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Miami Will Be Underwater Soon. Its Drinking Water Could Go First

bloomberg.com

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Re: Miami Will Be Underwater Soon. Its Drinking Water Could Go First

#201

Post by specialist »

adameast9000 wrote: post #164
slg wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not sure it is reasonable for every article about the effects of climate change to start with the evidence that climate change is real. If you come to this article from the angle of "climate change is a myth", a single article from Bloomberg was never going to be the turning point in your belief anyway.

I think it would be better for the writer to provide specific evidence for the specific pretext. You don't need to convince me that climate change is real, but climate change is a general term. I'd rather see some evidence backing up the sea level increase in Miami claim.

Evidence that the sea level is rising? Or that the cause is anthropogenic climate change?

Re: Miami Will Be Underwater Soon. Its Drinking Water Could Go First

#202

Post by jnurmine »

frockington wrote: post #21

At a rate of 0-3 mm/year or 1 foot/century its going to be hard to convince anyone to care about the sea level. https://tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/sltrends/sltrends.html

From what I remember reading, the problem points are really the Arctic and the Antarctic. If they melt, hello Waterworld.

For example, the ice cover in Greenland is melting at a record rate. If it goes completely, this alone would raise the sea level with something like 7 m (23 ft).

If everything goes, it will be something like a 65 m (213 ft) sea level rise.

Now, given the sluggishness of action-taking in this matter, some of the ice cover will almost certainly melt before anything gets done.

The end result will probably be much more than a few feet, but less than the maximum, so let's guess 30 m (100 ft).

Now, I suppose some self-correcting actions are automatically taken when enough people get displaced and pour to dry areas: traffic ceases in the coastal cities, air traffic to these areas will cease as well, factories will stop, and so on.

But still... given +30 m, have you already checked where the current coastline would be where you live?

Re: Miami Will Be Underwater Soon. Its Drinking Water Could Go First

#203

Post by skh »

calcifer wrote: post #171
skh wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At this point in time people who deny climate change is occurring are impervious to logic and reason. They are like people who deny evolution or the people who believe the Earth is around 10,000 years old. Nothing is going to convince them they are wrong. It's too burdensome to ask that all articles about the detrimental effects of climate change present a proof of said claims. At some point in time it's pointless to…

Honestly, the fact that your comment is downvoted speaks volumes about the audience here. The people who deny climate change are no different than antivaxxers.

That is a more apt comparison. I was trying to think of one that didn't have the appearance of being anti-religious. Yes, they are like anti-vaxxers.

Re: Miami Will Be Underwater Soon. Its Drinking Water Could Go First

#204

Post by temp64201292 »

skh wrote: post #102
fabricexpert wrote: post #80

This article is kind of infuriating. Just bring the facts up and talk about them, instead of describing people. I think this is one of the more critical parts (along with the stuff about water supply getting contaminated): > Barring a stupendous reversal in greenhouse gas emissions, the rising Atlantic will cover much of Miami by the end of this century. The economic effects will be devastating: Zillow Inc. estimates…

At this point in time people who deny climate change is occurring are impervious to logic and reason. They are like people who deny evolution or the people who believe the Earth is around 10,000 years old. Nothing is going to convince them they are wrong. It's too burdensome to ask that all articles about the detrimental effects of climate change present a proof of said claims. At some point in time it's pointless to…

It is actually more than pointless to argue with these people, as many of them actively engage in conspiracy theories: https://www.logicallyfallacious.com/tools/lp/Bo/LogicalFalla...

I personally know someone with the belief that climate change is a political conspiracy. Any evidence to support climate change just points to a bigger "cover-up" and validates their beliefs. Almost always this is not an isolated belief but a pattern of thinking, and the person holds similar conspiracy theory beliefs about other issues. This is not a political left/right issue (the person I happen to know happens to be a left-wing conspiracy theorist). This is an issue of mild paranoid psychosis that is not being recognized and treated seriously because the symptoms are not very disturbing to others, and the people suffering from it happen to be relatively high-functioning. Eventually as these people age the symptoms get worse and they end up driving those close to them away.

Re: Miami Will Be Underwater Soon. Its Drinking Water Could Go First

#205

Post by llandho »

fabricexpert wrote: post #80

This article is kind of infuriating. Just bring the facts up and talk about them, instead of describing people. I think this is one of the more critical parts (along with the stuff about water supply getting contaminated): > Barring a stupendous reversal in greenhouse gas emissions, the rising Atlantic will cover much of Miami by the end of this century. The economic effects will be devastating: Zillow Inc. estimates…

[flagged]

Re: Miami Will Be Underwater Soon. Its Drinking Water Could Go First

#206

Post by Synaesthesia »

hfdgiutdryg wrote: post #147

The idea that it's 2018 and we don't have solar powered desalination plants for some of our largest, sunny, water-limited southern cities boggles my mind. Los Angeles has a nuclear plant just to the north, but no desalination, and more sun than anyone wants. It's insane.

It’s still a really expensive way to get drinking water.

Re: Miami Will Be Underwater Soon. Its Drinking Water Could Go First

#207

Post by southern_cross »

fabricexpert wrote: post #80

This article is kind of infuriating. Just bring the facts up and talk about them, instead of describing people. I think this is one of the more critical parts (along with the stuff about water supply getting contaminated): > Barring a stupendous reversal in greenhouse gas emissions, the rising Atlantic will cover much of Miami by the end of this century. The economic effects will be devastating: Zillow Inc. estimates…

Whenever I read articles like this these days, I just sort of automatically mentally strikethrough any mentions of climate change so that I can, you know, concentrate more on the real problems.

Re: Miami Will Be Underwater Soon. Its Drinking Water Could Go First

#208

Post by thaumaturgy »

mbostleman wrote: post #185
fabricexpert wrote: post #80

This article is kind of infuriating. Just bring the facts up and talk about them, instead of describing people. I think this is one of the more critical parts (along with the stuff about water supply getting contaminated): > Barring a stupendous reversal in greenhouse gas emissions, the rising Atlantic will cover much of Miami by the end of this century. The economic effects will be devastating: Zillow Inc. estimates…

Yes. I think the issue is that mainstream "journalism" is actually entertainment in all respects other than the fact that it carries a fairly widespread credibility among its audience as not being entertainment but rather a factual, verifiable source of information - one that is beyond the audience's ability to understand. Sort of like the unquestioning acceptance that many give to doctors or lawyers because (it is a…

People also sometimes cherry-pick or carve up data so that they can find a "surprising" result, to use one of ~pg's favorite adjectives.

Your coworker had the impression that wildfires are becoming larger and more damaging, and that climate change is a principal cause of this, due to widespread coverage to that effect (examples: [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6]). (Which I suppose was your point.)

And many of those journalists are repeating each other, but eventually you find that a lot of those statements originate from the National Interagency Fire Center [7]. There, the raw numbers pretty clearly show an upward overall trend from, oh, about 1953 or so. Before 1953, the numbers look a lot different, and if someone were to just casually plug all those values into a graph, they could make the point that wildfires aren't getting worse after all. That person would be completely ignoring the massive increase in wildfire suppression efforts over that same period, of course, but they wouldn't want that to get in the way of their surprising finding.

Further investigation into the subject would start to reveal all kinds of neat subtleties that would be missed from a quick glance at numbers, both from non-climate-related factors like increased habitation in the wildland-urban interface areas [8], as well as climate-related factors like the massive number of dead trees in western forests as a result of increased bark beetle activity [9] [10].

And then someone might begin to be in a position to have a more interesting discussion on the subject. :-)

[1]: https://www.usnews.com/news/data-mine/articles/2018-08-01/wi...

[2]: http://www.climatecentral.org/western-wildfire-trends

[3]: https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2018/08/14/wildfires...

[4]: https://www.npr.org/2018/07/31/634369281/wildfires-could-be-...

[5]: https://www.vox.com/2018/8/7/17661096/california-wildfires-2...

[6]: https://theconversation.com/wildfires-in-west-have-gotten-bi...

[7]: https://www.nifc.gov/fireInfo/fireInfo_stats_totalFires.html

[8]: https://www.wildfirex.com/2013/07/25/population-climbs-in-wi...

[9]: https://www.fs.fed.us/research/invasive-species/insects/bark...

[10]: http://www.latimes.com/local/california/la-me-sierra-dead-tr...

Re: Miami Will Be Underwater Soon. Its Drinking Water Could Go First

#209

Post by llandho »

lakechfoma wrote: post #154
slg wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not sure it is reasonable for every article about the effects of climate change to start with the evidence that climate change is real. If you come to this article from the angle of "climate change is a myth", a single article from Bloomberg was never going to be the turning point in your belief anyway.

Probably not but I think GPs point is that if the rhetoric of the article was different and better data included then stuff like this would be harder to tear up and dismiss. This happens on both sides on all issues.

People who still believe climate change is a myth aren’t reasoned or reasoning people.

His position is ideological not logical.

More info in a Bloomberg piece won’t help, and it’s silly to pretend otherwise.

Re: Miami Will Be Underwater Soon. Its Drinking Water Could Go First

#210

Post by overcast »

panzagl wrote: post #17
erentz wrote: post #3

I’ve never understood how the parts of the country most affected by sea level rise have been so vociferously against it being real. When the BP spill happened and they had all the local mayors and politicians crying about the damage to their coast, I couldn’t understand why no one had the cajones to ask them why they cared so much about their coast being damaged now, when they were completely fine with it being gone…

You can sue BP, can't sue the atmosphere.

Not with that attitude!
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