[HN Gopher] 2024 sea level 'report cards' map futures of U.S. co...
___________________________________________________________________
2024 sea level 'report cards' map futures of U.S. coastal
communities
Author : gnabgib
Score : 85 points
Date : 2025-05-11 18:59 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (news.wm.edu)
(TXT) w3m dump (news.wm.edu)
| tw04 wrote:
| The sad part is anticipate the current administration will see
| this report and attack any federal funds William and Mary receive
| unless they remove and retract the data.
| burkaman wrote:
| William and Mary actually have a very in depth page on their
| opposition to federal suppression of free speech and what they
| are doing about it: https://www.wm.edu/sites/federalguidelines/
| hammock wrote:
| I may be misremembering but I believe they wrote a similar
| letter a few years ago when Facebook and others were in the
| news for working with the government to suppress speech
| during the lockdown. I really admire W&M for their
| consistency in supporting the issue
| sorcerer-mar wrote:
| Are you referring to the case that went all the way to
| SCOTUS who ruled that the government is in fact allowed to
| report things to social media companies (1st Amendment
| protected speech) and that social media companies, if they
| want to, are allowed to act on those reports (also 1st
| Amendment protected speech)?
|
| I think the main missing element was that the social media
| companies didn't even claim to be coerced by the government
| whatsoever and have consistently stated they moderated
| content as they saw fit on their own platforms (which,
| again, is their 1st Amendment right)
| renewiltord wrote:
| The "nice business you got here; shame if anything were
| to happen to it" loophole.
| sorcerer-mar wrote:
| Interesting because during this exact time period, every
| social media company declined all sorts of requests from
| the government, as I'm sure they do a couple dozen or
| hundred times per day?
|
| I wonder if these multi-billion dollar companies have
| anyone on staff who is aware of the company's 1st
| Amendment rights (they do).
|
| Edit: jcranmer's comment reminded me to be explicit on
| this: it is in fact illegal for the government to coerce
| private parties to regulate speech. That's why it's
| important that those private parties never claimed they
| were coerced, and there's given that they agreed with
| some requests and didn't with others, there's no evidence
| whatsoever they were coerced.
| jcranmer wrote:
| Just so you're aware, an actual implied threat like that
| is considered an unconstitutional act by the government.
| It's just that a politician complaining about social
| media on the campaign trail isn't anywhere near the level
| of implied threat to be considered unconstitutional.
| renewiltord wrote:
| Oh sorry. As a BIPOC, I meant the "nice business; here's
| a list of people I don't like; no threats implied; to be
| clear: we are not threatening you; do what you like with
| this list" loophole.
| sorcerer-mar wrote:
| This is a cool skill, it's like three-hop mind-reading.
|
| You somehow know that the platforms were coerced despite
| them never claiming it, and they were specifically
| coerced by threats that were never actually stated!
|
| Super neat.
| throw0101c wrote:
| About 30-40% of the US population lives in a coastal county:
|
| * https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/population.html
|
| * https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/visualizat...
| zamadatix wrote:
| And about 6% of the population less than 3 meters above sea
| level. This is much more relevant than the county is coastal,
| for some it's basically the entire county.
| https://www.iai.int/en/post/detail/snapshot-3-how-many-peopl...
| c-linkage wrote:
| The chart is good because it shows actual measurements, but I'm
| concerned about the baseline being 1970. It is possible that
| measurements prior to 1970 are higher and make the projected
| measurements look worse than they are, especially since many
| charts for mid-Atlantic sites were clearly on a downward trend
| shortly after 1970.
|
| I'm not saying there is an intentional attempt to bamboozle
| readers. It's just hard to judge the report on such a short time
| scale.
|
| EDIT: I'm not a climate denialist, but I have many people in my
| life who are. I was really looking forward to showing them this
| website but refrained knowing that they would come back with the
| argument I mentioned.
| crystal_revenge wrote:
| I shouldn't be surprised that we still see this standard
| climate denial logic, but it's worth pointing out that your
| logic here is not particularly strong. The problem with this
| line of reasoning is it takes the assumption that all we have
| is measurements without any real understanding of the process
| that's happening to _cause_ those measurements.
|
| Sure, if we knew _nothing_ about Earth 's climate (and also
| didn't have plenty of other ways to measure historic sea
| level), only having 50 years of measurements might be
| misleading. But we _know_ that sea level is rising and we know
| _why_ it is rising. We have a very strong hypothesis as to what
| 's happening and we see this hypothesis confirmed again and
| again across a very wide range of subjects that otherwise have
| no relation to one another.
|
| On top of this, we do have plenty of other measurements for
| historical sea levels that all indicated _yes, sea level is
| raising_ they just aren 't perfectly apples-to-apples "actual
| measurements" so it wouldn't be perfectly honest to include
| them in this chart.
| nandomrumber wrote:
| > just are perfectly apples-to-apples
|
| _aren't_?
| crystal_revenge wrote:
| Fixed, thanks!
| thisdougb wrote:
| This is an interesting podcast:
| https://corecursive.com/briffa-sep98-e/
|
| "In this episode we explore the "Climategate" scandal that
| erupted from leaked emails and code snippets, fueling doubts
| about climate science. What starts as an investigation into
| accusations of fraud leads to an unexpected journey through
| the messy reality of data science, legacy code struggles, and
| the complex pressures scientists face every day."
|
| He goes into the code/data that is seemingly the root-cause
| of a lot of "it's all a hoax." I found it pretty informative,
| as to how climate data is gathered and processed (by the
| scientists). And the limitations therein. He's simply trying
| to explain the cause of climategate, rather than advocate any
| view.
|
| It's also a great example of a tech/dev investigation into
| root-cause analysis, of someone else's code. So it's
| interesting from that point of view, even if you're less
| interested the climate side of it.
| parineum wrote:
| > standard climate denial logic
|
| This stinks of circular reasoning. It's bad logic because
| climate deniers use it and climate deniers are wrong because
| they only ise bad logic.
|
| The reason the other measurements you mentioned can't be
| included are often that the measurements are or equal or
| greater distance between eachother than this entire set.
| Including this data in one of those sets would demonstrate
| that there are plenty of times in history where the sea level
| changed the amount it has in the last 50 years.
|
| If we know so much about why it's rising, what's with all the
| measurements? We don't "know" nearly as much as you're
| implying. The reason we don't go around measuring healthy
| humans body temperature is because we know what it is. The
| entire purpose of the measurements is to increase
| understanding.
|
| Current forecasts of Y temperature rise would lead to X sea
| level rise rely in a static model of all other variables. It
| should be obvious that the climate is anything but static,
| considering the entire argument is about climate change.
|
| It's perfectly reasonable to criticize this kind of
| extrapolatory thinking without denying the fundamentals of
| climate change.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Including this data in one of those sets would
| demonstrate that there are plenty of times in history where
| the sea level changed the amount it has in the last 50
| years_
|
| In history? No. Sea levels have never been higher in the
| written record.
|
| In geologic history? Of course. No serious scientist argues
| otherwise. The point is returning to those levels means
| abandoning Baltimore, Houston, much of Los Angeles and most
| of Miami and multi-trillion dollar projects to protect San
| Francisco, New York and Boston.
| xienze wrote:
| > The point is returning to those levels means abandoning
| Baltimore, Houston, much of Los Angeles and most of Miami
| and multi-trillion dollar projects to protect San
| Francisco, New York and Boston.
|
| Here's my problem with all this stuff. All the science
| says LA, NYC, etc. are going to be underwater. Not maybe,
| not in the worst case, no. All the reporting says this is
| pretty much a forgone conclusion, and has for many years.
|
| So why have these cities not started working on erecting
| (say) 50ft tall "future-proof" sea walls? Even if they
| end up not being needed, it _seems_ like this is the type
| of climate change mitigation step that would be a prudent
| thing to do. Certainly more so than the whole lot of
| nothing currently being done. Surely LA and NYC
| politicians and voters, being so much more educated than
| all those dumb red state hicks would be in favor of that,
| wouldn't they?
| ianbutler wrote:
| In short there's no actual will and people think short
| term.
|
| A bit longer:
|
| Good luck sourcing that from taxes. People vote, and
| those projects would A, fall to graft, B piss off many in
| your voter base both as a consequence of the graft and
| the general disagreement over their value.
|
| The answer is you would see the people who greenlit the
| projects voted out and the projects would be scuttled.
|
| People can say they know this is a problem but because
| its in the abstract most of your voter base just won't go
| for it and it's squarely in a "people don't actually vote
| in their best interest" type of problem.
|
| It's a riot trying to get a few new MTA tunnels approved
| and needed repair and modernization for the NYC subways
| is always basically just out of the question.
|
| So 50 ft sea walls? Yeah people would actually be under
| water and still doubting the need for them.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _why have these cities not started working on erecting
| (say) 50ft tall "future-proof" sea walls?_
|
| Because we don't need to yet? Also, a sea wall doesn't
| block, it deflects. Protecting Manhattan means deflecting
| those surges to _e.g._ Long Island and New Jersey. That's
| a difficult conversation much easier had after a
| hurricane washes away some of the opposition (and /or
| generates urgency in the core).
|
| > _LA and NYC politicians and voters, being so much more
| educated than all those dumb red state hicks would be in
| favor of that, wouldn't they?_
|
| Yes, but they'll do what those states do with their own
| climate risks: wait for a catastrophic failure that
| ultimately costs more but unlocks federal funding and so
| costs less locally.
| crystal_revenge wrote:
| > This stinks of circular reasoning. It's bad logic because
| climate deniers use it and climate deniers are wrong
| because they only ise bad logic.
|
| That would be a good point, _if_ that was what I was
| arguing but it 's clearly _not_. I am pointing out that
| this is a common form of argument used by climate deniers,
| and _then_ , independent of that fact, demonstrating why
| it's poor logic. My argument regarding _why_ the logic is
| poor has nothing to do with the fact that 's it's a
| commonly used line of reasoning in climate denial. However
| the classification of the logic as such is useful to help
| people quickly identify the common set of erroneous methods
| used that show up very frequently in online discussions
| (and sadly, very commonly on HN).
|
| Climate denial arguments do _tend_ to use faulty logic in a
| similar vein to the way creationists _tend_ to use faulty
| logic, because the evidence in favor of the alternative
| hypothesis is so much greater the easiest way to "attack"
| that hypothesis is through poor use of logic. But clearly
| that does not imply that all logic employed by people in
| these camps is inherently faulty.
| mistrial9 wrote:
| check out the Eocene geological period. invest in swimming
| gear...
| mmooss wrote:
| If that is a risk, it is just as likely to cause an error the
| other way and then we are underestimating sea-level rise.
| abound wrote:
| I was curious about this, so I looked for data from prior to
| 1970 [1] and it's all clearly trending in the same direction.
| So 1970 isn't special or misleading in this case, there does
| not appear to be any bamboozlement going on.
|
| [1] https://www.climate.gov/news-features/understanding-
| climate/...
| c-linkage wrote:
| Thank you for adding information in response to my comment.
| I've been to [Mer de Galce](https://montenversmerdeglace.mont
| blancnaturalresort.com/en) and seen the effects of glacial
| melt, so no doubt it contributes to sea level rise.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _It is possible that measurements prior to 1970 are higher_
|
| Except for all the evidence from trees and Antarctic ice cores,
| sure. We couldn't forecast hurricanes _at all_ until the 1950s,
| and even then barely until the age of satellites, so 1970 makes
| sense as a starting point for high-frequency data. But let's
| not pretend the lower-frequency data don't exist. To the extent
| there is bamboozling afoot, it's from the climate deniers.
| iambateman wrote:
| I grew up a few minutes away from the picture at the top of the
| article.
|
| Knowing that many of the places I love, which formed me, will
| soon be under water gives me a kind of sadness which doesn't go
| away.
| shaboinkin wrote:
| What I wonder about sea level rise is what happens to all of the
| development that gets swallowed by the sea? I'm not optimistic
| that there will be proper cleanup of the stuff that was built up
| over time. If I recall from the LA fires last year, the burnt
| down homes left some toxic stuff behind that require proper
| disposal. The same stuff in those homes presumably exists in the
| buildings and infrastructure that will be taken by the sea. How
| much pollution is going to be introduced into the environment?
| And what long term consequences will result from that?
| bix6 wrote:
| We still have decaying nuclear material off the west coast and
| Tijuana has been flooding the border with polluted water for
| years now so anything more will just cause additional strain
| and more beach closures / illness.
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| The tijuana situation is pretty untenable when you view it
| less along internatial border lines and more along metro
| region lines with SD and TJ being part of one megacity. They
| very much are a megacity in practice.
|
| Now imagine the flack that would happen if you say took the
| Bronx and subject it to border security checkpoints and let
| the people have materially significantly worse sewer and
| other living conditions. People would call it a travesty and
| a dark mark on nyc as a whole for allowing such a thing to
| happen to its own people.
|
| Yet over in SD that very situation happens with all the
| commuters and trade that goes on between there and TJ. And
| people don't bat an eye to it, if only to blame TJ for the
| sewer situation.
| kortilla wrote:
| What are you suggesting though? Annexing TJ?
| jemmyw wrote:
| I would guess it should be more about cooperation on the
| problems and maybe some money needing to flow from the
| richer side to the poorer, and the poorer side agreeing
| to some policies.
|
| Annexing wouldn't work because a new city would pop up
| along the new border. The border is the attraction.
| smcin wrote:
| Of course they aren't. SD could pay or part-pay for TJ
| sewage facilities (since it daily flows up to SD and LA
| anyway).
|
| https://www.nbcsandiego.com/news/local/epa-administrator-
| vis...
| hirvi74 wrote:
| In my city, there is a relatively large, man-made lake not too
| terribly far from the downtown area. Apparently, there are
| still buildings, cars, etc. at the bottom of the lake. Instead
| of clearing out the area, the city just decided to flood the
| entire area over. In times of drought, some of the building
| foundations can still be seen from an arial view.
|
| I doubt the environmental impact was positive, but the point I
| am trying to make is that I wouldn't be surprised if current
| infrastructure was just left to be swallowed by the sea.
| shaboinkin wrote:
| Sure, but we're talking about hundreds of miles of coast line
| all being affected, within various regions as the article
| points out, at relatively the same time. Thousands of
| coastline if we want consider a worst case rate of increase.
| The leaching of whatever is soaking into the water will
| likely occur in localized areas at similar rates. It seems
| reasonable to me it'll introduce shock to the ecosystem if
| considered in geological timescales.
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| It is probably far less material than what gets deposited from
| that plus slightly inland property from hurricanes and other
| major homeshredding storms.
| rwmj wrote:
| Here in the UK parts of the east coast are regularly lost to
| the sea (not caused by climate change), and the answer is we
| just let the houses fall into the sea.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coastal_erosion_in_Yorkshire
| simonebrunozzi wrote:
| I live in Venice, Italy. This issue has been urgent and critical
| for Venetians for a few decades now. The problem here is that
| even a 60cm (2 feet) increase in sea level would essentially:
|
| 1) force to shut the dams (MOSE) almost always during the year.
|
| 2) ruin the lagoon ecosystem
|
| 3) create uncountable damage to the city of Venice, and nearby
| islands.
|
| 4) possibly displace tens of thousands of people.
| pc86 wrote:
| Not trying to be pedantic but how can something both "be urgent
| and critical" and have been a problem for "a few decades?"
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| In the same way an asteroid doomed to strike in a few decades
| is urgent and critical
| chgs wrote:
| 60cm would basically wipe out some countries and cause the loss
| and displacement of dozens of millions as cities like Dhaka and
| Jakarta are flooded
| bix6 wrote:
| "Mitchell also notes that most West Coast localities have been
| fairly stable, despite past predictions that they would increase
| rapidly. "This has led to some questions about why," she said."
|
| ^ this interested me, apparently it's due to geological uplift
| combined with regional water patterns. The regional water
| patterns are due to winds and the ENSO cycle, which can mask long
| term effects. Apparently it will increase faster once Antarctica
| starts shedding in earnest.
| metalman wrote:
| most of the worlds water just so happens to be at around 2~4degC,
| which is where water density is the highest, warming or cooling a
| bit causes it to expand, so just maybe it warms up a bit, and the
| total increased volume is enough to flood, everything we want
| dry. Oh ya, we are on track for the warmest and most ice free
| artic summer ever.We just finnished the warmest and most ice free
| winter, so, ya, right. https://nsidc.org/sea-ice-today
| IncreasePosts wrote:
| The average temperature of all water in the ocean is
| approximately 3.5deg C, but I think most of the warming would
| be contained to surface waters which averages around 17deg C. A
| bigger issue decreased density of seawater would probably just
| be melting ice
| harmmonica wrote:
| Not to diminish the fact that this is happening, nor that humans
| are at least _a_ principal cause of it, but does anyone think, at
| least in the US, that the costs to mitigate sea-level rise would
| not be shared across the US, at least in those places with
| significant population? The contradiction is not lost on me, but
| most of the time when people are asked "should the government
| bail _me_ out? " the answer seems to be yes regardless of where
| one sits on the political spectrum.
|
| I bring this up because the same people who would deny that this
| is a problem will also be amongst the people who will take a
| "check" from the federal and/or state government to mitigate any
| issues that arise from it. And it's, at least partially, that
| reality that keeps people from actually trying to mitigate it
| with their own actions. I'm not saying people consciously are
| sitting there saying that, but I do think it's an underlying
| belief.
|
| For instance, is this guy or gal
| (https://www.realtor.com/news/unique-homes/florida-most-expen...)
| going to pay for the levy or whatever solution keeps the water
| from inundating their property without first lobbying the
| government to take care of it for them?
| IncreasePosts wrote:
| Maybe? There's only 800 ft of ocean frontage. The problem with
| lobbying the government to do your bidding is you might not
| like the method they choose. I'm imagining you can easily
| afford to build about 2.5 mi of wall exactly how you want it if
| you spent $225 million on a home
| harmmonica wrote:
| Oh that's an interesting point. Maybe they bought the
| property with the expectation that it would turn into their
| own private island once seal level rises enough to force them
| to build a wall. I'm not sure if I'm even being sarcastic
| with that comment given the sums of money we're talking
| about.
| adrr wrote:
| They do beach replenishment to build up the beach to give
| more buffer. Spend lots of money on it. Also there is the
| federal flood insurance program that is running up a big
| debt.
|
| https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-u-s-
| spends-a-...
| renewiltord wrote:
| Already happened in Palos Verdes. And Houston had similarly
| socialization of flood plains. Probably they will wait to have
| a disaster and then buy out the people affected at the highest
| rate in the last 3 years (like in Palos Verdes)
| harmmonica wrote:
| Good point. Was just talking about PV yesterday and the
| lengths they've gone to to mitigate. That said I don't think
| individual property owners are being directly bailed out
| (i.e., are being made whole on their home values by the
| government).
| renewiltord wrote:
| Did they cancel the buy-out? They effectively picked the
| highest prices from the last few years if I recall
|
| https://www.cbsnews.com/losangeles/news/fema-cal-oes-
| announc...
| harmmonica wrote:
| Oh man I didn't know! Thanks for pointing me to that.
|
| Edit: this is interesting because now that I've read
| about it it seems the gov is paying fair market value for
| the land. Do you know if that's for the land value only
| or are the improvements part of it? Seems like a decent
| solution actually, but it does beg the larger question:
| what happens when it's thousands of homes?
|
| Have to imagine Palisades and Eaton fire folks are
| agitating for this exact same deal. The costs, in
| comparison to PV, will be extreme.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _at least in the US, that the costs to mitigate sea-level
| rise would not be shared across the US, at least in those
| places with significant population?_
|
| Probably. Despite our partisan poisoning, our coastlines are
| split across red states and blue states. A unified coastal
| defence bill probably has political purchase. (Though not under
| MAGA/DOGE.)
| mrcwinn wrote:
| That's an oversimplification of the factions.
|
| There are large groups who don't deny the risk, but question
| the cause, or simply think it's not a viable solution to stop
| the economy, or not treat sick people with grid-taxing medical
| equipment, or deny automobiles to people who must commute to
| earn a living, or ban certain foods, and so on and so on.
|
| I really wish we had always been on solar and the Model T had
| been electric for the same cost. Unfortunately, the supply
| chain and economy just didn't support that. Bummer. Let's focus
| a bit less on moralizing and instead turn our attention to
| fixing the challenges at hand.
|
| I know someone who is very far left, and yet insists on driving
| a vintage car that is a lot worse for the environment than a
| neighbor's F150. We're all filled with contradictions and
| regrettable hypocrisies.
|
| It's the challenge of our time. How can we live how we want to
| live, whatever that means individually, in a way that is
| sustainable and avoids a system of state rationing?
| coldpie wrote:
| > or simply think it's not a viable solution to stop the
| economy, or not treat sick people with grid-taxing medical
| equipment, or deny automobiles to people who must commute to
| earn a living, or ban certain foods, and so on and so on.
|
| At least in the US, pretty much nobody of any consequence is
| advocating for any of those things.
|
| > How can we live how we want to live, whatever that means
| individually, in a way that is sustainable and avoids a
| system of state rationing?
|
| It's an extremely complex problem, but for the most part what
| we need to do is understood. Stop burning fuel for energy by
| implementing renewables and nuclear, and retiring coal and
| NG; and switch to electric cars, trucks, and trains. Those
| two things alone would almost eliminate half of US carbon
| emissions. There's a long tail of much more difficult
| problems to tackle after that, but accomplishing just those
| two would buy a ton of time to address that long tail. That's
| why everyone serious is focusing on those two problems and
| not like, artificial meat or whatever.
| Loughla wrote:
| I don't think we can live the way we want to live without
| extreme weather, disease, and/or famine killing a good share
| of us. The modern human way of life is simply unsustainable.
|
| The problem is that no one wants to willingly sacrifice their
| own wants or needs for the greater good, which makes sense.
| Why should I suffer for 8 billion people I don't know? The
| scale is just too large to comprehend as a basic human.
|
| We need to focus on fixing our local area and living as much
| within what it can provide as we can. It's easier to
| understand. It's easier to see the impacts.
|
| But it doesn't solve the problem of human caused climate
| change.
|
| Maybe I'm too pessimistic, but I don't see a way out of this
| that ends with anything but the complete and utter collapse
| of civilization as we know it before 2100.
|
| I believe that we will no longer possess the technology to
| access this comment well before that time, and we'll see a
| return to feudal/tribal lifestyles with a much diminished
| population.
|
| I just hope it happens after my bloodline has already died
| out, and none of my kids or grandkids will have to experience
| the shit show. But I have little faith of that. I think the
| collapse will come within my kids' lifetime, and that's very
| depressing.
| pstuart wrote:
| > The modern human way of life is simply unsustainable.
|
| It doesn't _have_ to be that way, it 's just that our
| owners chose it so they can live in opulence 'til the end.
| lazyasciiart wrote:
| > We need to focus on fixing our local area
|
| And many people take that as building walls and
| aggressively rounding up anyone who tries to sleep in a
| park.
| kiba wrote:
| We are already suffering today. The housing crisis is
| connected to our car oriented lifestyle and unsafe street.
|
| It's not about sacrificing for the future, it's about
| seeing a better way to live our life.
| sweeter wrote:
| "suffer" in this context is using some form of renewable
| energy and curtailing the industries that pump the 95% of
| all CO2 into the air. The absolute horror.
|
| You say this, but if you think that is suffering, wait
| until clean water is a limited resource. You aren't going
| to be running away to Mars. We can't even fix the very
| simple issues on Earth.
| harmmonica wrote:
| I'm not sure fixing the challenges and moralizing are
| orthogonal. We need people, across the political (and any
| other) spectrum, to recognize the contradictions in their
| lives in the hopes it affects change.
| tehjoker wrote:
| I think the issue is that while there is no social policy
| wide drive to fix anything, anything you do as an individual
| is a drop in the ocean. Of course you should take reasonable
| steps, but needing to commute can be fixed with reliable high
| speed rail and buses etc. Unfortunately, there will need to
| be incentives towards particular outcomes and rationing if
| that fails. This is a huge existential problem. I don't blame
| individuals for isolated actions, but I do blame them if they
| resist political and economic solutions.
|
| The problems we have are primarily problems of production. If
| production is adjusted, consumption will adapt if it is
| managed well.
| sweeter wrote:
| I'm sorry but this is so misguided. You could magically take
| every gas powered vehicle off of the road immediately, and
| you would only remove like 3% of the problem. The idea that
| you can "consumer activism" your way out of a industrial
| production problem is a malicious lie propagated by Neo-
| Liberals who directly benefit from those industries.
| photonthug wrote:
| > answer seems to be yes regardless of where one sits on the
| political spectrum
|
| Yes, the ugly truth is that it's hard to find people that have
| static or principled values on anything, and most are kind of
| transparently looking for ways to force things on others.
|
| A place where you can see this very clearly is issues of bodily
| autonomy: one side of the political spectrum wants to force the
| other side to get vaccinated and the other side wants to force
| people into unwanted child birth. These are of course very
| different things, but both are ultimately coercive, so it's not
| about the right to choose in either case.
|
| States autonomy vs federalism, bail outs, are similar. Almost
| no one has any real preference for it one way or the other on
| _principle_ , it just depends on how they think they might be
| able to use it as a cudgel and how it will increase or diminish
| their own bottom line.
| thrance wrote:
| Yet more bothsideism with a ridiculous comparison. Democrats
| never passed a law to force anyone to get vaccinated. If you
| want to die of fucking TB or polio, feel free to. But know
| you're a dickhead for acting as a vector of cured diseases,
| therefore endangering vulnerable people.
|
| One side and one side only rejects the mere idea of climate
| change, defunded FEMA, defunded NOAA, favors the oil and coal
| lobbies, etc. I could go on and on and on. I do not hold the
| Democrats in my heart, but these comparisons are beyond
| ridiculous.
|
| Finally, perhaps it's time for Americans to start reasoning
| in positive freedoms: maybe my freedom to not die of
| preventable diseases or to not live in a shitty overheating
| world surpasses yours to not get vaccinated or drive an
| oversized SUV to go to Walmart and back.
| richwater wrote:
| > Democrats never passed a law to force anyone to get
| vaccinated
|
| This is revisionism at best, disinformation at worst.
|
| https://www.npr.org/2021/11/04/1048939858/osha-biden-
| vaccine...
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biden_administration_COVID-19
| _...
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_vaccination_mandates
| _...
| thrance wrote:
| All your links point out the fact that workers could opt
| to wear a mask and get tested weekly instead of getting
| vaccinated. As for healthcare workers, they always had
| the option to quit their job if they refused to get
| vaccinated and preferred exposing patients to the
| disease, out of ideological fear of the vaccine.
|
| Maybe read what you link next time?
| photonthug wrote:
| Woah there buddy, I'm personally a big fan of vaccines, I
| believe climate change is real, and we probably agree about
| more things than you expect.
|
| If you're interested, I'm also _not_ talking about who
| passed what laws, I 'm talking about average people, and
| what they say about what they want, and what they say their
| reasons are. If you don't see hypocrisy in that all the
| time, then either you're not talking to very many people,
| or you're so deeply into groupthink that you're just not
| capable of making any honest appraisal at this point. If
| you want to start calling a dislike of hypocrisy and a
| desire for more integrity in more people "bothesideism" and
| spewing all this vitriol then I guess you can do that, but
| I'm not sure it will have any positive effects.
| grafmax wrote:
| Concentration of wealth is a concentration of power. We should
| hold accountable those with the deepest pockets and the
| greatest influence on climate policy: the fossil fuel cartel.
| Calls to cut government spending by withholding relief from
| those on the margins of decision-making miss the forest for the
| trees. Justice would have those paying to destroy our future
| pay for the consequences of their cynicism and misanthropy.
| yieldcrv wrote:
| That's kind of my issue with partisan takes
|
| Like, they're often not opposite, they're just different.
|
| One group is saying "no, we don't want the government to pay
| for that, in that way, or at all" and another group is saying
| "you aren't acknowledging this is a problem at all or are
| apathetic or plain evil", which isn't a useful way to gain
| friends and influence people
|
| but the stances generally aren't opposite about the existence
| of the problem, but the sides do get entrenched until the party
| line becomes denial instead of merely about the financing
| calvinmorrison wrote:
| We spent billions bailing out after Katrina in south jersey and
| now shore front properties are in the millions. Yawn.
| somishere wrote:
| As an aside we went to see the new David Attenborough film Ocean
| over the weekend. Equal parts stunning and heartbreaking - it
| sews a compelling narrative for the oceans, spread between
| climate and ocean ecology, the extent of our exploitation, and
| the renewed hope (if you could call it that) that it holds for
| humanity's survival ...
|
| A hard watch but also a must see:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cIZAdCtKT_g
| doakes wrote:
| I work in this space of measuring (mostly coastal) water levels
| and it's pretty amazing how many different vertical datums there
| are. When people say something has a height of X, you don't
| always consider what it's relative to. Is it sea level? High tide
| or low tide? Maybe it's relative to one of the many geodetic
| ellipsoids. Maybe a nearby physical benchmark put into the ground
| by a surveyor. Many cases (like this article) just care about the
| relative changes locally, but even for that you have to be
| careful of places like Southeast Alaska where glacial melt causes
| the land to rise and give the appearance of sea levels dropping.
| thebeardisred wrote:
| TIL: The US West coast will see less of the increase than other
| places due to wind and tectonic movement.
| efitz wrote:
| This is great. Let us remember this link, and archive the data
| right now.
|
| I will wager $1000 of my own money right now that if the exact
| same methodology is used to measure sea level in 10 years, as was
| used at the publication of the study, and if the editors do not
| apply any "offset" to sea levels, that in 10 years the sea level
| will have risen less than 50% of their predictions at more than
| 50% of stations.
|
| Applying any offset for any reason or changing methodology will
| invalidate the bet.
|
| I'll try to set up a Kalshi market.
|
| If climate change studies should be used to influence public
| policy, then they must be empirical, repeatable and have
| predictive value.
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