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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’

#181

Post by averagewall »

dragonwriter wrote: post #155
averagewall wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 scientifi…

Bloodletting. It's honestly trivial to find examples of where science was wrong. I'm not going to research them for you if you'll make up ad-hoc reasons to reject them.

Obviously I can't give an example of current consensus being likely wrong because if I knew that, scientists would too and it wouldn't be the consensus.

Here's a snarky example though. See if you can find the flaw in it - current consensus among scientists is that you can't prove causation without doing an experiment - in particular you can't prove it using historical data. This is an obstacle to medical research since ethics impedes controlled experiments on people and it's part of why nutrition advice is frequently wrong (there you go for even more examples). But climate scientists have apparently done just that - themselves demonstrating that either the consensus is wrong or they're wrong. Either way, a consensus is wrong.

These are just an arguments to show how wrong consensus can be though - in reality I'm pretty sure that climate scientists don't acutally believe they're right without any doubt. It will be politics and attempts to manipulate people that changes confidence values into supposed certainty.

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

#182

Post by Feniks »

Armisael16 wrote: post #159
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.

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...

Well if my country floods its all over, considering we're under sea level the water may never leave.

And I can imagine Japan doesn't want to risk Tokio.

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

#183

Post by ScottBurson »

jessaustin wrote: post #167
WalterBright wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Changing economic behavior with public campaigns has a pretty much zero success rate. Anyone remember Pres Ford's "WIP" buttons (Whip Inflation Now)? It had the hubris that inflation could be stopped if only people would just stop raising prices. Even as a kid, I laughed at the absurdity of that campaign. Of course it had zero effect. Something that will work is to tax pollution, i.e. a carbon tax. Making it more exp…

Ford wasn't very good at acronyms?

It was WIN, not WIP.

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

#184

Post by Feniks »

shkkmo wrote: post #141
komali2 wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

How does that work? There's a reason why all the world's biggest metropolises are on the coast. Were would the people go? There are 20 million people in the Tokyo area.

And its actually not a problem. Rich countries can build flood defenses just fine. The Houston flooding could have easily been prevented if the US cared about infrastructure. After Katrina plans have been submitted. They just need funding.

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

#186

Post by ASlave2Gravity »

A little off topic, but the novel Japan Sinks [0] by Sakyo Komatsu is a wonderful insight into Japan and its fears/feelings on natural disaster. Also, more generally, just a really great disaster novel.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japan_Sinks

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

#187

Post by samplonius »

poulsbohemian wrote: post #8

I may not understand the scope of this project, but when I read the $2 billion, my thought was "wow that's cheap!" Consider the Big Dig or the current Seattle tunnel, at $14B+ and $3B+ respectively.

The project is a number of years old now. The cost of construction projects tend to increase by 15% per year in western countries.

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

#188

Post by samplonius »

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…

I don't get why Houston wants to spend $400M on a reservoir. Sure they need a reservoir, but they need all of the other stuff too. Perhaps if they had $4B budget, they could actually fix everything that needs to be fixed.

Houston needs to get to the point that they can handle 60+ inches of rain in a 24 hour period. Token efforts might keep their budget balanced and the voters appeased until the next election, but they're getting 100 year storms so frequently now, they'll have to stop calling them that.

Climate change is great and all, but even if you sharply cut carbon emissions today, it would take a years before 100 years storms went back to their previous frequency.

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

#189

Post by nexus2045 »

ASlave2Gravity wrote: post #186

A little off topic, but the novel Japan Sinks [0] by Sakyo Komatsu is a wonderful insight into Japan and its fears/feelings on natural disaster. Also, more generally, just a really great disaster novel. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japan_Sinks

Enjoyed the movie based on the novel as well.

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

#190

Post by Boothroid »

Banthum wrote: post #152
Boothroid wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 .

You assert forcefully, but I think there are problems with what you say: firstly there is no guarantee that we would spend the money saved on global warming on those other things that you list; secondly it's false to assert that we have to choose between those things and fixing global warming; thirdly efforts to fix global warming could have benefits of their own including in some of the areas that you list, i.e. malaria is likely to increase due to rises in temperature, efficiency measures and reductions in consumption could help cure pollution problems.
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