NYC ignores science to wreck precious parks in the name of climate doom

A fresh breeze is sweeping away climate-change hysteria.

The UN International Panel on Climate Change, often cited to support cataclysmic forecasts, recently admitted its extreme scenarios are highly implausible.

The walkback followed last year’s peer-reviewed Dutch research study in the Journal of Marine Science and Engineering, which found no measurable acceleration in global sea-level rises.

But these retreats came too late to prevent or even slow the scandalous ongoing destruction of Manhattan’s Battery Park City Esplanade and John V. Lindsay East River Park.

Both epic acts of civic vandalism were authorized in the name of protecting New York from an imaginary “100-year flood.”

The schemes are part of the $2 billion, state-sponsored East Coast Resiliency project along a 3.5-mile waterfront stretch wrapping from the East River to the Hudson.

And while a coalition of downtown civic groups and residents recently filed a new lawsuit aiming to block it, public authorities have steamrolled over previous legal challenges.

Mayor Zohran Mandani on Monday trumpeted the completion of a small part of the project — the elevation of a waterfront promenade at the Battery.

The area is “on the front lines of the climate crisis,” he lectured.

“With phase one now complete, we are taking a major step toward safeguarding Lower Manhattan . . . from rising seas and stronger storms.” 

Despite Mamdani’s blather, the walkway this week remains a confusing jumble of barricades and security checkpoints.

And whatever work was done there is puny compared with what’s in store at Battery Park City and the East River park.

Yet growing skepticism about the climate zealots’ dire warnings may not be enough to stave off future atrocities promoted by their hysterical echo chamber — and by the designers, engineers, construction companies and “consultants” who batten on the lucrative boondoggles.

Both Manhattan projects bury underground flood-barrier walls beneath new, undulating topography that’s inimical to casual use.

Walkways and lawns that once served as a front porch to our picturesque waterways were lifted ten feet; mature shade trees, art installations, public seating and athletic areas have been torn out.

At Le District’s alfresco Battery Park café, customers who previously enjoyed views of the river and the New Jersey skyline now face a chain-link fence and roaring excavation machines.

Battery Park City’s beloved Hudson River Esplanade, a treasure of Lower Manhattan, will be closed for years to come as it’s needlessly reconfigured.

Its off-limits condition shocks those who loved its airy refuge from the city’s thrum — and appalls nearby residents of this once magnificent neighborhood.

The ruination started at little Wagner Park at Battery Park City’s south end.

The widely praised, 3.5-acre green oasis was sliced and diced into awkward segments with none of its former charm — all for a mere $300 million.

Few people today enjoy sitting on the shadeless, bleachers-like steps that replaced Wagner’s original flat meadow, once a  paradise for sunbathers and sightseers.

But, oh joy! — we now have an “integrated flood barrier system,” “flip-up deployables” and “lush gardens planted with native, salt-resistant species.”

It’s the more infuriating given that Superstorm Sandy in 2012 did no damage to Wagner Park at all, despite the harbor’s highest sea-level rise ever recorded.

Meanwhile, the southern portion of the miles-long, 46-acre John V. Lindsay East River Park, which stretches from Montgomery Street north of the Manhattan Bridge to East 12th Street, has been warped in accord with climate mandates.

The park’s northern part and the Battery Park Esplanade are soon to follow.

They’re being replaced by elevated recreation areas stripped of the simple pleasures that drew millions of users.

In the now “resilient” segment south of the Williamsburg Bridge, scores of old trees have given way to saplings that might throw shade in a mere 25 years.

The mostly level recreation lawns that were favorite gathering grounds for residents of nearby NYCHA housing projects have sprouted hilly, segmented zones mostly too small for easy use.

Impromptu cookouts on the open grass are now discouraged in favor of a concrete-paved “barbecue area” that saw no grills firing on recent BBQ-perfect afternoons.

Nowhere is the stupidity more infuriating than at a derelict former fireboat house near the foot of Grand Street.

There, design geniuses inexplicably installed a concrete, five-level curved seating area, reminiscent of Mussolini-era architecture in Rome, which faces nothing but the building’s blank rear wall.

Maybe the recent, thoroughly researched refutations of Biblical-scale flood forecasts will dissuade other municipalities from inflicting such abominations in the future.

But don’t count on the media to help: Except in The Post, it’s hard to find any critical thinking or questioning of the supposed need for these riverfront rapes.

The New York Times, the climate-change lobby’s loudest organ, last October published an interminable, lavishly illustrated article titled “New York City Is Going to Flood, Here’s What the City Can Do to Survive.”

The city will survive — but not its beloved and precious waterfront spaces, destroyed in the name of saving them.