Is the world becoming uninsurable?

A significant portion of human structures are located close to the coast (seaborne trade having been a huge enabler of economic development for a few hundred years) and are exposed to flooding from rising sea levels, or built in valleys that are increasingly at risk from flooding due to far-above-long-term-historic-norms precipitation runoff (higher atmospheric temps lead to more energy in weather systems; see eg massive floods in Europe in the past few years).

Compared to the other challenges climate change poses those are fairly simple engineering problems. The Netherlands manage fine with large parts of the country below sea level.

and sea level rises are slow enough that countries with more high ground than The Netherlands can just not rebuild/maintain old houses in vulnerable positions and build higher (often just a bit further in) instead.

Some buildings buy the coast (especially in port cities) and have steep rises anyway.

There is a huge threat of cultural loss - e.g. Venice.

Said the American living in a log cabin in Montana. But if you're from, say, Tuvalu, or Venice, the 15cm rise of the last decades is definitely noticeable, and the trend has no reason to stop or decrease.

Agreed - Where I live now, 8 thousand years ago I could have walked all the way from the UK to Holland.

Even just 1000 years ago the coastline here went four miles out to sea compared to today.

In the last 20 year we've seen the erosion of the coastline here accelerating - regular news stories about people losing their houses to the sea: https://www.norfolk.gov.uk/article/56352/Challenges-of-coast...

It doesn't matter if you think it is human caused or not, the sea level is undeniably rising:

https://royalsociety.org/news-resources/projects/climate-cha....

A few critical ingredients being: no denialism about their vulnerability, strong social and economic commitment to reducing vulnerability, lack of reflexively blaming floods on illegal immigrants or trans people

The Netherlands has been planning for the impacts of sea-level rise for decades now. At least twenty years ago the government broached the idea (with TV commercials) that they were going to have to abandon some are areas to the sea.

it used to be reported that Venice is sinking into the water but now the climate nut jobs have flipped it to it’s actually because it’s rising. I guess it’s all relative

Sea level naturally varies (if we define it liberally). It's at the times of maximums - high tide plus storm surge - we notice, otherwise it's easy to miss.

But when those high tides plus storm surges hit, we really notice sea level rise.

It's difficult to not be sarcastic but let me try my best: Venice sinking is what happens when water is rising.

You’re ignoring things like the geological conditions in the Netherlands, they have very peaty soil which is fairly impermeable to water. Which makes the task of keep the sea back pretty easy, you just build a big wall.

But if you look in places like Florida, the ground conditions there are substantially more porous. If you try to keep the sea back there with a simple wall, it’ll just flow under the wall through the soil. You would have to dig all the way to bedrock and install some kind of impermeable barrier to prevent most of Florida from flooding due to sea level rise. Something that’s unbelievably cost prohibitive to do.

The Netherlands only exists below sea level because their ground conditions meant it was possible to pump out the country using technology available in the 1740s. If the ground conditions weren’t basically perfect for this kind of geo-engineering, the Netherlands simply wouldn’t exist as it does today.

You’re using an example that exists purely as a result of survivorship bias, as an argument that it’s practical to apply the same techniques or achieve the same outcomes anywhere else. Completely ignoring the fact that your example only exists because a unique set of geologic conditions made it possible, and those conditions are far from universal, and not in anyway correlated with places we humans would like to protect.

Eh, Venice is also sinking regardless of sea level rise. That’s what happens when you build a city on top of what is practically a swamp. No surprise that big heavy buildings put on top of loose, waterlogged soil are gonna slowly sink into that soil.

Karst Topography enters the room....

Also they don't blame the climate or weather on democrats there.

I forgot that one! The Dems controlling the weather. Big one!