow his example. :-/

Based on my 10 minutes of looking around, it seems the largest population of people buying new homes are retired people paying in cash, whose timelines aren't so long-viewed. There's also the belief that seawalls and other mitigating factors aren't so expensive, and will be subsidized by the government.

https://redgreenandblue.org/2022/03/26/sea-level-rise-coasta... (concerning Florida):

> The largest pool of buyers driving market are retired or soon to be retired people and they have the belief that they will be long gone before there is any impact from climate change. They mainly are buying on emotion and not factoring in the long-term cost of ownership. They are also buying with cash and no mortgage.”

https://www.wbur.org/news/2019/05/14/climate-change-real-est... gives examples:

> A nationwide study by the First Street Foundation suggests climate change concerns have caused nearly $16 billion in lost appreciation of property values along the Eastern Seaboard and Gulf Coast since 2005

> In another recent study , researchers at the University of Colorado Boulder's School of Business found coastal properties most exposed to sea level rise sold, on average, for 7 percent less than equivalent properties the same distance from shore but not as threatened by the sea.

> And in Florida's Miami-Dade County, higher-elevation properties are appreciating faster than lower ones as companies and deep-pocketed buyers increasingly consider climate change risks, a study in the publication Environmental Research Letters found last year.

then notes:

> But Williams and other researchers note the First Street Foundation study uses sea-level rise predictions from the Army Corps of Engineers that are more dire than figures from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which usually provides the go-to numbers for such studies.

> The other two studies largely rely on data from Florida, which is so low and highly developed that in many ways it is an outlier, unaffiliated researchers point out. They also focus only on single-family homes, leaving out huge numbers of condos, high-rises and other multi-family properties.

Finally, https://yaleclimateconnections.org/2018/09/sea-level-rise-hi...

> So what should we make of the fact that beachfront home buyers seem unconcerned? Are they just burying their heads in the sand?

> Spiegel doesn’t think so. By the time most properties will be at any serious risk of ocean waves lapping at their front doors, which could in some places be more than a century from now, the homes will probably have deteriorated anyway—leaving plenty of time for them to be torn down and rebuilt on stilts, or to create a sea wall, if necessary.

> Homeowners may not even have to pay for certain large-scale mitigation efforts themselves: major cities including Boston and New York have already begun planning infrastructure projects that would provide storm barriers and prevent flooding.

> “Between the amount of time that’s involved for the vast majority of homes that we’re talking about, and the amount of time you have for mitigation efforts—among the many things you should worry about in your life, this isn’t it,” he says Spiegel

I think this is a great question and one that many people are asking. The answer is twofold: first, coastal real estate is not falling because the market for it is still strong. Second, even if sea levels rise, there will still be demand for coastal real estate because people are used to living on the coast and do not want to leave their homes.

When asked about why he was building his new house so close to the ocean, one developer said "I don't think about it." This attitude has been echoed by many other developers who believe that they are safe from rising sea levels because their properties are on higher ground than most others in their area.

In addition, many people simply do not believe that climate change will affect them or their home personally—even if they live near coastal areas or low-lying islands such as Puerto Rico or the Maldives. This is partly due to an unwillingness to accept what scientists say about climate change as accurate (which makes sense given how politicized the subject has become), but also because they do not want to face up to what could happen if sea levels continue rising over time.