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Kind: captions Language: en I'm Claus Jacob I'm a special research scientist at the Lamont door the Earth Observatory and I'm also teaching at the sea that's the School of International and public affairs of Columbia University in disaster risk management one weather event like Sandy does not make climate change but it's a symptom together with many of the other events that will show yes there is something going and we call it climate change the weather event in the atmosphere is not exactly predictable related to climate change but what is predictable is the flooding because climate change will raise the sea level and sea level will contribute to the power of flooding and therefore the flooding event that was associated with Sandy is definitely something that will increase and we'll see more and more in the future in a very easily predictable way so the real effect is not how high the water goes but at a given elevation how frequently it will reach or exceed that elevation that's critical for the functioning of the Subway or anything else and so the 100-year storm will become essentially a 2year storm two to five year storm by the end of the century with that kind of seum of eyes the first one that everybody Chumps out is protection protection protection build barriers like New Orleans like London like St Petersburg well think about it but before I go there the second one is not protect yourself from the water but invite the water in live with the water move all the critical facilities out of the lower floors put them at the 10th floor of skyscrapers or on the roof and let the water come in it goes out you clean up and you're done if your house is what's called wet proofed I'm not saying we should have no barriers all I'm saying is if we have barriers use the time wisely to plan for retreat when those barriers become dysfunctional which will be in 100 150 years we have the wrong development policies in this city this has to be reversed and we have to start gradually not everywhere to retreat from the most exposed Waterfront having said that Manhattan is probably particular Down the Wall Street area is the least likely to retreat from why because we have invested so much both in buildings in institutions and in infrastructure the entire city and for that matter the entire nation is essentially hung up with shortterm at best midterm planning we see that in politics we see that in the financial sector it's not surprising that we see it in the public when it comes to dealing with flooding and disaster risk management look New York City has evolved over 400 years if you look at it 400 years ago it certainly didn't look like now and it will not look the same 400 years from now so think a little bit what it might look 400 years from now with 20 whatever feet of SE rise it will not look the same so don't kid yourself the question is how do we get to where we know it will have to go at our daytoday decisions today
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