Or ... spend hundreds of billions to save a wealthy municipality hundreds of millions?
The economy will restructure itself and the area will depopulate. The article mentions the role of banks and insurers. Almost nobody can afford to buy a home without a mortgage or to self-insure.
Already, many Florida homeowners have only one option for homeowner's insurance: the Citizens Property Insurance Corporation, which is a non-profit "insurer of last resort". There is no profit in insuring the Florida coasts.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens_Property_Insurance_Co...
> Globally, it’s estimated that a hundred million people live within three feet of mean high tide and another hundred million or so live within six feet of it. Hundreds of millions more live in areas likely to be affected by increasingly destructive storm surges.
I've actually been rather surprised at how LOW many predictions of sea-level rise are for the century ending in the year 2100. The United States Environmental Protection Agency writes,[1] "Since 1870, global sea level has risen by about 7.5 inches. Estimates of future sea level rise vary for different regions, but global sea level for the next century is expected to rise at a greater rate than during the past 50 years. Studies project global sea level to rise by another 1 to 4 feet by 2100, with an uncertainty range of 0.66 to 6.6 feet." The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change document on sea level rise[2] projects a lot of uncertainty, but doesn't seem to predict such major changes in sea level.
[1] http://www3.epa.gov/climatechange/science/future.html#sealev...
[2] https://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/unfccc/cop19/3_gregory13sbsta.pdf
The thing that has people worried is that the mass losses from glaciers are large, not well-accounted for, and they could accelerate. (The sea level rise from volume increases due to temperature rise of the oceans are much smaller and much easier to account for.)
Looking carefully at the IPCC summary (your [2]), it seems that 1m is the current top of the likely range for rise by 2100, even including possible loss of Greenland and the Antarctic glaciers.
Here's a sample of the reactions to a recent, high-profile paper that put forward a 3m rise by 2100: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2015/07/150721-james-hans...
I remember having the same general thought when I was in Miami beach...
As to rain, it usually will rain daily during wet season, yet "flooding" occurs maybe a dozen times over the year when storms have significant rainfall, and this is nothing new and so in my opinion not related to sea level rise. My opinion is "flooding" from rain is isolated to places with bad drainage, for example its more likely to happen miles inland in a place like Kendall more so than Brickell which is right on the Bay, or even more locally where one street may have flooding but the very next one doesn't.
The atmosphere is like any other system of waves -- increase the energy in the system, and you increase the amplitude (the frequency being largely limited by the shape/harmonics of the Earth). So, big surprise that we'll expect more extreme events with climate change. Warm ocean water is the fuel for tropical cyclones, so risk in these low-lying areas can only get worse.
