Reimagining New York
Cax5tu4qOx8 • 2013-11-21
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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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file updated 2026-02-13 12:59:20 UTC
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