News Note by Kip Hansen — 8 April 2025
At the New York Times, Mihir Zaveri and Hilary Howard allow themselves to be fooled by an alarmist report, released Monday by the Regional Plan Association, a nonprofit civic organization, which said “by 2040, dozens of neighborhoods and suburbs are likely to have lost thousands of homes to floods.”
The NY Times title is “In 15 Years, 80,000 Homes in the New York Area May Be Lost to Flooding”.
The report that has led these two professional journalists astray is “Averting Crisis – Zoning to Create Resilient Homes for All” particularly its section “Flood Exposure and Loss”.
The report seems rather straightforward, stating in simple language “By 2040, around 77,300 acres of residential-zoned land in New York City and the study area suburbs – or 10.5% of such land – may face flooding.”
That seems like a lot of lost residential area, doesn’t it?
How did they figure that?
That would certainly be bad.
But, I have to admit, my non-science buzzer went off when I read that.
They don’t exactly cheat, they do supply some reference as to how thy arrived at that conclusion. Following the journalistic norm by placing explanatory caveats behind little “circle-dots”.
Obviously, that means “Please click on this little dot to find more information”, at least in the minds of the authors of the report. What do we find when we click on the dot?
Say what? 16” sea level rise by 2040? Sixteen inches in 15 years?
Taking the risk of over-exposing readers to this ubiquitous graph of actually experienced, real-world Relative Sea Level Rise in and around New York City, here is how much relative sea level has really risen in the last 150 years and it states simply “0.96 feet in 100 years”.
Maybe our NY Times striving journalists just failed to click on the circle-dot for an explanation of that rather over-blown sea level rise prediction. Maybe they just took the report at face-value, as if no one would ever sex-up a report to get more impact. Maybe neither Mihir Zaveri or Hilary Howard has any real background knowledge about sea level and don’t know how to find out, how to check facts presented to them – I don’t know. But not realizing that the Regional Plan Association report makes totally unrealistic, non-physical, impossible assumptions about sea level rise by 2040 is a pretty big fail for journalists at one of the world’s newspaper of record.
Maybe they didn’t read the actual report at all – if they had read one paragraph further, they would have found “Hazards include storm surge, riverine flooding, and sea level rise projections based on New York Panel Climate Change (NPCC) 16″ of sea level rise by 2040 (75th percentile).”
Bottom Lines:
1. Don’t believe everything you read in the NY Times or hear on NPR or “facts” that are dished up by advocacy non-profit organizations – even if they quote advocacy-based “official” reports from the likes of the New York City Panel on Climate Change (NPCC).
2. Most of the Climate Alarm Talking Points are easily checked by referring to official sources (even knowing that those sources themselves may be biased in favor of alarm) – NOAA gives the easily located facts about sea level rise for many U.S. locations. PSMSL offers far more extensive coverage. There is no excuse for being fooled on sea level rise alarmism.
3. New York City is a coastal, sea-facing, island city (for the most part). It was hit by Hurricane Sandy (by any name) in 2014 and saw 14.06 feet of storm surge at Battery Park. It needs to adapt to these types of threats.
4. Except for low-lying areas built on tidal flats and pre-existing flood plains, or areas directly on ocean-facing beaches, most of NY City need not worry about relative Sea Level Rise this century but NY City will see another foot or so of sea level by 2100.
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Author’s Comment:
NY City, and most of the entire state of New York, has a terrible deficit of basic decent affordable housing for lower income working people. This is true even in the tiny Upstate community in which live. Even truly crappy apartments are priced out of the reach of minimum wage earners, even for two earner couples. I don’t mean to downplay that aspect of the report on which this news brief is based.
Years ago, I urged my kids to buy small homes that they could afford and fix them up. They now have the advantages (and downsides) of being “home owners” and have seen doubling and tripling of the values of their homes in the last decade. None bought homes in flood zones (with a bit of advice from me) or on beaches.
I am usually disappointed by the reporting in the NY Times, even in the ‘back sections’ (in the past they were devoid of politics). They used to have decent Science and Health sections – but no more. They now have a Climate and Environment section, which reads like it is written by an unholy cross between the Environmental Defense Fund and the Climate Action Network.
But, hey, Thanks for Reading.
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I am not so charitable. The New York Times has been reliably politically correct for quite a while (arguably since their current owners have been in place), and they are locked into a variety of Appeal to Authority. If the source has the correct political connections, they are regarded as “reliable”.
Their intended readers probably contribute to those Green NGOs, so repeating a preposterous claim by them is just supporting that consensus.
If the NYT is getting weird, it reflects their readers prejudices getting even more weird.
Yes, Kip is WAY too charitable in saying “allow themselves to be fooled”.
I’d like to stick around until 2100 to check on sea level rise but I will need a different kind of miracle if that is to happen.
I’m so old I have never seen a “circle-dot” for more information. I do enjoy any day when I learn something new!
John ==> “I do enjoy any day when I learn something new!” You and me both!
And if it hasn’t happened, can we burn their building to the ground?
This sort of stupidity is playing out in Australia in states and councils with green idiots in control. Victoria and Queensland are going to require 0.8m (800mm) sea level rise into account in building approvals … at current rate that is 250 years 🙂
Leon ==> Yes, “Think of our great-great-great-great-grandchidren!”
Story Tip..
I certainly hope this one comes true
NASA’s New Chief Likely To Wind Down Climate Alarm Shop – Climate Change Dispatch
“…here is how much relative sea level has really risen in the last 150 years and it states simply “9.6 feet in 100 years”.
Close, but misplaced the decimal point there.
Mike ==> Good eye! Silly mistake – apologies. Corrected now.
Selwyn county in New Zealand can beat that, the mayor told residents of a small tidal lakeside community that the sea level will rise 5 meters in the next 10 years
The official word from Selwyn is 0.21m by 2040.
But maybe the mayor is confused about his own district ?
and all derived from RCP 8.5
“Sixteen inches in 15 years”
That guy will grow up to be a porn star !!! (:-))
1save ==> ahhhh…ah hmmm…
Do these media not realise that these claims will be fact checked in 15 years ?
Just as the ones from 25-30 years ago were and found wanting
Sadly, if that were an impediment, nobody would be taking them seriously now. It’s similar to the perennial declarations of Peak Oil—never doubted, always taken seriously despite a dozen busted predictions.
“will be fact checked”
by whom?
these claims will be fact checked in 15 years
They don’t care. They’ll just make new “predictions” in 15 years – it’s going to happen in 15 years…
Duker ==> You miss the idea that the journalists DID fact-check the sea level rise data — they looked to an official report about sea level for NY City.
That report contradicts the statement made in the Times article — see this link of Fig 3.3.
According to the co-located GPS elevation gauge at The Battery tide gauge site, about half of the observed relative sea level rise is due to the land sinking so the true sea level rise is about 1.5 mm/yr, not 3. The Battery gauges are mounted on bedrock so it seems that the sinking is due to geology, not ground water pumping nor CO2 nor any other manmade changes. The 1.5mm rate is consistent with USGS studies concluding that mid-Atlantic coastal sea level has been rising at 1 to 2 mm/yr for the past 6,000 years.
Denis ==> Yes, that is roughly correct. Vertical Land Movement (negative – downward) is added to absolute change in sea level to arrive at Relative Sea Level — sort of….It is as you note, the downward movement of the land mass adds to the rise in the surface of the sea to add up to Relative Sea Level rise.
For New York City, the point is irrelevant — the increase in the height of the sea compared to the land it real and the water flows into those housing developments built on mud flats – at or below highest astronomical tide levels.
And, again, yes, overall, worldwide, absolute sea level is rising and has been rising and will continue to rise at about 2-3mm a year for the foreseeable future.
The ‘Delta Norm’, the Dutch standard for sea defences is 7 meters above average sea level. In NY the levees fall short of that by about 3 meters. I suggest therefore that a solution to potential flooding related problems in lower Manhattan could be to return the NY area to Dutch control.
Just a thought …
Uitstekend idee!
Transfer New York and New Jersey back to Nieuw Nederland!
That would be one way to get the UN out of the US.
That would be too expensive, even for the rich Dutch.
Whatever the Dutch did is applicable to a country 40% below the 7 meter standard and has 17 million people on a postage stamp.
Very few acres of natural areas are left over.
Everything is jam packed.
People and other detritus everywhere.
Those NY areas should never have been zoned “residential” for greedy developers who paid off politicians
They should have remained wetlands
They should have been left as natural spaces, with occasional flooding during storm surges and very high tides.
But then the leftist, woke NYT “journalists” would have one less scare-mongering issue to write about
The NY defenses against high seas are lacking and will inevitably result in flooding. Since no bureaucrat wants to be blamed for endangerment of lives, this will be blamed on Climate Change rather than the true culprit….seawalls and dikes that were designed for the 100 year case coming up against the 250 year storm that occurs at high tide with onshore winds.
Are they hoping it happens before the excuse disappears?
I like the Dutch too much to punish them by giving NYC back to them.
Maybe give it to Greenland instead?
Ed ==> Maybe we could do a three country swap, where the Dutch get Manhattan and we end up with Greenland? Just have to figure what the Dutch give Denmark….
Dutch cheese to Denmark to put their highly subsidized farmers out of business
Their job is not to report facts
It is to find sensational “exclusives”
There are plenty of those in the climate change literature promising doom and gloom, end of times, end of this and end of that
They simply need to read a few random abstracts in nature or science, job done
Maybe they received this from Climate Central and published with minor tweaks (avoid plagiarism)..
“a nonprofit civic organization”
nonprofit – spend it all
civic – on living in the city
Anything’s possible in California.
Very nice Kip. At some point we need to hold media and NGOs accountable, it is not okay to lie.
Sandy was not a hurricane at the time it made landfall, it was a SUPPER STORM, the new alarmist name for a little old tropical storm.
But this does point out how neglecting infrequent, yet plausible events can result in catastrophic consequences.