Presentation on the effects of rising water levels towards New York – Liam Cohen

Today I went upstairs to the Science Lab to watch a presentation given by one of the Rookie Robotics Team member’s father.  His presentation was about a how the rise of waters in the ocean are going to affect New York City.  It was a very interesting presentation and I learned a lot of new things, for example; I learned that massive damage from a hurricane can be prevented by putting up a few environmentally positive islands to minimize the amount of a damage a tidal wave could cause.  What I felt like was amazing about the presentation is that I could see all the time and effort that was put into what they did.  And what they did was pretty amazing.  In short terms, they focused on predicting what would happen if a hurricane were to strike, then what we could do to minimize damage.  I asked many questions, not only to help me better understand the subject but to gain knowledge for my robotics presentation.  I found the whole thing also very motivating, but also somewhat frustrating.  It made me motivated because all the ideas that the presenter put forth were ideas that I though were brilliant, this is also why it frustrated me.  It frustrated me because they could do this so easily, but no one would probably listen to them.  The only question I have, is why focus on preventing the damage, shouldn’t we be more focused on preventing it from happening at all?