This is a science fiction story about a world in which the sea level has risen "more than 50 feet" (15m) in 2140. This is a reasonable conceit for a story, but,

This is a science fiction story about a world in which the sea level has risen "more than 50 feet" (15m) in 2140. This is a reasonable conceit for a story, but, it's important to not update our beliefs about the real world based on fictional evidence. Eyeballing a graph in the IPCC climate change report, the worst-case scenario for sea level rise by 2200 has a wide error bar, but it's from .6m-2m; the average-case scenario is from .3m-1.1m. Reduce those numbers further for a setting in 2140, and this is not enough to flood New York as described. https://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar5/wg1/WG1AR5_Chapter13_FINAL.pdf https://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar5/wg1/WG1AR5_Cha... pg 1188.