Original subtitles

Miami...

Or as I like to call it, Shangri-La.

Where old people come to retire,

and young people come to stay young.

It's one of America's most vital cities.

Always wondered what it'd be like to get a place down here.

Maybe a swanky pad like this one?

It's got all the amenities:

custom gourmet kitchen,

the soaking tub,

and of course, unobstructed views of the water.

And this is the guy who would sell it to me.

So, gorgeous property.

-A very nice home. -This is it. This is the life.

Yeah. We are on the Venetian Islands now.

Basically, it separates Miami Beach from downtown Miami.

Unbelievable. And this is like the most desired...

-neighborhood-ish, right? -This is amazing. Exactly.

And, in fact, are property values going up?

The values are going up like crazy.

I mean, it's amazing what you see five years ago, today,

the increases in prices are incredible.

Miami is beautiful. You have the weather...

It's really like the place to be.

Do people talk about climate change and the rising sea levels?

Is that a concern of any of your clients?

For my clients and other friends in the industry, it's not a concern.

Because it's paradise, it's tropical, it's gorgeous.

And yet, it is, according to the scientists,

one of the most vulnerable to climate change.

Sea rises a couple of feet, this whole thing gets...

But no one... It's just like, "Yeah, nah, whatevs."

When I was a kid, sea level rise wasn't even a thing.

Back then, oceans were scary because of pirates,

sharks, and violent storms.

I was on the phone with my father during Hurricane Katrina

when the line went dead.

I was amazed I ever saw him again.

It's my brother standing on his house.

Everything he ever had was gone.

That's crazy.

We used to kick the soccer ball right here.

This is my family's neighborhood.

The neighborhood I loved.

Everyone who stayed went into their attics.

But the problem is the water kept going,

and there was no way for them to ever get out.

There were body bags all along the road.

Ever since Katrina,

it seems to me that storms are coming faster and more furiously.

To find out whether this is all just in my head,

I'm here in the Bahamas, with my wife Nikki,

about to rendezvous with a team of top scientists

on that boat down there.

Their mission:

to understand what effect human-caused climate change

will have on the storms of the future.

Who wouldn't want to live in Miami?

It's beautiful!

But is sea level rise something people here have to worry about?

To find out, I've arranged to meet with a scientist named Keren Bolter.

She lives in south Florida, and says she'll give me the low down.

Today, she's introducing me

to two top climate scientists in Florida,

Ben Kirtman and Harold Wanless.

So what are we looking at here?

So, here we go. This is what it looks like in 2030.

Everything in red is going to be under water.

-Whoa. -In 15 years,

during the extreme tide in October,

every high tide is going to be this high.

That's just 15 years from now. Now, let's look at 2060.

High tide in October,

areas that will be below sea level.

It's uninhabitable.

I can't believe what I'm looking at.

Whole parts of Miami, gone?

I had no idea it could be this bad.

And so soon.

And you know a hurricane in October

is not unheard of, that happens here.

So, now you have sea level rise and storm surge,

think about how much flooding they'll suffer during a major event.

If a storm surge hit in 2060,

this is what's vulnerable once the sea level's that high.

And you're looking at less than 50 years in the future.

I was in a movie called Waterworld.

And it got really bad reviews.

But now we can see that we were right.

Can you show me on the map

what the worst-case scenario is for, say, 2100?

The high projections for 2100 are 6.6 feet.

When the tide is highest,

everything in red will be under water.

-Whoa. -Yeah. The entire county.

There's no safe place.

There's no more Miami.

The port facility is compromised,

the airport's compromised.

No fresh water resources.

Also, just because there's places that are above water,

if there's no roads going to the place,

it's essentially cut off from civilization.

And that's what we're telling communities to plan for.

We're not just looking at South Florida.

This is a proxy for all the coastal areas of the world,

the Mumbai's, the Shanghai's.

-Yeah. -The Atlantic cities.

There's gonna be, like, massive migrations of humanity

moving to different parts of the world

just to survive, right? We're talkin'...

It's going to happen in the coming centuries,

because all of this carbon that we put into the atmosphere,

it hasn't even started to make its impact.

There's such a time lag.

The big urgency is that every year we don't do anything,

we're warming the ocean more.

And it's that heat that's accelerating melting of ice.

And that's the scary part.

We need to start thinking about how we build and plan,

not for the next five years, but for the next hundred years.

I really had no idea that all the carbon dioxide we've emitted

will continue to do damage for decades raising the seas,

all around the world.

What are the millions of people who live on the coasts

supposed to do?

Just 40 miles from Miami,

Nikki and I are about to embark on a week-long science expedition.

Hi!

As scary as hurricanes are to me,

I've got to admit I'm excited to be on this ship, The Alucia,

a state-of-the-art research vessel.

-Jeff. Nice to meet you. -Such a pleasure, man. Truly.

Do you want to see the ship?

Our host for the voyage is Jeff Donnelly.

He's a top geologist with the famed Woods Hole

Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts.

These are the submarines. We'll be going down in these.

-There's Al in there. -Hey, Al. This is Nikki.

Hey, guys.

We're going down in a submarine?

Okay.

I'm dying to know more about this mission,

and to see if there really is a connection

between a warming planet and more violent storms.

-Here's the bridge. -Okay.

-There's Captain Frank over there. -Hi, Frank.

Thanks for driving us.

Many of the hurricanes that are impacting the US

are sort of tracking here through the Bahamas and past Cuba.

This is Cay Sal Bank here. This is where we're headed.

And we're in this area, specifically, because...?

It's a submerged bank off the Florida coast.

It has some really deep holes in it, called "blue holes."

These blue holes accumulate sediment through time

that actually provides a record of past hurricanes.

This marine sediment is getting washed in, day in and out,

and just accumulating in this beautiful pile.

That's just perfectly collecting sediment over time?

So it's really well positioned to be sort of our weather station,

monitoring the hurricanes that have impacted North America,

going back hundreds of years, and even millennia.

It's fascinating to learn that these underwater caves,

called blue holes,

actually contain the history of hurricanes.

To reveal that history,

Jeff explains that he drills long tubes into the sea floor.

I'm gonna lift it up, you're gonna put a cap on it. Fast as you can.

Pulling up layers of mud.

Let's get it up on the deck.

Revealing the core sample inside.

It's those strata that hold ancient clues about our future.

Hurricanes are often related to sea surface temperature.

So, one concern is that with the planet warming so much,

we might see hurricanes getting much more intense.

An increase in frequency, or in intensity? Or both?

We're wrestling with that.

It's those, you know, Cat 3, Cat 4, Cat 5 hurricanes

that our computer models suggest

will actually increase with global warming.

So, the data that you could be collecting here

could tell us that we are heading

into a new age of superstorms, basically?

We have a climate experiment that's run over millennia

telling us when you get warm sea temperatures,

you should get many more, very intense hurricanes.

-"Nature's Climate Experiment." -That's right.

-So, the short answer is, "Yes." -Yeah.

Wow. That's Cuba.

The blue hole we're gonna look at is right there.

Has anyone ever done this work before?

No, I mean, this is really hard to do.

We're in the middle of the ocean, going into a quite shallow area,

so you can't get a really large oceanographic ship in here.

But yet, when you get there, you have to core down 300 feet,

so you need some significant piece of equipment to do that.

It's a really challenging place to work.

If the weather doesn't cooperate,

if the equipment breaks, somebody gets hurt,

it's possible we could walk away with nothing.

I can't believe I'm on this groundbreaking mission

to explore a blue hole.

We're going to look into the past

to discover the future of hurricanes that could someday make landfall.

As I ponder Miami's future,

I can't help but notice how normal everyone's acting.

Don't they realize the city's on the verge of a major crisis?

Already streets are flooding during some high tides,

salt water bubbling up from drains and making things miserable.

But it seems that sea level rise isn't a priority

for some of Florida's top politicians,

like second-term governor, Rick Scott.

Officials in Florida's Department of Environmental Protection

were banned from using the words "climate change"

in official reports and communications.

Scott's office denied there was a policy.

But state workers seemed to be dancing around

the terms at a hearing.

Future versions of our mitigation plan

will be required to have language discussing that issue.

What issue is that?

The issue you mentioned earlier...

Thank you so much.

So, are there any politicians here who are taking things seriously?

Turns out there's one right here in Miami Beach.

-Mayor Philip Levine. -Nice to see you too.

We're all fighting against sea level rise.

We believe that if we organize together,

hopefully our voice will be much louder.

If there is a politician who can help save Miami,

I gotta meet him.

Mayor Levine? Good to meet you.

Welcome to Miami Beach.

So, Mayor, what kind of things are you doing

to prepare for what's, you know, what's coming and what's happening?

Basically, the sea level goes up,

the bay goes up.

And the water comes out of our drains onto our streets.

So what we did right away

is we started putting in massive pumps,

under the ground, to push the water back out to where it came.

We also began raising the roads.

For example, the area you're in right now,

you see how low we are.

We've actually raised the street higher.

Two years ago.

-That's what this is? -Exactly.

But what about this when it floods? This is not higher.

There are drains around us where the water will go into.

So, we're lower. There's drains here.

That's a higher street. This will not flood.

We believe it's a good 40/50-year solution.

-You see this... -We're not raising them for today.

-It's a 50-year solution? -Absolutely.

But the forecast for Miami seemed to be pretty grim.

They're talking about, you know, the end of this century,

most of Miami being under water.

I don't necessarily agree with those forecasts.

I believe in climate change, and I believe it's human-made.

And I believe that the seas are rising.

I'm not sure I believe

in the very aggressive forecasts put out there.

Okay, but at this current pace of sea level rise,

Miami will be submerged unless something drastic is done.

Yes. I'm optimistic, I believe we can get it done.

You know, one of our biggest obstacles, Jack,

is that we have a state with a governor and a cabinet

that don't believe in sea level rise,

and they've turned a blind eye.

And they say, "We don't believe it, we don't see a sense of urgency."

And we're trying to convince the governor,

"Forget about politics, understand that your streets are flooding.

You have coastal cities that need help."

Mayor Levine may only be planning a few decades out,

but at least he's trying.

What about that governor, Rick Scott?

Hi, this is Jack Black calling for Governor Scott.

My Hollywood cred doesn't get me through.

Thank you, I appreciate it.

The best I can do is leave my number.

Okay, mission not accomplished.

As we make our way

toward the mysterious blue hole off the coast of Cuba,

I learn there really is reason to fear more storms like Katrina.

Baby, listen to this.

"In a 2012 study, a major finding was that Katrina-size surges

have been twice as frequent in warm years

compared with cold years."

It's crazy. That's what they're talking about.

"In a 2013 paper, Grinsted and his colleagues estimate..."

Whoa! "...a doubling of Katrina magnitude events

associated with the warming over the 20th century."

-Just the 20th century. It's crazy. -The 20th century.

"The study concludes we have probably crossed the threshold

where Katrina magnitude hurricane surges

are more likely caused by global warming than not."

In the early daylight hour of the next morning,

day three on the magnificent ship, Alucia,

we're approaching our destination: the blue hole.

I'm dying to see this underwater cave

Jeff and his team have been talking so much about.

Let's do this.

It's a shallow water alarm sort of telling us it's too shallow.

Six under the keel.

Six meters underneath the keel.

-We're okay. -For the moment.

Yeah, okay, I might come hard left and see if we can run across it.

Roger.

All right, this is the wall right here.

You can see the blue hole coming in there now.

-Okay. -Pretty cool.

Dr. Donnelly, there's your blue hole, man.

Would it really be possible to raise up the entire city of Miami

to save it from big storms and sea level rise,

the way Mayor Levine wants to on Miami Beach?

I decide to talk to another mayor, Phil Stoddard, of South Miami,

to get his take.

Mr. Mayor, I just came from a lunch with Mayor Levine.

And his solution seems to be,

we'll just lift the city up. We're going to lift up the streets.

His plan will work for a while,

and it will work on Miami Beach,

because Miami Beach has a very high income level per square mile.

If you go out to West Miami-Dade County,

the land does not generate enough income

to do the kind of projects Levine talks about.

There's just not enough money.

But is it even a realistic goal to say,

"Let's lift the whole city up three feet"?

It seems insane to me.

-We don't have that much rock. -Right.

So, if you elevate the roads,

your driveways go whoop like this, so you've got to elevate those.

You've got to elevate sidewalks.

Might want to put dirt in between, so people don't fall off.

And then, your house is down in a hole,

so you've got to start elevating the houses and schools.

A couple of trillion dollars later.

And the hospitals, and everything.

I don't think we can afford it.

What about further projections?

What do you see Miami looking like in a hundred years?

-Waterworld. -Waterworld?

-Yeah. -It's funny you mention that.

I actually had a small role, you wouldn't have recognized me.

I was covered in grease.

But I still think we were on to something there, some real...

-Yeah, I loved that sailboat he had. -Sorry to get off topic.

What about sea walls, the solution of seawalls? Is it...?

The problem for Miami

is that we sit on top of a bed of porous limestone.

And you know what's going to kill us? The shrimp.

There's these prehistoric shrimp

that dug in the sediments and made holes underneath us.

The whole city is built

on a foundation of Swiss cheese, basically?

A rocky version of Swiss cheese. Want to see a piece?

-Yeah. -I've got some in the yard.

Yeah, I've got some of it.

So, Jack, this is the reason we can't keep the water out.

This is Miami formation limestone.

The water goes right through it.

So this is the foundation that Miami is built on.

If you build a wall up on top of that to keep the water out,

the water goes through the holes, comes from underneath you.

So, Mayor Levine says, "Don't listen to the doomsayers.

Miami's here to stay." What do you think?

This place is gonna be underwater.

We have enough heat in the atmosphere right now,

enough heat in the oceans, enough carbon dioxide.

Eventually Miami will be underwater, it's just a matter of when?

You got it. The sea level is gonna rise.

And Miami won't be here when it rises.

We've arrived at the blue hole

just 50 nautical miles off the coast of Cuba.

-Approaching the drop-off. -Roger that.

Today, we go down inside it.

Here we go, start lifting off. And we're off.

Even though Jeff has cored many blue holes before...

This is amazing!

...he's never been to the bottom, because they're too deep to dive.

So this will be a first for both of us.

It's a rocky little bastard.

We'll go ahead, release.

-Okay, you can release. -Here we go.

Okay, bridge lines are free. You are clear to maneuver.

SOSO Nadir. Comm's okay, no leaks.

Roger that. Nadir, and so, you are clear to dunk when ready.

SOSO Nadir. Venting now, over.

Roger, Nadir venting now. Have a good dive.

-Okay, here we go, guys. -Yeah!

I'd say that's perfection.

I love hearing that that's perfection!

The way to the hole is ahead, right off of our stern.

Depth 6-0 meters,

altitude 1-7 meters.

They're seeing the bottom at about 75 meters, about 210 feet,

so they are basically descending this wall.

We are literally sinking into this giant blue hole.

This is so beautiful.

Nadir, Nadir, control my depth at 7 meters.

-Vents are secure. -Coming up on the wall.

Confirm, descending to 2-0 meters on the wall.

What is a blue hole? What is it that we're in right now?

A blue hole is basically a cave

that forms in a carbonate platform or limestone.

The sea level has risen about 350 feet since the last ice age.

It drowns it. So you end up with a hole in the ocean floor.

And that hole is just collecting sediments.

You can see it around us falling through the water column.

All that sand... Covers everything and blankets it.

It's similar to a tree ring, putting on a new layer every year.

It accumulates at the bottom.

When a hurricane strikes,

it whips up really big particles,

off the banktop, throws that in the hole,

and that's our record of the passage of that particular hurricane.

So, by taking the sediment core,

we can do a reconstruction of those hurricane events.

It's a perfect time capsule.

That time capsule basically starts

when the sea floods this, probably about 8,000 years ago.

So we should have 8000 years' worth of sediment accumulating.

We won't be able to collect that much.

We might get a few thousand years.

Roger that. Coming down to the bottom...

Almost. I don't think anyone's seen what we're seeing right now.

What's really exciting is being able to lay eyes

on something that no human has ever seen.

It's amazing.

Control, Control, this is Nadir.

Off-bottom depth is 7-5 meters. Ascending, over.

Thank you, Captain. Great maneuvering, man.

That was a great scout.

Now comes the hard part.

Jeff and his team will try to drive these aluminum tubes

deep into the ocean floor.

The farther they go down, the more data they'll collect.

But the more ambitious they are, the more often things can go wrong.

The tubes can bend or even break.

Okay, starting to launch now, cap.

-Launch away. -Copy, launching.

-Keep on going... -Everybody's happy?

All right, start her up!

Nice and easy!

We're not in the bottom, we're lyin' on the bottom.

All right, stop it!

I lost her at the bottom.

Coming up on the cable.

Work out those muscles.

The bottom of the core at the surface.

She's got an angle there at the end.

Hopefully, at depth, she's already going.

All right, stay.

As so often happens, the core has broken.

Now it's empty, right?

And then it fell off while we were securing it, yeah.

All the team can do is try again.

Let's get another one going.

But if anything more goes wrong, a big-time mission like this one

could all be for nothing.

I can't stop thinking of all the neighborhoods

away from the glamour of Miami Beach,

on the mainland,

that are going to be impacted by the rising oceans

coming up through the porous limestone.

Of the nearly three million people who live in the Miami area,

more than half are lower-income or immigrant.

What are they going to do?

I arrange a meeting with Nicole Hernandez Hammer,

a scientist who left academia to work as a climate activist here.

So great to meet you.

What a gorgeous summer day, in the middle of December.

Yup, and we still have a little bit of flooding.

Oh, yeah!

Now, what's happening here? Is this water...?

-This is high tide. -This is just high tide?

Yeah, and this is actually a foot less than last month.

Crazy, 'cause I thought this was like left over from rain.

-No, this is today. And no rain. -Wow.

It's really tough, because I think, sometimes,

people see the flooding and think maybe a water main broke,

or it's just bad infrastructure.

They're not making the connection between the climate change

and what's happening here.

Just to be clear, we're far away from the beach right now.

-We're on the mainland. -Miles away from the beach,

and yet, water comes all the way here

through the floor, basically?

Through the limestone, yeah.

And it carries with it whatever is sitting on the surface

and slightly underground, like septic tanks.

-Yikes. -Or auto shops,

and whatever they've got coming out, and it collects.

It's like biohazard stuff. It can be toxic.

It's got bacterias, and people don't know it.

They're walking around in the water, their kids splashing in the water.

-It's a public health concern. -Damn.

We're talking about people that have lived here their whole lives,

and it's probably tough for them to wrap their head around that.

I think there's a certain degree of denial.

I think people feel, like,

you know, the elected officials

or state agencies are going to figure it out.

"It can't be that Miami is gonna be underwater."

Is the governor hearing your voice? Is there movement in the...?

He heard it, but he's pretending he didn't hear it.

Some colleagues had a meeting with him.

And he listened. And then they left, and then that was it.

-And nothing changed. -Yeah.

So, you can see the writing on the wall.

What do you tell people in the community?

Essentially, it's telling people that what we have is going away

and they could lose everything.

And I'd like to introduce you to some people that I talk to.

How's it going?

-Jason. How are you doing? -Nice to meet you.

So, Nicole was telling me that sometimes the septic tanks

can mix with the groundwater,

and it can be like dangerous water. Has that ever been a problem?

We're like two blocks down,

and it's really bad, it gets flooded bad. And it stinks.

I don't know if that's like gases or something,

and then, it just smells really, like, bad.

You tell the kids, "No splashing there."

-No. -Do you guys get worried?

Because the level of the ocean is just gonna keep on rising,

and it's only like one foot away from water coming into your house.

Are people concerned about Miami and, like, the future?

Yeah, it'll devalue the home eventually.

People are going to come by and see it,

and there's no interest in buying a property like that.

Is this really our future?

One where, eventually, millions of Americans

will have to move away from the coast?

If that happens, where are they all going to go?

Who's going to decide where they go,

and who is going to pay for it all?

Hello. Hi, yes, it's Jack Black calling again.

Just wanted to talk to Governor Scott.

I decide to call Governor Rick Scott one more time,

the one who apparently won't listen to his mayors. Or his scientists.

It's regarding climate change.

Okay, but what if...? What if I say, I just want to talk about, like...

weather difference?

Does that make a difference?

Again I don't get through.

All right.

He knows where to find me, if he wants to call me.

But I'm not gonna hold my breath. Thank you.

This is insane to me.

Miami's going under,

but so many people are acting like nothing is wrong.

I am in awe at the number of people involved on this mission

and the passion that they bring to the task.

They seem tireless too.

Go real slow and steady too for the last half of it, okay?

Working from morning to night, all in the name of climate science.

And even though they've come up empty so far,

the team is determined to get enough core samples

to make the trip to this blue hole worth the cost.

All right, Chris, up easy!

-You happy now? -I will be when we land this.

Okay, so how do we make that happen?

We're just about to.

If this lands on deck, we will have collected

the longest core ever collected from a blue hole on Earth.

They're laughing. That must be something good.

Oh, shit! Don't stop!

It came up by a fingernail.

-We don't want to lose any. -No.

All right, everybody ready? One, two, three.

Jeff will analyze this core back at Woods Hole

to see when hurricanes occurred and how powerful they were.

He'll also study how warm the sea surface temperature was.

That's where Pete Van Hengstum comes in.

What's up, Pete?

Pete's a micropaleontologist, and a key part of this team.

Have a look, it's all set up.

Wow. It's like a whole little world in there.

Look at these on the bigger screen.

Essentially, what you're looking at are millions of tiny shells

that are being deposited in these blue holes.

This is from the core drilling you did?

Absolutely. These are the microfossils

that were at the very bottom of that core.

I'm still not completely understanding

the climate connection.

These organisms make their shells out of mineral calcium carbonate.

And when you form those shells,

the chemistry of the shell is linked to the temperature

of when that animal was living.

How do you check the temperature?

We can measure the ratio of the heavy to light oxygen atoms

inside of these shells.

And the relationship of that ratio

is controlled by the ocean's temperature.

We still need to radiocarbon date

leaves that are preserved inside the cores

to know how old the different sediment layers are.

Now I'm beginning to see the full picture.

By analyzing the fossils,

as well as the mud they pull up from the sea bottom,

these scientists can tell not just when a hurricane occurred,

but how warm the water was at the time.

So, imagine if going back through time

for 1,000 or 2,000 years, every single year,

we knew how many hurricanes made landfall

and what the temperature was like.

"Were there more hurricanes? Was the ocean warmer?"

We're going to be able to learn so much about climate,

how the environment in those holes changed through time.

-That's just really exciting. -So cool.

No, I mean, it's amazing.

Well, we've got the mud.

And we've got the fossils.

Now it's just a matter

of what Jeff Donnelly is going to find out

in his lab back in Massachusetts.

Everywhere I go, I see construction cranes

and new buildings going up.

With sea levels rising, surely the developers in Miami

are aware of the risk.

Or are they thinking maybe people

can just swim to the kitchen for breakfast?

I asked an architect, Reinaldo Borges,

and an insurance expert, Alex Kaplan, to meet.

-Insurance mogul? -Something like that.

-Architect extraordinaire? -Yes, sir.

Great to meet you. I'm Jack Black, actor supreme. Let's have a seat.

Currently, how many new buildings are being built in Miami?

Right now, we have over 300 permits

for significant high-rise/mid-rise construction.

There's no slowing down in sight.

We have over 20 billion dollars of new buildings going up.

Unbelievable.

None have been thought through in terms of permanent flooding.

So no one seems to be panicked about,

"Hey, Miami is going to be one of the most severely hit places

with regard to climate change."

No, building increases.

The city builders are sort of saying,

"We're experiencing construction here that is unprecedented,

with a lot of cash coming to Miami.

Everybody's happy, and it's fantastic."

Okay, now I get it.

Real estate developers aren't concerned about the future.

They're cashing in today while the getting is good.

You know, in Florida alone,

you've got 544 billion dollars' worth of property

that lives within six feet of the high tide line.

It's right on the front line for sea level rise.

Alex's company, Swiss Re, is an international insurance giant.

They insure the insurance companies. Alex understands risk.

The problem is, overwhelmingly,

people, individuals, corporations and governments

underestimate what they are exposed to.

The expectation is, "The government will solve our problems,

so why should I deal with it today?"

But flood insurance in the US doesn't cover these things.

Sea level rise over time, that's on the owner.

Nobody else is paying for that.

At what point do you think people go,

"Wait, it's not worth it anymore"?

These residential buildings

get transferred from the developer into an association.

If later the insurance company says, "We cannot insure your building,"

because of risk assessment,

suddenly they have a building that doesn't have insurance.

It's really scary to think South Florida will not be insurable.

So many people own homes. They have 30-year mortgages on them.

You know, in thinking about how a lot of these towers are financed,

it's entirely unsustainable.

I get that no one wants this party to end.

But when the insurance companies decide the risk is too high,

and the banks stop giving mortgages,

this whole house of cards is going to collapse, right?

I can't help wondering what will happen

to everyone who lives here

when all this property isn't worth anything.

It's been months since I've seen Jeff Donnelly and his team.

I'm a little anxious as I arrive at their lab at Woods Hole,

here on Cape Cod.

I'm wondering, am I about to learn the worst

about the future of Atlantic hurricanes?

This is one of the cores we took on the cruise.

We split it open for you, so you can have a look at it.

Wow.

And so, as you march down this core, you're marching back through time.

This entire core goes back a little over 1,000 years.

That's incredible.

The base of this section is probably about 500 years ago.

Europeans hadn't settled North America

when these sediments were deposited.

So, Columbus doesn't arrive until the upper end of this section.

If we date a whole series of those, we can build a chronology of events.

So, question:

you have consistency in the core,

and then you have these inconsistent patterns.

These are events, right?

Right. So, these really coarse intervals here

are deposited during a hurricane.

-That's a hurricane? -That's right.

You go down a number of years, and it's pretty quiet.

But then, all of a sudden, you get boom, boom, boom.

One, two, three events within, say, ten years.

-That's right. -This is incredible.

So, we got one here, at the base of this core... I can show you.

This is one of the bigger event beds we have in this particular core.

Here you got a coarse debris,

and there's probably 10 or 15 centimeters of it.

Something that large is probably a Category 4 or 5 hurricane.

-This is like a Katrina. -It could even be more intense.

Hurricane after hurricane after hurricane.

There was a lot of activity. Why?

Well, this particular interval

is one in which sea surface temperatures were pretty warm

along the Eastern seaboard of the US.

And those warm sea surface temperatures

actually caused much more hurricane activity.

This shows that what the climate models are saying is really right.

Hurricanes are really sensitive to sea surface temperature,

and when you warm up that temperature even a little,

you start getting more intense hurricanes.

-Is that where we're headed? -Well, that's the worry.

There's this natural variability in the oceans and the climate system

that sometimes it was warmer, and sometimes, colder.

But we've been warming up the sea surface temperatures

with greenhouse gas emissions.

The planet should be cooling right now, and it isn't.

It's warming rapidly.

We shot past the warmest period in, basically, the last 450 years.

So by virtue of us heating the temperatures of the water,

we're already warmer than this was,

when we have this super-violent, very, very active storms.

That's right. Right.

Then we look more closely at one of these storms of the past

to see what could be coming our way.

This 1821 storm we actually know quite a bit about.

We have a really fast moving Category 3 hurricane

going up the Eastern seaboard, over New Jersey and New York.

That had to have been destructive.

Those sort of 1821 kind of storms that we're seeing in the cores,

really big, they're really intense storms.

Sandy, for example, we barely see any deposits.

So why was there so much damage from Sandy,

even though it was a minimal hurricane?

And it turns out, you know, we're the problem.

This is the New Jersey shoreline when the 1821 hurricane hit.

We didn't build anything on it.

There are fishing shacks, and that's about it.

-Right. -This is that same shoreline today.

We've basically built Atlantic City, this urban area,

on top of this barrier island.

And there's all this permanent infrastructure,

whether it be hotels...

-Port facilities, gas terminals. -Homes, all of this.

All that sits vulnerable to these storms.

Imagine you're watching this big Category 4 hurricane

spinning off of North Carolina.

Eight, twelve hours, you'll have to make some critical decisions

about how to get people out of harm's way

across this really heavily populated area.

-That's literally an impossibility. -Right.

Katrina, we had days, and we still did a horrible job.

Indeed.

So that's what's really scary about these storms.

We put ourselves in harm's way.

In this harm's way.

And as these waters get warmer, storms will become more frequent.

Yeah. It's only a matter of time.

The more I learn about Miami's fate,

the less I'm able to wrap my head around it.

Are we going to have to someday rename it "the lost city of Miami"?

It's only a matter of time before another major storm hits.

But it's been a decade and they've been lucky,

so maybe that's part of the denial here?

It's all making me feel a little crazy.

I'm imagining that if I lived here in Miami,

what would I do?

What do you think you'd do?

What we know is coming is sea level rise.

Three feet, six feet, twelve feet.

What is it that keeps me

from really believing

or wrapping my head around these facts?

Here's your premise that's wrong.

You are thinking that our brains are only rational. And they're not.

Our brains are wired, in part, to deny unpleasant emotions.

There is a part of our brain which is highly rational,

analyzes data, takes in information,

and then there's the emotional part of the brain.

The emotional part of the brain is extremely powerful.

And it feels more comfortable just to...

just to shut down the scientific part of my brain

and just enjoy the right now, just do nothing.

You are not alone.

I have dubbed the condition, pre-traumatic stress disorder.

I am hearing what the scientists are saying in my mind,

playing it like a tape all the time.

-I do. -Now,

was there a specific incident

that heightened this sense of vulnerability

and connected it with climate?

I remember my parents fighting when I was a little boy,

and I was so scared of their anger towards each other,

I ran into a room with my nanny.

Okay, that has nothing to do with climate change.

-Oh, but... -That's just what came up.

I don't know why. That sense of...

-Well, try to think. -...of fear and danger.

-And instability. -Yes. Right.

It's just so unfathomable, the idea of change.

So, there's the tensions in that space.

While you're trying to find a peaceful resolution,

you just kind of don't do anything.

Do you think those are coconuts up there?

What do you think they are?

It's really hard for me to live with the fact

that more storms like Katrina are headed our way.

I wonder how Jeff and his team deal with it.

You guys seem to be the holders of this knowledge,

really specific to sort of our survival,

that not a lot of people know.

-How does that make you feel? -I get frustrated.

That means I'm not doing a good enough job

getting what we know out there.

It's always a challenge,

and we're good at talking to each other about it.

But translating it into a language that everybody understands

is much more difficult.

From early in my career, I was like, "As soon as New Orleans gets hit,

society'll get the message."

Katrina happens, and I thought, "Here it is."

And nothing happened.

"If New Orleans didn't work,

the next time New York's hit, we'll get it."

Yeah, East Coast gets pummeled.

Sandy hits, first thing we do is rebuild the Jersey Shore.

We just don't get it. We don't take that long view.

That's what keeps you up at night,

'cause you know you've got tens of millions of people in harm's way

and don't know where the next one will hit.

Isn't it frustrating, the lack of political will

that we have in the United States of America

to address this?

Absolutely. It's the most frustrating part of my life.

-All of it, right? -We're impartial observers, right?

Scientists always come into it very skeptical.

We're the most skeptical people on the planet.

We try to understand how the Earth's system works

and we figure things out,

and you put that message out and it becomes politicized, right?

People think, "You're trying to get more federal money, get prestige."

The reality is, if I could prove global warming wasn't real,

I'd be the most famous scientist on the planet.

I would have more funding than anybody.

There's lots of incentive for me to disprove climate change.

I can't do it though.

We're actually measuring it, we see it happening.

There's this war going on that has nothing to do with reality.

And after living through hurricanes and seeing Katrina,

and you guys living on the Eastern seaboard

in the most densely populated area,

aren't you as worried as I am?

I guess I don't believe in sitting around being afraid.

Rather... trying to make measures towards, like, changing it.

No, I understand, for sure.

And I don't feel doom and gloom, actually, at all.

I feel empowered 'cause I have that sense of wonder,

that sense of excitement.

We're innovative people.

Why can't we make good decisions about where we put infrastructure?

Cheers, guys. Thank you for all of your energy, your time,

the incredible amount of information I've learned today.

And Jeff, thank you for scaring the shit out of me.

My pleasure.

It's time for me to leave Miami,

but before I go,

scientist Keren Bolter thought I should meet one other person,

someone who might hold a key to the future:

17-year-old Delaney Reynolds.

Delaney, nice to meet you. I'm Jack.

Is it true? I've heard you are an incredible new force

in the fight against climate change?

Definitely, yes. I go around and I educate

as many people as possible,

but my main focus is kids,

'cause it's our generation that is gonna inherit this problem.

Like, all the kids that I talk to, they're like,

"Yes, this is a problem, and we need to fix it."

And they get so engaged. And they're like,

"I want to help. How can I help? What can we do?"

-That's so encouraging. -Really cool.

So, it seems like that's the trend with the youth movement,

-people accepting what's happening. -Kids get it.

Unlike so many adults in leadership positions.

Our governor has denied that climate change is real,

and our senator denies climate change is related to humans,

that we have not caused this.

And these are educated people.

I like to say that I live in a "State of Denial."

But not me, personally. The entire state of Florida.

Wow.

It's a world problem, right? It's not just a Miami problem.

Miami is number one in terms of vulnerability,

so what we see here is going to get the whole world to wake up.

For the survival of the species of human beings.

-Right? -Or will we become Waterworld?

Exactly, where it's just me and Kevin Costner...

On a little boat.

He was kind of like an Aquaman, he didn't need a boat.

Anyway, it's an amazing movie, if you get a chance.

Thank you so much for this. This is the highlight of my journey.

-Yes! -Finally, I've found some hope!

But it's been amazing talking to you.

Do you have any events coming up?

Yes, actually, part of a program called Breakthrough Miami.

I'm going to give a talk to about a hundred kids.

I'm Delaney, and I'm going to talk to you about my passion,

which is global warming and sea level rise.

The good news is there are things we can do.

Instead of using fossil fuels,

we have technology, like wind power and hydro power,

and electric cars, and solar power.

We just need to use it.

So, maybe Delaney and her generation will help us get out of this mess.

If we work together, we can do this.

I hope so. But they can't do it alone.

What do we want? Climate Justice! When do we want it? Now!

They need people like Keren and Nicole Hernandez Hammer.

And the rest of us.

We are unstoppable! Another world is possible!

Subtitles: Viviana Varandela plint.com