Cheers

Mark

http://www.solar.ifa.hawaii.edu/Tropical/summary.html

no tropical storms seem to have yet reached southern California with any intensity left. This will change over the next decade.

And don’t forget about Hawaii…

For a 1m rise:

2) The East Coast & Gulf Coast have:
a) Much development right on the coast, even on the beaches and barrier islands.
b) Numerous rivers.
c) Flat coastal plains.
d) Hurricanes.

3) The West Coast has:
a) Relatively modest development right on the coast, no barrier islands, and almost nothing built right on the beaches. The main exceptions would be San Diego… Santa Barbara, Monterey, Santa Cruz, one edge of San Francisco, some pieces of Vancouver [the airport, among others]. Although not on the coast, the San Francisco Bay has issues, as does a piece of the Central Valley [already below sea level]. SF Bay planners are certainly already working on the issues.

From SF North, until you get to Vancouver, there is relatively little development right on the coast, compared to the Gulf/East Coasts.

b) Relatively few rivers exiting to the coast, and that really helps, because it;s not enough to build sea walls, you have to build levees along the rivers.

c) The West Coast of course has coastal hills and mountain ranges. In a lot of places, a few meters’ rise would wipe out the beaches, but then there would be 5-10 meters worth of cliff, and thankfully, there’s a lot of open-space preserve or farmland in many cases.

d) No hurricanes.

Even +1m is going to be *really* expensive on the West Coast, but the water problems we worry about most are the supply problems due to worsening snowpack issues. But, compared to the East Coast, we’re better off, and as for the Gulf Coast…. sad to say, I really can’t see how New Orleans will exist in 2100AD, given that:
a) The land is sinking.
b) The Mississippi does flood, albeit rarely.
c) Hurricanes.
d) And the Mississippi *really* wants to go down the Atchafalaya:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atchafalaya_River
I’d be astonished if it doesn’t sometime during this century.

Cheap Internet service makes people rich … except when you need to buy steel, concrete, and earthmoving, which tend to use real energy in the real world, and you may be noticing Peak Oil, which won’t make any of this cheaper.
+1m will be messy and expensive, but you can try +7m (part of Greenland + Antarctic Peninsula), or +14m (some combination of Greenland and WAIS).