Wednesday, August 26, 2015
21 comments:
Dear Anonymous,
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The management.
That look pretty ugly, Eli. Where is it (this week)?
ReplyDeleteLooks pretty ugly. Ah. Katrina. One should google before one asks.
ReplyDeleteGreg surmises the same could happen again with Erika, vis FL's narrow escape from Katrina:
http://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/2015/08/26/is-tropical-storm-erika-the-ghost-of-katrina-south-florida-beware/
I suppose your title was ironic, but that actually what failure to adapt to climate (and other, mostly delta settling) change looks like. No matter what, a lot of climate change is already baking in the oven, and the consequences of failure to adapt will become increasingly severe.
ReplyDeleteCIP
Ironic indeed.
ReplyDeleteWithout extreme mitigation efforts any adaptation to climate change will in fact materialise as a failure to adapt: most people still seem to imagine that "adaptation" will be a one-off hitching of our skirts and a single change-over to that new miracle crop. Most people are going to be sorely disappointed...
There are better pictures from the 19th Century. Of course they would have nothing to do with adaptation to human-caused climate change. Oh, wait--neither does your picture!
ReplyDeleteYes, tommyrot, you're right. Look at Bernard's post. This picture is what NOT adopting, which is currently what we're doing: NOT ADAPTING, looks like.
ReplyDeleteAnd was it cheap, tommyrot?
No, it was a lot more expensive than prevention, wasn't it.
Of course, I forgot, you don't know, you don't have a clue, but you're never going to let that stop you from talking bollocks to support your inaction religion.
Don't ever change, BP. And thanks for making my arguments for me. Katrina, a Cat 3 storm when it landed, was well announced and had been game-planned for a decade. But nothing was done.
ReplyDeleteGlobal warming had nothing to do with it. It was just lack of preparation. That didn't stop people from blaming it on climate change--especially those who were busy not preparing for it.
Ah, well.
More attempt at passive aggressive smack talking, tommyrot.
ReplyDeleteYes, I will continue to point out your precise idiocies and eviscerate your unearned sense of self-worth.
Live with it or stop being such a bloody moron in public.
Hey, tom fullerthanadunnywagon, where is your proof that katrina would have been as bad if the CO2 levels had not increased from pre-industrial 280ppm?
ReplyDelete"But nothing was done"
ReplyDeleteMy understanding was that the army corp of engineers built a bunch of dikes at great expense to prevent this sort of thing, using models from the past.
Tom, since you pretend to be the grown-up in the room so resolutely, I assume you realize that hurricanes are driven by heat energy, that, ceteris paribus, major storms grow and intensify when they find themselves over warmer water, and that when the warmth goes deeper into the water column storms don't undermine their energy source by stirring up the surface. That is, while dynamics are complex, warmer waters do contribute to the conditions needed for larger and more intense hurricanes. Repeating 'nothing to see here' is a popular activity amongst those who don't want the rest of us to look at what's going on.
ReplyDeleteTom
ReplyDeleteFollowing on from Bryson:
Global warming had nothing to do with it. It was just lack of preparation.
While fractional attribution of Katrina is unresolved and perhaps likely to remain so, the strong statement that global warming had nothing to do with it is simply incorrect. What Bryson said.
Unpreparedness was, is, and will be a problem.
Also that lack of preparation was a bunch of people pinching pennies because they hoped that it wouldn't happen yet, and they could "balance the books" first.
ReplyDeleteJust like the deniers hope to happen with AGW.
It was just lack of preparation.
ReplyDeleteI'd say that's the point. We already know that climate change is happening, and will likely be costly. What are we doing now to prepare for it?
Not much.. same as for Katrina.
I would argue that one principal reason we are not preparing is that people are saying we need to prepare for an outlier possibility for sea level rise. This lessens resolve to shore up defenses for what has happened in the past.
ReplyDeleteYes, tom fullerthanadunnywagon, you would argue.
ReplyDeleteWould you have any support for your claim, though? Past evidence shows not.
Past evidence of NO is that the money was spent giving rich people tax breaks and pork barrel spending in "useful" areas, whereas there was just hope and prayer that the levees would not be in danger this year, but some few years time.
And that is PRECISELY what adaption is today: Don't do anything because we may be safe for the next few years, we'll think about it then.
"What are we doing now to prepare for it?"
ReplyDeleteThe proper question you need to ask yourself is what are you doing for it? Maybe you're happy with doing nothing about it, but I'm doing rocket science and quantum and condensed matter physics, because I know those things are part of the solution, along with all the mesoscopic things that you can do to remediate, prepare and act the obvious problems. Thermoelectricity advances are changing the game.
I reiterate, culture and religion are the real problems here.
Both of those are problems because of the fear of facing reality in all its irreconcilable uncertainties.
ReplyDeleteReligion and ideology (especially self-healing delusions base on them) are a security blanket, making believe that there isn't any change, that the world is entirely understood and is not a scary place.
And when disturbed, the fear comes out and the anger is the option taken to combat the fear. Ill advised though it is.
The uncertainties are not as irreconcilable as you think. We've got a good handle on the mesoscale, the astrophysical and cosmological is not going to change much other than an occasional asteroid impact or converging into condensed matter physics, and we're here because of quantum mechanics. Everything else is quite honestly nonsense given the problems of our biology. Quantum mechanics is really the only way out of this problem, but even then a sustainable long term biological civilization may not be possible given cultural and religious problems.
ReplyDeleteTom
ReplyDeleteI would argue that one principal reason we are not preparing is that people are saying we need to prepare for an outlier possibility for sea level rise. This lessens resolve to shore up defenses for what has happened in the past.
Have you got a single shred of evidence to support this claim?
Of course not, and Tom Fullerthanadunnywagon will never change.
ReplyDelete