Historically that doesn’t make sense. Usually by not relocating you can extract greater concessions from your fellow citizens. As an example, if you left Rancho Palos Verdes when signs showed up you could have bought an equivalent home. But if you waited for your property there to be condemned, you received money equivalent to the maximum of the price in the last three years. The latter is obviously superior to maximize your own capital with the bonus that you get to live there until it is dangerous.<p>Likewise, the flood plains of Texas are cheap and nice to live in when there are no floods and when floods are imminent you have sufficient warning that you can evacuate and the federal government will compensate you. You can then go back and live there. This one is harder because it is unpleasant to move and you don’t receive the inflated price but it does incentivize some on the border.<p>Of course the fires in Malibu are a story of going too far in the wrong time. If they’d had a sympathetic administration in the federal government likely some kind of compensation scheme could have been worked out. So you have to work on the politics and the economics.
It’s more than rising oceans. New Orleans is sinking rapidly just like Jakarta.<p>The southern third of LA has ground composed of spongy organic material deposited by rivers since the last ice age as opposed to solid ground largely made up of silicates and minerals covering bedrock.
Ocean Rise: ~3.2 mm/yr<p>Land Sinking: + ~8.0 mm/yr<p>I wonder why CNN have decided to highlight oceans rising and not mention land sinking anywhere in the entire article? Is it possible they have an agenda?
> I wonder why CNN have decided to highlight oceans rising and not mention land sinking anywhere in the entire article? Is it possible they have an agenda?<p>Because water incursion is a much more difficult thing to deal with, in terms of infrastructure and prevention.<p>Also, let me know when the rest of coastal land has the same sinking as N.O.
I wish that there were a Corps of Engineers in the Army, whose job it was to build and maintain water retention structures. I think that such an organization might be our best hope for half an inch of rising water every year. Given that much of the state is already below sea level, that they have not suffered the wrath of climate change could only be a miracle. It must be the work of a merciful God who has forgiven their sins of owning Ford F150s.
Why would this need to be a miltary organization? Are the sinking lands/rising seas a plot from some enemy? This is a civil engineering thing if ever I saw one. Might want to look at how the Dutch deal with this. I don't think it involves any armies.
This approach has already failed miserably for the city. They just need to move to where it isn't so obviously a risk, regardless the reason of the day, rather than have all of us pay to try to keep them there and then continually fail anyways.
NOLA land sinking is also (in large part) due to human activity in draining the wetlands and swamps, so the dry soil starts compressing.
Because land sinking makes only New Orleans unlivable?
See level rise is not the relevant measure.<p>A single catastrophic event that causes a temporal rise of several meters can permanently alter the coastline and storms are worsening.
Sure do. People don't click on land sinking titles.
This humors me: people still think CNN has a “liberal bias” especially as it transitions into ownership by David Ellison.<p>They probably should have mentioned it, yeah. But if you’re on a sinking ship in the ocean that does mean that the water level is rising relative to you and that is most of your problem.<p>And are we supposed to not be prepared and informed about the ocean rising at over 3mm per year? I wouldn’t exactly jump to being dismissive of sea level rise that is so dramatic. Every 10 years you’re gaining over an inch, every 100 you’re gaining about a foot. And then you’ve got the ice caps melting which is an impending climate disaster.<p>In reality, the right-wing criticism of the “mainstream media” has been a form of projection and justification for legitimizing its own propaganda network. Meanwhile, the right denies their own mainstream status: the “mainstream media lies” but the #1 cable news network is a right wing network, the Joe Rogan Experience is the #1 podcast that hosts political
guests but isn’t part of the “lying press,” and this is all justification for the FCC to send threatening letters to terrestrial networks for their choice of jokes on late night talk shows or their daytime talk shows not being conservative enough.<p>CNN misses one detail in a highly scientific story and they get accused of having an agenda, Fox News trots out an employee in a mask pretending to be antifa and nobody bats an eye.<p>I’m not saying we shouldn’t scrutinize all media, but this particular dynamic is something that has been noticeable.
Agreed. Also, as every media organization is free to make editorial decisions on both what they cover and how they cover it, left/right is often far too simplistic and vague to actually reverse engineer a media orgs bias.
> CNN misses one detail in a highly scientific story and they get accused of having an agenda<p>If it's as the earlier poster said that sinking is 8mm per year, versus 3.2mm and they point out the 3.2, don't you think this news organisation has missed the <i>main</i> detail?
Because we can't do anything about land subsidence.
I don’t think we have direct control over sea levels either.
we can though? NOLA is sinking in large part because human activity has lowered the groundwater level by draining the swamps and wetlands, so the soil starts compressing.
You can take your tinfoil hat off. In common parlance, ”rising seas” is about relative sea level (RSL), which is what actually matters regardless of the mix of underlying causes. This is how it’s used by e.g NOAA <a href="https://tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/sltrends/faq.html#q1" rel="nofollow">https://tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/sltrends/faq.html#q1</a>
Do you think the average CNN reader has a good grasp on the distinction of relative and eustatic sea levels?
I considered it a pretty nuanced topic, I’m surprised CNN treats it as table stakes.
Relative sea level (RSL): <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relative_sea_level" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relative_sea_level</a>
I think this is the point you're making:<p>Relative sea level rise = actual sea level rise + land subsidence<p>Cities like New Orleans are suffering a double whammy: not only are they subsiding (sinking), but the sea levels are also rising and so between the two they're in grave trouble.
Reminds me of the famous photo showing Anderson Cooper in hip waders, standing in a flooded hole. It appears that flood waters were chest high, but if you saw the surrounding terrain you realized the water was not nearly so deep, it only seemed that way because he was standing in a hole.
What, do people not remember Katrina? That was the sign to move, and it was 20 years ago.
As the song goes: "New Orleans is sinking, man, and I don't wanna swim"
Oh hey, something I used to work on. The story here is coastal erosion / land subsidence much more than it is sea level rise, although that is a contributing factor. The land subsidence has been caused by Engineering works of the past, including the construction of levees and floodwalls around the city. When I worked on this a decade ago, we were already telling people outside of the city to move and spending a fortune to protect people inside the city. The most cost-effective option is often getting people to move, but good luck convincing everyone. Also this is such a shame because New Orleans is one of the most unique, charming places in the US.
New Orleans is on a river delta, and without human effects on land, and without sea level rise, wouldn't one expect this delta to <i>expand</i> due to silt deposition?<p>And would this silt deposition actually occur at a rate that would fully counteract sea level rise, just as the huge rise in sea levels at the end of the last ice age did not mean that the delta disappeared?<p>If so, the danger to New Orleans would be entirely avoidable by changes in local land use.<p>Perhaps the fundamental issue is that river deltas tend to be dynamic, with the watercourse continually changing, which isn't really compatible with a city in a fixed location. (Hence the damaging attempts at stopping this.)
I hope there is some plan to thwart this, as New Orleans is my favorite city on Earth. Truly unique culture and history against the homogenization and suburbanization of America. If you’ve never visited, please go.
relocation requires assistance, people living paycheck-to-paycheck cannot just up and move out of city/state<p>take some of that $1 BILLION PER DAY being used to bomb innocent kids and civilians in Iran, soon Cuba, and help innocent people in your own country relocate<p>if the current administration is in charge the week New Orleans is about to go undersea they will "solve the problem" by banning FEMA from doing anything or just defunding it to $1/day
I wonder if they would even have to be relocated if they had the water management expertise and functional government of Denmark?<p>I think the article didn’t talk enough about how Louisiana is far too poor to undertake a planned relocation without a vast amount of federal help.<p>Then, you’ve got the fact that Louisiana’s political leadership is some of the worst in the country. The article touched on it but arguably didn’t discuss it enough. These are not people who will do anything that benefits constituents. Arguably they aren’t even benefiting their donors by burying their head in the sand, although I imagine their donors have accepted that they’ll just leave New Orleans with their profits in hand when the time comes.
They've already tried the big guns. You cannot win at this game forever.<p>> The pump station complex, which is the largest of its type in the world, consists of 11 each 5,444 horsepower Caterpillar engines.<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulf_Intracoastal_Waterway_West_Closure_Complex" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulf_Intracoastal_Waterway_Wes...</a>
>too poor<p>Louisiana isn’t poor by almost any objective measure. They’re in the bottom half of US states by GDP per capita (not in the bottom 10), but they’d be in the top 20 countries in the world by GDP per capita if they were a country.<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territories_by_GDP" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territ...</a><p>They’re just behind Denmark by GDP per capita and ahead of Germany, Sweden, Australia, Canada, the Netherlands, and the UK.
I've been to Louisiana and most of those countries. Going by the eye test, Louisiana was the poorest.
GDP per capita is meaningless in the US bro. It's literally a cooked number that holds up big capitalists making money "in the state" from extraction of natural resources, but that money isn't staying in LA.<p>Drive through LA and those places you mentioned and you'll see it.<p>Also, use PPP.
the people they refer to are certainly the least capable.
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> the city must start the relocation process now to avoid chaos.<p>I've no reason to doubt this is absolutely true.<p>that's not what they're gonna do though....<p>> The region has “crossed the point of no return,” the paper’s authors wrote, adding New Orleans “may well be surrounded by the Gulf of Mexico before the end of this century.”<p>sorry, Gulf of <i>what</i> ? /s
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Anyone who could afford to leave has left long ago. This is, partially, a class issue. It's very sad.