Slashdot Mirror
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."
IsIs?
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.
He's right. It was a bright, beautiful day. Then the climate in Louisiana changed and it rained a lot.
Love sees no species.
www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/by%20(all)%20rights
. . . the in-process Maunder-type Solar Minimum gets ignored.
Me, I'm planning for Blizzards, not Hurricanes. . .
That's a lot of text to essentially say nothing.
I see you're new here. Welcome to slashdot.
The fact the whole state is a river flood plain and only stupid people build homes in a river flood plain?
Global warming may have cause the weather pattern changes, but it does not change the fact that if you build in the low lands, you have to expect flooding because it will absolutely happen with a 100% guarantee.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Bill Nye the politics guy.
"Our favorite science guy?"
WTF is this, reddit? Goddamn slashdot's gone to shit. I mean, it's gone to shit several, several times since I started posting here, but every time I keep thinking we've hit bottom, no the editors find a way to dig deeper.
That's not the editor's writing, it's the submitter's writing, which you should know by now.
Fanatically anti-fanatical
Or more accurately Bill Nye says "it is reasonable that these storms are connected to [climate change]", and the media cannot understand the difference between drawing a probable conclusion and drawing a definitive conclusion. Bill Nye never said this was absolutely because of climate change, just that climate change most likely had a significant impact on the magnitude of the rain. But that is too reasonable and we need a more inflammatory headline.
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
Bill Nye only has a bachelors degree in mechanical engineering.
That's like an electrical engineer telling a geologist that the earth is actually only 6000 years old.
Bill Nye has absolutely no business talking about climate change, and he is merely a mouthpiece of the Rothschild Man Made Global Warming Agenda
Source
Get off the elite's payroll bill nye, you unqualified fuckface
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.
https://www.google.it/search?q=south+park+on+global+warming&client=safari&hl=it-it&prmd=niv&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjziq-1-NrOAhUHVywKHf-cCDoQ_AUICSgC&biw=320&bih=460#imgrc=K9MehPEBpJdhwM%3A
Liberal hardleft sheepdot.
For every comment like this there is another one complaining about how it is full of libertarian neckbeards. This is something I used to consider an anecdotal observation until I realized that it is easily quantifiable in up/down mods. Just about every time I make a left/right polarizing comment, it gets an equal number of up/down mods and basically lands in a neutral state. This would seem to indicate that you should stop complaining and work on improving the quality of your comments. This one is not a good start.
Thunderstorms are humongous elevators that dump heat in to space.
love is just extroverted narcissism
http://static1.squarespace.com/static/56530521e4b0c307d59bbe97/t/56af97fda3360cecbfe34b0e/1454348294881/?format=750w
You're partly right: ice is less dense than water. That's why it floats on water.
However, liquid water does change its density as a function of temperature. In 1 atm, water is densest at 4 degrees Celsius. Its density goes down in either direction from that temperature. And of course, it gets far less dense when it turns into water vapor.
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
It's true that he has little credibility on this subject but what a sixty year old guy did in undergrad is practically meaningless.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
The interview was on CNN, which staffs a meteorologist that is a climate change denier.
He was not a denier, he was a skeptic. And he has changed his opinion.
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
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.
No, it's not like that at all - it's like saying that not every cancer case is from smoking - and it's 100% right.
Stupid sexy Flanders.
Bill Nye the science guy is an entertaining fun thing to watch that teaches people some basic science.
Bill Nye the political commentator seems to be kinda of a dick.
.... regional floods have been happening for quite some time before man even existed, let alone was capable of having an environmental impact on the world.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
It's also worth reading TFA to see what Nye ACTUALLY said.
Same for the Earthquake in Italy.
Flooding, possibly - earthquakes, not a chance.
Every well-informed person knows that earthquakes are caused by the Great Satan, the United States.
#DeleteChrome
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.
They're caused by anal sex you ignorant clod.
In all of slashdot's history (and I have been here under other guises for quite some time.. 98-99), there is a long precedent of leaving the submissions mostly alone, with whatever warts they have.
Silence is a state of mime.
Once, people stood on the shore and looked out at the majesty of the world-spanning seas and said "What an awesome display of unstoppable power. Only a fool would build more than a shack close to Poseidon's realm."
Now, idiots stand on a beach and say "Hey, can we build a multi-billion dollar resort here? This looks like a fun spot."
This is why floods cost more.
Thank you
After all of the bad things said about climate change, it is nice to hear something positive for once.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein describes the situation with frequent 500 year floods and explosive wild fires as a climate emergency. https://youtu.be/7X_aqEr1vCY
The article quotes Bill Nye as saying:
“This is the result of climate change,” he said. “It’s only going to get worse.”
Which is a bit stronger than just saying it is reasonable to believe the storm is connected to climate change. While the storm might be connected to greenhouse gas induced climate change, that linkage is really quite murky. For example, the insulating layer of greenhouse gas has a far greater impact on night-time temperatures than day-time temperatures, since the greatest radiative heat loss to space occurs at night. As a result the day time to night time temperature differences should be reduced by climate change. However, these same day time to night time temperature differences are a major driver of weather and world-wide weather patterns, with more extreme temperature differences leading to stronger weather events. Thus, it is reasonable to conclude that climate change may actually reduce many forms of extreme weather events. So, it is not clear at all that as a result of climate change, such weather events will get worse.
Source: TFA.
So, for all the people cherry-picking his "it's very reasonable" comment and ignoring his flat-out quote that says "THIS IS," y'all need to take his dick out of your mouths.
So, the flooding is becoming more frequent due to climate change?
You are welcome on my lawn.
Bill should have stuck to igniting helium balloons on "Almost Live!" and using JohnJohnJohnJohn KEEEEISTER as a target for CO2 discharges...
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
We have always had flooding, it's just now people build and rebuild in flood plains. Remember to buy flood insurance? Guarantee you a lot of these people who lost everything will simply rebuild same lot again and wait for it to happen again.
They're thermoerotic...global warming gives them a boner.
Louisiana floods early and often, rather foolish to make a statement about climate based on a single weather event there. Maybe some other events in the USA would be better for the cause I'd think....
The article quotes Bill Nye as saying:
“This is the result of climate change,” he said. “It’s only going to get worse.”
That is just bad journalism. He did say those words at some point in the discussion, but it is taken out of context. He says this statement briefly near the beginning but is interrupted, and then later clarifies with a more detailed explanation. He gives the explanation in the same discussion, so it isn't as if he made a gaffe and was trying to cover it up. He made it very clear exactly what he meant.
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
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.
Seriously, I see him all over the net, doing interviews talking about creationists. Is he only a TV person or does he have an actually lab and published research data???
Conservatives label me as hard left when they find out I believe that global warming is a man made phenomenon. Liberals label me as hard right when I point out the BS in social justice and other movements like BLM.
Your altitudism is not welcome here.
Freedom to fear. Freedom from thought. Freedom to kill.
I guess the War on Terror really is about freedom!
I actually did LOL! Thanks, I really needed that.
Freedom to fear. Freedom from thought. Freedom to kill.
I guess the War on Terror really is about freedom!
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!
Right. He should have said "This is consistent with what we expect of climate change."
"As the ocean gets warmer, which it is getting, it expands..." is just an example of Bill Nye trying to impress his audience with his knowledge of the physical properties of water, and therefore he should be trusted as part of the Priestly Order of the Science Illuminati.
Of course the flooding in Louisiana has noting to do with the fact that the southern arch of the Jet Stream has been cycling over Nevada instead of Missouri for the past few weeks. In no way could this have been caused by cyclic El Niño warming in the Pacific causing an early breakdown of the Polar Vortex, enhanced by seasonal Atlantic low-pressure zones, which cause North America to experience increased hydraulic activity overall.
Nope, it's due to oceanic surface water expansion.
For small amounts of water, yes. Not so much the case for really large water bodies like oceans. Of course, few feet of difference in sea level is technically a negligible distance for something of that size too.... but its impact can still be huge.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Bill Nye the Hype Guy is more like it. There is ZERO evidence that this would not have happened without climate change. Lunatic global warming alarmism should be mocked in the media, not regurgitated
Silly AC, the media loves lunatic global warming alarmists.
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.
This storm was more severe due to God crying over the War on Christmas.
I blame Slashdot for their crap mod system.
suggests that what we are doing is changing the atmosphere and sea in ways that, amongst other things, increase the energy that drives weather systems. This increases the likelihood: that storms will be violent; that winds pick up more moisture from the sea - that has to fall later as rain; etc ... The predictions are silent about individual weather events, these will be more affected by local geography and placing, etc, of weather patterns on the day. In some cases: the energy changes will lead to local cooling or drying (or droughts).
So: we cannot point to an individual climatic event (ie storm or something) and say that it was caused, or made more extreme, by global warming. We can observe that overall things are getting worse - in ways that match the models that we have used to predict these effects.
The trouble is that many do not want to know: the effects are over many years "I'll be dead by then"; or are seen as costing more (eg moving from petrol [gas] to electric powered cars); global in nature "why should I do something when XX is not"; and are often far away:
First the flooding happened in Louisiana, but I did nothing because I do not live in Louisiana.
First the flooding happened in Eastern Australia, but I did nothing because I do not live in Eastern Australia.
Then the flooding happened in Cumbria, England, but I did nothing because I do not live in Cumbria.
Now the flooding is inundating my house, but there is no one to keep me dry.
With apologies to Pastor Martin Niemöller.
The best solution for Louisiana and Gulf coast aid for storms is simple.
Rezone all new buildings for solar and wind power only.
And build them on stilts.
Don't accept excuses.
This will both help the locals - as solar gets more efficient due to global warming and revitalize American construction industries, since construction labor is local for the most part.
Anything else is a total and utter waste of time.
Oh, and cancel all flood insurance over $1 million for any residential property.
Let the market fix the problem, not the tax subsidized fossil fuel No Change communism.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Or maybe watch the video that contains his full comments? Naw, let's ignore it and look only at the one or two sentences the author decided to quote and assume they form his complete stance on the subject.
Freedom to fear. Freedom from thought. Freedom to kill.
I guess the War on Terror really is about freedom!
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.
And here we see the difference between cherry picking sentences and actually reading/listening to the whole message.
You cherry picked the "THIS IS" bit but ignored where he clarified who believes "THIS IS" and that it is a reasonable belief.
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.
I think we all knew that Bill Nye would not have made a statement like in the headline. It's just clickbait, but people want to complain about it anyway.
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
Did you listen to EVERYTHING he said or just read the sound bite and call it good?
Yawn silly old fart, the media simply acknowledges the reality that blinkered right wing denialists are so desperate to ignore.
Explain the delusions of ancient middle eastern goat herders, youre really desperate in your denial arent you.
Increasing frequency and severity of storms may well be a result of climate change, although when it comes to flooding, there are many factors involved.
But, let's look at Bill Nye's explanation:
The only thing that explanation shows is that Bill Nye is not a scientist, but a clown. International scientists didn't "concur" with Bill Nye, most international scientists aren't even aware of the existence of Bill Nye. The fact that this guy is the president of the Planetary Society is a disgrace to the society and the the memory of Carl Sagan.
Totally. Wait, are you talking about Bill Nye or Donald Trump?
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.
But it's not like every other flood. It's flooded places that haven't flooded in anyone's living memory. The amount of rain in the storms was enhanced compared to previous events.
the Army Corp of Engineers not maintaining the dykes????
Rick B.
Being modded 'Troll' for trying to moderate hyperbole pretty much sums it up better than my original comment ever could. Hilarious. 'Offtopic' would have been a better choice, but I guess it lacked the satisfaction of delivering an insult.
I suspect that the lack of proper maintenance and repair of the anti-flood infrastructure is also a definite part of it.
I actually don't thin Bill is saying it's the result of climate change. He is saying it is consistent with what we would expect from climate change. And then I can't tell if Bill or the journoclown is getting it wrong by making the leap that THEREFORE it was the result of climate change. Of course that does not follow logically.
The power of statistics is such that we would need many decades of data before we could theoretically detect that climate change is indeed changing the frequency or intensity of these events. Truth is that things like floods APPEAR to be dropping when measured in meaningful ways.
When people make these statements, they are worse than people who deny science. They are pretending to be scientific when being quite the opposite.
There are sane people out there. They are rare. But they exist. Here is one: https://youtu.be/meoETyMA4K0
Actually I think you got it wrong too. Saying climate change most likely increased the amount of rain is actually a causal conclusion that is not supportable. It's an opinion. The more accurate way to say it is that the amount of rain is consistent with what one might expect given the effects of climate change.
But it's actually just as possible that the rain would have been more if not for climate change.
> 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
That isn't evidence. And climate has a timescale that is longer than human memory and even good records.
"This has never happened before, therefore it's caused by CO2." What?
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.
I'd like to know how Noah got the Kangaroos from Australia to the Middle East, then delivered them back again afterwards. This is a greater miracle than building a big boat.
And don't get me started on fresh and salt water fish...
World record typhoons year after year, 500 year droughts, 139 deg F record high tempratures, 14 months of global heat record in a row... "How far is Al Gore going to take this global warming hoax?"
This isn't anything close to a normal flood. This is a once-in-a-thousand-years flood. Areas were underwater that had been flood-free for hundreds of years. Would you have 'had it coming' if your house got washed away, in flood waters not seen in your area since Gengis Khan was tromping around Asia?
So.....Bill Nye is a science denier.....because you drank the hatorade on Al Gore??
Who has a doctorate in meteorology, not climate science, so you might want to ease up with that 'not a real scientist' attack least it hit your appeals-to-authority fallacy in the face in the process.
Annnnnd now from actual climate scientists: It is unclear whether global warming is increasing hurricane frequency but there is increasing evidence that warming increases hurricane intensity. You look at a list of the most powerful hurricanes/cyclones and it's going to be heavy with storms in the last 20 years. Looking at the 8 most powerful to make landfall, six of them have been since 1998.
You're the 101st poster gangbanging that chicken. She's pretty worn out by this point, could you give her a break?
Incorrect usage of appeal to authority. Nye or anyone else isn't making the case that he himself is an expert, in all his views on the subject he points to the science (worked on by climatologists and others who are qualified to discuss the subject). Nye's popularity is because of his presenting science in a form that's easy and interesting for the general public to understand. His TV show alone has inspired thousands of kids to take up science careers. His own academic background is irrelevant, he could be a mime artist for all it matters, since he's not claiming to be an expert on what he talks about.
"..One hosts to look them up, one DNS to find them, and in the darkness BIND them."
The dude said it's "like every other flood" but it isn't because he can't point to a single flood in the past that was like this one.
You can point to the floods in 1927, 2005 and 2011 but there are houses flooded by this flood that were not flooded by those previous floods.
So what is your conservative solution to anthropogenic global warming? All I ever hear from your side is denial of the problem.
During the Jurassic the Sun was also dimmer than it is now and the configuration of the continents was completely different. You can't compare the two periods without taking that into account.
"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)
"Bill Nye is another loud mouth douche who thinks because he speaks people care. Some do, but most people with common sense stopped listening to him shortly after they grew the fuck up." - he has more credability than any twat who thinks the gays are someway responsible or a climate change denier with no evidence "
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
We may still get periods of smaller and less frequent storms even with extreme global warming just as we do today.
Absolutely true. And if I may add a bit along the same lines: As the atmosphere gets warmer, it gets more turbulent - this happens in any fluid medium (ie. water and air); we have probably all seen this experiement in science class in school, where you have a large glass bowl of water, put in a few crystals of something strongly coloured and heat it at the bottom, ad the colours start swirling around. If you were to measure the temperature in different places, you would find that the water rising up is warm, and the water sinking down towards the heat source is cold. This is almost exactly what happens when North America has record cold winters at the moment - the hot air rises up in the atmosphere, the Coriolis effect or something sends it towards the poles, and the cold air is displaced to the south: the Arctic is warming very quickly and the mid-latitudes are experiencing severe winters. Which is why climatologists say this is consistent with global warming; but the "skeptics" insist that is proof of the opposite. The skeptics are of course mistaken - looking only at data that are very localised in time and area is simply cherry picking.
I don't think that the parent said that CO2 was the cause, just that global warming causes a rise in water levels and temp. This doesn't need tremendous deductive reasoning; it's practically an axiom (heating causes an increase in temp - who'd thunk?). There's no "cooling" mechanism to counteract this that we are aware of, and hoping for one is not a strategy that I'd hang my hat on.
Separately, increase in CO2 levels could trigger some sort of counter effect - the most common one that has been speculated is more plant growth due to more CO2 and rainfall. But this does not happen overnight, and unless it is exponential, will likely be offset by linear forest area decline: http://www.earth-policy.org/indicators/C56/forests_2012. And if there were such a mechanism, it's effects have already been accounted for because the atmospheric CO2 level is a net of all inflows and outflows, and shows a horrible trend: http://www.climatecentral.org/news/the-last-time-co2-was-this-high-humans-didnt-exist-15938.
I don't think that ocean is 17C all the way to the bottom.
http://www.windows2universe.or...
Basically, below 1000m you can assume it is 4C.
This is not some scientist that got a microphone pushed in his face and stammered something that is taken out of context. This is a person that actively seeks the media and is part of that media by any means.
Pulling some political bullshit and turning what you say into an issue about language does not fly with me. This was fun when I was 12. It is now just an immature reaction.
He has enough experience with the media and the public that he knows that the public does not know the difference between a probable and definite conclusion and as somebody who wants to be an educator, he should take that into account.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
It used to be you could wade through the filth and stupidity on Slashdot and find some great humor, interesting insights and enlightening information....now its like looking for a needle in a haystack, except the haystack is a boiling broth of crazy and there is no way you aren't worse off for having looked for the needle in the first place...Sigh...
So if I am a science guy, I am forced to like him and if I do not like him I am a flaming bozo with an agenda? It is not at all possible that I dislike the guy, yet like science and facts regardless if they are his or not?
Being unable to keep the two things apart is pretty unscientific and makes you sound like a flaming bozo with an agenda.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
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.
Floods are steady and the damage as a % of GDP has fallen 75% since 1950.
Economic cost of flooding is a terrible metric for "the amount of flooding." Damage due to flooding is easily mitigated by engineering: dikes near populated areas, overflow zones, dams... Damage due to flooding is easily mitigated by population changes: mandate expensive flood insurance in flood-prone areas so people leave; inform property owners of flood-prone areas; build an extensive rail/road infrastructure so businesses can move away from river transport. It can be mitigated by changing the economy: in 1950, 7% of US GDP was farming - much of is done in river basins for irrigation. In 2000, 0.7% of US GDP was farming.
But not more flooding everywhere. Warming also changes weather patterns which can result in less precipitation in some regions. The truth is we don't have the modeling capability to predict the result in any particular region, only the ability to generalize the impact. So, no, it is not hand waving, it is a very real possibility, even if considered unlikely.
On the contrary, there are many more dickheads on /. like you burying their heads in the sand and crying conspiracy, because they're too fucking childish to deal with reality. You're no different than creationists at this point. Suck it the fuck up. Your position becomes more ridiculous every year.
I do not want your cheap brainburning drugs. They are useless for work. And I am a working man today.
Mmmmhmm. The scientists aren't scientific, but YOU are. Because you don't like the conclusion they come to, THEY must be wrong. Gotcha. And the devil put the fucking fossils in the rocks, eh? lol.
I do not want your cheap brainburning drugs. They are useless for work. And I am a working man today.
I just love it when I have mod points and a global warming story pops up. Sadly, I spent my mod points on the other global warming story today.
Yeah totally. When you put more energy into a system, you should expect that system to quieten down and have less activity. That's why a car gets icy cold when bright sunshine pours through the windows. You've just cracked the conspiracy, well done.
I do not want your cheap brainburning drugs. They are useless for work. And I am a working man today.
Well, you're not a total twat then. Congrats.
I do not want your cheap brainburning drugs. They are useless for work. And I am a working man today.
he lost it on this one. Water does not expand when it gets warmer, it expands when it freezes.
You'd think even a BS Mech E would know that.
Science is the opposite of relying on what authority figures say is true.
Bingo! And guess which side all the authority figures speaking "truth" are on? It is indeed the opposite of the side with all the scientists presenting and analyzing data.
The single biggest problem we have today is that vested interests (oil companies, Russia, etc) are undermining efforts to dramatically improve our world for the better...even if climate change was a hoax. Immediate benefits include: de-funding isis and several other authoritarian regimes, eliminating several of the most hazardous occupations, avoiding massive ecological disasters (oil spills), and decentralizing power...both literally and figuratively! Why the fuck are we still subsidizing oil?!
Because scientific theories are just totally about what part of the political spectrum you're from.
What you're dealing with there is just motivated reasoning. Dislike the conclusion, therefore find something, *ANYTHING* that even seems to contradict it, to lessen the cognitive dissonance. Start with the conclusion, work backwards. The fact that it has already got to the point of crying politics and conspiracy shows just how little shame some people have.
I do not want your cheap brainburning drugs. They are useless for work. And I am a working man today.
In the end, it is very likely that Climate Change will result in both positive and negative effects on us lowly humans.
The problem is not that the climate is changing. The problem is that it is changing too fucking fast for ecosystems to adapt. That is the threat. Mass extinction, loss of biosphere. Yes, cities will be flooded. Big fucking deal.
I do not want your cheap brainburning drugs. They are useless for work. And I am a working man today.
That is their solution. There is no problem. They'll still be saying that when they're getting washed down a fucking muddy river full of cars.
I do not want your cheap brainburning drugs. They are useless for work. And I am a working man today.
Well done, your internal mental model is the diametric opposite of reality. That takes a special kind of stupid.
I do not want your cheap brainburning drugs. They are useless for work. And I am a working man today.
I think you understand.
If you like science, you'll like Bill Nye. If not, then think about why you don't like him. Is it jealousy, fear, bigotry, or maybe you don't believe in science?
Self reflection is always useful.
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
Except the developing world really isn't where a large amount of the greenhouse gasses are produced. Yes, China and India are offenders, but the Industrialized world still is responsible for a huge amount of emissions. While population is a factor, it's not a simple straight line like you suggest.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Quantum mechanics is astonishingly complex, and yet we can still predict radioactive decay rates. Just handwaving away observations with "it's too complex" isn't really a critique at all. The fact is that increasing the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere will inevitably trap more energy in the atmosphere. Complexity doesn't overrule thermodynamics.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
You have a citation for these figures? I'd wager Katrina's costs alone, once they're fully factored, probably significantly outweigh similar events, so I'm calling bullshit on your claim.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
No, it would be impossible, as I say above, to link specific weather events to climate change. But you can analyze all weather systems and see if intensity and frequency trend up along with increasing temperature increases.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Exactly my thought. If I was building in Louisiana after 2005, my house would be a houseboat, on dry land, with pylons, and the back of the garage would have a boat in it.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
No, you transcribed one thing he said. Watch the video. Listen carefully. Unfortunately, the text misrepresents him.
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.
Weather is a subset of climate. Climate is the statistics of weather, usually over a 30-year interval. It is measured by assessing the patterns of variation in temperature, humidity, atmospheric pressure, wind, precipitation, atmospheric particle count and other meteorological variables in a given region over long periods of time. The flood may have happened and it also may not have happened. Nobody could tell if it would be more or less severe because of climate change without an alternate timeline. That's why nobody is pointing to any one specific event (no, not even Bill Nye is doing it). He also cares about the aggregate. Did you watch the video? He isn't coming down as some hardliner. What it sounds like to me is a knee-jerk reaction by somebody who doesn't like Bill Nye.
. . . Nye is making it up: "The resolution dependence of contiguous US precipitation extremes in response to CO2 forcing" http://journals.ametsoc.org/do... "Finally, the observed record and historical model experiments were used to investigate changes in the recent past. In part because of large intrinsic variability, no evidence was found for changes in extreme precipitation attributable to climate change in the available observed record." That's why one should not get one's science from a cult of scientism hack, er, activist.
You need many decades and perhaps centuries of that data to make the determination you want to make. Extreme weather events are part of the weather pattern. What you have to show is that the distribution of weather events has shifted to the more frequent or more strong. And because we have to reject the null hypothesis (chance) with enough certainty, we need a long time of observing.
I didn't pick the metric. This is one of the metrics the IPCC looked at.
What is my motivation to make things up? If you weren't lazy, you could verify it yourself, as could anyone.
I usually ignore responses like yours, but I just so happened to be able to easily pull up one source: https://youtu.be/meoETyMA4K0
You are still confusing effects and net effects. Think of two people pushing a large rock from different sides. Both have forces (effects) that are discoverable, but not by looking at the net movement of the rock alone.
I'm curious. When there is flooding due to heavy rains, it is because of climate change that makes the oceans warmer, etc. Does that mean that California (in a severe drought for the last several years), is NOT experiencing climate change? We would kill for some flooding around here.
This is a cop out. "Global warming" and "climate change" are short hands for AGW.
It can be like no flood that has ever happened in history and still be perfectly normal. I'm sure that confuses you.
It's okay to be a total wingnut AGW alarmist for risk reasons. This is actually the only good reason, in my mind. But that is actually acknowledging that you don't know AGW's impact, but because there is the risk of ruin, you err on the side of the uncertainty that does not risk ruin.
As someone originally from Baton Rouge, I can tell you a large part of the problem is that the area is being built up so much that the natural runoff ability has been greatly disrupted.
load "linux",8,1
Or more accurately Bill Nye says "it is reasonable that these storms are connected to [climate change]", and the media cannot understand the difference between drawing a probable conclusion and drawing a definitive conclusion. Bill Nye never said this was absolutely because of climate change.
Or more accurately, the very first thing that he says (46 secs into the video) is "This is the result of climate change, and its only going to get worse". No ifs, no buts, no probabilities, just a plain statement of fact.
And I don't buy the idea that he was misquoted and they twisted what he said. Bill Nye is a media personality who has been on the TV for decades, and he knows how to put his message across. He is savvy enough to know that this kind of remark will be picked up and used as headlines, and any equivocation that follows will be ignored. He is smart enough to know that he could have said "This might be the result of climate change" or "This could be the result of climate change" and it would have been reported that way.
Recording of weather events in places like the US and Britain has been going on for well over a century, and certainly there are ways to determine extreme events further back than that in some cases, so it's not like we just started recording weather and climate data yesterday.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
As appealing as a Senate hearing is, I'd prefer an actual citation from literature, and not a well known skeptic. In other words, let's see the actual data your claim is based off of. Do you possess this data, or did you just rush out and find the only link you could that you thought could justify your initial claim?
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
"Global warming" is a more general term than "anthropogenic global warming", and "climate change" emphasizes that weird things happen rather than just a general increase in temperature. Nor does that have anything to do with what GP said, which is that we do have global warming. GP specifically left the "A" out, although that's pretty darn certain.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
You're oversimplifying. It's easy to think of mechanisms by which an increase of CO2 doesn't trap more energy (such as increased albedo). The proof that we've got global warming is that the surface of the Earth is warming up, as shown by a very large number of measurements.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Further, climatologists have analyzed Pielke's methodology, and found it wanting:
http://fivethirtyeight.com/fea...
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Technically, all weather events are partly a result of global warming. Weather is chaotic, which means extremely sensitive to initial conditions. If the atmosphere was a bit cooler, we'd have entirely different weather.
The important thing, of course, is that the weather will be statistically different with a warmer planet.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
You are using those numbers in a vacuum, ignoring the fact that black people are more like (statistically) to live in poor areas with higher violent crime.
Also, as a police officer, you are more likely to be killed by a black person but - until BLM - that was for the same reasons I stated above.
Please point out the parts where he is carefully refining and adding caveats to his view?
"Individual storms are hard to predict. And so as the ocean gets bigger and the sea surface gets warmer, you would expect more of these storms." Expectation is at the heart of statistics. If you suspect a new process favors an event, you expect that event to happen more frequently.
Let's not forget that he also basically said, "If you don't fix climate change right now, we'll have a descent into lawlessness with looters everywhere," too.
No, he did not. He actually said, "What'll probably happen is people will move, and then what's gonna happen to all that copper? Somebody's gonna show up to salvage or loot it." He makes no mention of a descent into lawlessness. This is exactly what's happened in cities where the major industry has closed or moved away.
While I wish his opening line was less absolute, you are being rather disingenuous by putting words in his mouth and ignoring the full context.
Freedom to fear. Freedom from thought. Freedom to kill.
I guess the War on Terror really is about freedom!
Wow, that's a nice, 1 level deep point.
I think we all knew that Bill Nye would not have made a statement like in the headline. It's just clickbait, but people want to complain about it anyway.
Really not sure if this is sarcasm or not. The headline is "Bill Nye explains that the flooding in Louisiana is the result of climate change" and in the video he is asked about the flooding in Louisiana and says "This is the result of climate change" so it is really not clear what the problem is what that headline.
How low is that? What percent of the US population lives at that elevation?
Learn to love Alaska
If it can be both uniqu and normal at the same time, then we are speaking a different language. Do you have a dictionary for yours? We'll say I use Websters (not my favorite, but a common one).
Learn to love Alaska
When you correct for SES, the trend stays. In fact, race correlates with the result more than SES does, it's just that because race correlates with SES, we've used SES for 50 years, so we could blindly believe that the race wars were over with the civil rights movement in the '60s.
Learn to love Alaska
And all the sofa cushions should be flotation devices.
You are welcome on my lawn.
There are at least 20 big US cities with lower elevation than Baton Rouge, LA, and most of them are coastal.
You are welcome on my lawn.
He basically says "It's hard to predict, and we expect more of these storms." That does nothing to contradict or clarify his assertion that "THIS IS THE RESULT OF CLIMATE CHANGE."
Can you not understand the difference between those two statements and how statistics and probability are involved? Are you willfully ignoring logic? If I tell you not to sit on your ass all day eating cake because you'll get fat, and then you do and stay slim all your life due to a high metabolism, have you disproven that inactivity combined with a high-carbohydrate diet cause weight gain?
"Oh yes, it's a myth!" you'll shout. Good luck with that.
Well, since you're not even bothering to quote from my actual transcript.
Oh don't even start with that. I did copy that text from your transcript and cut out the duplicated text for clarity.
"What'll probably happen is people will move - they'll move away from these areas, and then what's gonna happen to all that copper wiring and all that copper plumbing? Somebody's gonna show up to salvage it, or is somebody going to show up to loot it?"
You, on the other hand, completely made up words that he never even used. Is this what passes for intellectual honesty these days?
"If you don't fix climate change right now, we'll have a descent into lawlessness with looters everywhere."
In depressed areas like those mentioned in the article I linked, people are resorting to looting copper and other metals from abandoned buildings, and this has lead to—you guessed it—all sorts of criminal activity. A descent into lawlessness? Your claim, not his.
Don't blame me for taking what he said as if he meant it.
Why must everything be paint-by-numbers? Oh right, because that's the only argument left against taking action on climate change. "We can't because . . . you wore a blue shirt today, sorry."
Freedom to fear. Freedom from thought. Freedom to kill.
I guess the War on Terror really is about freedom!
You do understand, I trust, that different countries have different birth rates, right, so while one country may have a very high birth rate, another country may have a very low one. You know, how Japan's population is shrinking, and India's is growing?
It often makes me wonder if being a political partisan either causes stupidity, or political partisans are just inherently stupid people.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
I think scientists can make some larger statements on the impacts. No one can tell you what exactly it would be like at any particular location, But what you're doing is exaggerating the amount of uncertainty, and then trying to defend warming trends by invoking even less certain predictions. It's hard not to see how you aren't just being a contrarian simply because you don't like the answers science can provide.
When rain belts shift northward in North America, arid conditions will begin to become the norm in large parts of the American Midwest, and that will mean American food security will become, at some point over the next century so, one of the most serious issues the US has ever had to face. And this isn't a matter if whether it will happen or not, the debate is over WHEN it will happen.
Pumping vast amounts of formerly sequestered CO2 into the atmosphere is just plain bad. We should be moving at all speed to alternative energy sources, and either leaving the oil and coal in the ground, or finding some other use for it that doesn't involve releasing CO2 into the atmosphere.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Why is pricing carbon anti-conservative? It's eminently conservative, putting the job of reducing emissions in the hands of the market.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
The race war wasn't over but had calmed until it was flared up by our divisive (black kids look like my kids white kids don't) president.
last time I checked, housing in New York, Miami, Atlanta is not exactly cheap.
You are welcome on my lawn.
OK, so where did he say this particular storm is absolutely positively solely caused by global warming? He indicated that he and others (encompassed under "us") believe it was caused by global warming.
Ah, so you were born in 2009. Because anyone born earlier than that saw the racist stuff flying when he was running, before he said anything you'd consider racist or divisive.
I saw more than one "Nigger in Chief" bumper sticker. In person, not some staged photo. Yes, Obama started the race war, by not staying in "his place".
The whole drug war was spearheaded against civil rights by the Republicans because it was a racist program. And the anti-personal rights Republicans were all for stripping everyone in the country of their personal rights, so long as the cops used that power disproportionately against Black people. The fist drug war was even sold as such explicitly in Congress.
Learn to love Alaska
But limited to the group "us" meaning it is an opinion of him and others in the same camp.
QED for real.
You're way in over your head and you don't even know it.
XD
Looks like they're removing stuff now.
What, every single group that does temperature reconstructions is "removing stuff" and just happen to end up with the exact same answer? That's one hell of a conspiracy theory! It's item 4 on the conspiracy theory detector.
In my humble opinion, his successor is lying a lot more. That's why every month this year has been a "record."
So, nothing to do with the El Nino? That's item 10 on the conspiracy theory detector.
Even featured here on slashdot it's so suspicious,
That one's off the chart.
This site has actual photos of newspaper articles.
But isn't discussing global temperatures so is not really relevant to our discussion...
Those stubborn facts again-
Well, yeah :)
Yet another analysis:
Also not discussing global temperatures...
I understand you're not a scientist. However for God sakes, look at the data! Go into the distant past to present! Analyze it! Come up with a theory!
We've already got one, and as I've shown, the data fits quite well!
Another clue is they want to put people in jail that disagree with man made GW.
Yes. Clue #7
What's very frustrating to me is I've predicted this for 20 years that their models wouldn't hold up
Yes. That's got to be frustrating given how well they have!
Wonder why I haven't been responding? I
Because you're losing our bet so badly and because of how cocky and condescending you were when you entered it and because you're not particularly fond of the taste of crow?
People who know what they are talking about disagree.
He isn't a skeptic. And he cites his source. You clearly are not actually interested in information.
This is getting silly. No one is denying that climate changes. The debate is over whether human causes increase change in detrimental ways, and whether the costs of preventing those human causes is worth the degree of impact it would have
Yes, it can. Normal weather is a bell curve. An event could have a 0.0000000000000000000000000000001% chance of happening and has always had that probability, and when it happens, for the first time it does not represent a change of anything. I'm pretty convinced that half of you people believe what you believe because you never took intro statistics.
Creating "artificial scarcity" is how we got fracking. Because you can't regulate people out of making a living.
Murphy was an optimist
Yes but what is the most interesting is to compare Slashdot of 2008 to Slashdot of 2016. In 2008 had any poster dared to question Mr. Nye's comments he would have been flooded with angry emails, ridiculed, called all kinds of horrible names... Those people - the great cuttters and pasters of talking points - now find themselves in the minority, the majority are actually thinking for themselves.
It's why I have posted as AC for the last five years... until today.
Murphy was an optimist
Perhaps direct a chunk of this heavy precipitation to the western USA to relieve some drought!
Self-importance and self-indulgence is the root of ALL evil.