Manhattan Underwater Update

Times Square Cam – EarthCam

According to NASA’s top scientist, Manhattan has been underwater for the past four years, and is experiencing a horrific drought.

While doing research 12 or 13 years ago, I met Jim Hansen, the scientist who in 1988 predicted the greenhouse effect before Congress. I went over to the window with him and looked out on Broadway in New York City and said, “If what you’re saying about the greenhouse effect is true, is anything going to look different down there in 20 years?” He looked for a while and was quiet and didn’t say anything for a couple seconds. Then he said, “Well, there will be more traffic.” I, of course, didn’t think he heard the question right. Then he explained, “The West Side Highway [which runs along the Hudson River] will be under water. And there will be tape across the windows across the street because of high winds. And the same birds won’t be there. The trees in the median strip will change.” Then he said, “There will be more police cars.” Why? “Well, you know what happens to crime when the heat goes up.”

And so far, over the last 10 years, we’ve had 10 of the hottest years on record.

Didn’t he also say that restaurants would have signs in their windows that read, “Water by request only.”

Under the greenhouse effect, extreme weather increases. Depending on where you are in terms of the hydrological cycle, you get more of whatever you’re prone to get. New York can get droughts, the droughts can get more severe and you’ll have signs in restaurants saying “Water by request only.”

When did he say this will happen?

Within 20 or 30 years. And remember we had this conversation in 1988 or 1989.

Global Warming – Salon.com

About Tony Heller

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19 Responses to Manhattan Underwater Update

  1. Andy DC says:

    Super Duper Exponential Heating is hiding in the oceans. But when Super Duper El Nino kicks in, NYC is doomed (sarc).

  2. tckev says:

    Super Duper Exponential Heating now cooks your goose, or chicken…
    http://niklowe.blogspot.co.uk/2012/08/wheres-my-nobel-prize-then.html

  3. NikFromNYC says:

    Oh snap, they’ve got an iPhone app, the first *live* city cams I’ve found! Real people running ’round. Since I’m up in Hansen territory, a college town area where rent control means only gray haired wooly fascists have word of mouth access to apartments, I suffer summer break, when I have few people to talk to since the students must vacate. It’s so bad that I use a crappy little app that shows static views of the rest of the city, to remind the entrepreneur in my that, yes, there are rewards, eventually, for living on the island, namely every variety of muse imaginable. Now granted, due to the women’s college across the street and a near 3:1 ratio of college gals to guys, the area becomes a rogue’s paradise twice a year, winters not much included. Now that the AGW political climate has turned around, a pep in my step has been delivered, one I think will last, quite some time.

  4. Well…. There is the Willis Eschenbach update discussion at WUWT about the Salon reporter misreading his notes about the date Hansen was predicting ( http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/04/21/nasas-hansen-thinks-sea-level-rise-will-be-accelerating-i-think-not-offering-a-new-paper-and-updated-story-on-hansen-to-show-why/ ).

    Nevertheless, Houston, we still have a problem. For Hansen’s 40-year prediction to come true in 2028, the sea level (currently and rather stubbornly refusing to show any noticeable rise) needs to start rising TOMORROW if not sooner, and for every year it does not rise, we can do the math on how much more it needs to rise in the remaining years in order to swamp the Manhattan west side freeway on schedule.

    • That explanation is nonsense. He confirmed that date twice in his original article.

      • LLAP says:

        From Hansen’s site:

        http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/2011/20110126_SingingInTheRain.pdf

        “Michaels also has the facts wrong about a 1988 interview of me by Bob Reiss, in which Reiss asked me to speculate on changes that might happen in New York City in 40 years assuming CO2 doubled in amount. Michaelshas it as 20 years, not 40 years, with no mention of doubled CO2. Reiss verified this fact to me, but he later sent the
        message: “I went back to my book and re-read the interview I had with you. I am embarrassed to say that although the book text is correct, in remembering our original conversation, during a casual phone interview with a Salon magazine reporter in 2001 I was off in years. What I asked you originally at your office window was for a prediction
        of what Broadway would look like in 40 years, not 20. But when I spoke to the Salon reporter 10 years later -probably because I’d been watching the predictions come true, I remembered it as a 20 year question.” So giveMichaels a pass on this one — assume that he reads Salon, but he did not check the original source, Reiss’ book.””

  5. If you’ve been reading the newspaper articles from the past that Steve has repeatedly dug up here you will see that Hansen has the uncanny ability to be serially ‘misquoted’ by all sources. Although it can’t be ruled out that other newspapers quoted a small number of original interviews perhaps. It’s also possible that Hansen exaggerated for attention seeking because he appeared more cautious in his published work of the period. Although even his more modest published claims turned out to be wrong.

  6. Louise says:

    How’s that ‘Manhatten Underwater’ thing looking now?

    • Greenland melted and flooded Manhattan for a few hours, but then it refroze and the waters receded.

      Hopefully you aren’t as stupid as you pretend to be.

    • Stephen Richards says:

      She ? has demonstrated he crassness on a few occasions on blogs.

      Steve, something interesting in the UK this week, apart from Chelsea 2 Man united 2 in the league cup ( was 1 -2 ) was the children that broke into a coal fired power station in the north and climbed the water tower to stay there a week. There is nothing in the news. Not the BBC and not the papers; Don’t know about the Grauniad. 🙁

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