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It’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 deposit
by austin-cheney 5mo ago
It’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.
- deleted 5mo ago[deleted]
- 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.
- s5300 5mo ago[dead]
- deleted 5mo ago[deleted]
- 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.
- deleted 5mo ago[deleted]
- 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