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from the a-rising-tide-lifts-all-boats-but-not-so-good-for-property dept.
Michael Mishak writes that there are few places in the nation more vulnerable to rising sea levels than low-lying South Florida, a tourist and retirement mecca built on drained swampland. Yet as other coastal states and the Obama administration take aggressive measures to battle the effects of global warming, Florida's top Republican politicians are challenging the science and balking at government fixes. In Miami Beach the concern is palpable. On a recent afternoon, local businessman Scott McKenzie pulled out his iPad and flipped through photos from a 2009 storm. In one, two women kayak through knee-high water in the center of town. "This is not a future problem. It's a current problem," says Leonard Berry, a contributing author of the National Climate Assessment, which found that sea levels have risen about 8 inches in the past century. By one regional assessment, the waters off South Florida could rise another 2 feet by 2060, a scenario that would overwhelm the region's aging drainage system and taint its sources of drinking water. "It's getting to the point where some properties being bought today will probably not be able to be sold at the end of a 30-year mortgage," says Harold Wanless. "You would think responsible leaders and responsible governments would take that as a wake-up call."
Gov. Rick Scott, who is running for re-election, has worked with the Republican-controlled Legislature to dismantle Florida's fledgling climate change initiatives that were put into place by his predecessor and current opponent, Democrat Charlie Crist. "I'm not a scientist," says Scott when asked about anthropogenic global warming during a stop in Miami. Meanwhile, Miami Beach is bracing for another season of punishing tides. "We're suffering while everyone is arguing man-made or natural," says Christine Florez, president of the West Avenue Corridor Neighborhood Association. "We should be working together to find solutions so people don't feel like they've been left on a log drifting out to sea."
(Score: 2) by hoochiecoochieman on Monday June 09 2014, @11:59AM
Looks like the problem is not hitting Florida citizens hard enough that they stop voting for right-wing politicians. I say, let democracy rule. The problem will fix itself when all the deniers drown.
(Score: 2, Troll) by VLM on Monday June 09 2014, @12:37PM
1) It wasn't rich old neoconservative white men watching Fox News who drowned in New Orleans. I'm guessing the demographics of who drowns in FL will be about the same.
2) The supporters don't actually intent to do anything other than left wing social engineering, so believing them won't help anyway. Two competing religions, neither wants you to think about the situation, and both want you to pray in a different manner while the asteroid is on the way. Choose either, they will both be totally ineffective. Given that, lets select the option that will involve wasting the least money and doing the least social engineering. So I'm a "denier" for pragmatic reasons, not because I don't believe in the scientific method or I feel the belief that Jesus told me or some other form of insanity. Pure pragmatism. Two sides want to screw me over, but one will cost less, impact everyone less, and add less to the disaster... seems an easy choice.
3) As a guy currently sitting where two miles of ice was recently covering the land, I'm not really all that concerned about global warming. Trying to "personalize" it by talking about the human interest story of some crazy florida people will probably result in about 90% of the population deciding the most rational individualistic thing for them to do is have a bonfire in their backyard tonight, which was not exactly the overall goal of the movement.
4) The GW supporters never quite have the honesty to admit that nothing short of going all "Pol Pot" on ourselves will have any significant effect. If they were honest about it I wouldn't laugh at them so much. If you're going to support genocide as a social engineering project at least have the honesty to admit it in public. If they were honest about it (9 in 10 Americans must die to keep sea levels constant, etc) then they'd be so repulsive virtually no one would tolerate them, so they're kinda stuck being crooks.
5) The funniest part of the discussion is the desperate belief that there is "a" sea level that should always be aspired to and should never change. A pretty stupid believe, geologically. Intelligent people would be doing capital projects and land use plans on the assumption the level WILL change. Because like it or not, it always has and always will.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 09 2014, @01:31PM
Two competing religions, neither wants you to think about the situation, and both want you to pray in a different manner while the asteroid is on the way. Choose either, they will both be totally ineffective.
That sort of high-school level analysis is a big part of the problem. Whenever humans are involved there will be self-interest and corruption. But it is juvenile to stretch the existence of corruption into a rationale for inaction. That's not pragmatism, its just laziness built on a sense of personal superiority.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Monday June 09 2014, @02:02PM
Unfortunately your assertions have no reasoning or evidence behind them other than "they make a nice rebuttal if stated as fact".
Other than the off topic non sequitur at the end it was the start of a decent rebuttal.
I might very well change my mind if there were any chance the power gained would be used for good purposes not evil. I'd even be willing to consider off topic use of the money ... So we'll enforce a massive taxing regime to extract billions from the middle class and instead of spending it on actual environmental issues we'll spend it all on something totally different ... yet good, maybe the space program or basic science R+D. That would be corrupt, but at least not evil, or not as evil as what would more realistically happen once they gain more power.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 09 2014, @02:16PM
Unfortunately your assertions have no reasoning or evidence behind them other than "they make a nice rebuttal if stated as fact"
Yeah, funny how your assertions have just as much reasoning and evidence. If anyone needed proof of just how unfounded your sense of superiority is, you just gave it to them.
(Score: 2) by Yog-Yogguth on Monday June 09 2014, @04:35PM
POinting out the fact that moderating the parent to "0 Troll" is obvious misuse of the moderation system. I don't have mod points right now and I already commented anyway before seeing this (in fact a post correcting/informing VLM in another thread) so I don't think it wouldn't have helped if I did (or maybe that is changed now, haven't tested it).
The moderation system is not made for "punishing" people you disagree with and each time anyone does so it makes the site worse because the site is made for commenting and debate. If anyone want to "punish" anything they should use comments to argue, inform, and/or correct.
Bite harder Ouroboros, bite! tails.boum.org/ linux USB CD secure desktop IRC *crypt tor (not endorsements (XKeyScore))
(Score: 2) by skullz on Monday June 09 2014, @05:10PM
Yeah, no kidding. I've seen that happen a lot recently. People are getting way to butt hurt and vindictive.
I miss the good old SN days when we all sung songs while holding hands. Or at least didn't try to silence anyone we disagreed with.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 09 2014, @08:27PM
> POinting out the fact that moderating the parent to "0 Troll" is obvious misuse of the moderation system
No, stuff like these lines are 100% troll:
"The supporters don't actually intent to do anything other than left wing social engineering,
... The GW supporters never quite have the honesty to admit that nothing short of going all "Pol Pot" on ourselves
... the desperate belief
... (9 in 10 Americans must die to keep sea levels constant)
... so they're kinda stuck being crooks."
Maybe you agree with it, maybe not, but all of those lines are deliberately inflammatory because they add nothing to the discussion but they do demonize and belittle the people he disagrees with. If you want to argue about whether it is flamebait or trolling go ahead, but that would just be splitting hairs. He wasn't modded down as punishment for his ideas, he was modded down as punishment for being unnecessarily provocative and not just a little bit, he was way over the top.
Good on the people who were able to respond without stooping to that level, but he doesn't deserve an ounce of credit for their restraint when he couldn't practice it himself.
(Score: 2) by Yog-Yogguth on Tuesday June 10 2014, @09:22AM
But if one sets the bar for what is considered trolling and flamebaiting low enough then all honest disagreement is suppressed. If most or all comments that are against something get Troll moderated into oblivion then something is very wrong. People should not have to lick boots in order to voice disagreement, nor should they have to adapt some faked academic or politically correct attitude to discourse. They should not have to profess false modesty, humility, servility, or even non-aggression just because they disagree.
By increasing the criteria for "acceptable comments" one feeds ones own bigotry; being a bigot is to not accept that other points of view can have any value. Yes of course I often walk into that trap as well, it might be impossible not to if one has any strong opinions at all.
I think one ought to reserve Troll and Flamebait moderation for the truly obvious stuff (which is rare!) and just leave comments alone if one can't stomach replying to them; I feel pretty sure most people here do that all the time because I certainly do. I.e. there's a reason I haven't commented on TFA but I browse comments because sometimes someone says something truly interesting like the person who posted about small manufactured/artificially grown floating wetland islands.
Bite harder Ouroboros, bite! tails.boum.org/ linux USB CD secure desktop IRC *crypt tor (not endorsements (XKeyScore))
(Score: 2) by starcraftsicko on Wednesday June 11 2014, @02:04AM
Agreed. GP was 'Interesting' and should have been moderated so. "Interesting" != Agree.
This post was created with recycled electrons.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Monday June 09 2014, @06:01PM
I think that's a great new basis for policy making. Deny climate change and rising seas? Great! Welcome to your new home in South Florida or the Marshall Islands [telegraph.co.uk]. Deny that climate change will cause more, and stronger storms? Great! Welcome to your new double-wide in Tornado Alley [theblaze.com]. Think Clean Air regulations are a communist plot to cripple American industry? Welcome to your new home in beautiful Beijing [smh.com.au]!
Think of the wonderful world we could live in if we were able to make people directly experience the consequences of their political hobby horses.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by khallow on Monday June 09 2014, @07:50PM
Or don't drown. It's worth noting here that there isn't a good case for large sea level rises, even over centuries or millennia. We don't even know how long we'll continue to use fossil fuels, for example.
(Score: 1) by zsau on Tuesday June 10 2014, @02:07AM
We'll be using fossil fuels until there's none left, unless there's some massive war or other social disruption that means we don't have the technology any more. As the oil runs out we'll liquefy more and more coal. Just like the tar sands.
The alternative exists today. You can live and work where you don't need a car. (I do. People look at me like I have an arm coming out of my head.) You can not buy shit you don't need. But so few people are willing to do it...
(Score: 2) by khallow on Tuesday June 10 2014, @11:40PM
So what? There's a big difference between today's near total reliance on fossil fuels for transportation and a future where its a bunch of hobbyists running vintage internal combustion engine vehicles.
(Score: 1) by zsau on Monday June 16 2014, @10:40AM
Well, I'd be inclined to call your prediction utopian (that is, the prediction that most people will have switched away from fossil fuels sometime in the forseeable future), but even if that were true it doesn't matter. It took millions of years to get that carbon out of the atmosphere. If we put them all back into the atmosphere on any scale less than millions of years, we're going to make it rather uncomfortable. It doesn't really matter if we use up all the fossil fuels in the next twenty years or the next century: they're both just as bad.
(Btw, I hope I've interpreted your implied timescale right. Sorry if I haven't.)
(Score: 2) by khallow on Monday June 16 2014, @10:31PM
There's no geological evidence for that. Even the more pessimistic interpretations of the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum [wikipedia.org] had scenarios with far more carbon than is currently present in the atmosphere scrubbed inside of 100,000 years. Personally, I think it would be on the scale of thousands of years to remove the current elevated levels of carbon dioxide which is quite adequate IMHO.
Which would also be orders of magnitude more than the amount of fossil fuels that we have or could economically extract.
(Score: 2) by khallow on Tuesday June 10 2014, @11:42PM
I do too. I currently have a job which requires a car, but most of the people I work with don't have that requirement.
I'm willing to go with what people want to do. I think a bigger problem than climate change is all the people who have this impression that they know better.
(Score: 1) by zsau on Monday June 16 2014, @10:45AM
I'm afraid I don't at all understand your second paragraph at all. People would quite happily choose to ride bikes if governments spent even a quarter of the effort being bike-friendly and working on road safety as they do on being car friendly. The Netherlands is an excellent case in point. I certainly don't dispute that.
But the fact of the matter is, today, people are in their cars in most countries making pointlessly short trips even when they could safely and quickly ride to where they want to go. People don't at all make decisions independently of what's offered: decision making is just too hard.
(Score: 2) by khallow on Monday June 16 2014, @10:34PM
And I bet, most of those people already ride bikes. The rest would not be happy doing so.
By being car-unfriendly.
The rides would be just as pointless on a bike.