David W. Chen and Mireya Navarro write in The New York Times about warnings that weren't heeded: "For nearly a decade, scientists have told city and state officials that New York faces certain peril: rising sea levels, more frequent flooding and extreme weather patterns. The alarm bells grew louder after Tropical Storm Irene last year, when the city shut down its subway system and water rushed into the Rockaways and Lower Manhattan."

  • http://www.facebook.com/dewimorgan Dewi Morgan

    Ah, hindsight.

    I’d love a good list of all things that scientists have warned again and again about… but unfortunately, that list covers just about *every conceivable* disaster.

    Having them ranked by probability * likely damage, though, that’d be a damn fine infographic.

    • traalfaz

      Well, except that this one is pretty much a gimme.  There’s really no way that the lowest lying parts of NYC are viable long term unless we’re willing to put in the ridiculous amounts of money it would take to build probably 20 to 30 foot seawalls all around it.

      • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100001443259034 David Davion

        It’s true.  When I took a meteorology class at a local Community College, the teacher said it was only a matter of time that other places like New Orleans, were going to get hit by Hurricanes they aren’t prepared for.  He then listed off 3 highly populated areas that hurricanes can reach that are very poorly prepared. This was 5-6 years ago, btw. 

        • http://www.facebook.com/dewimorgan Dewi Morgan

           What were the other two?

  • http://www.meneghello.net Marco Meneghello

    New York City as the New Venice, yeah!

    • http://bradbell.tv/blog/ BradBell

      But old Venice is the new Venice
      https://vimeo.com/52325632

      • http://www.meneghello.net Marco Meneghello

        That Venice is the old underwater Venice!
        Tomorrow under 140cm btw, I live close there.. :P

    • Artimus Mangilord

      They didn’t want to suffer the same judgement the Italian scientists have.

  • Chuck

    Just be ready for the climate change deniers to change their gripe to “Them scientists didn’t do enough to tell us this was going to happen!”

  • Chanfan

    Perhaps they should be charged with manslaughter, since they obviously knew it was coming, but didn’t do their utmost to warn the public…   (*rolleyes*)

  • http://punchnrun.myopenid.com/ PunchNRun

     Just like the years of well-documented reports on the inadequacy of the flood protection in New Orleans, leading up to the Katrina disaster. But the reasoning part of the human is mostly a passenger in an instinct-driven creature. Unless the danger is snarling in its face, no response is required.

    • http://twitter.com/rvitelli Romeo Vitelli

      There was an article in Scientific American years before Katrina describing how vulnerable New Orleans was to a major hurricane.   And people were still caught off-guard.

  • oasisob1

    *Watches xkcd closely*…

  • http://twitter.com/AndBobando ando bobando

    This reminds me of an awesome exhibit I saw at MoMA in 2010, with proposals by architects-in-residence on innovative ways to deal with rising sea levels and the effects of climate change in New York and New Jersey. Too bad they dismantled the exhibit – they should have kept it there until somebody actually tried implementing a solution!
    http://www.moma.org/visit/calendar/exhibitions/1031

  • timquinn

    The advantage this allows is that the scientists now get to say, “See!”

  • Snig

    Not that I wished this would happen, but I was sort of waiting for the “Rock Hudson” moment for the climate crisis.  I’m hoping this is enough to wake people up. 

  • Aaron H

    I have an invitation here, addressed to “All the Climate Scientists” for an exclusive dinner at the Cassandra Complex? Where is that, exactly?