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

nytimes.com

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

#151

Post by Banthum »

throwaway5752 wrote: post #144
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.…

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...

This figure gets trotted out all the time and it's tiresome because it is so unconvincing to anyone who is even a bit sceptical.

That's a bit like asking what percentage of Christian priests believe God exists. There's kind of a selection bias there.

More helpful are broader surveys including earth scientists, geologists, etc, which (as I recall, not having the source handy) come up much more conflicted, close to 50% disagreement on various critical questions.

There also the issue of what questions are asked. It's easy to ask, 'is the climate changing', get a near-unanimous response to this near-tautological statement, and declare victory. But that question has nothing to do with any real disagreements real people are having.

The actual questions at hand are much more delicate. First among them is the question of what question we should even be asking.

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

#152

Post by Banthum »

Boothroid wrote: post #88
averagewall wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This issue is too political for normal people to properly understand. I don't mean to offend you personally but there's little value in the feelings of someone who's been immersed in a social atmosphere of global warming propaganda, calls to action, and pressure to shut down dissenting voices. Even scientists can't safely publish work on positive effects of climate change or areas where it's not as bad as previously…

This reads very much like a Bjorn Lomborg type argument - along the lines of: global warming is not proven, and anyway if it does happen it may not be all bad, and even if it is bad we could better spend the money elsewhere. Personally when it comes to disturbing planetary equilibrium I'd rather err on the side of caution.

Even if 'erring on the side of caution' means killing millions of people by diverting resources that could've been used to cure diseases, solve local pollution problems, stop crime and democide, improve work safety, etc etc?

We're not talking about packing an extra sandwich for a picnic here. These things cost.

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

#153

Post by averagewall »

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…

Scientists were widely confident about the correctness of Newton's 2nd law and the universal law of gravitation up till the late 1800s/early 1900s. Then Einstein showed their limitations/incorrectness. You can't look at contemporary modern consensuses because if it's a consensus, it'll look like it's right until the future when/if it's proven wrong.

Philosophy of science says we can't prove theories (of a certain type, which includes most of physics), only disprove them. So there aren't scientific truths, just current best theories.

Many cultures had religious myths about the history of the world which they widely believed.

I'm not saying that people who disagree with the consensus are necessarily right, or even that we should bother to listen to them - just that sometimes they might be so consensus isn't a reason to judge something as true.

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

#154

Post by mrob »

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…

Bill Gates denies making that 640K statement, and there's no clear evidence he ever said it:

https://quoteinvestigator.com/2011/09/08/640k-enough/

There's also no clear evidence that Thomas Watson ever made the world market for five computers statement:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_J._Watson#Famous_attrib...

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

#155

Post by dragonwriter »

averagewall wrote: post #153
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…

Scientists were widely confident about the correctness of Newton's 2nd law and the universal law of gravitation up till the late 1800s/early 1900s. Then Einstein showed their limitations/incorrectness. You can't look at contemporary modern consensuses because if it's a consensus, it'll look like it's right until the future when/if it's proven wrong. Philosophy of science says we can't prove theories (of a certain typ…

> Scientists were widely confident about the correctness of Newton's 2nd law and the universal law of gravitation up till the late 1800s/early 1900s. Then Einstein showed their limitations/incorrectness.

While Einstein revised them, the Newtonian equations are correct enough that they are still generally used for all kinds of things.

If that the best example you can use to make the argument that the current scientific consensus could be wide off the mark, you've done more to refute your argument than advance it.

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

#156

Post by averagewall »

throwaway5752 wrote: post #144
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.…

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...

More helpful than the percentage of scientists who think it's true (a bizarre metric in science) would be the confidence they place on that conclusion. It can't be exactly 100%. Showing causation is notoriously hard, especially when you can only look at historical data, and even more so when there's only one example (one case of humans causing global warming).

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

#157

Post by late2part »

mrob wrote: post #154
late2part wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Bill Gates denies making that 640K statement, and there's no clear evidence he ever said it: https://quoteinvestigator.com/2011/09/08/640k-enough/ There's also no clear evidence that Thomas Watson ever made the world market for five computers statement: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_J._Watson#Famous_attrib...

Congrats. You poked a hole in the meta-consensus, proving the point.

You ignore the others, that dogma leads to shallow thinking.

All the world is the blend of chaos and order; acceptance and rejection, yin and yang. Your contribution helps drive the analytical consideration of acceptance or rejection.

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

#158

Post by zanny »

SapphireSun wrote: post #51
bdamm wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's clear that our contemporary social structures are not well equipped to deal with climate change. This is unlikely to change in the next 10-50 years. So local governments that are able to act must do so. "Solutions to global problems start at home." --> If everyone in Houston switched up their SUVs for Prius', nothing globally would change at all, except that the people of Houston would have smaller cars. Why doe…

You're right that we require a policy attack on Climate Change, but nonetheless, it feels a bit odd to keep doing the thing that'll kill you.

If only Houston produced carbon and the rest of the world were carbon neutral the 4 million residents of the metro area wouldn't be able to raise the temperature of Earth a degree in a millennia at current emissions rates.

This is why Climate Change is hard. Individually nobody is causing that much damage (except maybe Californian cows) but the sum of the parts causes an extraordinary problem.

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

#159

Post by Armisael16 »

saalweachter wrote: post #113
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…

Also too, of course you should build your "prevent floods from wrecking our shit" system to handle floods "beyond anything we've seen before". Building it to handle less than what you've seen before would be stupid.

That isn't entirely true. How much is it worth to upgrade from a "once every 500 years" system to a "once every 5000 years" system? If it's more than the expected damages...

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

#160

Post by woodandsteel »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #122
woodandsteel wrote: post #116

From what I understand, Japan thinks the climate is getting warmer due to human action, and serious steps need to be taken to deal with it. I have a question for the global climate change skeptics out there. Are there any major countries in the world besides the US and maybe Russia where the central government agrees with you on what is happening and what to do about it? (If there are give us some links)

Does the USA have a central government with a central policy? Obama believed in climate change even if Trump doesn't, most of congress, even on the right, believe in some amount of climate change (e.g. McCain). I'm really at a loss to find that unified anti climate change sentiment in the states. It's more like a democracy where politicians and electorates are allowed to have different opinions.

By central government, I meant for the US the federal government, and in particular the present administration.

My question still stands.

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