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Bill Nye Explains That the Flooding In Louisiana Is the Result of Climate Change (qz.com)
Reader mspohr writes: Our favorite science guy has an interview (and video) in Quartz where he explains how Louisiana flooding is due to climate change:
"As the ocean gets warmer, which it is getting, it expands," Nye explained. "Molecules spread apart, and then as the sea surface is warmer, more water evaporates, and so it's very reasonable that these storms are connected to these big effects."
The article also notes that a National Academy of Sciences issued a report with the same findings: "Scientists from around the world have concurred with Nye that this is exactly what the effects of climate change look like, and that disasters like the Louisiana floods are going to happen more and more. According to a National Academy of Sciences report published earlier this year, extreme flooding can be traced directly to human-induced global warming. As the atmosphere warms, it retains more moisture, leading to bouts of sustained, heavy precipitation that can cause floods."
"As the ocean gets warmer, which it is getting, it expands," Nye explained. "Molecules spread apart, and then as the sea surface is warmer, more water evaporates, and so it's very reasonable that these storms are connected to these big effects."
The article also notes that a National Academy of Sciences issued a report with the same findings: "Scientists from around the world have concurred with Nye that this is exactly what the effects of climate change look like, and that disasters like the Louisiana floods are going to happen more and more. According to a National Academy of Sciences report published earlier this year, extreme flooding can be traced directly to human-induced global warming. As the atmosphere warms, it retains more moisture, leading to bouts of sustained, heavy precipitation that can cause floods."
It has nothing at all to do with over-development in what used to be (and by all rights and common sense, still ought to be) swampland and coastal forest.
Bill Nye the politics guy.
Right, we should never blame editors for the content they edit and choose to disseminate.
That's like saying that smoking tobacco doesn't cause cancer because there were cancer cases before humans smoked tobacco. Flawed argument is flawed.
Because scientific theories are just totally about what part of the political spectrum you're from.
You do understand the universe doesn't give a flying fuck whether you're a liberal, a conservative, a libertarian, an anarchist or a socialist, right? It really doesn't. CO2 absorbs and re-emits solar radiation on the liberal and the libertarian equally.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
As with any branch of science that uses statistics, no one can say that any specific event has a specific cause where multiple causes are possible. For instance, you can't tell whether a specific decay event in a lump of plutonium was caused by radioactive decay, or maybe a stray high energy cosmic ray. But what you can do is measure a large number of decay events and come up with the most probable explanation. This is true of all statistics, and it's why we have tools like statistics.
So if anyone points to a specific storm and says "That's AGW", they're not going to get much support even in the climatological community. But if someone states "The number of major floods and the intensity of those floods is increasing, and the most likely agent is AGW", well that's a statement of probability.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
I agree with you about Bill Nye not pointing to climate change as the sole cause of the flooding. Had he said that, I'd think he was a complete idiot. Of course climate change has to do with almost every weather pattern. However it's worth pointing out that every few years, some random town in America (and in other parts of the world too) floods to a large degree, and has ever since I can remember (I was born in the mid 70's).
It's also worth pointing out that the water level has been rising at a noticeable rate for the last 10 years or so. I live near the ocean, and I've watched boat launches and piers go underwater during high tide, where that never use to happen. I wonder how much of this water rising had to do with, and will have to do with in the future, Louisiana flooding. They're basically already underwater in the lower parts of the state, so much so, that they cannot bury their dead in the ground, due to ground water being so near the surface. My hunch is that the ground water rising is the main contributor to flooding at times like this.
Politics; n. : A religion whereby man is god.
Hi!
I wrote "our favorite science guy" since many people (including myself) think he's their favorite science guy.
Clearly, there are a number of science deniers who don't like him. They probably have some other non-science guy they like.
I agree that Slashdot is a lot like reddit. Lots of flaming bozos with an agenda.
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
Of course, it is also entirely possible that these storms were less severe due to global warming. But that wouldn't get any headlines.
No, you just missed Martian's point entirely. Global warming is causing the sea temperature to increase which is causing the sea volume and level to increase. These are easily demonstrated with simple physics experiments. But that will only increase the size and frequency of storms probabilistically.
We may still get periods of smaller and less frequent storms even with extreme global warming just as we do today. The probability of those periods occurring, however, will decrease. The system is far too complex to point to individual events and say, "This was directly caused by X," because that event could have occurred without X, too.
Freedom to fear. Freedom from thought. Freedom to kill.
I guess the War on Terror really is about freedom!
Well, to be honest with you, I don't have much time for either side. I think the Liberals, but more particularly the Left have done a lot of damage to AGW acceptance simply by trying to integrate into their own economic mumbo jumbo, and trying to beat conservative elements over the head with it. They've made one of the supreme challenges of humanity at this point of time and politicizing it for their own ends). The conservatives, on the other hand, are often just people easily manipulated by large commercial interests who want to delay significant responses to AGW long enough to maximize profits. That's why the fossil fuel companies fund crap "think tanks" like the Heartland Institute, because they serve to give conservative and libertarian types a pack of memes to trot out every time the topic of global warming comes up. A pox on both their houses, I say. Both groups are populated by idiots and demagogues.
To my mind, the time has come to simply look at the best way of dealing with the problem. For me, the simplest way and the way that it is the most market oriented is carbon pricing. Start upping the price of fossil fuels, thus allowing market forces to concentrate investment on alternatives. I don't even care if governments pocket the cash. The whole point isn't reinvestment of carbon taxes, but rather to create an artificial scarcity. This solution should be eminently favorable conservatives and libertarians, because it favors their economic approach, but of course, it will cost the likes of the Koch Brothers money, so the game goes on.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Yeah I think there are just plenty of people here on either side who are surprised when peppering their comments with invectives and no actual substance doesn't win them a standing ovation. Then they get butthurt about it and decide that it must be due to some grand conspiracy to silence dissenting opinions, not that they are just assholes with nothing interesting to say. It's amazing the backflips the human mind can do to avoid self-examination.
They can explain everything, but are able to predict nothing. Internet is full of compilations of failed predictions, but the only "successful" ones are the useless statements like "it may get hotter, or colder". Yeah, right...
Tar-and-feathers beckon...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Nye hasn't published any papers on this topic. Let's look at what real scientists have found.
Even as Al Gore was trying to scare everyone into believing that the frequency and intensity of cyclones was in the process of skyrocketing, Dr. R.N. Maue analyzed actual data and found just the opposite:
Recent historically low global tropical cyclone activity
Abstract
Tropical cyclone accumulated cyclone energy (ACE) has exhibited strikingly large global interannual variability during the past 40-years. In the pentad since 2006, Northern Hemisphere and global tropical cyclone ACE has decreased dramatically to the lowest levels since the late 1970s. Additionally, the global frequency of tropical cyclones has reached a historical low. Here evidence is presented demonstrating that considerable variability in tropical cyclone ACE is associated with the evolution of the character of observed large-scale climate mechanisms including the El Niño Southern Oscillation and Pacific Decadal Oscillation. In contrast to record quiet North Pacific tropical cyclone activity in 2010, the North Atlantic basin remained very active by contributing almost one-third of the overall calendar year global ACE.
- R.N. Maue, Center for Ocean-Atmospheric Prediction Studies, Florida State University
And there are plenty of studies that show increasing global temperature causes reduced storm activity. One such study published in Quaternary Science Reviews is summarized here.
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
It shouldn't take more than a high school education to talk about and understand climate change.
...is the Donald Trump of scientists.
Yeah, except for the ridiculous lying, misogyny, racist remarks, authoritarian tendencies, complete disdain for expert opinion, and hair that is the obvious result of a poorly executed medical procedure.
It's just like a bowl of icecream is the pile of compost of desserts. As in they're complete opposites.
I stole this Sig
What? How is it bad journalism to use specific quotes making a specific statement with a conclusion? How can you possibly take 'This is the result of climate change' out of context? Trying to explain 'well what I meant is that its reasonable so assume so' is not an explanation to clarify it is no more correct since there is NO way to prove the event was due to Climate Change or in any way 'reasonable to assume so', its not at ALL reasonable. It is no more reasonable than to say 'see it didn't flood in Miami today so that's evidence that Climate Change isn't occurring'.
It is a weather EVENT not a 'climate event', the flood may have happened and may have been just as severe regardless if the climate is changing.
Nye is the one being sloppy here NOT the journalist. Or we can blame them both & if the journalist in question had any proper scientific knowledge he could have taken Nye to task for his conclusions/statements e.g. 'But Bill, as a science expert you obviously know that no single event can be attributed to climate change only the aggregate, why are you trying to blame this single event on climate change?'...that would have been proper journalism rather than the pandering the journalist did.
> The number of major floods and the intensity of those floods is increasing, and the most likely agent is AGW", well that's a statement of probability.
Except it's not. Floods are steady and the damage as a % of GDP has fallen 75% since 1950.
Truth is you need a much longer time scale before you have enough power to see an effect of climate change in the statistics.
The system is far too complex for you to be making almost every claim in your comment. You can do a small physics experiment to prove that CO2 increases are causing all of the ocean temp increases? No, you cannot. There could be a feedback system that 100% counteracts that effect or even 175% counteracts that effect and some completely different interaction is responsible for the net increase of ocean temps. And then higher ocean temps will cause more storms? Maybe, maybe not.
If everyone who patted themselves on the back for being "pro-science" would take a couple months and read some philosophy books on science and its methods, I feel like we would end up with far more productive conversations and better research investment and policy decisions. Science isn't s out memorizing facts of what "we know" according to "consensus of scientists". Science is the opposite of relying on what authority figures say is true. That's called religion. It's important for consumers of science to understand what is knowable and how powerful (or not) certain statistical and scientific methods are. The single biggest problem we have in science today is overstating findings that simply are not supportable by the evidence. Scientists included, too -- see: replication crisis, endless reversals in nutrition science, etc
It will be impossible to statistically link weather events to climate for centuries. Even that assumes massive advances in simulating climate. It's complete scientific nonsense to try to link the two right now. Nye should have known better than to even talk about this.
"The single biggest problem we have in science today is overstating findings that simply are not supportable by the evidence. " and you'd conducted all the experiments and research to prove that assertion?
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
You can do a small physics experiment to prove that CO2 increases are causing all of the ocean temp increases? No, you cannot.
"Climate change" is not a synonym for "atmospheric CO2." There is absolutely no question that ocean temperatures have risen dramatically in the last 100 years. That is climate change. That is the energy source Nye is claiming can "reasonably" be connected to more energetic and wetter storms. He is not wrong.
There's a lot of evidence and theory supporting the hypothesis that man-made CO2 emissions have contributed to the rise in surface and ocean temperatures, but that's a separate issue. Regardless of whether you're a pro- or anti-AGW person, it is an empirical fact that 379 consecutive months of above average temperature demonstrates that the global temperature is rising. You can't deny that data, or the consequences of that temperature trend, just because you don't like some people's explanation of the cause.