It’s a firmly held belief in most of the scientific community that the ice caps are melting, the ocean rising and sooner or later, we’re absolutely finished. We mean, they say it a more boring, nerdy way, but the point that we have a giant countdown clock over our head before the oceans rise and overtake us for good remains the same. In case you were wondering where to buy real estate, amateur doomsayer Jeffrey Lin has made a number of maps detailing how things will look once the seas rise. In Brooklyn, your best bet is Sunset Park and Park Slope if you want to survive the angry ocean. Which isn’t a given that you do, we understand.
According to The Real Deal, Lin is using his background in geography and urban planning to figure out just how submerged different cities will be if the ice caps melt the way that environmental scientists predict. The above map for Brooklyn shows what we’re looking at if the 1/3 of the world’s ice sheet melts and the sea levels rise 100 feet.
The good news is that at least part of Brooklyn will still be around, with Sunset Park, Prospect Heights and Park Slope high enough to survive. The bad news is that you can’t afford to live in Park Slope, and news like this is bound to start an even crazier speculative rush on Sunset Park than we’ve already seen. Eh, fine by us. Who even wants to survive our awful Waterworld future? We saw that movie, living didn’t look too fun.
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Hey, my apartment will be beachfront property if the icecaps disappear. BURN, BABY, BURN
People underestimate the influence of money and power once their own interests are at stake. A "seawall" of epic proportions would be built around NYC harbor long before Lower Manhattan and Manhattan at large, along with surrounding landmasses, were ever allowed to be consumed by rising waters. These "what if?" maps are purely hypothetical because they'll never happen; the recent storage fire in North Brooklyn sits on land valued at upwards of $100M, and that's basically just one block with waterfront views. Now add up all the land value, let alone actual stuff-value of buildings and infrastructure.
Nice conjecture, but I'm more interested in the solutions and real-world discussions. Cheers.