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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."
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.
. . . 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.
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
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.
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)
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.
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.
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.”
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???
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!
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!
"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.
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.
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.
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.
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
Did you listen to EVERYTHING he said or just read the sound bite and call it good?
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.
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 Army Corp of Engineers not maintaining the dykes????
Rick B.
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
> 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.
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...
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.
"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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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