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Rising Waters Are Drowning Amtrak's Northeast Corridor

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Re: Rising Waters Are Drowning Amtrak's Northeast Corridor

#81

Post by moate »

QuarterReptile wrote: post #79
moate wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rising temperatures melting glacial/mountain ice more dramatically contributing to river water carry? I'm not saying that's specifically the case, just throwing out a possible hypothesis. Plenty of others exist (bad rainy season, tributary re-routing due to industry, removal of forested areas that would have previously soaked up water, etc). Could be a global warming thing, could be a seasonal thing, could be anythin…

As a general rule, higher temperatures lead to atrophied snowmelt rivers because there's not as much accumulation. That's one of the contributing factors for water problems in a lot of Western (U.S.) areas.

Good point, but OP didn't mention if this was an isolated incident (the hot summer that burns off more cap snow which will never get replenished) or a sustained thing (this used to be a 4 foot stream, but for the last 5 years it's been 100 feet wide instead). Who knows what's actually going on in this story.

I'm not saying it's anything one way or the other since this is a hyper-empirical piece of data to be working off of. Based on context I'm assuming OP meant to imply that this is a sign of rising water levels, but I was just posting some alternate theories.

Re: Rising Waters Are Drowning Amtrak's Northeast Corridor

#82

Post by lifeformed »

rfinney wrote: post #73
lifeformed wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I never understood why "climate skeptics" don't see past this glaringly obvious fact: almost every time there is some "rebuttal" against climate change, the source comes back to a conservative think tank or oil company. Hello??? It's so frustrating.

Isn't "attacking the motive" a logical fallacy? https://study.com/academy/lesson/attacking-the-motive-fallac...

Saying something is biased might be a fallacy in a debate, but not in statistics. In a complex topic, where the data is fuzzy and misrepresentation is easy to do and harder to detect, you must consider biases in your sources.

An alien can look at this "debate" and make a rational decision without even knowing what the debate is about. The world's scientists study X and overwhelmingly agree: X is going to wreak havoc on the world within a few decades. In response, the humans who make extraordinary amounts of money off of X (and won't be alive in a few decades), pay large sums of money to a few people who say: X isn't that bad.

So an alien examines this situation and thinks: "Hmm... should I believe the overwhelming majority of rationalists, or the few people with financial incentives to be contrarians?" The alien concludes: "Since there are two sides to the debate, that means each side is exactly 50% likely to be right. The answer must be unknowable, and therefore they shouldn't make any decision on it and just maintain the status quo (making the contrarians the victors)." Just kidding. The alien says, "Wow, if this species is stumped on this one, I'll just come back later and harvest their newly melted water and filter all their corpses out."

Re: Rising Waters Are Drowning Amtrak's Northeast Corridor

#83

Post by Joeri »

mortivore wrote: post #42
freehunter wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>this seems like one of the least worrisome -- we even know how to fix it already! The biggest struggle with climate change (in the US at least) is trying to convince businesses that they're going to be impacted financially. If anything we need more industry-specific reporting to try to show companies how ignoring climate change will impact their bottom line.

I don't think it matters if you show businesses that climate will impact them financially. The people running the show may not be running it when the financial burden actually comes around. If there is no impact or very little for the person/people currently running the business, then there is no reason to make a move to prevent/mitigate the problem.

Not only that but I’m pretty sure that when the climate change bill comes due businesses will demand government help pay it, with the argument that the whole thing is the government’s fault anyway. And they’ll get what they want, because they always do.

Re: Rising Waters Are Drowning Amtrak's Northeast Corridor

#84

Post by zaroth »

munk-a wrote: post #72
azeotropic wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>could at least tax GP may also be thinking of the U.S. House of Representatives. Amtrak has no power to levy taxes.

Amtrak (or carriers, in this case I believe Conrail may be what I meant) can charge money for their services. When I mentioned taxing the goods I didn't mean sending in the IRS and instead I was referring to levying an additional fee for the costs induced by the usage of their service. The word tax has multiple meanings, and my usage above was indeed correctly utilizing one of those meanings.

Discriminatory pricing on government subsidized rail lines based on pet policy objectives seems like a really bad idea. I would expect there is some sort of legislation on this, we could call it rail neutrality or something.

Re: Rising Waters Are Drowning Amtrak's Northeast Corridor

#85

Post by joncrane »

rayiner wrote: post #65
pavel_lishin wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> On the other hand, giving the Amtrak fleet a bath, or altogether destroying it sounds pretty good to me. Why?

I commuted on Amtrak for two years between DC and Baltimore. The train was routinely 15 minutes late, and regularly 1 hour+. Destroying it might allow something else to be built in its place.

Why didn't you use MARC?

Re: Rising Waters Are Drowning Amtrak's Northeast Corridor

#86

Post by rayiner »

moorhosj wrote: post #74
rayiner wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Have I missed something? Yes. Sitting for hours at the Amtrak station waiting for a delayed train to arrive.

Have you never taxied at an airport waiting for a gate to open or had a flight delayed/cancelled?

That's relatively rare on routine domestic flights compared to Amtrak outside the NEC. To pick a completely random data point: there were 5 trains between Seattle and Portland yesterday. 501 Cascades left 2 hours and 48 minutes late. 517 Cascades left 1 hour and 18 minutes late.

Day before yesterday was better. The 501 was only 22 minutes late, but arrived 44 minutes late. The 517 left 10 minutes late and arrived 34 minutes late. The 507 left 10 minutes late and arrived 28 minutes late.

But Monday was worse again. The 501 left 26 minutes late, arriving 21 minutes late. The 11 Coast Starlight left 58 minutes late, arriving an hour and 20 minutes late. And the 517 Cascades left 39 minutes late, arriving 56 minutes late.

I can't remember the last time I had a routine flight between nearby cities delayed.

Re: Rising Waters Are Drowning Amtrak's Northeast Corridor

#87

Post by zachrose »

moate wrote: post #81
QuarterReptile wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a general rule, higher temperatures lead to atrophied snowmelt rivers because there's not as much accumulation. That's one of the contributing factors for water problems in a lot of Western (U.S.) areas.

Good point, but OP didn't mention if this was an isolated incident (the hot summer that burns off more cap snow which will never get replenished) or a sustained thing (this used to be a 4 foot stream, but for the last 5 years it's been 100 feet wide instead). Who knows what's actually going on in this story. I'm not saying it's anything one way or the other since this is a hyper-empirical piece of data to be working…

Yes, hyper-empirical is exactly right. I totally don't know what caused the bigger creek in Big Bend or how that relates to the larger climate. I was hoping Hacker News would chime in with exactly this kind of analysis.

Re: Rising Waters Are Drowning Amtrak's Northeast Corridor

#88

Post by rayiner »

joncrane wrote: post #85
rayiner wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I commuted on Amtrak for two years between DC and Baltimore. The train was routinely 15 minutes late, and regularly 1 hour+. Destroying it might allow something else to be built in its place.

Why didn't you use MARC?

MARC is also routinely late because they have to sit behind Amtrak trains that are running late. And an Amtrak train that is 15 minutes late will get to D.C. in the same total time as a MARC train that's on time. Also, MARC is sometimes delayed leaving DC, while the 188 Amtrak always leaves D.C. on time. (Even the one that derailed and killed a bunch of people after I got off at Baltimore, left D.C. at 7:10 on the nose.)

Re: Rising Waters Are Drowning Amtrak's Northeast Corridor

#89

Post by rfinney »

lifeformed wrote: post #82
rfinney wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't "attacking the motive" a logical fallacy? https://study.com/academy/lesson/attacking-the-motive-fallac...

Saying something is biased might be a fallacy in a debate, but not in statistics. In a complex topic, where the data is fuzzy and misrepresentation is easy to do and harder to detect, you must consider biases in your sources. An alien can look at this "debate" and make a rational decision without even knowing what the debate is about. The world's scientists study X and overwhelmingly agree: X is going to wreak havoc…

what the heck ... (my karma in this thread is like the stock market today) ...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_authority

Re: Rising Waters Are Drowning Amtrak's Northeast Corridor

#90

Post by Symbiote »

lostapathy wrote: post #62
mikey_p wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One major downside is that the schedule is very unpredictable between Portland and Seattle, due to right of way being preempted by freight traffic. It's not uncommon to have to pull into a siding and sit for 10-20 minutes several times. That said the comfort between train and air travel is night and day, you get much more space, plenty of outlets, room to get up and move around, purchase food and drinks, even if the…

How can the food be worse than airline food? I haven’t been on a flight in years that had anything other than prepackaged snacks available at any price.

I have eaten one Amtrak meal.

It was a burger in a plastic wrap, which was microwaved to heat it.

I've had bad airline food, like British Airways ten years back, and food from British trains, but Amtrak's offering was easily the worst. Hopefully they've improved by now.

The best meal was on a Swiss train (in Germany). That was also the cheapest Swiss food I've ever had.

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