It’s only a matter of time before New York gets a storm that brings both high seas and heavy rains.

Is the city ready? trib.al/rNx7JKU
Hurricane Ida put an exclamation point on realities that New York was already grappling with.

Like other parts of the world, the city is confronting more than calamitous extreme events. It’s the drip, drip of “the chronic worsening of average conditions”
trib.al/JgcjfKN Image
The NYC Stormwater Resiliency Plan says that weatherwise, the scale of everything has changed.

The city’s current infrastructure — its roads, subway tunnels, sewer systems, storm drains — isn't built to withstand the climate-related ravages to come trib.al/JgcjfKN Image
New York City’s sewage system is geared to handle about 1.75 inches of rain per hour.

On Sept. 1, between 8:51 and 9:51 p.m., Hurricane Ida brought down 3.15 inches in Central Park trib.al/JgcjfKN Image
Even on dry days, subterranean New York is soggy, with leaking sewer pipes.

If every storm drain had been clear and every pipe in NYC's sewer system had been free of obstruction on Sept. 1, the city had no way to rid itself of so much water trib.al/JgcjfKN Image
By the end of the 21st century, New York City could experience as much as 25% more annual rainfall, according to @NYClimate.

The number of days marked by extreme rain would also markedly increase trib.al/JgcjfKN Image
@NYClimate New York City may not be able to buy its way out of trouble without also changing its ways.

Since the 1960s, the city has spent about $45 billion on sewer infrastructure. Hurricane Ida overwhelmed it in minutes trib.al/JgcjfKN Image
@NYClimate Coastal cities, such as Norfolk, Virginia, and Charleston, South Carolina, have been resorting to old maps to understand how to manage the threat of sea rise.

They’ve found that their city flood maps hearken back to filled-in creeks and wetlands trib.al/JgcjfKN Image
@NYClimate NYC is no different. Manhattan’s waterways once included:

💦66 miles of streams
💦More than 300 springs
💦21 ponds and salt pools

Those waterways didn’t disappear, they were just covered with concrete trib.al/JgcjfKN Image
@NYClimate Understanding where water used to be tells us where it still wants to go.

If Ida transformed the Major Deegan Expressway into water, for example, it’s partly because ancient waterways had been turned into the expressway trib.al/JgcjfKN Image
@NYClimate New York has taken small steps in the direction of a more comprehensive approach to water. Landmarks of a future cityscape include features to help absorb rainfall and manage drainage:

🌳Trees
🛣Porous roads
🌸Gardens rather than concrete
🌿Green roofs trib.al/JgcjfKN

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More from @bopinion

18 Oct
Vaccine opponents are seizing on the death of former Secretary of State Colin Powell, who was fully vaccinated yet died of Covid-19 complications, to cast doubt on the vaccination effort against the virus.

These people are dangerously wrong. Here’s why:
trib.al/vEstvdB
The death of someone like Powell, who was 84 and fighting multiple myeloma, a blood cancer that significantly hampers the immune system, is a potent argument to vaccinate as broadly as possible trib.al/vEstvdB Image
Data from the CDC makes it abundantly clear that while fully vaccinated people can contract Covid, it’s far less common.

In fact, it was six times less common than in the unvaccinated in August across all age groups trib.al/vEstvdB Image
Read 11 tweets
15 Oct
There are roughly a million qualified immigrant workers waiting to get visas to work in the United States.

About 80,000 green cards will go to waste if Congress doesn’t act soon trib.al/yeaVAIa
The Biden administration has acknowledged that in the last fiscal year, the U.S. failed to issue green cards to legal immigrant workers.

The shortfall adds to a backlog of more than 1 million people waiting to receive employment-based visas trib.al/yeaVAIa
Congress should ensure those green cards are used. The Biden administration should also create a streamlined approval process for immigrants.

This means, among other things, upgrading technology to allow applicants to file paperwork online trib.al/yeaVAIa
Read 10 tweets
14 Oct
☕ Starbucks is marking its 50th anniversary.

If you think that number must be off by a couple of decades, you’re not alone.

The chain only made its way into most of our lives in the 1990s. Its success was a slow brew, requiring several recipe changes trib.al/gq9fyqV
The original Starbucks wasn’t a café.

It sold gourmet beans and equipment so customers could make their own coffee.

In 1981, a sales rep visited to see why four small stores in Seattle were selling more of a simple drip setup than all of Macy’s trib.al/jW0jdDX Image
The sales rep's name was Howard Schultz.

Starbucks could go national, he told the owners, with “dozens of stores, maybe even hundreds,” and become a brand-name “synonymous with great coffee.” He wanted to bring ubiquitous cafés to the U.S. trib.al/jW0jdDX Image
Read 9 tweets
14 Oct
The U.S. economy grew at an annualized pace of 0.6% from the duration (so far) of the Covid-19 pandemic.

That masks some pretty big regional divergences, though trib.al/FivrEZS
Four of the five worst-performing states, with real GDP shrinking at an annual pace of 2.5% or more, have economies dependent on fossil fuels.

The prices of fossil fuels collapsed early in the pandemic trib.al/Z7i82eT Image
Overall, the U.S. economy’s center of gravity shifted westward during Covid:

The Northeast’s economy is smaller
The Great Lakes region barely grew
The Southeast modestly outpaced the national average trib.al/Z7i82eT Image
Read 12 tweets
10 Oct
The world of logistics and manufacturing is in a state of disarray.

A record number of ships are stuck outside Los Angeles and Long Beach, California. Shortages of everything from vessels to truck drivers abound trib.al/arL9DMJ
With freight rates soaring, the ocean-shipping industry is beginning to look like a cartel.

The days of quick, cheap deliveries will soon become a distant memory trib.al/Ar6qsj7
The cost of shipping a 40-foot box on the Shanghai-to-Los Angeles route is so much higher than going the opposite direction that companies are willing to send containers back empty trib.al/Ar6qsj7
Read 11 tweets
8 Oct
If you have attended a conference or public event recently, you may have noticed: The wealthier attendees are not usually wearing masks, but the poorer servers and staff almost always are trib.al/GwLdlrA
Even if the attendees are wearing masks at the beginning, the masks come off once they start wining and dining — and they usually don’t go back on.

Isn’t this a sign that mask-wearing is no longer so essential? trib.al/GwLdlrA Image
It sends a mixed message: If you want to be comfortable eating and drinking with your peers, it’s OK to take off your mask.

But it’s not OK if you want to be comfortable:

🍲Serving food
🍽️Carrying heavy trays
🍰Describing the dessert menu
trib.al/GwLdlrA Image
Read 9 tweets

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