Flood

New York City has not armored itself from the upcoming floods that it will face. Responding to the article from New York Times “New York is lagging as seas and risks rise, critics warn” by Mireya Navaro, she writes about all the researches we already have to make it a flood proof city, also what we already have done or have not done to make it so and why it has not been done. Navaro writes that Douglas Hill an engineer at Stony Brook University said that instead of planning to be flooded “state and federal agencies should be investing in protection” (Navaro). The people who have authority to make a change are the state and federal agencies so instead of planning they should be investing towards making a change. I agree with what they are saying because we are just wasting our money and time on researches and planning and doing nothing to save ourselves and our city where we reside in. We need to focus on our researches that we already have to make it a flood prove city, then we can move on to other issues like reduce polluting carbon dioxide which is actually causing our sea levels to rise and the floods.

Feedback

I received few comments from my peers on the first draft of my essay. My peers told me I had too many questions in it but also how those questions made them think into the matter. How there can be a good and a bad side of a situation. So I will try to cut down on my questions and look for another way to write the information down. My biggest concern about my essay is what if I go on with information that is not related to this matter itself. I need help in cutting down information and not go on and write about issues. 

My Response on New York Times Article

In this blog I will be responding to an article that I read in The New York Times “New York is lagging as seas and risks rise, critics warn” by Mireya Navaro and which was published in September 10, 2012. This article first tells the readers how far behind New York is to armor itself from the climate change; secondly what New York can do to improve itself from the upcoming floods; and lastly the high expenses to make New York a climate proof city. When this article was published Hurricane Sandy did not happen yet so she refers back to Hurricane Irene and how the city shut down the subway system and ordered the evacuation of 370,000 people as Hurricane Irene barreled up the Atlantic coast. Hurricane Irene weakened to a tropical storm so it really did not hit New York City so there was no subway shut down or evacuation for Hurricane Irene. But Hurricane Sandy hit New York City hard, there was a subway shut down leaving New Yorkers no way to transport, there was evacuation and there was no power in some parts of the city not to mention the flood in some places around the city. If New York took actions after Hurricane Irene we would have been ready for Hurricane Sandy and many more to come. New York planers suggested that new constructions and buildings should be developed risk free for the upcoming climate disasters but no such actions are imposed. A research group from stuny brook suggested in 2004 of installing movable barriers during hurricanes would block huge tides from entering the city, it wasn’t installed because the cost of installing such barriers could reach nearly $10 billion. There were such excuses like how these barriers could interfere with water ecosystems. Author tells us that five years ago 3 ½ inches of rain stopped the subway system for hours leaving 2.5 million riders no way in or out of the city. Improving our subway the transit agency spent about $34 million. My question is why do we wait till the disaster and spend our money fixing, why don’t we just build it climate appropriately in the first place. It’s interesting how politics plays a role in the readers mind while reading this article about climate change. Out of the top three comments, two readers took this article towards politics and how the republic party does not support climate change and democratic does.

Summarizing graphs from the text

To the students who are not taking Professor Cooper’s English class based on climate change, I am Sanjida and I am writing this blog summarizing two graphs from the book climate change by William Nordhaus. On chapter four page 39, there’s this graph which is an observatory made by some scientists from the year 1958 in Hawaii; showing us on the graph how carbon dioxide concentrations rise 25% from 1958-2012. On the graph the X-axis refers to the numbers of years and the Y-axis refers to carbon dioxide concentrations (parts per million). Again in chapter four page 46, there’s another graph which is showing us the trend of global temperature done by three research groups; on the X-axis it refers to the number of years and the Y-axis shows temperature change from 1900 in Celsius.

My response to Nordhaus's words

In the book Climate Casino, William Nordhaus gives us an example how we burn fossil fuels in our daily lives. We might not realize how much carbon dioxide we are putting in the atmosphere when we are going on a long drive, heating or cooling our homes or when we are cooking, but think of it as a whole not just you itself. Nordhaus shows us with an example of his own how 100 pounds is produced for driving just 50 miles and how a person will not pay attention while driving. But if everyone around the world produces that 100 pounds of carbon dioxide twice a week it will make about 30billion metric tons of carbon dioxide to the world’s atmosphere. I find this very interesting how Nordhaus is telling us how we produce so much carbon dioxide in our daily lives then he states himself that he enjoys his lifestyles. We all love our current lifestyle, we get everything done very easily. Why would we go back to lives of a caveman? And work hard to get everything, like we don’t complain enough about the easy way out we have.