There’s only one way to say this: You’re wrong. Our resident conservative, oil-patch resident and fossil-fuel advocate in #26 provides us with an apocalyptic litany of things he apparently believes will happen if we try to address climate change, none of which are accurate and most of which are entirely false. AOC is indulging in a bit of political hyperbole, but she is not wrong. Of course the world will not end in 12 years, but approximately 12 years is about the maximum time we have to limit global temperature rise to no more than 1.5C according to a recent IPCC report, beyond which the impacts become increasingly catastrophic. And frankly no one seriously believes we’re going to be able to do that, especially with the US pulling out of the Paris climate accord.
So, no, the world is not going to end in 12 years. 12 years is around the time – if events continue as they probably will – that we’ll have to look our children in the eye and say, “it looks like this is going to be really bad”. Because 1.5C is about the most we can sustain and still retain some semblance of a normal climate; remember that even now vast areas of Arctic permafrost are melting for the first time in thousands of years and releasing methane, and entire Inuit communities are having to be relocated because their villages are literally falling into the sea, while polar ice coverges continues to hit record lows, leading to accelerated Arctic warming and long-term changes in North American weather patterns.
I invite all climate-change [del]deniers[/del] optimists to purchase [del]trailers[/del] modular homes and reside in [del]flood zones[/del] seaside Florida. Take your kids. Show us the depth of your faith. Nothing to worry about, sure. Be strong, not a climate wimp.
Looking at #26 again, I think the risk that we will “dismantle global capitalism to fix it” is smaller than the risk that climate change will be more dire than I suspect it will be. Also, while I’m for nuclear power, I think Sam Stone’s claims about its benefits are excessive.
Here’s my problem with threads like this: It sounds like when your side says something clearly mistaken, it’s a “bit of political hyperbole” that’s “not wrong.” But if the other side says something even close to being comparable, it’s “entirely false.” That doesn’t compute for me.
If you are an American taxpayer, this is terrible advice – for your sake. They will either purchase government-subsidized flood insurance, or rely on tax-funded disaster relief, and then, after moving back a few times, get a buy-out.
Some of this depends on one’s definition of dire. If we use Dutch techniques to save New York City, while giving up seasonal seaside homes in Florida, and casinos in Atlantic City, that’s not dire to me. If life expectancy in Bangladesh gets higher slower, that’s bad. If it goes down, as in Russia, and as now in the U.S., that’s a better candidate for dire. And it has little to nothing to do with climate change.
What I don’t understand is why you’re comparing non-expert/politcal viewpoints anyway. Why not simply accept what the IPCC report says is likely to happen? In terms of economic harm, again, why not accept expert opinion.
I believe in climate change but I’m definitely 8n the optimist camp. If you pay for me to have my equivalent home on the water in Florida I’ll move my family there tomorrow. I need 3500 sqft on an acre within 40 miles of a major airport. Let me know when you’ve purchased that land you think is worthless.
It is too bad his paper cannot be accessed since it is probably the closest to agreeing on some of the points made by post #26. Here is his video addressing the UN. Somewhat long. Nordhaus won a Nobel prize for his work so I feel like he’s particularly worth listening to, especially for those espousing a viewpoint like post #26. You have to be careful not to fall into the trap that some right-wing pundits have fallen into and only look at small slices of his work (Shapiro is notorious for this). You really need to read the whole thing and understand it as a whole.
Here is an older paper of his. I've not read it but it is discussing his economic model.
Oh while searching for an alternate pdf for Nordhaus, I found a pdf for the Stern Review I was looking for earlier. This is extremely long but well worth reading as well if you have the time. But it is nearly 600 pages so yeah. It is a major commitment.
Note, as with all scholarly material, there will be criticisms. Getting scholars to universally agree on anything, let along economists, is simply impossible. That’s why it is useful to see a few different well-respected perspectives.
Oh yes, hurricanes and other tropical cyclones. Weather events that have ramped-up recently. Tropical cyclone - Wikipedia : “The 2007 IPCC report …concluded the observed increase in tropical cyclone intensity is larger than climate models predict. In addition, the report considered that it is likely that storm intensity will continue to increase through the 21st century, and declared it more likely than not that there has been some human contribution to the increases in tropical cyclone intensity.”
But also, “projections currently show no consensus on how climate change will affect the overall frequency of tropical cyclones.” See, nothing to get hung about.
Too bad we can’t map the elevations above sea level at which climate-change [del]deniers[/del] optimists reside. That sounds like a Big Data challenge.
I don’t know but any correlation would be of interest. Do most [del]deniers[/del] optimists live according to their convictions? And do attitudes change after flooding?
Yes, Atlantean and Lemurian aqua-people responses are vital. Oh, you mean low LAND dwellers, like in the Nederlands and parts of New Orleans, and around the Salton Sea, Death Valley, and the Dead Sea. The Dutch and Louisianans are likely convinced, while the few others needn’t worry much because inland.
[del]Deniers[/del] optimists seem to be mostly Yanks because propaganda. Quora returns a 2006 estimate of 146 million worldwide below one meter above sea level and thus underwater at high tide. I’ll speculate they’re mostly convinced.
I could ask is you really believe that a country with just 4 percent of world population has most of the climate deniers and optimists. But you already answered the question with a yes.
I looked to see if there are any polls, in the U.S. or the Netherlands, broken down in a way to test your idea that there would be a relationship between actual impacts, coastal living, and climate denial/optimism. The closest I could find is this map of 2019 Dutch election results:
At first glance, it appears that the climate denialist FvD party did better in coastal areas. However, it is isn’t a single-issue party.
This next Wikipedia article is based on ten year old data, but shows people in the U.S. were more than twice as likely to perceive climate change as a threat as are people in Bangladesh:
My hypothesis is the people in coastal flood zones, whether in South Carolina or Massachusetts or Bangladesh, are highly influenced, in their views, by people living inland. There isn’t any world-wide solidarity among climate victims that I can see.
Too bad you didn’t actually read what I wrote, which had nothing to do with whether or not such events have gotten more frequent or not. What I SAID was, it would be a bad idea whether or not there is any climate change to build a trailer park on one of the southern US coasts and take your kids to live in it, as you suggested. And it would prove absolutely ZERO to any climate change denier, since they could rightfully point out that hurricanes happened in that part of the country long before the climate started rising, so your silly suggestion is worthless.
But thanks for the Wiki link to things I already knew!
I read you quite well. I apparently too-subtly hinted that chumps feel themselves safe enough where they are. “There’s no global warming!” is safely proclaimed from, say, Boise or Nashville. I suspect you’ll find fewer [del]deniers[/del] optimists in coastal flood zones than at higher elevations inland.
Oh no oh no, moving to Miami is inhumane! Think of the children! Okay then, the impervious could plop trailers on the mud flats around temperate Humboldt Bay, sheltered from tsunamis and orcas. No hurricanes there.
You could do a bit more to come up with something that would actually either demonstrate something or at least be amusing or humorous. Try harder. Here is a hint…suggesting someone move their families to a trailer park in a hurricane zone…a hurricane zone that was repeatedly hit by hurricanes long before global climate change was even a thing…is really, really stupid, and proves absolutely nothing to anyone. And it’s not even very clever, which is really the issue. Put a bit more effort in.
Like, advocate that climate change deniers, if they REALLY have faith, should definitely not invest in any crazy schemes to make use of the fictitious north west passage once the sea ice starts to clear in the summer. I mean, the ice is getting thicker, after all, so that will never happen, and any sort of investment in that is bound to fail (because, you know, the ice in Greenland and other parts north is actually increasing in density, and it’s all a CT by the media to say it’s really melting. Fuck those polar bears too!!). Hell, maybe they should invest in land in the South West, as the glaciers crawling down from the north are going to inevitably render the northern part of the US (better known as ‘Canada’) uninhabitable soon(ish), so they need to get in on the boom early!
If you need me to break down why my (silly) ideas would actually demonstrate something, while yours doesn’t, I’m always here for you man.
It’s expected to be opposite, actually. The current model simulations are showing that the PNW is expected to get warmer and wetter with climate change, not drier and colder. The cause in the models is a long-term increase in storms bringing rain up from the south/central Pacific (storms known as “Pineapple Expresses” as they originate around Hawaii/central Pacific).
The main issue is that the warm wet is expected to decrease PNW snowpack as a seasonal storage for water, so instead of relying on the gradual melting to keep rivers up to level throughout the spring/summer, best-case planning is that the region will need more reservoirs.
So this year is an anomaly in the opposite direction.
Which is when the climate optimists chime in and start to question all the dire predictions.
10 of the previous 11 years have been drier than normal in Eugene, OR. You need to go back to 1996 before there are consecutive years that are above normal for rain fall. An anomaly in the opposite direction? It calls into question the models, doesn’t it?
Not really. Climate has distinct stanzas that can last 10 to 40-50 years oscillating back and forth, while the background trend is slowly creeping in one direction. These shorter-scale (but multi-year) trends are present in climate modeling results and shouldn’t be mistaken for the background trend. (in fact, a major area of research is whether these cycles might get longer or shorter).
I’m not familiar with enough with the Eugene area itself has some particular microclimate going on. I plotted the annual data, and I do see what looks like a step down in rainfall around 2000. It looks like there’s both upward and downward movement with a couple of inflection points (1940, 1960, and 2000 if I was eyeballing)
