Waterworld (w/o Kevin Costner)
(although i actually liked that movie)
Today is the ominous date 6/6/6 &mdash June 6th, 2006. They chose this date to release the remake of the Christian apocalyptic movie The Omen, which I have no intention of seeing. I always find it difficult to 'get into' a movie built around the beliefs of someone else's religion, especially scary ones; I don't believe in Saytan or the Antichrist, so I can't really empathize with the characters' feelings.
Another movie to see is former Vice President Al Gore's documentary on global warming, An Inconvenient Truth, which describes the current and expected effects of the environmental crisis on Planet Earth and on human civilization.
A British programmer named Alex Tingle combined Google Maps and topographic data from NASA, and set up a webpage called Flood Maps to show what the planet will/would look like with a sea level rise of anywhere from 1 to 14 meters.
So I decided to go all the way and check out what the worst-case scenario 14 meters would do to the world as I know it. Feel free to check out your own locales and report back in the comments.
Here's what I found:
God told Humanity twice
(once to Adam and Eve, once to Noah)
be fruitful and multiply
and conquer the Earth!
In other words,
DON'T FLOOD IT!!!
(that's God's job)
Remember — it's not about saving the Earth.
It's about saving ourselves.
God set the planet bal timot — so that it won't falter.
We may not be so lucky.
Today is the ominous date 6/6/6 &mdash June 6th, 2006. They chose this date to release the remake of the Christian apocalyptic movie The Omen, which I have no intention of seeing. I always find it difficult to 'get into' a movie built around the beliefs of someone else's religion, especially scary ones; I don't believe in Saytan or the Antichrist, so I can't really empathize with the characters' feelings.
Another movie to see is former Vice President Al Gore's documentary on global warming, An Inconvenient Truth, which describes the current and expected effects of the environmental crisis on Planet Earth and on human civilization.
A British programmer named Alex Tingle combined Google Maps and topographic data from NASA, and set up a webpage called Flood Maps to show what the planet will/would look like with a sea level rise of anywhere from 1 to 14 meters.
So I decided to go all the way and check out what the worst-case scenario 14 meters would do to the world as I know it. Feel free to check out your own locales and report back in the comments.
Here's what I found:
WASHINGTON HEIGHTS — Perfectly fine! (map)
The neighboring neighborhood of Inwood is mostly flooded by the Harlem River, but the heights of Washington Heights, as well as the valley between "The YU Side" and "The Other/Breuer's/Bennett Side", are high enough to stay clear.
BROOKLYN — Not so good. (map)
Greater Jewish Flatbush is no more. Except for a small area north of Avenue J, everything's under water.
Borough Park fares much better. While much of the southern part of the neighborhood is all wet, northern Borough Park — a.k.a. Blythebourne (Station) — is high and dry. Just imagine a boardwalk along 18th Avenue!
GREATER JEWISH SPRING VALLEY —
Uh, yeah, nothing to say. 'Sall good. The rest of Upstate New York also has nothing to worry about.
NEW JERSEY —
While some of Teaneck between Route 4 and I-80 survives, much of the rest of the Hackensack River / Meadowlands / Newark Bay watershed has become a ria, leaving the Palisades sill as a long peninsula stretching south from Rockland County.
ISRAEL —
Here it gets interesting. According to the map, the Jordan Valley should flood; but since even with the sea level rise there's no way for the Ocean to get in there, I wouldn't expect much of a change. If it did, though, we could say goodbye to Jericho... and the Beit She’an Valley.
‘Ako and the entire Qerayot region north of Hhaifa disappear, as do long strips of Mediterranean coastline (you know... Hertzeliya, Tel Aviv, Ashdod...) and half of Eilat.
(once to Adam and Eve, once to Noah)
be fruitful and multiply
and conquer the Earth!
In other words,
DON'T FLOOD IT!!!
(that's God's job)
Remember — it's not about saving the Earth.
It's about saving ourselves.
God set the planet bal timot — so that it won't falter.
We may not be so lucky.
carved on the walls of the caverns by Steg (dos iz nit der šteg) at 6/06/2006 11:20:00 PM
10 Comments:
props (btw, I also liked the Costner movie)
How far would I have to travel from Jerusalem to get to the new beach?
I thought that RI would be completely submerged...
Turns out my house would be fine
*ok that last link didn't work as well as I'd like, but yeah. if you zoom in on RI and try to find Barrington, a lot of it is happily above water.
DK:
thanks!
WB:
about the same as now. if i'm reading the map correctly, you wouldn't be able to take Kevish Geiha to get there, though.
KOST:
congratulations!
Nice Map and overlay. I was always looking for a positive angle when cycling uphill from Manhattan (technically the uphill starts at 4th Ave in Brooklyn) to Borough Park. When Katrina devastated New Orleans and many of the local news pundits were speculating what a hurricane of Katrina's magnitude could mean to the metro NYC area, this map is a visual indicator thereof.
FWIW, Google Earth has an elevation function, if you enable the "terrain layer." For those of you who cycle often, this is incredibly useful in planning a route based on the grade of the potential slopes.
In this scenario, finding a place to live that is somewhat above sea level is equally useful.
Interesting post, although you left a semicolon out of your em dash.
JF:
Cool, thanks.
I remember when I used to bike from BP to Sha‘aré Ssiyón in 'Syriantown' during the week for Shahharit during the summer a few years ago, it was always more effort to bike back than to bike there. Eventually i realized that there was a very subtle slope going up to BP from Flatbush.
MK:
Where?
A certain country in Europe loses half it's territory to estuary.
Not a comforting feeling.
I doubt that those other countries will make much room.
Oh well, bigger dykes I guess.
Good dykes make good neighbors.
BS"D
YOY. Thanks for this link. Turn out that where I & my family live would be ok, that there would still be literally MILLIONS of people homeless in what would be left of the Lower Mainland (around Vancouver). So I'd have a lot of people to take in...
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