
When Will New York City Sink? - prostoalex
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2016/09/new-york-future-flooding-climate-change.html
======
fennecfoxen
> Jacob responded with a declaration that “our urban planning is irrelevant”
> and decried “shortsightedness of decision-making.” As an example, he cited
> the Hudson Yards development, just one of many waterfront megaprojects that
> the city has continued to enthusiastically promote, even after Sandy. He
> thinks that the government should instead rework its policies to relocate
> assets away from the water.

I think Jacob commits the opposite error, failing to discount the future. If
Manhattan real estate is worth "hundreds of billions of dollars" as an asset,
then it's worth tens of billions of dollars a year as a value-stream. If we're
talking something like Hurricane Sandy causing $33 billion in property damage
in New York, that's maybe _one year_ of the property market's value. That's a
quite small "weather tax" in the grand scheme of things, and if we're talking
a multi-century trend, well, it might come time to contemplate taking down the
skyscraper after a few hundred years, assuming the world hasn't perished in a
global thermonuclear war where Manhattan was the first target and assuming
that the city still prospers.

And remember that Manhattan is an island literally named "many hills". The
Financial District is low-lying but only because it's artificial land. Midtown
would be pretty solidly unaffected for a good little while.

~~~
yummyfajitas
Also, because we've lost the ability to build things in the US, we've
forgotten that low lying land is a solvable problem. In fact, we _already_
solved that problem in FiDi back before we gave up the social technology of
building things.

(Just look at our inability to build subways - something we were capable of
100 years ago and which desperately poor India and China do today.)

When push comes to shove, we can just pay the Dutch or Singaporeans a lot of
money to fix things for us.

~~~
fennecfoxen
> Also, because we've lost the ability to build things in the US

We have the ability. It's just that we've decided having a political process
with umpteen layers of environmental review, and having "prevailing wage+"
labor unions (who contribute to re-election campaigns) do the construction, is
more important than having nice things.

(+ the "prevailing wage", of course, being not the _average_ or _median_ wage,
but the highest wage out there.)

~~~
yummyfajitas
I think the concept of "social technology" is an important one.

[http://thefutureprimaeval.net/social-technology-and-
anarcho-...](http://thefutureprimaeval.net/social-technology-and-anarcho-
tyranny/)

While we have the machines and such needed to build a subway or build a
bridge, we no longer have the capacity to organize men in such an endeavor.

------
rdtsc
I got to see a small scale example of a city sinking when on vacation in some
islands off of North Carolina's shore. Some of those islands experience pretty
aggressive erosion. Streets simply appear and disappear during tides. Large
chunks of asphalt sticking out on the beach were a street used to be. Yet
people still live there (well vacation mostly) even though during high tide in
part they can fish from their porch.

It was strange to see because that is not usually how homes and property are
thought of. You buy, and hold on to it, and then sell it. There you buy and
then the ocean comes and takes it, and it's gone. Most of those places were
vacation homes, except for one where a little old lady was living permanently.
We gave her all our groceries we had before leaving, She seemed rather
grateful. I was wondering what her plans were for when erosion got to her
house. I imagine asking that would upset her, so I didn't.

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spodek
As usual, nothing about prevention.

> “One way or another, we get educated, and it’s much cheaper to listen once
> in a while to engineers and scientists.”

Global temperatures and the sea level are rising because of human behavior. If
we want different results, we have to behave differently. Engineers and
scientists know engineering and science but not so much leading people to
change their behavior.

It's easy to blame others: "Listen to me! If you don't you'll be sorry!" isn't
effective. Also, what fraction of engineers and scientists have, say, flown in
a plane or something similarly polluting in the past twelve months?

If you want to change behavior, you need to learn and practice leadership
skills and apply them to yourself as well as others. The science is clear.
More is nice and I agree we should keep pursuing it, but the best way to
decrease the effects of global warming is to change our behavior. (This is why
I moved from science to leadership.)

This article's writing about flood-proof architecture and other rearranging-
deck-chairs-on-the-Titanic behavior is necessary since it's too late to stop a
lot of change, but it's not too late to stop the change that we -- you and I
-- are contributing to now. As much as I wish past generations had changed
their behaviors so we wouldn't see these problems today, future generations
will wish we had changed our behavior today. Even if you don't have kids or
grandkids, I would think caring about human society in general and empathy and
compassion for future generations would be enough to focus on changing our
behavior proactively, not just reactively fixing problems others bequeathed to
us.

~~~
kijin
Call me a pessimist, but I don't think people will "change behavior" just
because somebody told them to. They won't change even if they begin to suffer
for it. Homes in parts of Southern Florida are already getting flooded on a
regular basis, even in clear weather. Are those homeowners burning less gas
because of it? Not really.

The high oil prices of the early 2010s did little to curb CO2 production
worldwide. People really don't want to change unless they're too poor to
afford fossil fuels, and making everyone poor is probably not a good solution,
either. Calling for abstinence doesn't work in energy consumption any more
than it does in sex education. To hope otherwise is wishful thinking.

More depressing is the fact that even if a lot of us drastically reduced our
carbon footprint right now, what's going to happen is going to happen anyway.
The amount of CO2 that's already in the atmosphere is enough to cause
catastrophe over the next few decades.

So I think the scientific and engineering prowess of the world would be better
spent trying to help people cope with the consequences of global warming than
trying to persuade them to change their habits. This Titanic is going down no
matter how hard you try to steer it away from that iceberg. Stop wasting time
trying to argue with people who think the ship is okay. Use that time to build
more lifeboats instead, because we barely have any time to do even that.

Use nuclear power to sequester massive amounts of CO2 someplace deep. Bulld
walls around major coastal cities. Relocate people in vulnerable areas to
higher ground. Start planting crops that tolerate heat better, and move
current crops further north -- there's gonna be a lot of newly arable land in
Canada and Russia. Use desalination and new agricultural techniques to fight
against drought. Put more research into malaria prevention, or better yet,
exterminate mosquitoes altogether. (A very large portion of projected loss of
life associated with global warming is due to 1. drought and 2. increased
mosquito activity.)

~~~
spodek
> _I don 't think people will "change behavior" just because somebody told
> them to_

Telling people what to do isn't leadership.

Confusing telling people what to do and other ineffective techniques with
_actually, effectively leading_ them is part of why we have been ineffective
at changing people's behavior, illustrating my point.

> _I think the scientific and engineering prowess of the world would be better
> spent trying to help people cope with the consequences of global warming
> than trying to persuade them to change their habits._

Black-and-white false dichotomies are another problem.

Believing since we've already done so much that the cause is lost is another.

A better life doesn't require releasing more CO2. In fact, it can often come
with less.

Effective leaders don't lose their cool in difficult times. Many shine then.
Instead of throwing in the towel on prevention, we can improve the future
relative to what it would be if we just say since we didn't succeed yet we
never will.

~~~
mlinksva
> I moved from science to leadership.

...

> Confusing telling people what to do and other ineffective techniques with
> actually, effectively leading them is part of why we have been ineffective
> at changing people's behavior, illustrating my point.

...

> Effective leaders don't lose their cool in difficult times. Many shine then.
> Instead of throwing in the towel on prevention, we can improve the future
> relative to what it would be if we just say since we didn't succeed yet we
> never will.

Please tell us what you are doing. Thanks in advance for whatever it is.

~~~
spodek
My profile has the link to my blog, but it's joshuaspodek.com. My bio is at
joshuaspodek.com/bio and my courses at joshuaspodek.com/courses.

~~~
mlinksva
I meant regarding climate change.

Searched your blog and best I could find is:

> I talk a lot about how I try to avoid flying because the pollution it causes
> hurts people.

Good for you! (I don't mean this sarcastically. Me too.)

I expected to find some things you've done that were _effective at changing
people's behavior_, given your comments above.

~~~
spodek
Changing my behavior to pollute less is easy and rewarding.

Changing others' behavior unrelated to polluting less is easy and rewarding.

Changing others' behavior to pollute less is hard and punishing. People get
angry and defensive about it. It's one of the main areas I'm trying to
develop.

(Other things I do myself include not owning a car, using subways or walking
nearly everywhere, not eating meat, avoiding packaged food, not using air
conditioning at least at home, and a few things like that, although after
doing them long enough, I generally do them because I prefer them to their
polluting alternatives. I like walking, eating fresh fruits and vegetables,
and so on).

~~~
mlinksva
I agree with and do all that also. I was expecting a bit more from you given
earlier:

> If you want to change behavior, you need to learn and practice leadership
> skills and apply them to yourself as well as others. The science is clear.
> More is nice and I agree we should keep pursuing it, but the best way to
> decrease the effects of global warming is to change our behavior. (This is
> why I moved from science to leadership.)

It sounds like you're asserting a "best way" but haven't come any closer than
the rest of us to figuring out how to implement, which makes assertion
questionable. But I hope that in trying to develop this area you do figure out
something new. Thanks in advance, again.

------
susan_hall
A lot of the articles that focus on rising oceans, and how they might effect
the USA, seem to confuse the general issue of global warming with the specific
issue of Florida. The situation in Florida might be hopeless, but why should
that effect how we talk about other USA urban centers? This article is an
example. It talks about New York as if the situation in New York is as
hopeless as the situation in Florida.

It's important to remember that much of the USA coastline can be defended the
same way that the Dutch defend their coastline: build a lot of dykes around
any urban area that is of high value. This strategy would work just fine for
much of the northern eastern coast of the USA.

The big exception is Florida. Because much of southern Florida sits on porous
limestone, it is useless to build dykes for Florida. The ocean would simply go
under the dyke. Figuring out how we might save Florida is a very difficult
issue, and it might be impossible.

But figuring out how to save New York is straight forward. The techniques that
the Dutch developed 500 years ago would work just fine for New York today.
Yes, it would be very expensive, but the payments can be stretched out over
100 years -- the projects can be implemented gradually, as the oceans rise
gradually. A staggering $1 trillion price tag is a trivial $10 billion a year,
over 100 years.

One could reasonably argue that we can't build a dyke for the whole east
coast. That is probably true. Some farmland will be sacrificed, some fishing
villages will be sacrificed. But can we build enough dykes to protect New
York? Obviously. If the Dutch could do this in the 1500s, why can't we do it
now?

~~~
Hondor
Promoting ways to protect ourselves from global warming instead of preventing
dilutes the popular rhetoric of "reduce emissions now or we're doomed!" If
there's enough publicity given to your kind of idea, then people might relax
and not worry enough. Without them worrying enough, they might not do anything
to prevent it. That kind of makes you wonder why try to prevent it anyway.

So to answer "why can't we do it now?" We can. We just don't want to talk
about it yet because sheeples.

------
realusername
Somehow related to this article, I recommend reading the interesting SF novel
"Depth" by Lev Ac Rosen ([https://www.amazon.co.uk/Depth-Lev-AC-Rosen-
ebook/dp/B00XGXA...](https://www.amazon.co.uk/Depth-Lev-AC-Rosen-
ebook/dp/B00XGXAJXG)).

The novel takes place in a future where New York is underwater and life is now
arranged on the skyscrapers that are high enough to step outside. The
isolation of the city, culturally and physically from the mainland affected a
lot the city and this aspect is highly detailed in the novel.

------
Hondor
Why any concern about private land being flooded? Landowners who are worries
about it can sell it now, before anyone else has cottoned on or if they want
to take a risk, they can keep it. It's an individual decision for each land
owner, and they're the ones who'll suffer the effects of their own personal
choice. Doesn't seem like something for anyone to really worry about.

~~~
haimez
You're right, no one should worry at all about the simple matter of private
land ownership in New York as the sea comes in.

It's a simple matter of private property ownership, right? No complicated
information economies need be considered, right? No state programs might seek
to intervene and disrupt the predictable linear progression of climate change,
right?

Anyone that's worried surely feels silly after reading your comment sir. Thank
you for your godly libertarian insights.

~~~
BuckRogers
Geez. He didn't really take it quite as far as your rebuttal, where you
proceeded to beat on the strawman you created. He said nothing about state
programs intervening and all of that. He's being downvoted quite unfairly for
his apparent political stance, but he did have a point.

While it would never work the way he suggested, it should more often. Instead,
we privatize profits and socialize losses. I think a lot of people are or
should be very sick of that trend by now. That was his point.

~~~
ZenoArrow
> "While it would never work the way he suggested, it should more often.
> Instead, we privatize profits and socialize losses. I think a lot of people
> are or should be very sick of that trend by now. That was his point."

Perhaps the rebuttal was as strong as it was because flooding of land does not
only affect landowners, it affects everyone who relies on that land (in one
way or another).

To give some examples:

* People could live on the land and not own it.

* People could work on the land and not own it.

* People could rely on the land as part of a major transportation route and not own it.

* People could rely on the land as part of the infrastructure that provides their food (e.g. a local supermarket, a farmer's market, a shipping dock, etc...) and not own it.

Therefore, to restrict the concern to landowners only is shortsighted. The
impacts are potentially far greater than just those felt by landowners.

~~~
Hondor
All those people have decades to see it coming too. They too can start
changing their dependence on it if they really think it'll affect them. Of
course most people don't think ahead nearly that far and won't actually look
for a new job until their employer literally goes underwater. But maybe we
just need a bit of public education about the predicted future to help those
people who aren't thinking about it themselves.

Still, my point was focused on landowners, which the article seems to be too.
Of course there are public services and so on that don't follow the free
market and they're a different issue. I just don't think we should be fearing
for the poor troubles that the owners of NY city property might suffer in
50-100 year's time. Those people are smart enough to evaluate risks themselves
and make their own decisions long before anything is forced on them.

~~~
ZenoArrow
I'm all for personal responsibility. However, I don't see the problem in the
government playing their part also. Whilst some people have enough privately
owned resources to work around the issues without too much fuss, there are
those who have more limited resources who are less able to do so.

Let's take the case of flooding in Manhattan. Let's imagine it hits the subway
first. There's a large number of people in NYC who live outside Manhattan but
work in Manhattan, travelling to work on the subway from the other NYC
boroughs. Whilst people may choose to move away from NYC over time, what about
those first few weeks after the flooding hits the subway? Other forms of
transport are already heavily used, so it's not like NYC could continue to
function smoothly by all former subway users using buses instead. In cases
like this, I'd want the government to intervene to help speed up the
implementation of flood defences and organise resources to help people
continue to live their lives until they were at a point where they had the
resources to move.

~~~
gwright
One of the reasons that governments have a hard time executing on large public
works projects are the costs.

Advocating for regulatory changes that reduce the cost of public works
projects (e.g. prevailing wage rules) would result in more of those projects
actually being completed.

~~~
ZenoArrow
Sorry, I'm not sure what you're advocating for. Are you looking for ways to
cut the pay of government contractors?

~~~
gwright
I'm suggesting that we should look for ways to complete projects with less $$.
That doesn't mean 'cutting pay', because that presumes you've already hired
someone at a high pay rate. How about don't hire them at that high rate to
start with?

[http://www.citylab.com/work/2014/04/7-reasons-us-
infrastruct...](http://www.citylab.com/work/2014/04/7-reasons-us-
infrastructure-projects-cost-way-more-they-should/8799/)

------
mgalka
I've seen a lot of projections like this, showing areas that will someday be
underwater when sea levels rise. But am I missing something? Why wouldn't
people just build barriers to keep the water out?

That may be prohibitively expensive for some places, but for Manhattan, I have
to imagine the cost would be small compared to the alternative.

~~~
tajen
The author addresses it in the essay. Flooding comes in the form of storms
every X years and super-high, rare tides, so barriers don't help. If storms
are unfrequent enough, people keep occupying the area. In Manhattan, they've
already thought about a barrier on the Hudson river, but it's prohibitively
expensive, covers a few percent of the risks only, and worse, gives people the
feeling that there's a solution. Plus they may solve the 2070 problem, but few
things solve the 2100 problem, and nothing solves the 2200 problem: When the
water is 30 feet higher, you just have to transform NYC into New Venice.

Which makes me think, a change of name into "New Venice" might help people
identify better with the new situation than every barrier.

~~~
gaadd33
Why is it possible for the Netherlands to prevent flooding and reclaim land
but not for New York City? Is there some inherent difference in geography?

~~~
blahi
Tokyo has solved this problem already.

Random article I found, perhaps not the best.

[http://newlaunches.com/archives/a-tour-of-tokyos-alien-
like-...](http://newlaunches.com/archives/a-tour-of-tokyos-alien-like-
underground-temple-drains.php)

------
IANAD
I saw this in AI:
[https://youtu.be/-isE7cFJTzU?t=1m36s](https://youtu.be/-isE7cFJTzU?t=1m36s)

~~~
based2
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_City_of_Shifting_Waters](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_City_of_Shifting_Waters)

------
f_allwein
interesting talk on the global implications of climate change and rising sea
levels:

[http://www.paragkhanna.com/home/2016/7/29/will-climate-
chang...](http://www.paragkhanna.com/home/2016/7/29/will-climate-change-force-
human-migration)

------
shmerl
Waterworld?

------
sbmassey
Some day a real rain will come and wash all the scum off the streets

