Hacker News Reader

Comment by mgalka | Hacker News Reader

I've seen a lot of projections like this, showing areas that will someday be underwater when sea levels rise. But am I missing something? Why wouldn't people just build barriers to keep the water out?

That may be prohibitively expensive for some places, but for Manhattan, I have to imagine the cost would be small compared to the alternative.

View on HN

The author addresses it in the essay. Flooding comes in the form of storms every X years and super-high, rare tides, so barriers don't help. If storms are unfrequent enough, people keep occupying the area. In Manhattan, they've already thought about a barrier on the Hudson river, but it's prohibitively expensive, covers a few percent of the risks only, and worse, gives people the feeling that there's a solution. Plus they may solve the 2070 problem, but few things solve the 2100 problem, and nothing solves the 2200 problem: When the water is 30 feet higher, you just have to transform NYC into New Venice.

Which makes me think, a change of name into "New Venice" might help people identify better with the new situation than every barrier.

Why is it possible for the Netherlands to prevent flooding and reclaim land but not for New York City? Is there some inherent difference in geography?

Tokyo has solved this problem already.

Random article I found, perhaps not the best.

http://newlaunches.com/archives/a-tour-of-tokyos-alien-like-...

The funny thing is that Venice, I mean the original one in Italy, seems also totally uninterested in this problem. After decades of discussion they have finally built these mobile barriers between the sea and the lagoon, which are supposed to protect the city from the periodic high tides ("acqua alta"). But apparently no one is thinking what will happen when the sea level will rise.

You've been watching too much Donald Trump!

It's ironic that Wall Street, where a great amount of money would've been invested in fossil fuel projects that caused the problem may soon be under water.

Unfortunately all the emissions caused by building defenses will just make the issue worse, it's a slippery slope.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thames_Barrier

The threat is from storm surges, rather than average sea level, but average level is becoming a problem in Florida as the water comes up through the water table.

My understanding is that while a barrier may be feasible (but still very expensive) somewhere like Boston where there is already a lot of natural protection, NYC's island nature, along with being at the junction of multiple estuaries, makes building barriers there a uniquely difficult challenge.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com