Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Tokyo Is Preparing for Floods ‘Beyond Anything We’ve Seen’

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

141–150 of 223 posts

Re: Tokyo Is Preparing for Floods ‘Beyond Anything We’ve Seen’

#141

Post by shkkmo »

komali2 wrote: post #123
ced wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'd argue that the actual solution to global warming will be more akin to "stepping out of the way": people will evacuate from major cities, major cities will be destroyed, And the people too poor to evacuate will stick it out in the city hoping for the best, and die in the aftermath of the next catastrophe.

A mass evacuation out of Houston for a hurricane is impossible . I have seen it time and time again - every time they try to evacuate us, a bunch of people just die in the streets, and then there's the risk of a NOLA situation where all the people who are poor to evacuate at every whisper of hurricane die of disease from disgusting floodwaters, or exposure. Or drown. The population of the Greater Houston area is 5.6…

I believe they were talking a bout a slow, permanent evacuation of an area likely to get hit by more and bigger floods coupled with rising oceans.

Re: Tokyo Is Preparing for Floods ‘Beyond Anything We’ve Seen’

#142

Post by mannykannot »

averagewall wrote: post #138
endorphone wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't it an agenda to call the consensus reality an "agenda"? I'm not being facetious, but that discourse has fallen the point where simple statements of reality are politicized has dumbed the entire discourse.

Calling it a consensus reality is also showing an agenda - trying to make it sound more certain than it is, which is to push the agenda of saving people from possible harm of future climate change by fooling them into believing it's certain because they're not competent enough to assess the risk of uncertain things. I'm not complaining about trying to do good, but it's not science, it's belief and it might be wrong.…

That there is a scientific consensus is not an agenda, it's a fact.

Re: Tokyo Is Preparing for Floods ‘Beyond Anything We’ve Seen’

#143

Post by rxhernandez »

averagewall wrote: post #138
endorphone wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't it an agenda to call the consensus reality an "agenda"? I'm not being facetious, but that discourse has fallen the point where simple statements of reality are politicized has dumbed the entire discourse.

Calling it a consensus reality is also showing an agenda - trying to make it sound more certain than it is, which is to push the agenda of saving people from possible harm of future climate change by fooling them into believing it's certain because they're not competent enough to assess the risk of uncertain things. I'm not complaining about trying to do good, but it's not science, it's belief and it might be wrong.…

> The rest of science doesn't get described so confidently

Um what? I feel like you haven't spent 10 minutes in a physics class. As someone who spent many years studying physics, you have to get within range of the quantum level before people in that field start feeling a little shaky in their beliefs.

The history of consensuses? Yes, please, you should do that, because it has gotten us quite far given the constraints of time. There are so many crackpot ideas that are thankfully rarely explored due to consensus.

Re: Tokyo Is Preparing for Floods ‘Beyond Anything We’ve Seen’

#144

Post by throwaway5752 »

averagewall wrote: post #138
endorphone wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't it an agenda to call the consensus reality an "agenda"? I'm not being facetious, but that discourse has fallen the point where simple statements of reality are politicized has dumbed the entire discourse.

Calling it a consensus reality is also showing an agenda - trying to make it sound more certain than it is, which is to push the agenda of saving people from possible harm of future climate change by fooling them into believing it's certain because they're not competent enough to assess the risk of uncertain things. I'm not complaining about trying to do good, but it's not science, it's belief and it might be wrong.…

How uncertain should man-made global warming sound, in your opinion? You're speaking in gross generalities, perhaps getting some hard numbers. What I've read is that nearly 100% of publishing researchers in the area agree on it (high 90's).

...Actually, it's 97%. I found the paper, which describes the data set and their methodology: http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/11/4/048...

Re: Tokyo Is Preparing for Floods ‘Beyond Anything We’ve Seen’

#145

Post by vkou »

KGIII wrote: post #133
RHSeeger wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just once, I'd like to see the people that planned something and signed the deals stand up to a politician. Just see the demand to make a huge, costly, unreasonable change (likely for political reasons) and say, "No, fuck it. We planned this, you already spent $3 billion on it, it's not changing now. If you want it changed, it's cancelled, the $3b goes up in smoke, along with your political career and everyone who's…

Oh, the things I could write... Let's do just that, shall we? Warning, this could take a minute. The Big Dig was pretty much my first project outside of the lab. I am not overly fond of admitting to my part in the project but it could be worse, much worse. Truth be told, we did our job just fine, but I digress. By the time I got involved with the project, it had been in planning stage for quite a while and had underg…

> There is tons of waste in government, I think we know that. But, politicians will add more - so long as it gets them votes. Interestingly, in this case, the guy campaigned on prosperity for the local economy. The project must not disrupt local business. Got to make money, after all. Yet, it slowed the project down and probably added a good 10% to the overall budget. The lengths we went to were absurd.

Contrast that to the Canada line in Vancouver, which was built using a cut-and-cover method. All the business owners in the Cambie corridor were convinced that this would be a minimal disruption to their business.

By the time construction was done, every single merchant along the corridor went out of business. Strangely enough, cut-and-cover proposals for more subway lines in Vancouver are as dead as a Monty Python parrot.

Re: Tokyo Is Preparing for Floods ‘Beyond Anything We’ve Seen’

#146

Post by late2part »

rxhernandez wrote: post #143
averagewall wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Calling it a consensus reality is also showing an agenda - trying to make it sound more certain than it is, which is to push the agenda of saving people from possible harm of future climate change by fooling them into believing it's certain because they're not competent enough to assess the risk of uncertain things. I'm not complaining about trying to do good, but it's not science, it's belief and it might be wrong.…

> The rest of science doesn't get described so confidently Um what? I feel like you haven't spent 10 minutes in a physics class. As someone who spent many years studying physics, you have to get within range of the quantum level before people in that field start feeling a little shaky in their beliefs. The history of consensuses? Yes, please, you should do that, because it has gotten us quite far given the constraint…

Things that were described confidently for centuries (or less):

  1.  The earth is flat.
  2.  The sun revolves around the earth.
  3.  Fire is an element.
  4.  They have chemical/nuclear weapons.
  5.  No one can enter the search market; AltaVista owns the market.
  6.  Pets.com can't fail - look at who is invested and how big is the market.
  7.  Noone will ever need more than 640K of ram.
  8.  There is a world market for maybe 5 computers.
etc. Who cares how solid the consensus is - what matters is facts and truth.

Re: Tokyo Is Preparing for Floods ‘Beyond Anything We’ve Seen’

#147

Post by [deleted] »

endorphone wrote: post #135
foobar__ wrote: post #104

Interestingly, the official website doesn't mention climate change at all, as far as I can see [1]. Instead, it claims that the purpose of the tunnels is to protect the areas surrounding some smaller rivers upstream of Tokyo, which are on flood plains and regularly used to get flooded (no climate change required, just regular rain season/typhoon does this). Now due to urban sprawl more people want to live there, exac…

Isn't it an agenda to call the consensus reality an "agenda"? I'm not being facetious, but that discourse has fallen the point where simple statements of reality are politicized has dumbed the entire discourse.

[deleted]

Re: Tokyo Is Preparing for Floods ‘Beyond Anything We’ve Seen’

#148

Post by [deleted] »

late2part wrote: post #146
rxhernandez wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The rest of science doesn't get described so confidently Um what? I feel like you haven't spent 10 minutes in a physics class. As someone who spent many years studying physics, you have to get within range of the quantum level before people in that field start feeling a little shaky in their beliefs. The history of consensuses? Yes, please, you should do that, because it has gotten us quite far given the constraint…

Things that were described confidently for centuries (or less): 1. The earth is flat. 2. The sun revolves around the earth. 3. Fire is an element. 4. They have chemical/nuclear weapons. 5. No one can enter the search market; AltaVista owns the market. 6. Pets.com can't fail - look at who is invested and how big is the market. 7. Noone will ever need more than 640K of ram. 8. There is a world market for maybe 5 comput…

[deleted]

Re: Tokyo Is Preparing for Floods ‘Beyond Anything We’ve Seen’

#149

Post by KVFinn »

munificent wrote: post #87
KVFinn wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Every single person who claims they believe global climate change is a very serious, and man-made, problem absolutely should be taking personal steps now to address it. Quit telling _others_ to solve the problems, and start doing it personally, now. This being effective seems contrary to everything we know about economics. If even a huge portion of people voluntary lower consumption or energy usage, it frees up that…

> You're just concerned about projecting the appearance > that you care. This is a completely unnecessary, uncharitable attack. The reasonable interpretation of the parent comment is that they do actually care about climate change but the two of you disagree on which mechanisms will most effectively reduce it.

>This is a completely unnecessary, uncharitable attack.

Yes it is unnecessarily snarky and if I could edit my comment I would remove that line.

Re: Tokyo Is Preparing for Floods ‘Beyond Anything We’ve Seen’

#150

Post by emodendroket »

nostrademons wrote: post #34
blondie9x wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Adaptation without mitigation will not be effective as the impacts worsen. Uncapped emissions and business as usual scenarios will cause outcomes that we will not be able to build ourselves out of. We must reduce emissions and push for sustainable infrastructure and solutions, now. We must adapt and we must also mitigate. Only through the combination of both efforts and through our determination and willingness to le…

Nah, the problem is self-limiting. If global warming reduces the carrying capacity of the environment, people will die. Dead people don't use resources; their bodies are returned to the environment by decomposers, where they will provide fertilizer for trees and other plants, which will grow even more abundantly because of the enhanced CO2 levels. Eventually the earth reaches a new equilibrium at a somewhat higher te…

The people most likely to die are the lowest emitters.
Post reply on HN