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Scientist: East Coast Cities are ‘Sitting Ducks’ for Storms
Cities on the United States east coast are “sitting ducks” for the next big storm because of the destruction wrought by Hurricane Sandy, one of Barack Obama’s top scientists warned on Tuesday.
Marcia McNutt, who last week announced her resignation as director of the U.S. Geological Survey, told a conference that Sandy had left coastal communities dangerously exposed to future storms of any size.
Hurricane Sandy churns off the U.S. east coast in the Atlantic Ocean.
Credit: NASA/Getty Images
“Superstorm Sandy was a threshold for the north-east and we have already crossed it,” McNutt told the National Council for Science and the Environment conference in Washington. “For the next storm, not even a super storm, even a run-of-the-mill nor’easter, the amount of breaches and the amount of coastal Read more…
New figures: More of US at risk to sea level rise
WASHINGTON (AP) — Nearly 4 million people across the United States, from Los Angeles to much of the East Coast, live in homes more prone to flooding from rising seas fueled by global warming, according to a new method of looking at flood risk published in two scientific papers.
The cities that have the most people living within three feet (one meter) of high tide – the projected sea level rise by the year 2100 made by many scientists and computer models – are in Florida, Louisiana, and New York. New York City, often not thought of as a city prone to flooding, has 141,000 people at risk, which is second only to New Orleans’ 284,000. The two big Southeast Florida counties, Miami-Dade and Broward, have 312,000 people at risk combined.
All told, 3.7 million people live in homes within three feet of high tide. More than 500 US cities have at least 10 percent of the population at increased risk, the studies said.
“Southeast Florida is definitely the highest density of population that’s really on Read more…
‘Digital DNA’ May Soon Be Required To Take SAT & ACT Exams
Since the SAT and ACT cheating scandals broke wide open on Long Island, lawmakers have pledged to come up with unique cutting edge ways to combat identity theft.
On Monday, CBS 2’s Jennifer McLogan got the exclusive first look at what politicians will see first hand in Albany on Tuesday afternoon, and what could soon be implemented at a high school near you.
Inside the applied DNA Read more…
Is The NYPD Experimenting With Drones Over The City? Evidence Points To Yes
Miami, Cities In Texas Also Said To Be Trying This New Way To Be Eye In The Sky
Drones like this one could very well be hovering over New York City soon. (Photo courtesy: Miami-Dade Police Special Response Team)
NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) — They’re used in war zones for surveillance and military strikes.
But are there plans to deploy drones in the Big Apple to keep an eye on New Yorkers?
More and more people believe it’s inevitable, reports CBS 2’s Don Dahler.
Drones are unmanned aircraft that can fly at low altitudes and shoot live video — or shoot live missiles.
Surveillance cameras already dot the city’s streets, but is the NYPD exploring the use of even more eyes in the skies, in the form of drones? Some evidence points to yes.
A website named Gay City News posted an e-mail it says it acquired through the Freedom of Information Act. It’s purportedly from a Read more…
Schools ‘spy’ on fat kids
Big Brother is joining the battle of the bulge.
A group of Long Island students will soon be wearing controversial electronic monitors that allow school officials to track their physical activity around the clock.
The athletics chair for the Bay Shore schools ordered 10 Polar Active monitors, at $90 a pop, for use starting this spring. The wristwatchlike devices count heartbeats, detect motion and even track students’ sleeping habits in a bid to combat obesity.
The information is displayed on a color-coded screen and gets transmitted to a password-protected Web site that students and educators can access.
The devices are already in use in school districts in St. Louis and South Orange, NJ — and have raised privacy concerns among some parents and observers.
But Ted Nagengast, the Bay Shore athletics chair, said, “It’s a great reinforcement in fighting the obesity epidemic. It tells kids, in real time, ‘Am I active? Am I not active?’ We want to give kids the opportunity to become active.”
The monitors are distributed by Polar Electro, of Lake Success, LI, the US division of a Finland firm.
In the South Orange-Maplewood School District, where earlier versions of the devices have been used for two years, upper-grade students’ marks in Read more…
New York Moves to Deploy Body Scanners on Street in Search for Guns
The NYPD and Department of Defense are working together testing Terahertz Imaging Detection, a new way to get concealed illegal weapons off the streets. (Photo courtesy: NYPD)
NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly told CBS in New York his department is looking to deploy Terahertz Imaging Detection scanners on the street in the war on “illegal guns.”
Kelly said the scanners would be used in “reasonably suspicious circumstances” and intended to cut down on the number of stop-and-frisks on the street. So called stop-and-frisks are considered a violation of the Fourth Amendment.
New York City is largely a Second Amendment free zone. The city’s mayor, Michael Bloomberg, has said that citizens “acting outside of any governmental military effort” should not be allowed to protect themselves with firearms.
“The NYPD and Department of Defense are working together testing Terahertz Imaging Detection, a new way to get concealed illegal weapons off the streets,” CBS reports. Terahertz Imaging Detection measures energy radiating from Read more…
Irene takes out cell towers, disrupts communications
Computerworld – Communications networks took a hit from Hurricane Irene, as 1,400 cell towers and cell sites were damaged or disrupted — mainly in Virginia, New Jersey, New York and North Carolina, the Federal Communications Commission said Monday.
In addition to cell site disruptions from power outages or other problems, 132,000 wired voice subscribers lost service as of Sunday, while 500,000 cable customers lost service, mostly in Virginia, an FCC spokesman said in an email early Monday. Three broadcast radio stations were also down for at least part of the storm, he said. The FCC didn’t say what percentage of the thousands of cell towers along the East Cost were affected.
On Sunday afternoon, when Irene was downgraded to tropical storm status, FCC chairman Julius Genachowski said there Read more…
America counts the cost of Hurricane Irene as flooding hits north east
At least 29 people in eight states have now been killed, many through drowning, as estimates of the damage caused to property alone reached $13 billion (£8 billion).
More than 500,000 homes and businesses across Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Vermont and New Hampshire were left without electricity, as rivers around the north-east burst their banks.
Another 285,000 homes and firms in eastern Canada lost power after being struck by Irene as it left the US, bringing the total dealing with blackouts to more than 5.5 million people.
“The impacts of this storm will be felt for some time,” President Barack Obama told Americans late on Sunday. “And the recovery effort will last for weeks or longer”.
Millions of commuters in New York City faced delays and packed trains upon their return to work on Monday morning, as thousands of evacuated residents continued to return to their homes.
It was their upstate neighbours, however, who bore the brunt. Several small towns throughout the Catskill Mountains were totally submerged by water after local rivers and streams flooded.
Already waterlogged following the wettest August on record, the outer Read more…
New York breaks city’s rainfall record with nearly eight inches soaking city
Staten Island was hit hard by the record rainfall on Sunday.
New York broke an all-time record for a one-day rainfall Sunday as up to 8 inches of water soaked the city, snarling trains and flooding roadways.
By 9 p.m., 7.7 inches of rain had fallen at Kennedy Airport.
It was the most recorded there in a single day since the National Weather Service began keeping records 116 years ago.
The heavy tropical rain is expected to continue Monday, and a flash flood warning is in effect until 9 p.m.
The normal rainfall for all of August in New York is 4 inches – which means the city was socked with two months worth of rain in a single day.
“This is what you would expect in a major hurricane,” said Steve Wistar, senior meteorologist at AccuWeather.
Kennedy Airport’s old one-day rainfall record, 6.3 inches, set on June 30, 1984, fell by noon.
Central Park, where the city’s official rainfall total is recorded, saw Read more…
North Carolina Most At-Risk Against Rising Sea Levels
If one man could hold back the sea, North Carolina wouldn’t need to worry about rising ocean levels. Neither would New York, Boston or Miami. (Photo: Reuters Photographer/Reuters)The problem with reports about rising sea levels is that the damn thing—the world’s ocean—seems to creep up very, very slowly. In the past 21 centuries it’s raised an average of .07874 an inch every year, about the thickness of a nickel.
That doesn’t sound like much, right? Nothing to worry about! But what makes rising sea levels a deadly serious problem is that the ocean just keeps creeping up, up, up. And the average in recent decades is more like an inch a year.
In fact a new report from the National Academy of Sciences says the rate of Read more…
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