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NASA Scientists Suggest We’ve Been Underestimating Sea Level Rise

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Re: NASA Scientists Suggest We’ve Been Underestimating Sea Level Rise

#141

Post by tjic »

epistasis wrote: post #81
WillPostForFood wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the other hand, people have been saying that for last few decades, and the bad news hasn't had much impact.

People (well, climate science researchers) have been saying that the changes are decades ahead of us, even now, but that we need to take action now and in the past to prevent these changes. Given the general staidness of the actual research, I think we need to worry a lot more about where climate science has underestimated the change than where they've overestimated it. The loss function will be brutal on that side.

> People (well, climate science researchers) have been saying that the changes are decades ahead of us, even now, but that we need to take action now and in the past to prevent these changes.

Climate researchers have _not_ been implying that the bad effects are way out in the 21st century: they've made hundreds of testable predictions that catastrophe was at hand in the 80s, 90s, and aughts.

We were going to see the end of arctic ice, have a perpetual ozone hole necessitating sun screen when venturing outside and decimating wildlife from cataracts, see New York and other major cities drowned, etc. (Not to mention famine killing billions of people, etc.)

It is possible to think that climate research is useful and interesting even while acknowledging that they are often alarmist and full of nonsense in their predictions.

Re: NASA Scientists Suggest We’ve Been Underestimating Sea Level Rise

#142

Post by ar-jan »

XaYdEk wrote: post #37
meric wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're building solar power plants everywhere, shutting down factories and coal power plants around large cities. "Other main targets include: – reduction of emissions from coal burning industries and vehicles2 – boost cleaner and more efficient use of coal – promote the use of electricity and natural gas in place of coal – support for wind, solar and bio power sectors; increase in proportion of clean energy – encou…

Solar and wind based energy production is not going to fully or even mostly replace our gas/coal burners because they lack constant and predictable outputs. Also, we have neither infrastructure for storing power at this level, nor would it be economically feasible. Hydro and geo-thermal are better sources in this sense, but neither are abundant and have their own drawbacks. '- promote the use of electricity and natur…

Both real-world examples and simulations say it's possible, by combining different renewable energy sources, spreading them out geographically, and using large distribution networks, among others: http://reneweconomy.com.au/2016/dispelling-the-nuclear-basel...

Re: NASA Scientists Suggest We’ve Been Underestimating Sea Level Rise

#143

Post by throwaway729 »

nylsaar wrote: post #94
fsloth wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't you think this is a bit too serious issues to waste energy on petty political divisions? Anyway, they only entities that can do something are governments. People are good at locally optimizing their own lives. Not so good at optimizing the good of the whole.

Where did the water for the ice come from? What is the optimal sea level for the governments to set? How do you calculate an energy output without knowing it's environment? Why do scientist, who are dependent on government funding, use words like 'suggest', 'surprised', or 'consensus'? The truth is that none of us know what the actual dimensions of our solar system were 5,000 years ago, nor do we know the measurement…

> What is the optimal sea level for the governments to set?

I don't think anyone is suggesting or has suggested such a policy. Rather, the recommendation is "avoid changing things, especially when the outcomes are probably negative and their magnitude highly unknown".

> who are dependent on government funding

Plenty of scientists who are funded by non-government grants agree that climate change is real.

Plenty of non-climate scientists have looked at the data and agree that climate change is real.

Plenty of non-scientists with training in a scientific discipline -- who have never received and will never receive a penny of grant money in their lives -- have looked at the data and agree that climate change is real.

This particular ad hom is tired and unfounded.

> Why do scientist, who are dependent on government funding, use words like 'suggest', 'surprised', or 'consensus'?

Suggest: because this is one study/measurement, and others should repeat the measurement and/or come to the same conclusions by other methods.

Surprised: Because they're surprised.

Consensus: When 90+% of trained experts agree on something, that's pretty much as close to a consensus as you can get in a large population.

> Where did the water for the ice come from?... How do you calculate an energy output without knowing it's environment?... The truth is that none of us know what the actual dimensions of our solar system were 5,000 years ago nor do we know the measurements in the next 1,000. An object is never the same when nature is applied over time.

We engineer systems and make scientific measurements and predictions with high accuracy every day without knowing the exact origin and trajectory of everything in the universe.

Re: NASA Scientists Suggest We’ve Been Underestimating Sea Level Rise

#144

Post by Pxtl »

refurb wrote: post #57
flukus wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The goal is to not sit on or arses while we wait for people who already produce less CO2 than us to reduce their usage.

The real measure should be CO2 output per unit of GDP. We still need to make stuff, so if you're going to release CO2, it better be an efficient use of it.

That seems like it could be gamed:

http://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/2013-01-14

Re: NASA Scientists Suggest We’ve Been Underestimating Sea Level Rise

#145

Post by Freestyler_3 »

Shivetya wrote: post #115
WillPostForFood wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the other hand, people have been saying that for last few decades, and the bad news hasn't had much impact.

It is always in how the numbers are used, cherry picking by both sides. However the real take away here is that they figured out they were wrong yet again. Of course they lean towards the more extreme each time but even some publications indicate that Antarctic changes are due to natural variability. Then lets play with sea rise, the fear is always that some islands will wash away and port towns will be at further ri…

I take it with a grain of salt because of the title including: "suggests"

And what's the projection, will it rise 0.5, 1, 2, 5, 100, 200 or 300 meters in the next 100 years? I have seen so many numbers, I don't know what the current estimation is. Anyway I tried to make sense of the article: " This number has hovered around 0.6 inches per decade since 1900...[]...Global sea level, the paper concluded, rose no less than 5.5 inches over the last century, and likely saw an increase of 6.7 inches."

lets see, 6.7 is likely. 6.7 / 10 = 0.67 inches per decade. and no less than 0.55 (lower than measured).

Re: NASA Scientists Suggest We’ve Been Underestimating Sea Level Rise

#146

Post by Hondor »

madaxe_again wrote: post #134
M_Grey wrote: post #11

I suspect that we can expect a lot of bad news to emerge over the next few decades, as the promise of climate change becomes the reality of climate change.

I'm afraid it will start emerging much sooner than on a decadal timescale - we're already seeing the impact in terms of crop yields and weather damage costs, all over the globe. Simultaneously, our political systems are gyrating wildly as they struggle to function in an ever faster and more interconnected and complex world. No, I think we're going to see a lot of bad news over the next few years. The impacts of clima…

You might be painting too rosy a picture of the past. Gyrating wildly? The UK no longer gets bombed by the IRA, there's no cold war, there's no crippling union strikes everywhere. As for more serious but less sexy problems, it'll take a lot of climate change to compete with disasters we've already had/are having:

Global deaths from famine from 1900-2000: 80,000,000 [1]

Global deaths from malaria from 2000-2015: 9,000,000 [3]

Global deaths from WWII: 60,000,000

Global traffic deaths in 2013: 1,000,000 [2]

We've got most of those problems on the run now, and the future looks even more promising with medical and safety tech.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_famines

[2] http://www.who.int/gho/road_safety/mortality/traffic_deaths_...

[3] http://www.who.int/gho/malaria/epidemic/deaths/en/

Re: NASA Scientists Suggest We’ve Been Underestimating Sea Level Rise

#147

Post by kakarot »

Hondor wrote: post #146
madaxe_again wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm afraid it will start emerging much sooner than on a decadal timescale - we're already seeing the impact in terms of crop yields and weather damage costs, all over the globe. Simultaneously, our political systems are gyrating wildly as they struggle to function in an ever faster and more interconnected and complex world. No, I think we're going to see a lot of bad news over the next few years. The impacts of clima…

You might be painting too rosy a picture of the past. Gyrating wildly? The UK no longer gets bombed by the IRA, there's no cold war, there's no crippling union strikes everywhere. As for more serious but less sexy problems, it'll take a lot of climate change to compete with disasters we've already had/are having: Global deaths from famine from 1900-2000: 80,000,000 [1] Global deaths from malaria from 2000-2015: 9,000…

I'm not entirely sure the Cold War ever ended, we just don't use that phrase anymore so that people don't think about it or know how to refer to the arms race of continual production of nuclear weaponry around the world.

Re: NASA Scientists Suggest We’ve Been Underestimating Sea Level Rise

#148

Post by flavor8 »

tjic wrote: post #141
epistasis wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People (well, climate science researchers) have been saying that the changes are decades ahead of us, even now, but that we need to take action now and in the past to prevent these changes. Given the general staidness of the actual research, I think we need to worry a lot more about where climate science has underestimated the change than where they've overestimated it. The loss function will be brutal on that side.

> People (well, climate science researchers) have been saying that the changes are decades ahead of us, even now, but that we need to take action now and in the past to prevent these changes. Climate researchers have _not_ been implying that the bad effects are way out in the 21st century: they've made hundreds of testable predictions that catastrophe was at hand in the 80s, 90s, and aughts. We were going to see the…

Source on the ozone hole? Last I heard that was actually shrinking dramatically as a direct result of the CRC ban.

Re: NASA Scientists Suggest We’ve Been Underestimating Sea Level Rise

#149

Post by Scarblac »

guard-of-terra wrote: post #139
Scarblac wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We had meat and heating before petrol, why would you expect it to go away? We had _some_ meat before petrol (when my parents were kids in the 1950s, sundays were special because they had meat, the 18th century won't have been better). And since the start of the industrial revolution, world population has increased about sevenfold.

"Industrial revolution" is a loose concept, it started at different time in different places and didn't really become runaway before mass petrol. For us colder northern countries, population didn't change that much since the coming of petrol. Maybe 1,5x increase in all. Definitely not sevenfold.

The industrial revolution is the point at which we began to use a lot of fossil fuel, first coal and later petrol. It may be different times in different places but it's more or less equivalent to the "before petrol" I was replying to. That was also different times in different places.

And I bet those colder northern countries import much of their meat these days, so it's not much use to make this about local matters only.

Re: NASA Scientists Suggest We’ve Been Underestimating Sea Level Rise

#150

Post by Hondor »

rybosome wrote: post #87
pavanred wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is a complex problem. As far as I understand, in the criticism to any work on climate change in the west (at least in the US) is that people are still debating if it is real or not, in the face of evidence; hence there's lack of political will. And, in countries like India or China, the criticism is that lots of people need cheap fuel to get out of poverty and imposing restrictions would impede that. Though, the p…

Yes, the US' continued debate over whether or not this is even real is maddening. Climate change has unfortunately been sucked into the great maw of partisan bickering, to loosely quote a different Vox article on the subject; belief or disbelief is not based on facts, but a deeply rooted sense of identity. And so, due to our highly tribal nature and inability to feel sufficient empathy for those in out groups, the US…

> experience the horror of a collapsing civilization.

Wait, what? Is there any serious prediction of global warming causing collapsing civilization? How would that happen? Hordes of starving Americans abandoning their jobs and storming Canada? We've had big famines before and they were localized to the countries they happened in. Sea level rise won't swamp many places. We've got Syria wrecked by war and civilization is doing just fine in Europe despite refugees.

Population explosion used to be going to cause collapsing civilization. So was nuclear war. Global warming is the panic of our generation. Something else we haven't thought of yet will surely be gripping people's fear 2 generations down the line.

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