Never Should Have Built it There -- New York
After four years of hearing, from commenters on the New Orleans disaster, that "they never should have built it there... they should just move it inland/upstream/away", comes this report on a conference suggesting the dire future that may await New York City if (or, as one expert puts it, "when") a hurricane generates serious storm surge.
The proposed solution: a set of barriers ringing the city to protect it from inundation. The proposed cost: billions of (supposedly federal) dollars. The alternative: there is none, because, says one of the designers of the proposed barriers:
"We're going to have to do something," Bowman said. "Or else you retreat, and that's inconceivable. How are you going to retreat from New York City?"
Well, the same way people do each summer: everybody to the Hamptons.
Here's a suggestion: for the sake of every city surrounded by water (much of Chicago, which I recently visited, actually sits nestled very tightly between a lake and a river), let's fix what the shoddily designed and constructed federal levees did to New Orleans first, and see if that works as a successful model. The Dutch have been doing this for hundreds of years, they may even have something to teach us. Even though they're -- ugh -- Europeans.
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Well I love Holland, Harry, but there's just a sliiiiiight difference here.
Without dikes there wouldn't *be* a Holland as we know it, they do what they do out of absolute necessity.
North America is not exactly in the same position.
We could go into the zillion other major differences between tiny, rich Holland and vast, ever-more-
The Duthch drained the fens, in England & built Dikes.
Rubbish. Billions maybe, but far less than what was spent after Katrina.
The title of this article is true, but misleading. No one in the 1600's - 1800's could have even conceived of the idea of global warming and rising sea levels. They simply didn't have the knowledge then.
We do need to consider what to do about our shoreline cities, both from an ecological and safety perspective. I agree that working with the Dutch (and any other folks with the knowledge) would be a wise move.
Nonsense. There's a village in The County of Norfolk, England, which was indundated in the middle ages.
Plus people in the 2100's will be laughing at the global warming/rising sea levels hysteria and wondering how so many people could have been so foolish.
No one but you is laughing.
The "solution" for New Orleans will never be higher, stronger walls against the sea. The problem with New Orleans is that it's sinking - and any rebuilding that's to be done should simply be higher. It's not a question of whether or not New Orleans will ever flood again. It's a question of do we have the commitment to rebuild it to withstand flooding. The best case scenario should really be, in a Katrina-like event (which is and was totally predictable) you evacuate the city, and two or three days later you simply come back, clean the silt off the streets and resume your lives. We cannot realistically elevate the city - but we can realistically elevate every structure below a certain elevation.
That is the effort that should be made.
Not so for NYC. Far too many skyscrapers with foundations down to bedrock - and it isn't sinking. So if sea levels rise and a large, churning category 5 swings up the East coast, sea walls and breakwaters are the only options. Evacuation isn't.
Do not worry about sea levels raising any time soon in higher latitudes ... it will start in equatorial waters, in poor countries mostly, and it is taking place already.
Well, that's a relief.
Right. Try adding extra water to just one end of a swimming pool or lake or ocean. How dumb does one have to be to buy this garbage? I thought that it was the Polar Ice melting that was going to cause the increase in sea levels? How will it be magically transported to the center of the ocean to purposefully attack the poor, equatorial islanders? Honestly! Think about it before you try to substitute bleeding heart liberal politics for pseudoscience. Bloody Hell!
Sea level rises everywhere when it rises. The reason that you know it's hitting the equatorial areas so hard right now is because there are PEOPLE there!
Ringing NYC with barriers to hold off a Storm Surge? hmmmm.....
those walls were probably high enough....
Hello China? Can we has some more money?
We should ask the banksters to pay for NYC sea barriers. They'd get the benefit and have already stolen the money.
We should ask the bottom 50% of tax payers to foot the bill; they hardly pay for anything (3.6% of the total take vs. 67% by the top 10%).
Are you suggesting, by any stretch of the imagination, that New Orleans is comparable in importance to New York City?
Actually, you'd be hard-pressed to show that Real America gives a hoot about either of those money pits.
You mean Raci5t America?
I think he means Redneck America. You know, the part that shouts so loudly about how it needs to keep its guns that it can't hear the sound of its house being foreclosed and who lack the education to know how it's being marginalized and essentially turned into a modern-day serf.
Of course, many Redneck Americans would probably be okay with being serfs...
You do understand, don't you, that nations need ports? And that the Port of New Orleans is the number-one port in the US? How do you think foreign goods get to the Midwest? It's not all trucks and trains.
And yeah, NYC, that money pit. Too bad it only pumps about a trillion dollars into the US economy each year.
Are you suggesting, by any stretch of the imagination, that the lives of New Orleanians any less important than New Yorkers?
The "Real America" is a concept that I am sure you came up with on your own to disguise the nonsense you have just made up. I am sure you are blissful..
Let's rebuild all the nation's necessary ports far away from water, where they'll be safer.
Hahahahahahaha!
I've often thought a submarine base in Beloit, Kansas would be a great idea - with tunnels coming from the Gulf, Southern California, Puget Sound, Chesapeake Bay and Lake Michigan. It would be a super public works project - lots of jobs for several decades.
Trivia tidbit: Beloit is the sound of a marble falling into a toilet bowl.
You make a very intelligent and cogent proposal, which just about guarantees that the federal government will never even consider it.
For what it's worth I've never heard a single New Yorker suggest we should do anything but protect New Orleans. Most of the chatter about how they just shouldn't live there has seemed to come from the same kind of people who feel like the Northeast doesn't understand "the real America."
True statement Moarku. New Yorkers have always been supportive. I think tragedy binds us. Thank you for the support.
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