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Rising seas will swallow New Orleans. People need to start relocating now
- austin-cheney 5mo agoIt’s more than rising oceans. New Orleans is sinking rapidly just like Jakarta. The southern third of LA has ground composed of spongy organic material deposited by rivers since the last ice age as opposed to solid ground largely made up of silicates and minerals covering bedrock.
- taylodl 5mo agoI think this is the point you're making: Relative sea level rise = actual sea level rise + land subsidence Cities like New Orleans are suffering a double whammy: not only are they subsiding (sinking), but the sea levels are also rising and so between the two they're in grave trouble.
- nekzn 5mo ago[flagged]
- dahart 5mo agoIs it possible the land is sinking because of the rising water level?
- dvh 5mo agoBecause land sinking makes only New Orleans unlivable?
- Hnrobert42 5mo agoBecause we can't do anything about land subsidence.
- opsnooperfax 5mo agoI don’t think we have direct control over sea levels either.
- postflopclarity 5mo agowe can though? NOLA is sinking in large part because human activity has lowered the groundwater level by draining the swamps and wetlands, so the soil starts compressing.
- dangus 5mo agoThis humors me: people still think CNN has a “liberal bias” especially as it transitions into ownership by David Ellison. They probably should have mentioned it, yeah. But if you’re on a sinking ship in the ocean that does mean that the water level is rising relative to you and that is most of your problem. And are we supposed to not be prepared and informed about the ocean rising at over 3mm per year? I wouldn’t exactly jump to being dismissive of sea level rise that is so dramatic. Every 10 years you’re gaining over an inch, every 100 you’re gaining about a foot. And then you’ve got the ice caps melting which is an impending climate disaster. In reality, the right-wing criticism of the “mainstream media” has been a form of projection and justification for legitimizing its own propaganda network. Meanwhile, the right denies their own mainstream status: the “mainstream media lies” but the #1 cable news network is a right wing network, the Joe Rogan Experience is the #1 podcast that hosts political guests but isn’t part of the “lying press,” and this is all justification for the FCC to send threatening letters to terrestrial networks for their choice of jokes on late night talk shows or their daytime talk shows not being conservative enough. CNN misses one detail in a highly scientific story and they get accused of having an agenda, Fox News trots out an employee in a mask pretending to be antifa and nobody bats an eye. I’m not saying we shouldn’t scrutinize all media, but this particular dynamic is something that has been noticeable.
- garrickvanburen 5mo agoAgreed. Also, as every media organization is free to make editorial decisions on both what they cover and how they cover it, left/right is often far too simplistic and vague to actually reverse engineer a media orgs bias.
- verisimi 5mo ago> CNN misses one detail in a highly scientific story and they get accused of having an agenda If it's as the earlier poster said that sinking is 8mm per year, versus 3.2mm and they point out the 3.2, don't you think this news organisation has missed the main detail?
- dangus 5mo agoThe article didn’t actually discuss the specific quantity of millimeters of sea level rise, either.
- karlgkk 5mo ago> I wonder why CNN have decided to highlight oceans rising and not mention land sinking anywhere in the entire article? Is it possible they have an agenda? Because water incursion is a much more difficult thing to deal with, in terms of infrastructure and prevention. Also, let me know when the rest of coastal land has the same sinking as N.O.
- verisimi 5mo agoYou work for cnn?
- megabless123 5mo agofunny, i had the same thought but for "common sense" and not CNN
- lostmsu 5mo agoThis doesn't make sense. Both land sinking and water rising contribute together to 11mm/y ground level going closer to sea level. And the sinking has >2x effect.
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- embedding-shape 5mo agoIsn't land sinking something to address locally where it happens, compared to water rising which we're gonna need some sort of global solution for, as it's not just because of one country? If so, one would seem more difficult than the other.
- bobthepanda 5mo agoAlso, in some places land is actually rising.
- pixl97 5mo agoProblem is the sinking isn't really something you can address in this particular case. It's a river delta that is compressing itself. But it's not only this, its land loss due to oil and natural gas practices, oh and its rising sea levels too. Tl;dr they are screwed.
- opsnooperfax 5mo agoI wish that there were a Corps of Engineers in the Army, whose job it was to build and maintain water retention structures. I think that such an organization might be our best hope for half an inch of rising water every year. Given that much of the state is already below sea level, that they have not suffered the wrath of climate change could only be a miracle. It must be the work of a merciful God who has forgiven their sins of owning Ford F150s.
- zamadatix 5mo agoThis approach has already failed miserably for the city. They just need to move to where it isn't so obviously a risk, regardless the reason of the day, rather than have all of us pay to try to keep them there and then continually fail anyways.
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- elric 5mo agoWhy would this need to be a miltary organization? Are the sinking lands/rising seas a plot from some enemy? This is a civil engineering thing if ever I saw one. Might want to look at how the Dutch deal with this. I don't think it involves any armies.
- arjie 5mo agoThe way the Dutch deal with this is changing. The predominant view now is depolderization. Environmental concerns indicate that they should return the land to the sea.
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- niemandhier 5mo agoSee level rise is not the relevant measure. A single catastrophic event that causes a temporal rise of several meters can permanently alter the coastline and storms are worsening.
- dnautics 5mo ago> storms are worsening I mean hard to say. "Climate change" means that weather patterns will change on a location by location basis, it's not all for the "worse" (climate doesn't care one way or another about what humans in particular value), and so far the 2000s have had more storms hit Louisiana than the 2010s and the 2020s have been milder than the 2010s. It's entirely possible that climate change reduces the number of storms that hit new orleans
- tobr 5mo agoYou can take your tinfoil hat off. In common parlance, ”rising seas” is about relative sea level (RSL), which is what actually matters regardless of the mix of underlying causes. This is how it’s used by e.g NOAA https://tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/sltrends/faq.html#q1 https://tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/sltrends/faq.html#q1
- westurner 5mo agoRelative sea level (RSL): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relative_sea_level https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relative_sea_level
- joenot443 5mo agoDo you think the average CNN reader has a good grasp on the distinction of relative and eustatic sea levels? I considered it a pretty nuanced topic, I’m surprised CNN treats it as table stakes.
- tobr 5mo agoYes, but it’s not the topic of the article though. The article is about relocation. It describes the general problem and why New Orleans is particularly vulnerable. It would be nice to mention sinking land explicitly, but the idea that there’s some ”agenda” behind why they aren’t mentioning it is ridiculous.
- postflopclarity 5mo agoNOLA land sinking is also (in large part) due to human activity in draining the wetlands and swamps, so the dry soil starts compressing.
- CuriouslyC 5mo agoSure do. People don't click on land sinking titles.
- WarmWash 5mo agoEvery 24hr news org has an agenda to maximize clicks/views from their ideologically captured herd. This isn't a left/right thing either.
- CWuestefeld 5mo agoI generally agree with your point about it being simply emergent behavior. But on the other hand, the timing (having seen over the past week or so several articles about the most disastrous IPCC model now having become implausible) makes me wonder if some individual actors are thinking they need something to shore up their disaster prophesying.
- 47282847 5mo agoCommon thinking is that one of these things you can influence, and the other you cannot. You don’t often read articles that mention the sunrise or seasons because they just are, and everybody is already aware of their contribution.
- declan_roberts 5mo agoWhich can we actually influence?
- 47282847 5mo agohttps://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/syr/summary-for-policymakers/ https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/syr/summary-for-policymakers/
- SoftTalker 5mo agoPossibly the soil subsidence can be stopped or at least reduced. In urban areas, there is no true solution for soil subsidence; it is not feasible to “reinflate” soils with water while urban life continues above. It is beneficial, however, to restore a certain level of water content to the soil in the interest of slowing future sinkage. The key is to absorb or retain as much stormwater runoff as possible through porous surfaces, retention ponds, bioswales, rain gardens and widened and landscaped grade-level outfall canals. https://openrivers.lib.umn.edu/article/new-orleans-was-once-above-sea-level/ https://openrivers.lib.umn.edu/article/new-orleans-was-once-...
- SoftTalker 5mo agoThat was my reaction to the headline. New Orleans is already below sea level. Has been for as long as I can remember. They have adapted to it, you can argue the wisdom of trying to fight the ocean but I'm not sure why they will fail now. Maybe they can get some investors to fund some big pumped hydro energy storage projects.
- RickJWagner 5mo agoReminds me of the famous photo showing Anderson Cooper in hip waders, standing in a flooded hole. It appears that flood waters were chest high, but if you saw the surrounding terrain you realized the water was not nearly so deep, it only seemed that way because he was standing in a hole.
- FartinMowler 5mo agoWith that for the rest of the day I won't get the Tragically Hip song "New Orleans is Sinking" out of my head. https://youtu.be/LAZUsCONjIQ?si=QIvXOppHk3X1UuQ0 https://youtu.be/LAZUsCONjIQ?si=QIvXOppHk3X1UuQ0
- cyanydeez 5mo agothe people they refer to are certainly the least capable.
- aaron695 5mo ago[dead]
- redsocksfan45 5mo ago[dead]
- kj4211cash 5mo agoOh hey, something I used to work on. The story here is coastal erosion / land subsidence much more than it is sea level rise, although that is a contributing factor. The land subsidence has been caused by Engineering works of the past, including the construction of levees and floodwalls around the city. When I worked on this a decade ago, we were already telling people outside of the city to move and spending a fortune to protect people inside the city. The most cost-effective option is often getting people to move, but good luck convincing everyone. Also this is such a shame because New Orleans is one of the most unique, charming places in the US.
- radford-neal 5mo agoNew Orleans is on a river delta, and without human effects on land, and without sea level rise, wouldn't one expect this delta to expand due to silt deposition? And would this silt deposition actually occur at a rate that would fully counteract sea level rise, just as the huge rise in sea levels at the end of the last ice age did not mean that the delta disappeared? If so, the danger to New Orleans would be entirely avoidable by changes in local land use. Perhaps the fundamental issue is that river deltas tend to be dynamic, with the watercourse continually changing, which isn't really compatible with a city in a fixed location. (Hence the damaging attempts at stopping this.)
- kjkjadksj 5mo agoIt isn’t expansion that it would do it is a return to wandering. When a river wanders, typically people die. It is not a good thing to be near a wandering river.
- radford-neal 5mo agoThe river water picks up silt as it flows to the sea. The silt has to go somewhere. That's why the delta exists, and grows, absent other effects. The river wandering is part of this. Since the silt can only be deposited where the water goes, for the delta to grow (or just maintain itself) the river has to go here and there all over it. And yes, people die when this happens. But if you stop the river wandering, the silt isn't going to be deposited so as to maintain the delta. Maybe it's not a good location for permanent human settlement.
- dangus 5mo agoI wonder if they would even have to be relocated if they had the water management expertise and functional government of Denmark? I think the article didn’t talk enough about how Louisiana is far too poor to undertake a planned relocation without a vast amount of federal help. Then, you’ve got the fact that Louisiana’s political leadership is some of the worst in the country. The article touched on it but arguably didn’t discuss it enough. These are not people who will do anything that benefits constituents. Arguably they aren’t even benefiting their donors by burying their head in the sand, although I imagine their donors have accepted that they’ll just leave New Orleans with their profits in hand when the time comes.
- bob1029 5mo agoThey've already tried the big guns. You cannot win at this game forever. > The pump station complex, which is the largest of its type in the world, consists of 11 each 5,444 horsepower Caterpillar engines. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulf_Intracoastal_Waterway_West_Closure_Complex https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulf_Intracoastal_Waterway_Wes...
- RobGR 5mo agoThat's on the other side of the river from New Orleans. To what I think is your larger point, that project is a small part of the efforts at water control around New Orleans. But, so far they have generally been viewed as beneficial and the various governmental entities keep paying for them -- why should we expect anything different in the future ? Roads get repaved all over the country, bridges rebuilt, and the levees rebuilt. There's always an "infrastructure crisis" of the decade, the chatter is how we as a society judge the expense and confirm it's necessary.
- sarchertech 5mo ago>too poor Louisiana isn’t poor by almost any objective measure. They’re in the bottom half of US states by GDP per capita (not in the bottom 10), but they’d be in the top 20 countries in the world by GDP per capita if they were a country. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territories_by_GDP https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territ... They’re just behind Denmark by GDP per capita and ahead of Germany, Sweden, Australia, Canada, the Netherlands, and the UK.
- ChoGGi 5mo agoAs the song goes: "New Orleans is sinking, man, and I don't wanna swim"
- joenot443 5mo agoRIP Gord. Such an awesome songwriter.
- Scoundreller 5mo agoYeah, the average Canadian has been well aware of New Orleans’ sinking problem for some decades now, thanks Canadian Content requirements. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Orleans_Is_Sinking https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Orleans_Is_Sinking
- master_crab 5mo agoWhat, do people not remember Katrina? That was the sign to move, and it was 20 years ago.
- dmd 5mo agoNo, they don't, because only about half of people in Louisiana are old enough to remember it.
- kspacewalk2 5mo agoThe median age of Louisiana is 38. Hurricane Katrina occurred 21 years ago.
- dmd 5mo agoSomeone who was 7 during Katrina at that time is roughly 28 today. Using the Census ACS age brackets, about 20-ish% of louisiana's population is under 15, and another 20 is between 15 and 29. Everyone 30 and older adds up to the other 60. So a hair over 60% are were at least 7. But that's who lives there now not who lived there then. Between 2005 and 2006 the state population dropped by 6% and most of that displaced population never returned - people coming in from elsewhere weren't there for Katrina. So the fraction who were both living there AND old enough to remember it is considerably smaller than 60%. So like I said, roughly half.
- WarmWash 5mo agoAnd most people don't remember anything from before age 5 anyway.
- kspacewalk2 5mo agoClaiming 9 year olds don't remember Katrina is quite an abuse of the word "roughly". The percentage of Louisiana's population under 25 is 33%, we can agree they don't "remember". Anything else requires considerable stretching with a hand-waving accompaniment. I can do that part just as well as any other internet person. Let's see, how about the fact that what followed Katrina was years of rebuilding? Someone from New Orleans probably saw its aftermath around them for 4-5 years.
- Mistletoe 5mo agoI hope there is some plan to thwart this, as New Orleans is my favorite city on Earth. Truly unique culture and history against the homogenization and suburbanization of America. If you’ve never visited, please go.
- CuriouslyC 5mo agoThey'll wall off the tourist portions of the city that are worth the expense and let the sea take the rest.
- evilduck 5mo agoThe tourist portions of the city are created and supported by the surrounding population; they generate the parade, music, and celebratory culture year round. We can't just abandon or move the residential areas and keep the rest intact without it becoming a Disney main street facsimile version mocking what it once was, which would destroy the tourist appeal outright.
- CuriouslyC 5mo agoI agree with you except for the last part, NOLA is gonna get frog boiled into exactly that Disney facsimile, people have shown they aren't discriminating about authenticity to the degree that you are.
- codelikeawolf 5mo agoI was thinking the same thing. It truly is a magical place and unlike any other city in America I've been to. I think relocation is best for the safety of the residents (obviously), but I can't help but think "New Orleans 2.0" would end up being just another city. Unless someone comes up with a way to pick the whole thing up and move it, I strongly recommended visiting before it's gone.
- kjkjadksj 5mo agoThey were able to raise both chicago and sacramento over a dozen feet some 100+ years ago. Maybe something similar can be done today.
- ck2 5mo agorelocation requires assistance, people living paycheck-to-paycheck cannot just up and move out of city/state take some of that $1 BILLION PER DAY being used to bomb innocent kids and civilians in Iran, soon Cuba, and help innocent people in your own country relocate if the current administration is in charge the week New Orleans is about to go undersea they will "solve the problem" by banning FEMA from doing anything or just defunding it to $1/day
- _-_-__-_-_- 5mo agoAnyone who could afford to leave has left long ago. This is, partially, a class issue. It's very sad.
- zzzeek 5mo ago> the city must start the relocation process now to avoid chaos. I've no reason to doubt this is absolutely true. that's not what they're gonna do though.... > The region has “crossed the point of no return,” the paper’s authors wrote, adding New Orleans “may well be surrounded by the Gulf of Mexico before the end of this century.” sorry, Gulf of what ? /s
- Danox 5mo agoFrom the Florida panhandle all the way through New Orleans all the way to Galveston, Texas and beyond to Mexico will be flooded out along the coast…
- arjie 5mo agoHistorically that doesn’t make sense. Usually by not relocating you can extract greater concessions from your fellow citizens. As an example, if you left Rancho Palos Verdes when signs showed up you could have bought an equivalent home. But if you waited for your property there to be condemned, you received money equivalent to the maximum of the price in the last three years. The latter is obviously superior to maximize your own capital with the bonus that you get to live there until it is dangerous. Likewise, the flood plains of Texas are cheap and nice to live in when there are no floods and when floods are imminent you have sufficient warning that you can evacuate and the federal government will compensate you. You can then go back and live there. This one is harder because it is unpleasant to move and you don’t receive the inflated price but it does incentivize some on the border. Of course the fires in Malibu are a story of going too far in the wrong time. If they’d had a sympathetic administration in the federal government likely some kind of compensation scheme could have been worked out. So you have to work on the politics and the economics.
- yifanl 5mo agoKeep in mind, at some point, insurers simply won't pay out.
- Barbing 5mo agoat some point slightly sooner now thanks to parent comment Wouldn’t plan it but sounds like could’ve been a solid strategy assuming trust in timely condemnations (out of homeowner control, I think).
- throwup238 5mo agoBut the National Flood Insurance Program will, with plenty of federal bailouts. Private insurers haven’t been willing to cover large parts of the south for decades. The NFIP was the backstop and already overstretched when Katrina hit New Orleans, which is when it first got bailed out. It’s been a downward spiral ever since.
- toomuchtodo 5mo ago
- warumdarum 5mo agoCcp central planner think like nonsense. People will just move on house boats and ponton cellar houses. New-new orleans will be right where it is now, near the river, even when the river changes course.
- ChrisArchitect 5mo agoEarlier this month: 'Point of no return': New Orleans relocation must start now due to sea level https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48015218 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48015218
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- grigio 5mo agoThe sea level is growing because Amsterdam is stealing land from the sea
- baking 5mo agoLink to paper: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41893-026-01820-z https://www.nature.com/articles/s41893-026-01820-z It appears that if you go through the link in this Guardian article, you will get free access to the full paper: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/may/04/new-orleans-sea-levels-relocation-climate-crisis https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/may/04/new-orleans-...
- punkrex 5mo agoThis article and the one before it are based on a paper in nature that says if the seas rise 10ft-23ft that New Orleans is screwed. Notably it does not predict this, just says that if sea levels rise the city is screwed. Which it is! But so is lower Manhattan, Miami, 60% of the land in the Netherlands, almost all of Bangladesh, along with numerous other places. Now 3m-7m is vastly higher than any current predictions, but hey lets scare monger about a single city!
- codethief 5mo ago> But so is lower Manhattan, Miami, 60% of the land in the Netherlands, almost all of Bangladesh, along with numerous other places. From page 1 of the paper: "Coastal Louisiana has been referred to as 'canary in the coal mine' with respect to climate impacts. As highlighted in the Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the central US Gulf Coast is the single most exposed LECZ (low-elevation coastal zone) in the world in terms of projected relative sea-level (RSL) rise throughout this century." > Notably it does not predict this Again from page 1 of the paper: "The initial impetus consists of new evidence that RSL in this region is probably committed to 3-7m of future rise, with a shoreline bound to migrate as much as 100km inland. We argue that future RSL rise to this elevation – judging from field evidence rather than climate model output – is, in fact, a best-case scenario."
- Jensson 5mo agoBut most of that relative sea changes comes from the land locally sinking, not from the sea globally rising. The title making it sound as if its climate change causing this issue is sensationalist, this would have happened even if the seas didn't rise.
- tim333 5mo agoGoogle has: Global mean sea level is projected to rise by 0.28 to 1.02 meters by 2100 The 3-7m! Relocate now! stuff seems unfounded and irresponsible.
- adolph 5mo agoAside from rising seas, there is regional destruction of protective barrier islands from poor resource management and sedimentary processes that should have moved the agriculture transshipment activities of BR/NO to the Atchafalaya River in the recent past. This is easier said than done and there is a strong video about how the Mississippi’s current path has been maintained by the Old River Complex: https://youtu.be/XpjPe4kbpYo https://youtu.be/XpjPe4kbpYo Edit: better video
- giardini 5mo agoRebuild it like Venice: imagine canals, building water passageways, and pirogues carrying tourists up and down the romantic Bourbon Street, all the former riff-raff washed away and only paying businesses remain. The sewer smell of Venice provides a good model.