My Climate Change House Hunt (Update)

Astute readers of the Cognitive Dissonance Dispatch will be familiar with my series considering global warming as part of my move from Oregon to Colorado. You can view the previous posts here, here, here, and here.

With the recent onslaught of Hurricanes, and as part of wrapping up my first 6 months in Colorado, I thought I would provide an update.

As we all know, Hurricane Helene wrought havoc on the western part of North Carolina. Flooding, towns destroyed, and at least 150 people killed. It’s a tragedy that still unfolds, and my heart goes out to those impacted.

What’s more troubling is the un-deniable role of global warming. Due to climate change, the Gulf of Mexico water temperatures were elevated and acted as a supercharger for the storm, causing an unprecedented acceleration from a moderate hurricane to a Category 4 disaster.

It took me some time to realize that I was thinking about global warming wrong. It’s not just that temperatures that were at issue. It was the energy. More heat equals more energy - and that dynamic does not bode well for the stability of systems like our climate. With more energy in the ocean and the atmosphere you get a greater likelihood of turbulence, instability - ‘weather whiplash’ if you will.

Once you think of things that way, the changes to our climate clarify themselves - sudden shifts in intensity, wind storms, large swings in precipitation. Even unusual winter storms can result with greater energy flooding the system.

And in that context, Hurricane Helene slammed the Southeast.

But ironically, many considered the area - and Asheville, North Carolina in particular - a climate ‘haven’ of sorts. They thought the area was more insulated to the effects of global warming.

So, I wanted to investigate myself, and see how the area scored in my climate geographic model.

Looking at the data, it quickly becomes obvious that the idea of Asheville as a relatively safe place was flawed. Asheville is located in Buncombe County, NC. When looking at my model, Buncombe ranks right in the middle of my ranking of all U.S. counties. It shows up as 1,388 out of 3,135 counties, or 44% (with 1% being the least vulnerable to global warming, and 100% being the most vulnerable).

The sub-factors tells an even greater story. Buncombe ranks 71% in ‘Flooding Risk to Roads’, 66% in ‘Deaths from Climate Disasters’, and 89% in ‘Costs of Climate Disaster’. It’s not just rain and flood events that impact the area. Buncombe scores at 78% for drought and 69% for wildfire risk according to my dataset.

Clearly, Asheville was not the climate haven many thought it to be.

I take no pleasure in this, or the fact that my model seems to have been a better predictor of geographic climate vulnerabilities than the local narratives say.

As I have stated in the past - global warming is a systemic and global crises. We’re all going to suffer.

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In a recent announcement, Zillow shared that it will post climate risk scores as part of any home listing in a partnership with First Street (formerly known as Risk Factor). In Part 4 of my series, I had used First Street data as a check against my own potential home. The results for both my former Portland home and my new house in Colorado can be seen below:

As this data enters the market and permeates the perception of home buyers, sellers, and real estate agents - it will be fascinating to see how this shapes decision making. Papers will be written on the impacts to property values, migration patterns, insurance rates, and the injustice of those stuck in highly impacted areas.

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As seen above, the primary risks to my neighborhood were due to wildfires, heat, and drought. Having been in Colorado for 6 months now, do I have any observations?

Unfortunately yes, first hand experience has made each of these risks more visceral.

First, the Alexander Mountain Fire and the Stone Canyon Fire both gave us cause for concern, within 20 miles of our house and columns of smoke visible from my office. Fortunately both were relatively inconsequential as far as these things go, but they strongly reinforced the tradeoffs we made in moving here.

Additionally, this summer was the second hottest on record for Denver and the Front Range. It was also significantly drier than normal. You really notice things like a lack of moisture here…especially after living in the Pacific Northwest.

So in a way we ticked the climate risk boxes in our first six months here in Colorado - wildfire, heat, and drought.

Not a fun checklist to be sure.

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In closing, as I write this, Hurricane Milton pummels the area around Tampa Bay and the Florida coastline. We’ll soon be tallying up the damages and watching brain dead politicians spin the disaster towards their favorite narrative, or stick their head in the sand as to root causes.

Tampa Bay is in Hillsborough County, which ranks 2,838 out of 3,135 counties in my climate risk model.

That is…91% of the counties in the U.S. are less risky than Hillsborough.

This is all so predictable, preventable, frustrating, and tragic.

Parting Proclamation

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Disclaimer:

All content and opinions are solely those of the author (Jack), and not representative of my employer, former employers, clients, anyone in Congress, my family, former college roommates, Baptists, the good citizens of Colorado, or my dog Mabel.