America’s Great Climate Exodus Is Starting in the Florida Keys • Hacker News Board

Re: America’s Great Climate Exodus Is Starting in the Florida Keys

#51

Post by electic » Sat, Sep 21, 2019, 8:36 PM UTC

fromthestart wrote: post #28

electic wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The issue isn't the hurricanes or the strength that is associated with them, it is the water content. In the past, hurricanes main threat was the wind. With wind, you can mitigate that with stronger building techniques and since the flooding was minimal, it was easy to recover from. The new issue with these hurricanes is that they are bringing significantly more water with them because of global warming. The net resu…

> The net result is you are seeing once in 1500 year floods happening every year. This is the same kind of cherry picking that denialists have been using for decades. Locally rare events appear frequent if you gather trials from enough localities. The fact is that there has been no increase in storm intensity or frequency over the last 100 years which correlates with greenhouse emissions. There was an increase starti…

I'm not referring to frequency but the water content in each storm. There are a lot of sources, but here is a preliminary data report that was put together by NOAA[1]. There is commentary by scientists at NOAA[2].

Overall this isn't rocket science. You have warmer temperatures over the ocean, which yields more water in the air to get caught up in passing hurricanes. The net result is more rainfall when it hits land. It is what it is.

[1] https://w2.weather.gov/climate/getclimate.php?date=&wfo=lix&...

[2] https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/11/climate/hurricane-tropica...

Re: America’s Great Climate Exodus Is Starting in the Florida Keys

#52

Post by eanzenberg » Sat, Sep 21, 2019, 8:38 PM UTC

fourthark wrote: post #22

olivermarks wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Claims and predictions are one thing but where are the facts?

What kind of evidence do you expect? Without time travel.

Many scientists build models to estimates the effects of sea level rise. You can read it online. Tl;dr, its not a big effect. The science has already been politicized. Carry on...

Re: America’s Great Climate Exodus Is Starting in the Florida Keys

#53

Post by Consultant32452 » Sat, Sep 21, 2019, 8:39 PM UTC

ryansmccoy wrote: post #39

Why do people buy beach front houses when they know they'll be under water in just a few years? Doesn't make sense to me.

Barrack Obama just bought a multi-million dollar beachfront home. If any major public figure has the most accurate info about pending sea level rise, even classified level information that might not be released to the public, surely it's him.

Re: America’s Great Climate Exodus Is Starting in the Florida Keys

#54

Post by mmaunder » Sat, Sep 21, 2019, 8:39 PM UTC

A little late if hurricanes are your benchmark for climate change.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1900_Galveston_hurricane

What's sad is that most reporters know that climate change is measured in decade long trends. Small yearly increases in sea level, gradual increases in global temps and slow changes in atmospheric composition. But that doesn't get clicks.

Associating climate change with outlying catastrophic events is as short sighted as the environmental abuse that causes climate change.

Re: America’s Great Climate Exodus Is Starting in the Florida Keys

#55

Post by olivermarks » Sat, Sep 21, 2019, 8:40 PM UTC

fourthark wrote: post #22

olivermarks wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Claims and predictions are one thing but where are the facts?

What kind of evidence do you expect? Without time travel.

Anything. Vague pointers to 'read it online' don't really cut it

Re: America’s Great Climate Exodus Is Starting in the Florida Keys

#56

Post by vnchr » Sat, Sep 21, 2019, 8:48 PM UTC

PKop wrote: post #43

ryansmccoy wrote: post #39

Why do people buy beach front houses when they know they'll be under water in just a few years? Doesn't make sense to me.

Because they know it won't be under water in just a few years, and that the climate scare is selective presentation of statistics in service of propaganda to consolidate political power. Interesting view highlighting the selective presentation of statistics: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8455KEDitpU President Obama is one of those who must think the sea level won't rise dramatically for a while, given he recently b…

The article does appear to be chasing a bias. “America’s Great Climate Exodus” is not a present reality, even if it is imagined as an eventuality to some.

Re: America’s Great Climate Exodus Is Starting in the Florida Keys

#57

Post by jgmjgm » Sat, Sep 21, 2019, 8:50 PM UTC

ForHackernews wrote: post #3

Where are the insurance companies on all this? Shouldn't it become increasingly more expensive to insure a low-lying property? Are they not including climate risks in their modelling?

I briefly worked in the insurance industry in Canada. FWIW in my experience the industry is incredibly backwards. I wouldn't expect their prices to reflect anything meaningful about climate risk. Quite the opposite. I rather think that the industry is jumping on the climate change band wagon precisely because their analytics are so poor. (Don't get me wrong, climate change is happening. I just think industries are going to profit from it any way that they can. In this case, this is a cover-your-ass move because the industry hasn't invested in this analytical research. Labeling bad policies that should never have been written at a certain price as climate change is a convenient excuse.)

This is anecdotal, but the one I worked at had no weather/climate modelling and was only just beginning to leverage even the most basic analytics across the company. From what I heard from people in pricing was that their pricing was also a mess for property. They basically just gave up on selling insurance to anyone within 100 meters of water. They did account for elevation to some degree so that they wouldn't insure people in a flood plain, but much of the process was kludgy and ad hoc. The company is a reasonably big player and is (laughably) considered to be very technically advanced in the broader market. Even the biggest players are just moving out of manual data entry so I am not overly hopeful about the broader industry in this country.

On the other hand, Canada has a very sheltered insurance market and it desperately needs more competition. It's very protected though so I don't expect that to happen any time soon. If there was more competition, I would expect the analytics to be better and yield a more accurate picture of the real climate change costs based on the existing science.

Re: America’s Great Climate Exodus Is Starting in the Florida Keys

#58

Post by smadge » Sat, Sep 21, 2019, 8:55 PM UTC

watertom wrote: post #26

Why is the government buying these people out? The homeowners weren't forced to purchase these properties, so it's not the government's responsibility to remediate the situation.

Because the government is interested in minimizing future economic losses from repeated flooding. It's not charity, it's rational planning.

Re: America’s Great Climate Exodus Is Starting in the Florida Keys

#59

Post by devoply » Sat, Sep 21, 2019, 8:56 PM UTC

PKop wrote: post #46

A counter-argument to climate alarmist statistics, shows use of selective presentation of statistics to portray specific conclusion on climate change: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8455KEDitpU

Billions of birds dead, insect apocalypse, amphibian populations decimated, etc... But yeah people are just being alarmist, it's the end of the world and I feel fine.

Re: America’s Great Climate Exodus Is Starting in the Florida Keys

#60

Post by qqqwerty » Sat, Sep 21, 2019, 8:57 PM UTC

mmaunder wrote: post #54

A little late if hurricanes are your benchmark for climate change. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1900_Galveston_hurricane What's sad is that most reporters know that climate change is measured in decade long trends. Small yearly increases in sea level, gradual increases in global temps and slow changes in atmospheric composition. But that doesn't get clicks. Associating climate change with outlying catastrophic eve…

I am completely fine with it. We need to convince low information voters that climate change is a serious issue, and the opposition likes to point at snow storms and bring snowballs to congress as proof that climate change is a hoax.