Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Rising Waters Are Drowning Amtrak's Northeast Corridor

bloomberg.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

141–150 of 181 posts

Re: Rising Waters Are Drowning Amtrak's Northeast Corridor

#141

Post by sandworm101 »

njarboe wrote: post #117
whatshisface wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Companies can use their political influence to get other companies to change. This isn't happening today because everyone on Earth is happier when electricity and gas are cheaper, from the poorest consumer to the wealthiest executive.

If the most vocal people shouting about the problem of climate change were advocating for the mass adoption of nuclear power, huge money into fusion power research, and investment in the R&D of removing CO2 from the air instead of advocating for reduced power usage, transportation restrictions (mass transit), and human population decline as the solutions to "climate change", US society would be a lot more likely to g…

They would get more done if they didn't ball in societal changes. It's like the autonomous car advocates who also want to do away with private vehicle ownership. People are open to new technologies. They aren't open to political rants. I want an electric car. I don't want a lecture about how people shouldn't be allowed to own cars. I want solar panels on my house. I don't want someone telling me to turn off my TV and read newspapers to save power.

Re: Rising Waters Are Drowning Amtrak's Northeast Corridor

#142

Post by krapp »

forkandwait wrote: post #139
flukus wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Yes and no. My take is this: there's too much time and energy being put into why and who does or doesn't believe (it's human-made), and not enough focus is on "solutions" (to the higher waters). Often this distraction seems to be generated by politicians. The President of the United States thinks it's a hoax (from snopes https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/donald-trump-global-warmin... ): The concept of global warmin…

It's crazy to say, but no one with a college degree takes the current president at all seriously.

None of those people with college degrees are running the country or setting environmental policy, though. The man who thinks global warming is a Chinese communist plot is.

Re: Rising Waters Are Drowning Amtrak's Northeast Corridor

#143

Post by stale2002 »

graeme wrote: post #97
sailfast wrote: post #30

> Water levels around Wilmington would rise 2 feet by 2050. That reflects the median of possible warming scenarios 2 feet is the median!? And things continue to accelerate? I thought I followed climate change issues but somehow did not know that in most people's lifetimes sea levels will rise multiple feet. I would've thought folks would be more... concerned? The maps of New Jersey, New York, and Connecticut look lik…

I have no idea why people aren't more concerned. I think the desire to avoid sounding "apocalyptic" has led to people not emphasizing the expected damage if we keep using CO2. Anyone with a child born this year can expect that child to live past 2100. A future grandchild will live well past 2100. Even most people reading this can probably expect to live past 2050. It's not an abstract issue that will affect future ge…

Well, that is because things aren't literally apocalyptic.

The science says that sea levels will rise by a meter or so over the next hundred years. That won't end the world.

The science says that climate change will cause trillions of dollars of damages, over the next hundred years.

Trillions of dollars in damages is bad. But it is on the same scale of "badness" as another iraq war.

I'd want to prevent a third Iraq war, but I am not going to pretend that it would put billions of lives in danger.

Re: Rising Waters Are Drowning Amtrak's Northeast Corridor

#144

Post by stale2002 »

vonmoltke wrote: post #92
superjan wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

King is not stating that here. He just says that the earth was no fun place to be, the last time greenhouse gasses were as high as they’ll likely be in 2100.

> "No ice was left on Earth. Antarctica was the best place for mammals to live, and the rest of the world would not sustain human life , he said. > Sir David warned that if the world did not curb its burning of fossil fuels "we will reach that level by 2100"." [Emphasis mine] He literally did say that, unless you think "would not sustain human life" is compatible with "habitable". That quote was an asinine statement…

Imagine if I were to say "the last time that large amounts of people walked around in suits on daily basis, we had two world wars!". This is both true and misleading.

No scientist believes that climate change will cause such sire circumstances.

The experts on the matter believe that sea levels will rise by a meter or so over the next hundred years.

If you believe that this will end the world, then you should know that the experts disagree with you, and that you should go read some more science.

So yes, it is true that "the last time C02 levels were at this level, the world could not sustain life". But it is also misleading as it implies causation.

The scienctists do not believe that these levels would cause mass extinction of human life. The badness is closer in scale to another Iraq war.

Re: Rising Waters Are Drowning Amtrak's Northeast Corridor

#145

Post by stale2002 »

graeme wrote: post #93
superjan wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

King is not stating that here. He just says that the earth was no fun place to be, the last time greenhouse gasses were as high as they’ll likely be in 2100.

I read the article. King does seem to be stating that. At least, he says the last time co2 was as high as it will be in 2100, then only antarctica was suitable for human life. Now, there's a lag to warming, so it might only reach the full temperatures by 2150 or so, but King did explicitly seem to be saying we're likely to make the world uninhabitable. Or at least that the last time co2 was that high, the world was u…

King is being maliciously misleading with his statements.

He is implying causation, but no scientist actually believes that the world will be uninhabitable by 2100. That is the opinion of the experts.

Re: Rising Waters Are Drowning Amtrak's Northeast Corridor

#146

Post by selectodude »

Spooky23 wrote: post #109
munk-a wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amtrak is weirdly a company that will suffer from climate change and could actually start addressing it (they end up shipping the vast majority of coal and could at least tax the movement of that good to recoup this expense) but most companies that will be hit by the effects of climate change won't be significantly contributing to it. Industries that see ever more profit in fields with high externalities won't have d…

CSX is what you’re thinking of. Amtrak is passenger only. They share track with CSX and many others.

Amtrak owns all their own trackage on the Northeast Corridor.

Re: Rising Waters Are Drowning Amtrak's Northeast Corridor

#147

Post by jcranmer »

selectodude wrote: post #146
Spooky23 wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

CSX is what you’re thinking of. Amtrak is passenger only. They share track with CSX and many others.

Amtrak owns all their own trackage on the Northeast Corridor.

Actually, the track from New Haven to New Rochelle is not owned by Amtrak but by Metro North (the local commuter rail). Apparently Massachusetts (via the MBTA, also the local commuter rail) also owns the NEC in Massachusetts.

Re: Rising Waters Are Drowning Amtrak's Northeast Corridor

#148

Post by jcranmer »

jackcarter wrote: post #9
koops wrote: post #2

The US east coast has post-glacial rebound and Atlantic meridional overturning circulation slowdown to compound their sea-level problems. But most the rise is nothing special compared the rest of the world, which is the worst part of this.

Won't post-glacial rebound counteract rising sea levels?

It depends on where you are. If you were underneath the ice sheet (which is Long Island and further north), then you are rebounding since the ice was pushing down on you. If you were further south, then you are slowly sinking due to the rebalancing of weight.

Re: Rising Waters Are Drowning Amtrak's Northeast Corridor

#149

Post by windexh8er »

ams6110 wrote: post #131
PhasmaFelis wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are still people who insist that the whole thing is made up. See "40 years ago they predicted global cooling!", "It was below freezing last night, so much for global warming!", etc., etc. They're getting rarer, though. As the evidence piles up, more and more of them are switching to "global warming is real but it's nobody's fault and there's definitely nothing we can or should do about it."

I don't think it's made up but I think there's a good chance we're wrong about the cause. The theory is not falsifiable. There are too many interacting variables. The models have all been fit to the data and not vice versa. We've been wrong about other things that were universally accepted as true (e.g. dietary fat is bad) and later turned out to be wrong. Doesn't really matter what I think though. I'm one person, no…

Just to be clear, dietary fat is not good as implied by your statement:

https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/abs/10.1161/CIR.000000000000...

Re: Rising Waters Are Drowning Amtrak's Northeast Corridor

#150

Post by graeme »

stale2002 wrote: post #143
graeme wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have no idea why people aren't more concerned. I think the desire to avoid sounding "apocalyptic" has led to people not emphasizing the expected damage if we keep using CO2. Anyone with a child born this year can expect that child to live past 2100. A future grandchild will live well past 2100. Even most people reading this can probably expect to live past 2050. It's not an abstract issue that will affect future ge…

Well, that is because things aren't literally apocalyptic. The science says that sea levels will rise by a meter or so over the next hundred years. That won't end the world. The science says that climate change will cause trillions of dollars of damages, over the next hundred years. Trillions of dollars in damages is bad. But it is on the same scale of "badness" as another iraq war. I'd want to prevent a third Iraq w…

Science can't predict the economic effects of such a change over a 100 year period. Economic forecasting just isn't that good.

That's also not the right way to look at Iraq war costs. A lot of the war cost is just "shuffling".

Eg pay $1,000,000 in soldier salaries, the money is moved from taxpayers to soldiers. Then the soldiers spend the money. What was lost?

The real cost is the alternative work the soldiers could have done. The private sector could presumably have put them to better use. This would be more acute if the economy had full employment.

Bombs and munitions are worse, as there is real destruction of material. But much of the money is still recycled back into the domestic economy.

By contrast, a trillion simply lost from a catastrophe is just lost. It's a loss of real infrastructure. It's a loss of whole cities such as Miami, etc

To speak of "science" in this context is to misuse the term.

Post reply on HN