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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’

#171

Post by jessaustin »

woodandsteel wrote: post #160
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

When I google "china coal power", a confusing set of links appears. Some are certain that coal power plant construction in China has halted or will halt in future, others are not. I suspect reality doesn't match the marketing exactly.

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

#172

Post by pvinis »

dmix wrote: post #163
vkou wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Can you explain what you mean by cut and cover?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tunnel#Cut-and-cover

This is hacker news. It's easy enough to google for 2 seconds to learn a new term.

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

#173

Post by shoo »

jacobolus wrote: post #71
nostrademons wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We're not, actually: https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2017/06/the-ends... I used to think that we were, and when I read that article, I kept looking for flaws in its logic or counterexamples in other press. But ultimately, it interviews a real expert, and his logic is correct: we're drawn to flashy apex predators at the top of the food web, but these species spring in and out of existence all the time, and…

Okay. > “I think that if we keep things up long enough, we’ll get to a mass extinction, but we’re not in a mass extinction yet, and I think that’s an optimistic discovery because that means we actually have time to avoid Armageddon,” he said. [...] > “The only hope we have in the future,” Erwin said, “is if we’re not in a mass extinction event.” * * * I guess it’s a bit fuzzy where you draw the line. Perhaps mass ext…

It's maybe worth drawing a distinction between things like "species extinction" versus "civilization collapse" and "massive reduction in carrying capacity".

I think it is much easier to have one or both of the latter outcomes in the med term (the next few hundred years, say) without it necessarily ending in human extinction.

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

#174

Post by shoo »

neuronexmachina wrote: post #58
acabal wrote: post #10

It's so crazy to me that everyone in vulnerable places--Tokyo and Houston in the article for example--are happy to spend hundreds of millions, even billions, to put a bandaid on their local climate change problems. It seems like they all acknowledge the reality and danger of climate change and are willing to spend money on it. In TFA Houston wants $400 million to build a reservoir. They seem to acknowledge that thing…

It's basically the Tragedy of the Commons on a global scale. The atmosphere is a huge public good, and climate change is a huge negative externality. It's relatively beneficial to the individual person, and even the individual country, to ignore the problem, even if it ultimately harms the population as a whole in the long run. That's why so many people prefer to ignore the problem or pretend it doesn't exist, rather…

Yep.

If I have a pile of coal, and you want electricity, I can sell you coal for a good price. I make a profit, you get energy, we both lose a tiny bit due to increased global warming. The other 7 billion people in the world each lose a tiny bit to global warming and get zero direct benefit from our trade. It is rational for me to keep selling you coal, and for you to keep buying it, while we can keep the game rolling and push the costs onto everyone else.

It's be beneficial for everyone else if they banded together and prevented us from trading without paying them appropriate compensation.

If you're feeling particularly misanthropic / politically foolish, repeat similar argument about living in society with high per capita greenhouse gas emissions. Suppose you and a partner decide to have children. Maybe everyone else in the world should band together and demand compensation/regulation for the global environmental impact due to population growth in these countries. Some things we currently regard as individual freedoms are not logically compatible with constrained resources/constrained pollution sinks.

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

#175

Post by ScottBurson »

pvinis wrote: post #172
dmix wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you explain what you mean by cut and cover?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tunnel#Cut-and-cover This is hacker news. It's easy enough to google for 2 seconds to learn a new term.

It is. But I think it's more efficient overall for someone to ask the question so that someone like you posts a helpful link, thus saving many more people the trouble of googling.

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

#176

Post by whazor »

acabal wrote: post #10

It's so crazy to me that everyone in vulnerable places--Tokyo and Houston in the article for example--are happy to spend hundreds of millions, even billions, to put a bandaid on their local climate change problems. It seems like they all acknowledge the reality and danger of climate change and are willing to spend money on it. In TFA Houston wants $400 million to build a reservoir. They seem to acknowledge that thing…

Because climate change makes the floods worse, meaning that without climate change you still have floods. Reversal of climate change is not significant enough to be able to safe money on these tunnels. Although we would save a lot of lives by undoing climate change.

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

#177

Post by arnoooooo »

jacobolus wrote: post #57
ctdonath wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yet everyone there still drives everywhere spewing carbon into their own air with every trip This. 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. Telecommuting is a thing. Home-solar is a thing. Electric cars are a thing. Quit telling _others_ to solve the problems, and start doing it personally,…

There’s nothing inherently wrong with taking personal steps, but by themselves they are largely worthless. It’s like optimizing an I/O bound program by speeding up some of the arithmetic operations not on any critical path. Telling people who continue to commute by car or use grid electricity or travel internationally that they don’t really care about climate change is idiotic – not just useless but actively counterp…

All the large-scale policies you cite are mostly useful for the medium and long term, but counter-productive in the sort-term, as creating new "clean" infrastructures is done using our current, fossil fueled infrastructures.

Personal steps are our main chance at a short term effect, and we need that short term effect. A huge part of greenhouse gas emissions for instance is due to meat. It amounts for more than half of it if you count cattle respiration ! This is something that can be almost exclusively solved by personal involvement, i.e. eating less meat or no meat at all. Likewise for personal transportation and home heating/insulation. With these three things other which people have a lot of control, we cover a large part of greenhouse gas emissions.

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

#178

Post by seanmcdirmid »

jessaustin wrote: post #171
woodandsteel wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

When I google "china coal power", a confusing set of links appears. Some are certain that coal power plant construction in China has halted or will halt in future, others are not. I suspect reality doesn't match the marketing exactly.

Your post is misplaced but...

China is definitely building new coal plants, just not in every district. Beijing has a ban, for example, but not surrounding Hebei.

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

#179

Post by tdist »

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.

> Building it to handle less than what you've seen before would be stupid.

Let me tell a second hand anecdote of a Burmese village.

It was a rather small collection of huts raised on tall poles. But it was a village none the less.

All paths in the village were laid out with a connected mass of wood. Along the path were sticks, rising pretty high up in the air. Somewhere along the top of the sticks were a lot of cuts made out in the wood, at various heights. By a knife or so.

In the dry season, this path laid on the ground to be walked on. You didn't have to walk on it of course, since the surrounding dirt was dry.

In the wet season however, floods often came. And so, they raised the path up along the sticks so that it became a water bridge for when floods came. They raised it to the level of the highest cuts that were made in the sticks. A very reasonable thing to do, in order to connect the village in times of crisis, without using boats.

Interestingly, however was the background of the cuts. Each cut represented a water height that had some time ago been the highest the flood had become. So each season, they only raised the water bridge to the level of the worst flood they had experienced.

They did not have a margin.

While they didn't prepare for less than what they had previously seen, they only prepared for the worst flood in history, and not the worst flood in history + a margin.

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

#180

Post by maxwin »

tdist wrote: post #179
saalweachter wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> Building it to handle less than what you've seen before would be stupid. Let me tell a second hand anecdote of a Burmese village. It was a rather small collection of huts raised on tall poles. But it was a village none the less. All paths in the village were laid out with a connected mass of wood. Along the path were sticks, rising pretty high up in the air. Somewhere along the top of the sticks were a lot of cuts…

Interesting story. Never knew that and I am a Burmese.
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