4 ms·

100-300 years is a long time to build some dikes and flood barriers.

teeja 14y ago
The flood barrier needed to -partially- protect NYC from Sandy flooding is estimated at $6-10 billion dollars. Spread that out along the coastline and the taxes needed gets into REAL money. Of course, with 110+F temperatures down South ALL summer, most people will need to move away from there.
- potatolicious 14y ago
  You don't need to protect the entire coastline, just already-developed parts of it that would present an extreme disruption to let flood. $6-10bn in the grand scheme of New York City is nothing (well, assuming anybody gives a shit about NYC in 300 years).
- mseebach 14y ago
  > The flood barrier needed to -partially- protect NYC from Sandy flooding is estimated at $6-10 billion dollars. Which is several orders of magnitude less that fixing global warming will cost. The GDP of NYC is $1280bln. Even at twice the cost for the barriers ($20bln), it's 1.5% of GDP to permanently "fix" global warming for NYC. Also, it's fairly deterministic. The tools and methods to build such barriers are readily available. The same can't be said of a political solution. > Of course, with 110+F temperatures down South ALL summer, most people will need to move away from there. Well, the region is already more or less uninhabitable without air conditioning, so the solution to that problem is pretty obvious.
joonix 14y ago
Or for the economics of fossil fuels to change drastically, figure out ways to reverse warming, enter a natural cooling period, or any black swan event.
mayneack 14y ago
Look back a few hundred years at Boston. Half of the land is "new" anyway. Granted, I would imagine that it's hard/impossible to do this for a city that already exists and has lots of large, expensive, heavy objects in the way. http://www.iboston.org/rg/backbayImap.htm http://www.iboston.org/rg/backbayImap.htm
mayneack 14y ago
Look back a few hundred years at Boston. Half of the land is "new" anyway. Granted, I would imagine that it's hard/impossible to do this for a city that already exists and has lots of large, expensive, heavy objects in the way. http://www.iboston.org/rg/backbayImap.htm http://www.iboston.org/rg/backbayImap.htm
willyt 14y ago
Think about the engineering involved. A 25ft rise would require what, a 35ft high reinforced concrete structure? It has to be capable of dissipating the wave energy from a storm like sandy. The foundations have to be pretty deep to guarantee resistance to scour. The buttressing structure will extend back at least 35/tan(45) ft back. Where and when do you decide to build it? What political process allows you to demolish all those houses without an impossible political deadlock about compensation land rights etc? What about rights of light for all the others? Re-routing subway lines, highways, utilities etc. How long is one these for New York/Jersey/Long Island? 50miles 100miles 250? Edit: tan(45)/35 to 35/tan(45), whoops.
- InclinedPlane 14y ago
  We're talking about 300 years from now. Even 100 years from now the global economy is going to be around 1 quadrillion dollars (in today's dollar) and technology will be unimaginably advanced. As much as I think long term planning is often important, I think this is a case where it's better to leave things to our much wealthier, much more technologically advanced future selves / children.
  - MichaelSalib 14y ago
    Unimaginably advanced? I'm not so sure. What unimaginable advances have happened to the jet engine in the last 30 years? If you spend all day focusing on silicon chips, then it looks like "technology" moves very fast. But most technologies don't advance at anything near the rate at which integrated circuits have been improving. And even that rate appears to be slowing dramatically.
    - wtvanhest 14y ago
      30 years ago: - Cell phones were just starting to be built, no body had them, people didn't even have pagers. - There was no internet - Only high end cars had power windows/power locks - Jet engines were far less efficient. I don't know what improvements were made but someone with that knowledge will hopefully chime in. Technology advances over the past 30 years have been insane. You can pull out a "phone" which accesses all the world's information wirelessly at high speeds. 30 years ago people would have never even thought that would ever be possible. They couldn't even imagine what "the internet" would be.

teeja 14y ago

The flood barrier needed to -partially- protect NYC from Sandy flooding is estimated at $6-10 billion dollars. Spread that out along the coastline and the taxes needed gets into REAL money. Of course, with 110+F temperatures down South ALL summer, most people will need to move away from there.

potatolicious 14y ago
You don't need to protect the entire coastline, just already-developed parts of it that would present an extreme disruption to let flood. $6-10bn in the grand scheme of New York City is nothing (well, assuming anybody gives a shit about NYC in 300 years).
mseebach 14y ago
> The flood barrier needed to -partially- protect NYC from Sandy flooding is estimated at $6-10 billion dollars. Which is several orders of magnitude less that fixing global warming will cost. The GDP of NYC is $1280bln. Even at twice the cost for the barriers ($20bln), it's 1.5% of GDP to permanently "fix" global warming for NYC. Also, it's fairly deterministic. The tools and methods to build such barriers are readily available. The same can't be said of a political solution. > Of course, with 110+F temperatures down South ALL summer, most people will need to move away from there. Well, the region is already more or less uninhabitable without air conditioning, so the solution to that problem is pretty obvious.

joonix 14y ago

Or for the economics of fossil fuels to change drastically, figure out ways to reverse warming, enter a natural cooling period, or any black swan event.

mayneack 14y ago

Look back a few hundred years at Boston. Half of the land is "new" anyway. Granted, I would imagine that it's hard/impossible to do this for a city that already exists and has lots of large, expensive, heavy objects in the way. http://www.iboston.org/rg/backbayImap.htm http://www.iboston.org/rg/backbayImap.htm

mayneack 14y ago

willyt 14y ago

Think about the engineering involved. A 25ft rise would require what, a 35ft high reinforced concrete structure? It has to be capable of dissipating the wave energy from a storm like sandy. The foundations have to be pretty deep to guarantee resistance to scour. The buttressing structure will extend back at least 35/tan(45) ft back. Where and when do you decide to build it? What political process allows you to demolish all those houses without an impossible political deadlock about compensation land rights etc? What about rights of light for all the others? Re-routing subway lines, highways, utilities etc. How long is one these for New York/Jersey/Long Island? 50miles 100miles 250? Edit: tan(45)/35 to 35/tan(45), whoops.

InclinedPlane 14y ago
We're talking about 300 years from now. Even 100 years from now the global economy is going to be around 1 quadrillion dollars (in today's dollar) and technology will be unimaginably advanced. As much as I think long term planning is often important, I think this is a case where it's better to leave things to our much wealthier, much more technologically advanced future selves / children.
- MichaelSalib 14y ago
  Unimaginably advanced? I'm not so sure. What unimaginable advances have happened to the jet engine in the last 30 years? If you spend all day focusing on silicon chips, then it looks like "technology" moves very fast. But most technologies don't advance at anything near the rate at which integrated circuits have been improving. And even that rate appears to be slowing dramatically.
  - wtvanhest 14y ago
    30 years ago: - Cell phones were just starting to be built, no body had them, people didn't even have pagers. - There was no internet - Only high end cars had power windows/power locks - Jet engines were far less efficient. I don't know what improvements were made but someone with that knowledge will hopefully chime in. Technology advances over the past 30 years have been insane. You can pull out a "phone" which accesses all the world's information wirelessly at high speeds. 30 years ago people would have never even thought that would ever be possible. They couldn't even imagine what "the internet" would be.