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Louisiana's Governor Declares State Of Emergency Over Disappearing Coastline (npr.org)

Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards has declared a state of emergency over the state's rapidly eroding coastline. From a report on NPR: It's an effort to bring nationwide attention to the issue and speed up the federal permitting process for coastal restoration projects. "Decades of saltwater intrusion, subsidence and rising sea levels have made the Louisiana coast the nation's most rapidly deteriorating shoreline," WWNO's Travis Lux tells our Newscast unit. "It loses the equivalent of one football field of land every hour." More than half of the state's population lives on the coast, the declaration states. It adds that the pace of erosion is getting faster: "more than 1,800 square miles of land between 1932 and 2010, including 300 square miles of marshland between 2004 and 2008 alone."

307 comments

  1. Louisiana is one big sinkhole by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Insightful

    Large parts of the state are below sea level. It's time to start considering how much money should be thrown into Louisiana at this point just to buy a little extra time, and if instead we should be considering moving people out of the state altogether.

    1. Re:Louisiana is one big sinkhole by cayenne8 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Large parts of the state are below sea level.

      No, it's pretty much just New Orleans that sits below sea level.

      --
      Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
    2. Re: Louisiana is one big sinkhole by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

      Don't worry, carbon taxes will fix it. Carbon taxes can fix all environmental problems.

    3. Re: Louisiana is one big sinkhole by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Being at or only slightly above sea level is essentially the same as being below it. It doesn't take much water to flood an area that is only 2 or 3 feet above sea level.

    4. Re: Louisiana is one big sinkhole by sound+vision · · Score: 1

      It could. Where are the floodwaters coming from? What is the ground composed of and what does the water table underneath look like? Are there any dikes or dams along the way that we might adjust? Boiling flood risk down to a single number might work for insurance companies, but devising a real solution to the problem requires a bit more analysis and thought.

    5. Re: Louisiana is one big sinkhole by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Funny

      Haha, same reaction here.

      Democrats need to learn how to be dicks like Republicans are.

      Next time Democrats are in control, they should cut off all funding to that red state for their pwecious coastlines. After all, global warming is a hoax, so they should be fine, and the invisible hand will provide, amirite?

    6. Re: Louisiana is one big sinkhole by joerdie · · Score: 1

      No one is talking about carbon credits anymore. And they haven't in a while. But don't shit on people with an idea when you don't have a better one.

    7. Re: Louisiana is one big sinkhole by OhPlz · · Score: 0

      Sometimes no idea is better than a bad idea. Stupidity like carbon credits hurt any credibility that "climate change" might have had.

    8. Re: Louisiana is one big sinkhole by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

      Basically anything south of Alexandria (which sits dead center of Louisiana) is consistently flooding. This includes many major cities (New Orleans, Baton Rouge, and Lafayette).

      There is really no way to stop this, the state is literally sinking.

    9. Re: Louisiana is one big sinkhole by joerdie · · Score: 4, Insightful

      "Might have had?" Your ignorance is showing.

    10. Re: Louisiana is one big sinkhole by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      If they're 2'-3' above sea level, then the water table will be about 2'-3' below ground, otherwise sea water will creep in. A bit simplistic, but not far off. You're pretty much just living on a sand-bar. A few inches of rain will cause a flood.

    11. Re: Louisiana is one big sinkhole by MightyMartian · · Score: 4, Insightful

      The whole point of carbon taxes is to set a price for CO2 emissions, with the baseline assumption that the market will produce solutions based on creating a sort of "artificial scarcity". If you're a free market advocate, carbon taxes are the way to go, because they are far easier to administer than regulatory regimes, carbon credits, and other regulation-style structures. Upping the price of carbon means alternatives become more attractive, and isn't that the name of the game?

      Unless, of course, you don't believe in free markets.

      --
      The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
    12. Re: Louisiana is one big sinkhole by Penguinisto · · Score: 1, Insightful

      A few problems with that...

      1) So who sets the prices? Any governmental price controls on any commodity (which carbon credits are) means there is no free market involvement.

      1a) If the government sets prices, it is nothing more than a de facto regulatory scheme dressed up as commodity.

      2) Enforcement? Good luck with that.

      3) What's to keep government from requiring individuals (in addition to businesses) to buy these things, as a form of consumption tax?

      4) I thought we all got out of the business of selling indulgences back when Martin Luther showed up?

      --
      Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
    13. Re: Louisiana is one big sinkhole by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      4) I thought we all got out of the business of selling indulgences back when Martin Luther showed up?

      Yep. Might as well give up on you. You're religious and unable to see anything except through the lens of religion.

      I'm sure you'll explain to me why you're not actually religious because climate change is the religion here.

    14. Re: Louisiana is one big sinkhole by MightyMartian · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Yes, the government will have to set the price, so it won't be a truly free market. But seeing as leaving it to the market to actually set the price means oil is obscenely cheap and it's use continues, until costs in other parts of the economy hit damaging levels (ie. how much do you want to spend on house insurance, flood remediation, and rising food costs, etc.) I did say "artificial scarcity".

      The fact is that CO2 emissions are trapping more heat in the lower atmosphere, the oceans and the surface of the planet. If you have some alternative solution, explain how it will solve this problem without creating an extremely intrusive regulatory regime, which everyone is going to hate a helluva lot more than simply setting a price on CO2 emissions.

      --
      The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
    15. Re:Louisiana is one big sinkhole by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Southern part of the state is build on the Mississippi River Delta, that shifts and changes, until the Army Corp of Engr came along. Now, the operative word is _ subsidence_, that part of the state is sinking. I know that in the 1980's, so why is it news now???

    16. Re: Louisiana is one big sinkhole by Khyber · · Score: 4, Informative

      "What is the ground composed of and what does the water table underneath look like?"

      That entire area is in the Mississippi Delta Floodplains. Everything from Memphis to the Gulf of Mexico is practically FLOATING on a giant aquifer. All it takes is for New Madrid to go 7.5 or higher to put most of everything from Memphis down to Hattiesburg underwater. A large influx of water on the floodplains further south would probably cause a quicksand effect (and in fact there's tons of that in Louisiana) and simply wash everything away or drag much of it under the ground (as we witnessed with Katrina and New Orleans.)

      --
      Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
    17. Re: Louisiana is one big sinkhole by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Being at or only slightly above sea level is essentially the same as being below it. It doesn't take much water to flood an area that is only 2 or 3 feet above sea level.

      The amount of water necessary to raise the level of the world's oceans 2-3 feet is easily in the "much" category. Being at or above sea level is not the same as being below it for the purposes of flooding, "essentially" or otherwise.

    18. Re: Louisiana is one big sinkhole by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

      A few problems with that...

      1) So who sets the prices? Any governmental price controls on any commodity (which carbon credits are) means there is no free market involvement.

      Only if you think like a Sith.

      The government charging you rent to store you carbon in public air is rather a lot more free market than "we're annexing all coal, natural gas, and petroleum related industryis under eminent domain and will be shutting them down.

    19. Re: Louisiana is one big sinkhole by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Democrats need to learn how to be dicks like Republicans are.

      Not going to happen. Dicks gravitate towards the Republicans, Pussies, to the Democrats. Assholes are all over the map, from anarchists to aristocrats.

    20. Re: Louisiana is one big sinkhole by Layzej · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Any governmental price controls on any commodity (which carbon credits are)

      GP is talking about a carbon tax, not carbon credits. A tax has many benefits and doesn't have the pitfalls you describe above. Best of all, a revenue neutral carbon tax would allow government to lower tax on things they ought to be encouraging like income and sales.

    21. Re: Louisiana is one big sinkhole by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      This "cost" is itself artificial and not justified by any credible backing....it's just a way to transfer money from one group that is thought of as "good" to another that is thought of as "bad". One has to accept that one is guilty in some way to justify this behavior.

      >

      Ferret

    22. Re: Louisiana is one big sinkhole by silentcoder · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Companies do not own the atmosphere. Citizens do. If they want to put things in our property we have every right to charge them rent by means of a tax.

      --
      Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
    23. Re:Louisiana is one big sinkhole by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      obligatory xkcd: https://xkcd.com/748/

    24. Re: Louisiana is one big sinkhole by fred6666 · · Score: 2

      carbon tax and cap and trade systems are both valid, free market solutions to the CO2 problem

      what is NOT a free market solution is incentives such as electric cars subsidies.

    25. Re: Louisiana is one big sinkhole by Facekhan · · Score: 1

      Government doesn't actually have to set the price. They just cap the availability and an auction process sets the price. Cap and trade ends up being more flexible and responsive to market conditions than a flat rate pollution tax.

      The government can manipulate the auction results via supply or reserve tranches of credits, (effectively at cheaper prices) for some nationally important industries or exempt small emitters (like you and your car) while requiring large emitters like an airline or rail conglomerate or a electrical utility to purchase the credits each year.

    26. Re:Louisiana is one big sinkhole by Woldscum · · Score: 1

      Pull up Google earth and look at all of the Oilfield canals in the coastal marsh. The 1st offshore oil well in the world was drilled south of Morgan City and offshore drilling was born there. http://www.rigmuseum.com/charl... The problem is the US Government has stolen all of the money from offshore drilling in Louisiana's waters from the 1950's to today. States that do not allow drilling in their own waters get a cut of what is rightly Louisianans money. It will not cost the Fed anything. Just give LA the royalties from the existing infrastructure.

      http://www.nola.com/politics/i...
      http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...
      http://www.thetowntalk.com/sto...

    27. Re: Louisiana is one big sinkhole by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Your arrogance is showing!!!

        A great man once said "extreme claims require extreme evidence".

      "No one is talking about carbon credits anymore" so what still your cult's idea and where is the evidence that cash lowers global temps.

      You people don't even look into the science your just repeat talking heads like any other religion for fools.

    28. Re: Louisiana is one big sinkhole by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      > Yes, the government will have to set the price, so it won't be a truly free market.

      So what you're saying is that you don't believe in free markets?

    29. Re:Louisiana is one big sinkhole by LifesABeach · · Score: 1

      The irony of it is that the guy that designed the water pump system for the Big Easy had/has a sail boat in his front yard.

    30. Re: Louisiana is one big sinkhole by LifesABeach · · Score: 1

      I hear that the current EPA secretary screams it while pleasuring himself.

    31. Re: Louisiana is one big sinkhole by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You mean the science that shows climate change is happening and its largely man-made you fuckstick?

    32. Re: Louisiana is one big sinkhole by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      every price is artificial and there is no truly a self regulating market even without laws or government involved there is going to be businesses scheming for more profit, the market share, company policies an abuse do affect the price of primary goods and commodities, secondary y markets and manufacturing and tertiary markets and services
      tie the price of the carbon tax to the current cost of eliminating the same amount of carbon from the environment plus as many additional benefit as you can get away with, that is what the rest of the businesses do, of course there are going to be political handouts and subsidising and god knows what....but that is how the rest of the "free" market scam works

    33. Re:Louisiana is one big sinkhole by hey! · · Score: 1

      It's time to start considering how much money should be thrown into Louisiana at this point just to buy a little extra time, and if instead we should be considering moving people out of the state altogether.

      True, but I see a hitch: exactly how are we going to do this considering? In particular who will make the decision to pull the trigger. Someone is going to have to make the decision to put Louisiana out of its misery if you're going to be "moving people out of the state". Or by "moving people out of state" do you mean letting nature take its course and generating millions of environmental refugees.

      I see megaengineering projects in our future -- not because they make sense, but because the political decision to face the consequences is too hard. In part the LA situation is the result of past megaprojects to contain flooding, which is what deposited the soil in coastal LA in the first place. What's more these megaprojects will likewise have an exclusively short-term focus, because facing long-term trends are too politically difficult. Should the project factor in IPCC sea level rise projections? Hah! Good luck with that.

      --
      Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
    34. Re: Louisiana is one big sinkhole by LifesABeach · · Score: 1

      Consider the reality of it. Those that have the resources to effectively cause a solution are beating the drum loudest for humanity it ignore the issue of raising sea levels and those human actions that cause it. So you've got to ask yourself some serious questions. One such question is, "What would the sea level be if both polar caps and Greenland melted?"

    35. Re: Louisiana is one big sinkhole by Dread_ed · · Score: 1

      So we, the citizens, own the air. And the government will tax corporations that put CO2 and other pollutants into our air. Then, those corporations will raise their prices to cover the cost of the tax.

      So we, the citizens who own the air, will be paying to have our air polluted. ...........!

      This is the stupidest fucking thing I have ever heard of.

      --
      When the only tool you have is a claw hammer every problem starts to look like the back of someone's skull.
    36. Re: Louisiana is one big sinkhole by hey! · · Score: 2

      Well, with a carbon tax the government would set the taxation rate, and it would be like any other tax... and that's the problem with carbon taxes: regulatory capture. In the US people who pay a lot of taxes have outsized influence on tax policy.

      This is why some environmentalists prefer cap and trade. In that system the government sets limits based on overall carbon emission goals. You'd first try to meet those caps by developing emission reduction technology, and if you reduced more than necessary you could sell the credit for the extra reduction to someone who was having trouble meeting their cap at a price mutually agreed upon without regulatory oversight. In other words the market would determine carbon credit trading prices.

      The economic advantage of this system over carbon taxation is that it is more flexible. Imagine that an overall reduction of, say, 50% in CO2 emissions is technologically feasible, but that doesn't mean every industry can feasibly achieve 50%. Under cap and trade if the airlines have trouble meeting their cap they could buy credits from the industries that can find ways that will save more than 50%.

      This leads to the environmental benefit: more carbon reduction. You can tell the airlines they've got to reduce CO2 by 50% but they physically can't do it, they can't. But if the electricity generators could cut their carbon by 75%, they aren't going to do so unless they have a financial reason -- either carbon taxes or the ability to sell the extra reduction. Cap and trade has the same effect as carbon taxes, but it uses a carrot and stick approach.

      This leads to the political benefit: carbon reduction will be someone's rice bowl. In a system where money talks loudest, that's important.

      --
      Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
    37. Re: Louisiana is one big sinkhole by thegarbz · · Score: 1

      Citizens do.

      Oh? Where is that written down? I mean sure it's implied, but where is the legal document declaring the air the property of the citizens. Also how much do they get? What control is legally given to us over it? If someone passes wind in an elevator can we hold them legally liable?

    38. Re: Louisiana is one big sinkhole by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      But seeing as leaving it to the market to actually set the price means oil is obscenely cheap and it's use continues, until costs in other parts of the economy hit damaging levels (ie. how much do you want to spend on house insurance, flood remediation, and rising food costs, etc.) I did say "artificial scarcity".

      1. "its" not "it's"
      2. According to Gore and the other alarmists the entire coastline around the world is supposed to have already been under water for a decade already.
      3. But even if you're right then so what? So insurance goes up-- so? So flooding increases-- so? Nothing stays the same. Holding back progress in order to try and stave off the inevitable is just stupid.

      The fact is that CO2 emissions are trapping more heat in the lower atmosphere, the oceans and the surface of the planet. If you have some alternative solution, explain how it will solve this problem without creating an extremely intrusive regulatory regime, which everyone is going to hate a helluva lot more than simply setting a price on CO2 emissions.

      The simple fact that alarmists are forcing all kinds of bullshit down everyone's throats is already unacceptable. Putting lube on the dildo doesn't change things much. How about fuck off and leave me alone instead?

    39. Re: Louisiana is one big sinkhole by MightyMartian · · Score: 1

      Why don't we deal with what scientists, rather than you going off on tangents about "alarmists" and seeming to accept the inevitability that which we could change. It's almost as if you don't actually want to deal with the science or the repercussions of human activities, but would rather play some pointless rhetorical game. I'll state right here that I don't give a fuck what Al Gore or Greenpeace says. They are not sources of information I go to, so throwing out what they say (or what you claim they say, since I don't recall any report that Al Gore said all the coast lines would be underwater by 2017) doesn't mean fuck all to me.

      Yes, things change. Eventually the house you're living in will fall down. So I guess it's okay if I come and light in on fire, right?

      --
      The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
    40. Re: Louisiana is one big sinkhole by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Tell that to Cliven Bundy and his cow poop.

      AC

    41. Re: Louisiana is one big sinkhole by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      We actually did this in Australia, and two things happened: the government gave the carbon tax revenue back to the people by raising the minimum income tax threshold, which mostly covered any price rises (primarily from coal-burning electricity companies), and people started buying more carbon-neutral electricity from hydro, solar etc, which were now cheaper than coal power because no carbon taxes to pay. Result: people were fine and our emissions dropped, but our coal companies (and the right-wing politicians who supported them) were not so happy.

    42. Re: Louisiana is one big sinkhole by radarskiy · · Score: 1

      "those corporations will raise their prices"

      You have assumed that the amount of pollutants emitted is immutable.

      If a corporation merely raises prices to exactly cover the taxation, they sell fewer units and have lower earnings without reducing pollution.

      If they reduce the pollution at a lower cost than the tax rate for the pollution, this creates a smaller shift in the supply curve, creates a market incentive for advancement in pollution reduction for their specific processes, and reduces their specific pollution.

      If pollution credits can be traded, this creates a smaller shift in the supply curve, creates a market incentive for advancement in pollution reduction for every process, and reduces pollution broadly.

      Meanwhile you present no method for dealing with external costs at all.

    43. Re: Louisiana is one big sinkhole by reanjr · · Score: 1

      No one has to set prices. You simply set emission standards by granting a certain number of carbon credits which can be spent to pollute. The price is determined by free trade of said credits.

      Still a dumb idea, because using markets to solve environmental issues (especially global ones) is terribly inefficient and subject to abuse.

      We COULD solve water quality issues with no regulation on pollutants, but by slicing up the waterways with private rights. Most people rightly see this as a horrible idea that only works on paper.

      For some reason, those people seem to think it will work for carbon, though.

    44. Re: Louisiana is one big sinkhole by WindBourne · · Score: 1

      yes, but their are several issues with 'carbon taxes'.
      1) we really need to apply it to GOODS/Service based on where the worst part/service comes from. This way, it involves ALL nations.
      2) we need a standard approach to measuring CO2. The ideal way is to use Japan's new CO2 sat, along with OCO-3, that trump just grounded. With these 2, we can get absolute numbers and can see CO2 moving IN and OUT of an area.
      3) need a better form of normalization. Considering that ppl in general do NOT make the choies on emissions, then this should be tied to emissions / $GDP. That way, businesses and govs will work together in their local area to drop their emissions. Otherwise, as taxes go up on an area, the businesses will leave.

      --
      I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
    45. Re: Louisiana is one big sinkhole by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You assume the rain falls evenly and everywhere on earth but Louisiana. And that there is no lake, river or dam upstream of it that could breach.

    46. Re: Louisiana is one big sinkhole by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      "practically FLOATING on a giant aquifer"

      How much of the sinking is due to excessive abstraction from the aquifers?

    47. Re: Louisiana is one big sinkhole by bestweasel · · Score: 1

      The Dutch managed it pretty well, centuries ago. Would there be any objections from Louisianans to having huge dykes in their state? Call them walls and tell Trump they'll keep out Mexican waves and he'll pay for them (well, use other people's taxes to pay for them).

    48. Re: Louisiana is one big sinkhole by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      They already have big dykes down there and you don't want to meet up with them because they're mean. I think you mean sea walls that keep the water out which is spelled dikes.
      The insistence on remaining in a place that is geographically underneath the Gulf of Mexico using my tax money is an enormous and ruinous waste.
      Anytime the pump fails the whole place goes and then more of my tax money comes traveling in.. .

    49. Re: Louisiana is one big sinkhole by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Until recent times Democrats controlled about 97% of Louisiana since reconstruction.
      Democrat controlled New Orleans was given money to strengthen their levies and they spent it on a Mardi Gras Fountain instead. Who knows what they did with the rest of it besides put it in their pocket.

    50. Re: Louisiana is one big sinkhole by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I do have a better idea and it's called nuclear power. We could have had 100% carbon free energy by now had not liberals of the 1970s let their anti-science emotions control their politics.

    51. Re: Louisiana is one big sinkhole by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Not leaving you alone while controlling and manipulating everything you do is the entire point of the global warming Church.
      They take your money as penance (you've been bad) and your obedience as a signal to increase ever harsher penalties and controls on everything you do (like any other cult) until you wake up in a North Korea like state and have to eat tree bark for food. All this based on an unscientific lie that was invented just 40 years ago.
      We've had the ability to use carbon free energy since the 1950s in just about any amount we wanted. If the only thing they did was get out of the way of nuclear power and encouraged it to go forward that would solve this bogus non problem tomorrow.
      But they don't want it solved even if it was a problem because they would have to invent another Boogeyman to extract money and rights from Free People.

    52. Re: Louisiana is one big sinkhole by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Nuclear is fine, except for the possible disasters, natural or terrorist-related. That said, water dams can cause the same troubles: more violent but not lasting as long.

    53. Re: Louisiana is one big sinkhole by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You can't tell the difference between science and religion. Go back to Infowars.

    54. Re: Louisiana is one big sinkhole by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You think insurance companies put tens to hundreds of billions of dollars on the line and are not at least as smart as you? It's absurd to even consider that they would boil it down to just one number...

    55. Re: Louisiana is one big sinkhole by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      So obviously you buy things from the companies that polluted less, and raised the prices less, or not at all.
      Why would you not buy cheap things?
      This is completely obvious...

      Are you paid to be this dense? Or don't you believe in markets?

    56. Re: Louisiana is one big sinkhole by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Well it is America, you could sue them for causing emotional distress and violating your safe space.

    57. Re: Louisiana is one big sinkhole by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Flood insurance is only provided by the Federal government. There is zero private flood insurance.

    58. Re: Louisiana is one big sinkhole by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Companies do not own the atmosphere. Citizens do. If they want to put things in our property we have every right to charge them rent by means of a tax.

      Citizens do not own the atmosphere - nor does humanity, for that matter. The atmosphere was here before we were, and will be around after we've gone. Heinlein discussed a family pet, centuries old, who felt that it was raising generations of Johnsons (?), rather than the other way around. Palaniuk mentioned antique French furniture that traded people whenever they died or went broke. Pretending that you own the air is like pretending that the water molecules that have been on earth for billions of years care about you.
      All you should be arguing is who is protecting your (perceived) interests in the atmosphere.

    59. Re: Louisiana is one big sinkhole by Dread_ed · · Score: 1

      You seem wise. My post was in half-jest. An oversimplification based on the presupposition that government and corporations will co-create this tax system and do so in a way that it favorable to them, not the people.

      I would ask you this: How do you reconcile instituting an entirely new tax scheme when we already have regulatory bodies in place that monitor and control the means of production in this country?

      Meaning, why would it be beneficial to create an entirely new tax system when you can achieve the same end result (lower pollution) by changing regulations for these industries?

      I am very wary of giving our coporatist government the impetus and support required to create a new tax system. I have serious doubts that it would be implemented in a way that truly benefits the people of the country. I can see the undue influence of our political system's sponsors and lobbyists creating something that does not work as advertised and our elected officials telling us "you will need to pass it to see what is in it," yet again. Then, once it is passed and we start to see the poor results and broken promises hearing "nobody knew that energy policy could be so complicated."

      Am I just too distrusting? Do you have faith that the US government would implement a sweeping new taxation policy in a way that doesn't end up fleecing the US electorate?

      --
      When the only tool you have is a claw hammer every problem starts to look like the back of someone's skull.
    60. Re: Louisiana is one big sinkhole by radarskiy · · Score: 1

      Pollution of a given type is locally fungible. If two factories next to each other are emitting the same pollutant, you can't really tell the difference in origin. However, if the factories create that pollutant as an output of different processes, the costs of reducing the pollutants can be wildly different. As reduction of the total pollutants is the actual public policy goal, that public policy should focus on maximizing that total without overspecifying what the components are.

      This method also includes several other good economic ideas, such as: prices are a means to compare dissimilar things; and absent a natural market, e.g. when dealing with external costs, you can create an artificial market via tradeable credits or taxes to take advantage of the optimization powers of markets.

      Also, it allows you to say "market" a lot when selling a government policy, and say "public policy" a lot when selling a market. ;-)

    61. Re: Louisiana is one big sinkhole by YouGotTobeKidding · · Score: 1

      The Dutch 'managed it' by having incredibly small cities.. and building on stilts. Take a look at a map of say New Orleans. Compared it to modern NO... and it is obvious what has happened. We drained swamps, built land-level buildings (some with even below ground basements) and wonder why those 'newly reclaimed land' flood costing billions in damage.

    62. Re: Louisiana is one big sinkhole by Agripa · · Score: 1

      1) So who sets the prices? Any governmental price controls on any commodity (which carbon credits are) means there is no free market involvement.

      1a) If the government sets prices, it is nothing more than a de facto regulatory scheme dressed up as commodity.

      But without the complexity of the alternatives, the opportunities for rent seeking are limited although this benefit is the very thing which makes this solution unattractive to politicians; they are all about rent seeking. Pigloviant taxes are a way to account for negative externalities and one of the few places where government can play a constructive role.

      2) Enforcement? Good luck with that.

      Gasoline taxes? Good luck with that.

      3) What's to keep government from requiring individuals (in addition to businesses) to buy these things, as a form of consumption tax?

      What prevents the government from doing that now?

      A carbon tax is exactly that; a tax on fossil carbon which will become carbon dioxide. It only has to be be taxed once in the production and consumption cycle.

      4) I thought we all got out of the business of selling indulgences back when Martin Luther showed up?

      Most of our taxes are effectively indulgences. Why would you think otherwise?

      What is the difference between a sin tax and any other tax? Nothing, there is no difference. The government taxes productivity, savings, income, profits, and cigarettes because it considers them all to be bad.

    63. Re: Louisiana is one big sinkhole by Agripa · · Score: 1

      Government doesn't actually have to set the price. They just cap the availability and an auction process sets the price. Cap and trade ends up being more flexible and responsive to market conditions than a flat rate pollution tax.

      \

      And most importantly, cap and trade allows for unlimited opportunities for rent seeking.

      The government can manipulate the auction results via supply or reserve tranches of credits, (effectively at cheaper prices) for some nationally important industries or exempt small emitters (like you and your car) while requiring large emitters like an airline or rail conglomerate or a electrical utility to purchase the credits each year.

      Exaclty, the advantage of cap and trade to facilitate rent seeking is what makes a Pigloviant tax on fossil carbon politically infeasible. A carbon tax is not corruptible enough.

    64. Re: Louisiana is one big sinkhole by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yeah, much better to burn carbon, which is a certain disaster.

  2. Its pretty important... by cayenne8 · · Score: 4, Informative
    This area of LA....a large percentage of the US's seafood comes from here, and, a large portion of the US's domestic oil comes from the Gulf into LA, and processed here.

    Oil from all over the place is processed here.

    The people that work these jobs, live on the coast and the sealife that supports these folks and provides a good amount of seafood to the US will disappear if this coastal erosion is allowed to continue.

    This isn't just for the people of Louisiana, but for the great resources it provides the rest of the US.

    --
    Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
    1. Re:Its pretty important... by Major+Blud · · Score: 3, Informative

      It's a shame more people don't realize this, as evidenced by the multiple posts on here suggesting that people need to relocate. I've lived all over the country, but I've spent the majority of my life here in Louisiana and I'd like to stay here.

      The majority of the folks affected by this live in areas such as Plaquemines, Terrebone, and Lafourche parishes aren't rich by any means.
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
      They were born here; to suggest that they just pack up and move is pretty short-sighted and somewhat insulting.

      The other part of this that's frustrating is that there isn't a simple engineering solution to fix this. The levee system, while keeping urban areas from flooding, prevents sediment build-up that would restore some of the coast line. Even nutria rats are partially responsible for the eroding coast.

      --
      If you post as Anonymous Coward, don't expect a reply.
    2. Re:Its pretty important... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      a large percentage of the US's seafood comes from here

      So this is good news, more sea, more seafood.

      Oil sucks too. Even better news.

      Those people probably voted Trump. Let them live their news exciting Kevin Costner lifestyle.

    3. Re:Its pretty important... by freeze128 · · Score: 1

      Well, if the water is encroaching on the land, that won't affect the SEA LIFE now, will it? The ocean will still have fish in it.

      This sounds like a terrible ecological disaster, but maybe it's just an opportunity for the people who live on the coast to adapt to the situation. How about building modern FLOATING canneries and docks that can change with the environment. You can try to build a levee to hold back the water, but that will only work for so long.

    4. Re:Its pretty important... by Baron_Yam · · Score: 4, Insightful

      >They were born here; to suggest that they just pack up and move is pretty short-sighted and somewhat insulting.

      The White House no longer recognizes man's effect on climate, which means there's little hope of policy directed at mitigating man's effects on climate - and still probably none even if they acknowledge the climate is changing and are merely ignoring man's role.

      Beyond that, the White House already had very little control over other nations that are or likely will significantly affect climate going forward.

      So... we're not going to fix the problem any time soon. The ocean doesn't care where you were born, it doesn't decide where its rising levels will flood land.

      To suggest people pack up and move isn't insulting, it's unfortunately common sense given the circumstances.

    5. Re:Its pretty important... by MightyYar · · Score: 1

      which means there's little hope of policy directed at mitigating man's effects on climate

      Why? So they don't call it man-made climate change and they call it God-made climate change... either way, the water comes up and mitigation has to happen. In places with a lot of infrastructure investment, it can make sense to shore things up. In other places, as you say it makes more sense to relocate. But none of that has anything to do with what causes the climate to change.

      --
      W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
    6. Re:Its pretty important... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You choose to live there, so I'm sure it is a big deal for you, but for everyone else you just seem entitled. Why should we give a shit about your home eroding away? It's not our fault you choose to live there is it? Move, or deal with the problem yourself.

    7. Re:Its pretty important... by Major+Blud · · Score: 0

      Everything you said is true, but this part is more complicated than that:

      To suggest people pack up and move isn't insulting, it's unfortunately common sense given the circumstances

      Who is going to help cover the cost of this? It sucks that people throw a fit when we deny entry to illegal aliens, but won't lift a finger to help these folks.

      --
      If you post as Anonymous Coward, don't expect a reply.
    8. Re: Its pretty important... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Does that mean seafood would be closer to the Midwest? Might drive the price down.

    9. Re:Its pretty important... by OhPlz · · Score: 2

      Why should the rest of the country pay to relocate people who chose to be near the ocean? That isn't a federal issue, that's for the state or local governments to figure out.

    10. Re:Its pretty important... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I am sure the buildup of toxins in the dirt from the past few hundred years of human activity will have little effect...

    11. Re:Its pretty important... by TrumpShaker · · Score: 1

      I sometimes get the idea that some parts of our government want this to happen, so they can brag or take credit for the "new" jobs created when the seafood industry, oil industry, etc. rebuild at the new coastal line. However, those industries don' t HAVE to rebuild.

    12. Re:Its pretty important... by Major+Blud · · Score: 1, Insightful

      I guess you missed the part of my post where I said that most of these folks were born in that area.

      For all those folks in Syria, why should I have to pay for them to relocate? They chose to live there!

      --
      If you post as Anonymous Coward, don't expect a reply.
    13. Re:Its pretty important... by Baron_Yam · · Score: 4, Insightful

      The denial of man's role is part of denying the change at all, because they're happy with the status quo. For some it's economics - they profit under the current system and alterations to reduce or fight the effects of climate change will reduce those profits, for some it's pure denial that the world could ever change.

      When the water's up around their ankles, they're scream bloody murder for levees, but that's about it. If it's somebody else up to their ankles they'll come up with some way to rationalize how it was always a risk and the climate hasn't actually changed, and how it's the fault of those who chose to live there.

    14. Re:Its pretty important... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      And yet a lot of the people catching that seafood don't believe in climate change. Because they think science is a wild guess with 50:50 chance of being right. And even if it does happen, it won't impact them or their livelihoods. The changes they're seeing? They either deny there's been any change, or that's just the ebb and flow of the world. It'll come back 'round soon they reckon. Having lived down there I can tell you that most of the damn state is about faking it to make it. Louisianans are so short sighted they can't even consider anything happening more than a month or two out. This is why so many Louisianans are on disability due to serious injury, morbidly obese, or suffering from preventable cancers in their 40's.

    15. Re:Its pretty important... by Orgasmatron · · Score: 5, Insightful

      This has nothing to do with climate. It has nothing to do with "rising sea levels". It has everything to do with 150 years of engineering the Mississippi river. That river flows an ungodly amount of water, and that water picks stuff up and drops it off. Every geographical feature in that area was (mostly) the result of a dynamic equilibrium between sediment deposits and erosion. We've changed the river, and now the land is adjusting to a new equilibrium.

      --
      See that "Preview" button?
    16. Re:Its pretty important... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      As I understand it, the biggest problem is NOT climate change or any other such disaster; the problem is human interference. They have channeled and canalled and levee'd and dredged the Mississippi output. The water -full of silt - that used to wash over the delta and deposit replacement dirt on the marshes and islands during heavy flow days (?) now is channeled along the river between high banks and well out to sea. The current delta is disappearing, but a few hundred years from now there might be a huge new marshy delta extending from where the river now spills into the gulf well past the current delta. Just look at Google earth to see the effect.

      You can't have it both ways, you can't stop the periodic floods that help replace the soild and also defend the soil you have against wave action.

    17. Re:Its pretty important... by MightyMartian · · Score: 3, Insightful

      For the same reason part of the country pays to bring water to cities in a desert, or pays to have people live in Tornado Alley.

      I'm fascinated by this notion that some have that societies should be fundamentally sociopathic... unless of course it's your own backyard, and then suddenly no amount of public funds is too much.

      --
      The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
    18. Re:Its pretty important... by NatasRevol · · Score: 1

      Wait, I can get paid to live in Oklahoma?

      Do tell me how!!

      --
      There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
    19. Re:Its pretty important... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      One could also inspect the argument "the White House already had very little control over other nations that are or likely will significantly affect climate going forward" a bit closer..

      It's like saying it's OK to keep kicking on someone lying down, because someone else is also doing it and not likely to stop any time soon!

    20. Re:Its pretty important... by Major+Blud · · Score: 2

      Thanks for bringing some sanity to this thread. I've followed some of your' comments on here before, and we may have have public disagreements on things, but thanks for keeping things civil.

      --
      If you post as Anonymous Coward, don't expect a reply.
    21. Re:Its pretty important... by NatasRevol · · Score: 1

      Probably much less so than all the oil wells just off the coast.

      --
      There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
    22. Re:Its pretty important... by Baron_Yam · · Score: 1

      You should reconsider your interpretation.

      I was saying they had little influence before, now they're giving up what little they had.

      That is not the same as saying, "We should give up because we can't stop the other guy from doing it anyway".

    23. Re:Its pretty important... by JudgeFurious · · Score: 3, Insightful

      No. No it won't. The people who work these jobs live on the coast and since the Gulf of Mexico has a rather long coast that stretches from, well "Mexico" all the way to the tip of Florida I'm sure somebody in this world is going to work these jobs and continue to live on the coast. For that matter if the coast moves inland how is that supposed to prevent people from living near the coast (You don't actually think all of these people live on the beach do you?). Yes, the existing coastline changes. It continues to change and will keep changing. Nothing is going to stop that from happening entirely but lots of people live near the coast in Louisiana and will never be affected by this to any great degree. Seafood doesn't even factor into this. "More" ocean is supposed to translate into less seafood? Seriously?

      --
      Appended to the end of comments you post. 120 chars.
    24. Re:Its pretty important... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      This is not a climate problem.

      Louisiana is on a portion of the continental shelf that is extremely weak due to an asteroid impact in the gulf millions of years ago, and that weakened shelf is slowly subsiding. The only thing keeping Louisiana above water was the regular deposit of eroded soil from the mississippi river. But the Mississippi has been tightly contained by levees for decades now, partly for flood control, and partly to improve its suitability for transport. But this means it's no longer adding enough soil to south louisiana keep it above the waterline, instead all that soil is getting dumped far out into the gulf.

    25. Re:Its pretty important... by amiga3D · · Score: 1

      You do know don't you that land erosion isn't as much of a problem for the seafood as it is for us? I mean, they live in the water.

    26. Re:Its pretty important... by Luthair · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Beyond that, the White House already had very little control over other nations that are or likely will significantly affect climate going forward.

      Well, they could have supported a number of international accords aimed at reducing emissions.

    27. Re:Its pretty important... by Luthair · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Why should the rest of the country pay to relocate people who chose to be near the ocean? That isn't a federal issue, that's for the state or local governments to figure out.

      Maybe because the issue has been caused in no small part by 300-million Americans driving SUVs, trucks, and burning coal. This is where the funds from a carbon tax should go.

    28. Re:Its pretty important... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Well they're welcome to drown, I suppose.

      I support giving them enough money to afford similar living elsewhere, and if they choose to stay, the government will not be responsible for them. At some point you have to write large portions of Louisiana off as not salvageable.

    29. Re:Its pretty important... by MightyYar · · Score: 1

      When the water's up around their ankles, they're scream bloody murder for levees, but that's about it. If it's somebody else up to their ankles they'll come up with some way to rationalize how it was always a risk and the climate hasn't actually changed, and how it's the fault of those who chose to live there.

      OK, but how does that have anything to do with what is causing the climate change? As you say, no one can deny that things have changed once there are people standing around ankle deep in water. At that point they can choose to help those people or not, but this has nothing to do with their feelings on anthropomorphic climate change. A libertarian or small-government conservative who believes in climate science is still going to advocate for no assistance while a liberal or social conservative who denies climate science will still advocate for assistance. While I concede that there is a strong correlation between political beliefs and climate denial, that does not mean that climate denial is the causal factor in whether or not the person believes in government mitigation.

      It's analogous to vaccine denial - just because anti-vaxers are retards doesn't mean they will sit around and let the plague wash over them. When the shit hits the fan, they'll deal with the mitigation even while denying that they had a thing to do with it.

      --
      W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
    30. Re:Its pretty important... by MightyMartian · · Score: 2

      Roads are built, right aways and easements are put in place for utilities, police and fire services, and other public services exist.

      --
      The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
    31. Re:Its pretty important... by CanadianMacFan · · Score: 2

      The marshes on the coast are where the fish spend the first part of the their lives in relative safety before heading out to more open areas. When the incoming water destroys land it is removing the marshes and they are not being replaced so the sea life will be impacted as the young fish won't have as many protected areas to grow up in.

    32. Re:Its pretty important... by Nunya666 · · Score: 2

      It's a shame more people don't realize this, as evidenced by the multiple posts on here suggesting that people need to relocate. I've lived all over the country, but I've spent the majority of my life here in Louisiana and I'd like to stay here.

      That's your choice. Why should the rest of society subsidize your poor choices?

      They were born here; to suggest that they just pack up and move is pretty short-sighted and somewhat insulting.

      No, to suggest that they just pack up and move is common sense. The U.S. is a mighty big country. Just pick another location, and move. To continue living anywhere that continues to get battered by Mother Nature is just plain ignorant. Just because they think it's "home" is not a valid reason. Just because they were born there is not a valid reason. At some point in your life, you have to take responsibility for your actions. And that includes where you choose to live.

    33. Re:Its pretty important... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      As they are everywhere - with local (and/or private) money - not federal. And the costs are not significantly increased by tornadoes.

    34. Re: Its pretty important... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      So you're saying it has everything to do with human activity, making denials of climate change irrelevant.

    35. Re: Its pretty important... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      This needs to be modded up +10000. This is the real issue at hand.

    36. Re:Its pretty important... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Maybe because the issue has been caused in no small part by 300-million Americans driving SUVs, trucks, and burning coal.

      It takes a special kind of stupid to keep parroting this line around.

    37. Re:Its pretty important... by cayenne8 · · Score: 1

      That's your choice. Why should the rest of society subsidize your poor choices?

      No, to suggest that they just pack up and move is common sense. The U.S. is a mighty big country. Just pick another location, and move. To continue living anywhere that continues to get battered by Mother Nature is just plain ignorant. Just because they think it's "home" is not a valid reason. Just because they were born there is not a valid reason. At some point in your life, you have to take responsibility for your actions. And that includes where you choose to live.

      The point is...if this happens off the coast of LA to the point of the worst case scenario....this will not just affect those people who "choose to live there"...it will effect a great portion of the US economy, which will affect the whole country.

      If you even discount the amount of domestic seafood that this part of LA produces for the whole of the US, you'll definitely feel it in the shortages of oil and gas that come from this area. Not only production from the Gulf coming in (those people that work those platforms live close to the coast for access to work)....but also the large processing plants in LA for oil from all over the world that feeds into the US.

      Chances are, no matter where in the US you live, you likely get your gas from the processing plants in southern LA.

      And for many parts here, New Orleans for instance, it is OLDER than the United States itself. The danger has evolved over the years, and a lot of this erosion is due to the pipes cutting across the bayous and the artificial water ways dug to transport all that oil from the Gulf to the processing plants and then to your tank.

      SO, if you drive a car, or fuel your home heater...you do have a stake in the coastal erosion of southern LA.

      NIMBY the rest of the US, doesn't want the oil refineries....we've given our coastline for the rest of the US, so why not shows some togetherness and thankfulness for that and help restore the coast.

      If you're going to be that way....there is NO safe place in the US to live. Should we tell all the folks along the MS river to move, since it floods there? What about all those folks living where wildfires annually are rampant in CA? NYC is pretty much a huge terrorist target, why should we pay to protect it...etc?

      Don't be so fucking selfish....

      --
      Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
    38. Re:Its pretty important... by luis_a_espinal · · Score: 1

      It's a shame more people don't realize this, as evidenced by the multiple posts on here suggesting that people need to relocate. I've lived all over the country, but I've spent the majority of my life here in Louisiana and I'd like to stay here.

      The majority of the folks affected by this live in areas such as Plaquemines, Terrebone, and Lafourche parishes aren't rich by any means. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... They were born here; to suggest that they just pack up and move is pretty short-sighted and somewhat insulting.

      The notion that people must be immune to relocation just because they "were born there" is an insult to human nature. Conditions change, Things go south, .Shit happens. People relocate, never to return. It's what humans do. It's what humans are meant to do.

    39. Re:Its pretty important... by cayenne8 · · Score: 2

      Seafood doesn't even factor into this. "More" ocean is supposed to translate into less seafood? Seriously?

      Actually it will.

      The brackish water of the marshes that is eroding...is a major part of the ecosystem of birth and lifecycle on a lot of fish that start there, breed there, but move more into the ocean. Oysters live on that edge between fresh and salt water....if you lose the marshes, you lose that wide area they can proliferate.

      There's also the bird population that depends on this area.

      So, no, it is not as simple as "more ocean". That entire ecosystem between the ocean and the fresh water is very important and if not replaced and allowed to disappear, will have great consequences for the seafood and other life that feed a good bit of the US.

      --
      Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
    40. Re:Its pretty important... by Layzej · · Score: 2

      As I understand it, the biggest problem is NOT climate change or any other such disaster; the problem is human interference. They have channeled and canalled and levee'd and dredged the Mississippi output. The water -full of silt - that used to wash over the delta and deposit replacement dirt on the marshes and islands during heavy flow days (?) now is channeled along the river between high banks and well out to sea.

      There are many factors. Sea level rise is one of them. As it is the one that is accelerating, it is likely to play an ever increasing role.

    41. Re:Its pretty important... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Do you realize that much of the hatchery for that seafood is in the marshes... And it is the marshes that are disappearing?

      No marshes, no seafood.

      Just a bigger dead area in the gulf.

    42. Re:Its pretty important... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Will it affect shareholders? If not, why should they care? Taking note that it's supereasy to sell US shares and buy in another country.

    43. Re:Its pretty important... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Okay you will acknowledge a delicate dynamic equilibrium that is disturbed by human meddling in a river delta, but you won't acknowledge the same complexity for the global issue of climate change. And voted +5. What an idiot forum.

    44. Re:Its pretty important... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      You know, this is where the Bullshit Train boards. You list several important causes of flooding and yet you insist that "climate has nothing to do with it". Why leave out that cause, when you accept all the other causes?

      Oh right, climate change cannot be real. So divert attention to the other issues and fight a rearguard action against climate change. Your politics are showing.

      In 50 or 100 years, Louisiana may be in real trouble, along with Florida and numerous coastal cities. At that time your spiritual successors will curse their political opponents for not doing enough to stop or mitigate the damage. And that's what will happen, no introspection, no acceptance that one's own side spent decades in denial, no truth or accountability. There will be endless attempts to blame "Librals" and "Godless Scientists" and "Worshippers of False Idols".

      All aboard the Bullshit Train!!

    45. Re:Its pretty important... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Don't live on a flood plain that sits 6 inches above sea level. Just like I would be against dumping money into california to shore up the state against earthquakes with some cockamamie scheme. You live somewhere like that you need to be prepared for when the land sinks out from under you or slides down from above you.

    46. Re:Its pretty important... by Just+Some+Guy · · Score: 1
      Question: what would it take to get you to admit that measurably rising sea levels due to climate change is causing problems? We're losing goddamn Louisiana to it. Literally everyone who studies this stuff for a living agrees with this. No one seriously doubts it. But you'd rather blame some river hacking for literally submerging Louisiana.

      What are you going to blame when we lose Florida? Is there a convenient river there to point the finger at? What ungodly amount of river water is flowing through the Solomon Islands that's causing them to disappear7?

      --
      Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
    47. Re:Its pretty important... by Waffle+Iron · · Score: 3, Informative

      So ironically, transporting the oil and gas out of the region is putting oil and gas production in jeopardy.

      That would seem to be yet another reason to transition this country away from fossil fuels altogether. That would address both the erosion issue and the fossil fuel dependence at the same time.

      As far as seafood goes, there's going to be a coastline somewhere, no matter how far it moves into the current state of Louisiana. The seafood will still come from wherever that is.

    48. Re:Its pretty important... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      doesn't mean they will sit around and let the plague wash over them

      That's exactly what they'll do. Just like the fucken climate deniers will keep ignoring the truth until the planet is irrecoverably fucked.

    49. Re:Its pretty important... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yeah, its important to remember a massive shift to hundreds of miles of coastline can only have one single contributing factor! Its a good thing you calculated the mass and location of all the silt the river moved for the past 10,000 years and controlled for and eliminated every conceivable outside factor...like, you know...what thousands of scientists have been doing for the past 50 years on man made CO2 driven climate change.

    50. Re:Its pretty important... by MightyYar · · Score: 1

      That's simply not true. People built dikes and levees all throughout history. It's only in the last 20 years that we've had credible climate science. What makes you think that people will suddenly become fundamentally different?

      --
      W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
    51. Re:Its pretty important... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Your reference link to losing Florida starts out with "In the most dire predictions". I think the alarmist view isn't really the best one to base a rational view from. Sure, consider them. Consider both extremes. Consider the likelihood that the truth is probably somewhere between the extremes, then come back for the discussion.

      As a resident in the area of that story I can tell you first hand that most of the flooding in my city is simply due to poor management. Not keeping storm drains clear and pumps operational. That's all it is chicken little. It has nothing to do with sea-level. You probably don't follow the local news coverage about maintenance workers taking naps rather than actually clearing out the storm drains. But yeah, it must be climate change, right?

    52. Re:Its pretty important... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Wow, talk about clueless. Most roads are funded by Federal highway dollars, not local or state funding much less private funding. This type of ignorance is what got us Trump.

    53. Re:Its pretty important... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Stop trying to educate them.

      They don't want to be educated!

      It's time to give up. Let them destroy the environment. Let them destroy our home, the only planet we know for certain supports life.

      You know those movies like Independence Day where aliens attack so they can strip mine our planet? My only fear is that the true future of humanity is something like that. We'll destroy the Earth. Then we'll destroy any planets around TRAPPIST-1 that might support life. Then we'll destroy LHC-1140b if it might support life.

      Please let this species kill itself here on Earth before we become the Harvesters.

    54. Re:Its pretty important... by Beezlebub33 · · Score: 4, Interesting

      I'd have a lot more sympathy for people from LA, if their representatives didn't vote against aid for people affected by Hurricaine Sandy. That would be Reps. Steve Scalise, John Flemming and Sen. Bill Cassidy. See: http://www.latimes.com/busines... for example. And I'd be more sympathetic if Sen. Cassidy wasn't a climate change skeptic. If the oil companies want to buy a themselves a LA senator, they can pay for protecting the state from climate change too.

      --
      The more people I meet, the better I like my dog.
    55. Re:Its pretty important... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      And where do you live?

      It is honestly like everyone forgot the whole purpose of forming a country is to share the burden with your neighbor so the impact is spread across a larger number of people. As a society we are able to do great works as we pool our resources.

      Every part of this country has some regular destructive force, when that region gets hit other regions are usually doing fine so we share the burden and everyone gets back on their feet faster.

      If you let LA erode then you open the door to more and more states eroding as the damage spreads. There is a line to draw though between the cost of protecting a region and the cost of relocating its inhabitants. If we are going to continue to deny climate change exists we're going to have to start dealing with its effects. The irony is that the regions affected the most by climate change are the ones trying to deny it the hardest.

    56. Re:Its pretty important... by OhPlz · · Score: 1

      I don't see why their place of birth matters. I don't live in the same state I was born in, and I didn't need a federal bailout to move. How pathetic are people that the government has to solve all their problems?

      As for Syria, we should not be relocating them either. They need to get their government under control.

    57. Re:Its pretty important... by OhPlz · · Score: 1

      So everyone that thinks a lot of what the government does is bad is a sociopath?

      I don't want to have to pay to irrigate the desert nor do I want to pay to rescue landowners on the shoreline. I never had the benefit of a shoreline view, therefore why should I be taxed to pay for those that do? If you want to turn all those lands into public beaches, maybe. Why do people living in livable areas of the country need to pay for those geniuses that choose to live in otherwise uninhabitable areas?

    58. Re:Its pretty important... by OhPlz · · Score: 1

      If the feds weren't stealing the money out of our paychecks, the states and towns could tax more to pay for the upkeep themselves. The feds use this money to force states to comply with decisions beyond the authority of the federal government. It's corruption, and it should stop.

    59. Re:Its pretty important... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      He is half right, in that 'engineering' the river delta is a significant contributor to the problem. It was part of the reason Hurricane Katrina was so devastating -- much of the historical marshlands that serve as a buffer to storm-driven water levels are gone. And that engineering was primarily done to facilitate the oil extraction industry.

      But he's 100% wrong that it has "nothing to do with climate" - screwing up the delta was a force multiplier for climate-change induced risks.

      Fixing the problem will require addressing the devastation to the Mississippi delta and the rising sea levels. Neither is sufficient on its own.

    60. Re:Its pretty important... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You mean like the EPA trying to prevent climate change and this whole short of shitstorm from happening?

    61. Re:Its pretty important... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I don't want to have to pay to irrigate the desert nor do I want to pay to rescue landowners on the shoreline

      Yep, this pretty much makes you a fucking sociopath

      I got mine, fuck everyone else

    62. Re:Its pretty important... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      If the feds weren't stealing the money out of our paychecks, the states and towns could tax more to pay for the upkeep themselves. The feds use this money to force states to comply with decisions beyond the authority of the federal government. It's corruption, and it should stop.

      LOL. Republican voting states employ the "feds" to steal money from better educated and more productive "coastal elites" in order to finance their failed flyover culture.

    63. Re:Its pretty important... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You forget to mention God's will
      If all get flooded is because all the evil people living in the sin of Sodom and Gomorrah

    64. Re:Its pretty important... by qeveren · · Score: 1

      "They should have thought of that before they decided to be poor." /s

      --
      Don't just stand there, get that other dog!
    65. Re:Its pretty important... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      They voted for the asshole. Karma is a bitch!

    66. Re:Its pretty important... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      If you really think paying your fair share of taxes is "stealing", then you should, as you yourself noted earlier, relocate to somewhere where this doesn't happen. Sudan, for example.

    67. Re:Its pretty important... by PlusFiveTroll · · Score: 1

      >t you'd rather blame some river hacking for literally submerging Louisiana

      Yes, because in this case you don't know what you're talking about. Flordia is built on rock (limestone in fact), when it see rises it stays the same level. Louisiana is not. The LA flood plain, if we allowed the natural flow of the river would take far longer than all the other land around it to be submerged by sea level rise. You should learn how river deltas work, and the fact they naturally compress over time.

    68. Re:Its pretty important... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Only the Amazon flows an ungodly amount amount of water

    69. Re:Its pretty important... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Is this place still under warranty. If so maybe we can return it to the French and get a replacement.

    70. Re:Its pretty important... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I have never owned a vehicle suv or otherwise that ran on coal, but I do want one. I have seen long gas lines several times in my life. I have never cars line up to get coal.

    71. Re:Its pretty important... by Orgasmatron · · Score: 1

      I'm actually pretty easy to please in this department. I would like to see some indication that the problem is well understood. Predictions that aren't vague, and that don't need to be "corrected" post hoc would do most of it for me.

      But I'm guessing that you have no idea how wobbly the chain is.

      --
      See that "Preview" button?
    72. Re:Its pretty important... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Or maybe it's erosion due to the over-engineered Mississipp river. No, it's just those damn Americans again, no one else drives cars or burns coal, apparently.

    73. Re:Its pretty important... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Both of your arguments are someone flawed.

      With the anti-vaxxers, enough of the virus will survive and more importantly MUTATE. This is why you either do a mass vaccination like Smallpox, or you wind up with a different virus infecting everyone (that's not to say all vaccines are effective without side effects)

      The major difference between "climate changer" and "climate denier" (politican views don't matter here) are HUGE. See the 2 minute mark: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zORv8wwiadQ
      tl;dw:
      - worst case extreme if climate change is false: we wasted a bit of money and impacted the global economy causing a recession due to all the wasted money.
      - worst case extreme if climate change is real: massive amounts of people die, you get to watch those you love perish around you due to rising tides destroying any pitiful leevees. those that survive have trouble feeding themselves.

      Which would you choose?

    74. Re:Its pretty important... by Just+Some+Guy · · Score: 1

      I'm actually pretty impossible to please in this department. I would like to see yet still more indication that the problem is well understood. Predictions that are precise to 15 digits, and that unlike all other scientific endeavors don't need to be "corrected" post hoc would do most of it for me.

      But that's the thing: it is very well understood, and scientists have made many predictions that are panning out. No one's ever going to say "the earth will get x.xxxxxxx% warmer on this date". Predictions are in the form of "we believe the atmosphere will get between x and y% warmer, with a confidence of z". And they've been accurate as stated. Any claims to the contrary are radical restatements of history.

      --
      Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
    75. Re:Its pretty important... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The US government can't even control it's own citizens... a good chunk of them protest constantly. Some even violently so (see the following list: https://mediamatters.org/blog/2017/02/07/trumps-list-underreported-terrorism-completely-ignores-domestic-right-wing-extremism/215260 , and don't forget the Oklahoma City bombing - one of the largest terrorst act on US soil, perpetrated by one or 2 US citizens)

      How do you expect a 2nd / 3rd world country to? Trample basic human rights?

    76. Re:Its pretty important... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It's both. Global sea level is rising, the land on the Mississippi Delta is subsiding, and sediment supply (which ordinarily fills up the space between the sea floor and sea level to form the delta surface) has decreased in all areas but the main channel mouths thanks to the US Army Corps of Engineers. The erosion is enhanced both due to the declining sediment supply over most of the delta and the rising sea level. It's like taking a bad problem and making it worse.

      You are right that it is a dynamic equilibrium, but between 3 processes, not two, and humans are making 2 of the 3 worse than they would be naturally. Even if you didn't have sea level rising and you shut off sediment supply you would still have ground subsidence occurring and the delta coastline would retreat.

    77. Re: Its pretty important... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      We're having to pay for your Mom's poor choices. Moving is expensive. Your privilege is showing.

    78. Re:Its pretty important... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      This has nothing to do with climate. It has nothing to do with "rising sea levels". It has everything to do with 150 years of engineering the Mississippi river. That river flows an ungodly amount of water, and that water picks stuff up and drops it off. Every geographical feature in that area was (mostly) the result of a dynamic equilibrium between sediment deposits and erosion. We've changed the river, and now the land is adjusting to a new equilibrium.

      Nope. Can't say that. It violates the prime narrative. It's man made climate change all the way. Like some Progressive said above, we must tax everyone to death to fix it. Otherwise our lives aren't worth living. Now excuse me while I fall on my fainting couch.

    79. Re:Its pretty important... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      what would it take to get you to admit that measurably rising sea levels due to climate change is causing problems?

      Yay, let's just lazily blame climate change for every negative event from now on without wasting a single second on critical thinking.
      I'm sure there's a reason why five islands in the Solomon Islands have been getting submerged but tens of thousands of islands around the world at a similar altitude haven't been, but fuck thinking about it. I hate humans so I know it was human-caused climate change.
      Everyone knows rivers only started changing course after humans started burning fossil fuels.

    80. Re:Its pretty important... by MightyYar · · Score: 1

      worst case extreme if climate change is real: massive amounts of people die, you get to watch those you love perish around you due to rising tides destroying any pitiful leevees. those that survive have trouble feeding themselves.

      This is bizarre. Even the most pessimistic models have the climate warming a few degrees over the course of a century. This picture you paint of a disaster movie is absurd. People will be displaced, some places will become uninhabitable, others will become habitable. It's not like the ocean will come rushing in and kill everyone in Miami. We aren't looking at "Waterworld". Levees will indeed fail, and the decision will need to be made to either abandon the area or build larger levees. People will be forced to deal with climate change whether or not they believe it is man-made.

      --
      W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
    81. Re:Its pretty important... by OhPlz · · Score: 2

      I call it stealing because they take it automatically from our checks. You can't protest by refusing to pay because they've already taken it. We don't pay, they take without permission.

    82. Re:Its pretty important... by OhPlz · · Score: 0

      Living on the shoreline is a luxury that most in the US don't have, yet the pricks that are able to expect everyone else to bail them out when the ocean tries to claim the shore. It's the people on the shoreline that are the "got mine, fuck everyone else" types.

    83. Re:Its pretty important... by PoopJuggler · · Score: 1

      Because the effects of climate change are not quick and obvious like a flooding river that needs diking. The climate will reach a point-of-no-return where no amount of mitigation will ever fix it. Ever. But by the time the effects of that are obvious enough to turn the heads of deniers, it's too late.

    84. Re:Its pretty important... by Goetterdaemmerung · · Score: 1

      The White House no longer recognizes man's effect on climate, which means there's little hope of policy directed at mitigating man's effects on climate - and still probably none even if they acknowledge the climate is changing and are merely ignoring man's role.

      Seriously? The White House is not omnipotent. All hope does not rest on who runs the executive branch. Write your congressperson. They pass the laws. They can take the power back if they can decide to work together and steamroll the current administration.

    85. Re:Its pretty important... by Orgasmatron · · Score: 1

      The most recent climate model simulations used in the AR5 indicate that the warming stagnation since 1998 is no longer consistent with model projections even at the 2% confidence level.

      For reference, the 2% confidence level is out past "wild ass guess" territory and approaching "enemy action" land. Feel free to link me up a model that has made a successful prediction. (Side note: only predictions of the future are accepted, so these links need to be about 5 years old, minimum.)

      And then there is Pat Frank. He has made a model that more closely matches reality than anything so far put out by the hockey team, but you won't like it. See his essay.and presentation. Watch the presentation, it is fantastic. And be sure to check the math yourself.

      --
      See that "Preview" button?
    86. Re:Its pretty important... by rtb61 · · Score: 1

      The poor do not live on water front with the exclusionary intent to deny others access to that waterfront. The poor also rarely own their homes, so moving not that much of a hassle.

      At an estimate we are talking 2 metres of water rise and mitigation is impossible unless billions is spent. Want to preserve you exclusionary waterfront property, pay for it, put it on stilts and ride a boat to work. You bought there, your problem, it's not like you weren't warned http://www.lenntech.com/greenh... a very long time ago, 18fucking96. Want to get paid, sue those who lied about it, don't expect the poor to pay for the excesses of the rich yet again.

      --
      Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
    87. Re: Its pretty important... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Syria is due to climate change.

      Tyrants that can grow/buy/give enough bread to keep the poor from risking their lives in open rebellion stay in power. People don't risk getting gunned down by tanks and machine guns and fucking airstrikes if the alternative is eating boring food and watching state tv reruns. They fight when death is the likely alternative, theirs or their families.

      That region has been a shithole for a thousand years. The reason they're leaving now is because staying means starving. Gutter trash will move from Louisiana to Texas, guns will be used and people will die on both sides, but not as many as die from disease and infection.

      So... The same as it ever was.

    88. Re:Its pretty important... by MightyYar · · Score: 1

      The climate will reach a point-of-no-return where no amount of mitigation will ever fix it. Ever.

      I really don't know what you mean. The coastline will change, people will have to be moved or the coastline will have to be fortified. That is mitigation. Current farmland will become marginal and marginal farmland will become fertile. Moving stuff around is mitigation. It's not even really a choice - mitigation just has to happen so that people can go on living.

      --
      W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
    89. Re:Its pretty important... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      This is bizarre. Even the most pessimistic models have the climate warming a few degrees over the course of a century.

      This is the problem. People by and large aren't very smart and when they hear that the climate will change by a few degrees they think it's no big deal. "After all" they think, "if the temperature in my house rises a few degrees, it's no big deal, why should it matter if the same thing happens to the whole world". It escapes them completely just what a staggering amount of energy is tied up in those few degrees. They don't understand that, for example, a few degrees in the other direction would mean ice sheets a mile thick over Europe and North America and that a few degrees warmer in climate terms would be similarly dramatic in its effect on the planet. The same people don't get it when you talk about sea level rising by a few feet. In their mind, that just means the water coming up a little higher on the beach. They don't see the hundreds of thousands of square miles of land outright vanishing into the ocean.

    90. Re:Its pretty important... by mcswell · · Score: 2

      According to NOAA (https://tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/sltrends/sltrends.html), sea level rise at Grand Isle LA averaged slightly over 9 mm/ year since 1947, and 9.65 mm/ year at Eugene Island LA. And 4.71 mm/ year at New Canal LA. (Those are the 3 locations on that graphic.) According to the wikipedia (attributed to an IPCC report), average global sea level rise in the 20th century is in the neighborhood of 1.8 mm/ year. Those are different time frames, but afaik the 20th century rise was more or less linear, so the IPCC numbers should hold for the NOAA time frame. That means that the global sea level rise for two of the three LA stations accounts for only about 20% of the rise; less than 40% for the third station.

      So no, you cannot attribute most of the rising sea level in Louisiana to climate change. Instead, most of the problem there is subsidence. And as for whether "Literally everyone who studies this stuff for a living agrees with this", wrong. As stated in the IPCC report (http://old.grida.no//climate/ipcc_tar/wg1/422.htm#tab119): "Coastal subsidence in river delta regions can be an important contributing factor to sea level change, with a typical magnitude of 10 mm/yr, although the phenomenon will usually be of a local character. Regions of documented subsidence include the Mediterranean deltas (Stanley, 1997), the Mississippi delta (Day et al., 1993)..." The sea level rise in LA is real; the attribution of that rise to climate change is only 20% true.

      As for the Solomon Islands, the rise there is also well above global average, something like 7mm/ year. That suggests that factors other than global sea level rise, brought on by climate change, are to blame, as the author of the study (Dr. Simon Albert) that reported on the loss of those islands himself stated.

      And finally, as for Florida, last I looked we haven't lost it. (Well, the Democrats lost it last November, but you know what I mean.) The entire state is on top of a fresh water aquifer, and withdrawals from that aquifer have increased in recent decades. But I don't know whether the removal of fresh water would cause subsidence, or just replacement of fresh water by salt water.

    91. Re:Its pretty important... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Quit your job (lol) and go live off the land, then they wont tax you.
      If you choose to live in a society, they your end of the deal is to pay your share of the taxes.

    92. Re:Its pretty important... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The right wing preaches family and wants everyone to go to church, but then, when the free market fails, they say move away from your family and church.

      Relocate is sometimes the only option, and sometimes it is hypocritical and insulting.

    93. Re:Its pretty important... by ebvwfbw · · Score: 1

      So where is this proof that man has any effect on climate? We have some models, that over the years haven't worked out based on the current level of CO2. As Einstein said - once there is on counter example your proof/theory is no more. Yet they keep trying to prove it is instead of realizing it's not CO2. CO2 is a symptom, not the cause and history going back millions of years proves that. Paying Al Gore a whole bunch of money won't change that. It'll make his get rich quick scheme work, however. It's helped shoddy science that we should all be upset about prevail. Science where we can never reproduce the results that some people received a PhD for.

      One really good indicator that MMGW is a scam is we know the nuts at NASA have been changing the data. All you have to do is look at the way back machine and you can see definitively that the 1930s is not as hot as it actually was. Stubborn facts, so they changed them.

      https://realclimatescience.com...

    94. Re:Its pretty important... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      If you think "the seafood will still come from somewhere" then you don't know how oceans work.

    95. Re:Its pretty important... by MightyYar · · Score: 1

      Agreed, but when the water comes up, they'll have to deal with it - either through construction or relocation or both.

      Let's say that tomorrow, scientists make a huge discovery that completely changes the climate models. It turns out that not only is mankind not responsible for climate change, but it is indeed fluctuations in the sun. How does this change our mitigation efforts? The answer is that it does not. Either way, we have to respond to higher water levels and a warming climate.

      --
      W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
    96. Re:Its pretty important... by martinfb · · Score: 1

      I am pretty sure that seafood will not go away with erosion.
      It MAY even get better, and closer inland ;-).

      Spilled oil, however, will adversely affect seafood production.

      You may want to clarify some thinking here.
      How do you figure that rising sea at the LA coastline affects seafood production?

      --


      Self-importance and self-indulgence is the root of ALL evil.
  3. How much is that in Libraries of Congress? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    That's the real question.

  4. Adapt. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Sounds like a great time for more than half of the state's population to relocate.

  5. Yeah, Climate Change isn't real /sarcasm by Linsaran · · Score: 4, Insightful

    And the Republicans insist climate change isn't real . . . well maybe when half the red leaning states are under water they'll open their eyes. Probably be way too late by that point though.

    --
    In a bit of shameless internet panhandling, I accept Litecoin Donations at Lbd2oH9QsthD1GfuUXPyka12YxvWJYnBVf
    1. Re:Yeah, Climate Change isn't real /sarcasm by __aaclcg7560 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      And Republicans will insist that the federal government pick up the tab for fixing the problems that they made.

    2. Re:Yeah, Climate Change isn't real /sarcasm by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      This has nothing to do with climate change. The coastline is disappearing because they locked the Mississippi down to a single specific channel thus stopping it from depositing sediment across it's massive delta.

    3. Re:Yeah, Climate Change isn't real /sarcasm by GLMDesigns · · Score: 1

      Yeah. The southern part of Louisiana are alluvial plains and swamps. If I'm not mistaken New Orleans is in the Mississippi delta. Hmmm. WTF does that mean?

      It means we shouldn't be fighting mother nature to keep the city going.

      --
      If you're scared of your govt then you need to further restrict its powers
      Vote 3rd Party in 2016 and beyond
    4. Re:Yeah, Climate Change isn't real /sarcasm by GLMDesigns · · Score: 0, Flamebait

      The problem that the Democratic government of Louisiana made over the last 50 years? That one?

      --
      If you're scared of your govt then you need to further restrict its powers
      Vote 3rd Party in 2016 and beyond
    5. Re:Yeah, Climate Change isn't real /sarcasm by jeff4747 · · Score: 0

      well maybe when half the red leaning states are under water they'll open their eyes

      No, at that point they will pivot to "Look at how ineffective government is! It couldn't even prevent climate change!".

      Followed shortly by "Tax cuts reduce the temperature of the atmosphere!"

    6. Re:Yeah, Climate Change isn't real /sarcasm by bluefoxlucid · · Score: 1

      At least it's still better than the fake reporting ProPublica regularly cons NPR into.

    7. Re:Yeah, Climate Change isn't real /sarcasm by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      "Aaaand you win the idiot of the day award."
      And you are a close second.

    8. Re:Yeah, Climate Change isn't real /sarcasm by sound+vision · · Score: 2

      But what they'll tell the voters is that Canada is paying for it.

    9. Re:Yeah, Climate Change isn't real /sarcasm by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Please stop with the fucking bickering over which party was in control when. They are the same goddamn thing. I don't recognize either party any more, and it's well beyond time that we kick both to the curb.

    10. Re:Yeah, Climate Change isn't real /sarcasm by __aaclcg7560 · · Score: 2

      The problem that the Democratic government of Louisiana made over the last 50 years? That one?

      The 58.1% that voted for Trump.

      http://www.nytimes.com/elections/results/louisiana

    11. Re:Yeah, Climate Change isn't real /sarcasm by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

      The problem that the Democratic government of Louisiana made over the last 50 years? That one?

      What problems would that be? Not throwing out the users of one of America's most active seaports? Not shutting down the petroleum extraction companies? Not forcing people to move elsewhere?

      The fact is, not only have Democrats tried to foster coastal restoration for the past 50 years(check out the legislative history), it has been Republicans refusing to fund the efforts and combined it with hand-wringing denials of any problems. This has been a national problem, ever since Reagan and his anti-government agenda took over.

      The saddest thing, is if the Russians could be blamed on the problem, it'd have already been solved. He'd have spared no expense on that. Well, ok, he'd probably have messed that up too, such is the way of things.

      The greatest irony, of course, is that the partisan shifting has now given Republicans responsibility for the people's anger and rage at the very thing the GOP could have acted to prevent.

      Much like they now own the racist bigots who want to secede. It is terribly funny in a way.

    12. Re:Yeah, Climate Change isn't real /sarcasm by iggymanz · · Score: 1, Flamebait

      nonsense.

      this situation with La. coastline has zero to do with climate change, even the "rising sea level" cited as reason is not valid.

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

      yes after giving the prime causes, even that article mentions that *lately* climate change is also given as reason....without citation of course. because it isn't relevant at all next to the primary factors

    13. Re:Yeah, Climate Change isn't real /sarcasm by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      This is not a climate problem but a geology problem exacerbated by flood control efforts - the section of continental shelf that louisiana is on is very weak, and is slowly sagging down into the earths core. The mississippi used to dump enough eroded topsoil there to keep it above sea level, but since it's walled in by levees it hasn't done that in decades, with the predictable result.

    14. Re:Yeah, Climate Change isn't real /sarcasm by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yeah, only republicans caused the problem. No democrat drives a fossil fuel burning car, or buys plastic based products, or lives in a wood house, or eats beef.

    15. Re:Yeah, Climate Change isn't real /sarcasm by __aaclcg7560 · · Score: 0

      Yeah, only republicans caused the problem.

      Haven't you ever noticed how many Republicans loudly proclaim they don't help from the federal government, and, when their houses get flooded in a major storm, they're the first ones in line for federal assistance?

    16. Re:Yeah, Climate Change isn't real /sarcasm by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Citation please.

    17. Re:Yeah, Climate Change isn't real /sarcasm by Aighearach · · Score: 1

      "Tax cuts reduce the temperature of the atmosphere!"

      Eventually. Any perturbation should eventually become an oscillation. And increasing the temperature of one part of the atmosphere will likely cool another part by a much smaller amount, so there is almost certainly some local cooling at some altitude caused by local resource mismanagement that results from tax cuts.

      Doesn't really help from a "negative affects on humans" perspective, though.

    18. Re:Yeah, Climate Change isn't real /sarcasm by __aaclcg7560 · · Score: 1

      Citation please.

      Uh, seriously?

    19. Re:Yeah, Climate Change isn't real /sarcasm by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I guess he never heard of Hurricane Katrina.

    20. Re:Yeah, Climate Change isn't real /sarcasm by nucrash · · Score: 3, Insightful

      http://northiowatoday.com/2012...

      Tom Vilsack was a Democrat. Still, I recall how many conservative farmers would complain about poor people taking from the government and yet they were first in line when this money was handed out.

      --
      Place something witty here
    21. Re:Yeah, Climate Change isn't real /sarcasm by nucrash · · Score: 1
      --
      Place something witty here
    22. Re:Yeah, Climate Change isn't real /sarcasm by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      http://www.businessinsider.com/red-states-more-dependent-on-federal-government-2015-7

    23. Re:Yeah, Climate Change isn't real /sarcasm by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Seriously.

      And I note you still haven't provided one.

    24. Re:Yeah, Climate Change isn't real /sarcasm by Beezlebub33 · · Score: 3, Interesting

      http://www.latimes.com/busines... When Louisana floods, they want money. When NJ floods, they vote against it. Hypocrisy.

      --
      The more people I meet, the better I like my dog.
    25. Re:Yeah, Climate Change isn't real /sarcasm by gordguide · · Score: 1

      But what they'll tell the voters is that Canada is paying for it.

      Canada might actually be helping ... Sea Ice causes the Oceans to fall in level as it melts. Its Landlocked Ice (like Greenland) that causes levels to rise as it melts. Now, I don't know if anyone has done the math, Canada certainly has some of the latter going on as well ... I certainly haven't ... but maybe the melting in the Northwest Passage is giving it the Old College Try at least.

    26. Re:Yeah, Climate Change isn't real /sarcasm by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Of course not
      And the higher sea rises and more frequent violent storms will not add or affect the current damage at all
      Climate change will not increase the damage or help to push that land to the tipping point, No sir, not at all

    27. Re:Yeah, Climate Change isn't real /sarcasm by phantomfive · · Score: 1

      The irony is that you are the one promoting fake science with your post. The erosion here isn't caused by AGW. If any, just a very small percent.

      But most likely you will ignore that fact, and continue on with your angry rant.

      --
      "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
    28. Re:Yeah, Climate Change isn't real /sarcasm by swillden · · Score: 1

      And the Republicans insist climate change isn't real . . . well maybe when half the red leaning states are under water they'll open their eyes. Probably be way too late by that point though.

      I wouldn't count on that. A lot of red-leaning states are inland, while the coasts are 2/3 blue.

      --
      Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
    29. Re:Yeah, Climate Change isn't real /sarcasm by __aaclcg7560 · · Score: 1

      Seriously.

      You're not a student of human nature then. It's quite natural for people to think that OTHER PEOPLE (typically minorities) are unworthy of government assistance and proclaiming their own self-sufficiency from government assistance. But if a storm comes through, floods their home because it was built on a flood plain, and they didn't bother to buy flood insurance, they fully expect to get government assistance. After all, they paid taxes and OTHER PEOPLE did not.

      And I note you still haven't provided one.

      Others have provided with at least five examples.

    30. Re:Yeah, Climate Change isn't real /sarcasm by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      And God forbidspecifically taxing the source of that problem (CO2 output) to finance dealing with side-effects so created. We'll just float the cost of keeping Miami, New York, and New Orleans from going underwater out of general revenue, preferably as little on the very rich as possible, and especially not on the people crazy enough to invest in beach-front property despite the risks.

    31. Re:Yeah, Climate Change isn't real /sarcasm by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      And the Republicans insist climate change isn't real . . . well maybe when half the red leaning states are under water they'll open their eyes. Probably be way too late by that point though.

      Republicans recognize climate change. They just don't think the human caused portion warrants busting skulls to get the trillions Progressives think we need to "fix" it. Maybe they would be more sympathetic to the cause if people like AlGore stop being hippicrits and give up their property on the coast and stop being dicks who only install solar power when it's pointed out to them that their residences use 5x the electricity a normal home uses.

    32. Re:Yeah, Climate Change isn't real /sarcasm by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      when their houses get flooded in a major storm, they're the first ones in line for federal assistance?

      Yes, especially all those Republicans in the New Orleans area, which went 80% for Clinton in the most recent presidential election, and which went around 90% for Obama in 2012. I'm sure they elbowed their way to the front of the line.

      In large part, the rural areas of Louisiana are Republican. Tell me where all the stories were about the literal square miles of Louisiana that were flattened by Katrina? As I recall, the coverage and the response largely focused on New Orleans, because everybody knows that a miles-wide hurricane always strikes poor inner city people with surgical precision.

      Yes, it's clear that Louisiana has a history of Republicans just stealing the spotlight away from the poor Democrat voters whenever something bad happens.

    33. Re:Yeah, Climate Change isn't real /sarcasm by ebvwfbw · · Score: 1

      Really? Louisiana is a democratic machine. Corrupt as hell, has been for decades. Just because they voted for Trump as the nation did doesn't somehow put everything on the Republicans/Trump.

      Hell, in case you haven't noticed, Trump is really neither a Dem or a Rep. They would both happily nail him if they could. They're the alligators and they don't like the swamp being drained.

    34. Re:Yeah, Climate Change isn't real /sarcasm by GLMDesigns · · Score: 1

      Really? It was the Republican Machine of Louisiana that didn't maintain the flood walls and levees?

      --
      If you're scared of your govt then you need to further restrict its powers
      Vote 3rd Party in 2016 and beyond
  6. News for nerds? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    -1. Needs more nerd appeal.

    1. Re:News for nerds? by sunderland56 · · Score: 1

      Came here to say just this. "News for Nerds, news that matters".....

        - it's not really news; since the same thing is happening all over the planet and has been for many years

        - it's not for nerds, it's for everyone; and besides, I'm doubtful that there are any nerds in Louisiana

        - it doesn't really matter *that* much; certainly it does matter some, but hey, it's Louisiana

      Now if the same thing was being reported in London or NYC or LA or SF or Tokyo..... well then yeah, it's slashdot worthy. Of course it *is* happening in all of those places; but for some unknown reason people are concerned about Louisiana.

  7. A Wall by NicknameUnavailable · · Score: 1
    Like most of life's problems, this one can be solved with a wall:
    • Build wall around Louisiana.
    • Install cameras on wall.
    • Livestream results for entertainment as they slowly evolve into mermaids.
  8. "one football field of land every hour" by beowulfcluster · · Score: 4, Funny

    But how many libraries of congress of land every hour is that?

    1. Re: "one football field of land every hour" by Chrisq · · Score: 1

      But how many libraries of congress of land every hour is that?

      I never realised that they played that much football in Louisiana.

    2. Re: "one football field of land every hour" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You don't even know how frustrating it is to have to build a new football field every hour. And if it's a game night, relocating the spectators is a real hassle.

    3. Re: "one football field of land every hour" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Not mentioning the need for running in hip boots...

      Or drowning in a tackle...

      Kickoff is a bit difficult - the ball won't stay on the tee... it keeps floating away.

    4. Re: "one football field of land every hour" by sootman · · Score: 1

      I was going to covert that to metric but there's not a single standard size for soccer or rugby fields.

      --
      Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
    5. Re: "one football field of land every hour" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      But how many libraries of congress of land every hour is that?

      It is .02 LOCOLPH

      Libraries of congress of land per hour.

  9. Hahahah, you libtard FOOLS! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

    I can't believe all you idiots believe this is actually happening. What a bunch of libtard climate-change believing fuck-muffins you are! Lucky for me I'm a diehard Republican through and through, so I'm busily buying up all this supposedly disappearing land. I stand to make billions!

    1. Re:Hahahah, you libtard FOOLS! by TrumpShaker · · Score: 2

      Good for you! I hope your "land" ends up being Territorial Waters.

    2. Re:Hahahah, you libtard FOOLS! by MightyMartian · · Score: 0

      Anybody buying up land in low-lying coastal areas is an idiot. Unless you plan on building dikes, breaks, coastal marsh systems and the like, which is going to cost you shit-tons of money, I think it's pretty ill-advised. Shockingly enough, coastline protection is one of those things governments are in the best position to do, but of course, government is evil.

      --
      The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
    3. Re:Hahahah, you libtard FOOLS! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Preach it man! I'm a Louisiana native, living right on the coast, and climate change is a buncha bullshblublublub^C LOST CARRIER

    4. Re:Hahahah, you libtard FOOLS! by gtall · · Score: 1

      I thought we were going to have Mexico pay for a big beautiful wall. We'll just make Mexico pay to extend it through Florida. It is the Gulf of *Mexico* after all. While we're at it, we'll annex Hawaii and make it a state, then we can tell those judges out there how to rule.

    5. Re:Hahahah, you libtard FOOLS! by k6mfw · · Score: 1

      As gtall implied, yes it will cost tons of money but since this is Gulf of Mexico that is causing coastlines disappear, people will then make Mexico pay for it! And I like that comment of "climate change is a buncha bullshblublublub^C LOST CARRIER"

      --
      mfwright@batnet.com
  10. We call them dykes by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    but will Mexico pay for it?

    1. Re:We call them dykes by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Racist! Not all Mexican Mermaids are dykes.

    2. Re:We call them dykes by CanadianMacFan · · Score: 1

      That's just silly. Why would Mexico have to pay for the wall? Atlantis should have to pay for the wall since they control the oceans.

    3. Re: We call them dykes by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Who building building a wall around an entire state or country was such hard work. Psh I sure as shit didn't.

  11. Reasons by Pollux · · Score: 4, Informative

    Decades of saltwater intrusion, subsidence and rising sea levels

    No, that's not why the delta's disappearing. Here are the reasons why:

    1) Levees and flood protections prevent silt from the Mississippi from depositing into the delta to maintain it, and
    2) Oil drilling required dredging up the delta to permit pipelines and shipping lanes, destroying wetlands that help capture and build-up the silt.

    1. Re:Reasons by Elfich47 · · Score: 4, Informative

      If I can add to this:

      The delta used to shift and move the river bed quite often. With the canals and leeves in place the natural tendency of the river to move is being fought against. It is the reason why the river breaks out at odd places just up stream or downstream of existing leeves. Part of this is a result of the silt deposits that used to be carried downstream by the Mississippi.

      With the wetlands being destroyed the ocean barrier that helped protect against storms is being destroyed. Which exposed larger areas of the coast line to damage.

      --
      Architectural plans are like computer source code with a couple of differences: You only compile once.
    2. Re:Reasons by d34thm0nk3y · · Score: 4, Informative

      From your link:

      "So we're fighting this massive loss of surface land [and] we're also subsiding because we're not replenishing these wetlands," Marshall says. "On top of that, here comes global warming and sea level rise." According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, southern Louisiana has "the highest rate of relative sea level rise of any place in the country, and one of the highest rates anywhere on the planet."

    3. Re:Reasons by Orgasmatron · · Score: 2

      Articles:

      http://www.newyorker.com/magaz...

      https://placesjournal.org/arti...

      good quotes:

      Society requires artifice to survive in a region where nature might reasonably have asked a few more eons to finish a work of creation that was incomplete - Albert Cowdrey

      This nation has a large and powerful adversary. Our opponent could cause the United States to lose nearly all her seaborne commerce, to lose her standing as first among trading nations. . . .We are fighting Mother Nature. . . .It's a battle we have to fight day by day, year by year; the health of our economy depends on victory

      The Mississippi River, with its sand and silt, has created most of Louisiana, and it could not have done so by remaining in one channel. If it had, southern Louisiana would be a long narrow peninsula reaching into the Gulf of Mexico. Southern Louisiana exists in its present form because the Mississippi River has jumped here and there within an arc about two hundred miles wide, like a pianist playing with one hand - frequently and radically changing course, surging over the left or the right bank to go off in utterly new directions. Always it is the river's purpose to get to the Gulf by the shortest and steepest gradient. As the mouth advances southward and the river lengthens, the gradient declines, the current slows, and sediment builds up the bed. Eventually, it builds up so much that the river spills to one side. Major shifts of that nature have tended to occur roughly once a millennium. The Mississippi's main channel of three thousand years ago is now the quiet water of Bayou Teche, which mimics the shape of the Mississippi. Along Bayou Teche, on the high ground of ancient natural levees, are Jeanerette, Breaux Bridge, Broussard, Olivierâ"arcuate strings of Cajun towns. Eight hundred years before the birth of Christ, the channel was captured from the east. It shifted abruptly and flowed in that direction for about a thousand years. In the second century a.d., it was captured again, and taken south, by the now unprepossessing Bayou Lafourche, which, by the year 1000, was losing its hegemony to the river's present course, through the region that would be known as Plaquemines. By the nineteen-fifties, the Mississippi River had advanced so far past New Orleans and out into the Gulf that it was about to shift again, and its offspring Atchafalaya was ready to receive it. By the route of the Atchafalaya, the distance across the delta plain was a hundred and forty-five miles - well under half the length of the route of the master stream.

      For the Mississippi to make such a change was completely natural, but in the interval since the last shift Europeans had settled beside the river, a nation had developed, and the nation could not afford nature. The consequences of the Atchafalaya's conquest of the Mississippi would include but not be limited to the demise of Baton Rouge and the virtual destruction of New Orleans. With its fresh water gone, its harbor a silt bar, its economy disconnected from inland commerce, New Orleans would turn into New Gomorrah.

      --
      See that "Preview" button?
    4. Re:Reasons by RobRyland · · Score: 1

      "Louisiana 1927"

      What has happened down here is the winds have changed
        Clouds roll in from the north and it started to rain
        Rained real hard and it rained for a real long time
        Six feet of water in the streets of Evangeline

        The river rose all day
        The river rose all night
        Some people got lost in the flood
        Some people got away alright
        The river have busted through clear down to Plaquemines
        Six feet of water in the streets of Evangeline

        President Coolidge came down in a railroad train
        With a little fat man with a note-pad in his hand
        The President say, "Little fat man isn't it a shame what the river has done
        To this poor crackers land."

  12. HA! These people want federal funds? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    From this administration?? Hey, the entire coastline of the whole country is moving inland. Pack yer bags!

  13. So the maths by rickb928 · · Score: 1, Insightful

    seem to indicate that Louisiana is losing 3300 acres a year to the Gulf. about 5 square miles.

    Plaquemines Parish is about 780 square miles, so if all loss were in Plaquemines, it would be losing about 0.6% per year land mass. Of course the loss is spread amongst 9 or more parishes, probably 10x the area total, the loss then becoming more like 0.06% per year.

    This, my friends, is a Democrat emergency.

    Mind you, this is an emergency to any family who used to live on land claimed by the Gulf, but not many do, as they are wise to the ways of water, and build differently there than elsewhere. I've played nine-ball in the Bayou. It's different there, mostly in good ways. But the Governor is certainly working this for all it is worth.

    --
    deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
    1. Re:So the maths by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

      "more than 1,800 square miles of land between 1932 and 2010, including 300 square miles of marshland between 2004 and 2008 alone."

      In the first case that's 1800 sq miles over 78 years or 23 sq miles per year.

      In the second case that's 300 sq miles over 4 years or 75 sq miles per year.

      Whichever number you use (and if you include the year in the range, so the numbers may be +/- 1 year) it's still greater than 5 sq miles per year.

    2. Re:So the maths by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      seem to indicate that Louisiana is losing 3300 acres a year to the Gulf. about 5 square miles.

      Plaquemines Parish is about 780 square miles, so if all loss were in Plaquemines, it would be losing about 0.6% per year land mass. Of course the loss is spread amongst 9 or more parishes, probably 10x the area total, the loss then becoming more like 0.06% per year.

      This, my friends, is a Democrat emergency.

      Mind you, this is an emergency to any family who used to live on land claimed by the Gulf, but not many do, as they are wise to the ways of water, and build differently there than elsewhere. I've played nine-ball in the Bayou. It's different there, mostly in good ways. But the Governor is certainly working this for all it is worth.

      That, my friends, is a partisan moron's response. Says it's about the math, doesn't do the actual math, or can't do it, chalks it up to a problem with the other party, because their low and incorrect FIVE SQUARE MILES a year figure isn't enough about which to be concerned. Fucking useless moron.

    3. Re:So the maths by bill_mcgonigle · · Score: 0

      This, my friends, is a Democrat emergency.

      Is that who's in charge now?

      I vacationed on the Gulf Coast there and read the signs at the tourist rest area about this very issue. In April of 2000.

      It's a manufactured and necessarily perpetual emergency, if it even qualifies as one. What good is a State of Emergency that never goes away? More syntactic destruction from an Executive Branch.

      If the issue has merit, this is exactly the opposite of the way for it to garner respect.

      --
      My God, it's Full of Source!
      OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
    4. Re: So the maths by rickb928 · · Score: 1

      To be fair, Governor Edwards is a Democrat... He succeeded Bobby Jindal, Republican.

      --
      deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
  14. Where is the receipt for the LA purchase? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Time to ask for our money back :)

  15. Mississippi River Delta by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The ONLY way to prevent further shoreline erosion, subsidence, and salt water incursion is to dynamite the levies and permit the return of yearly flooding in the MIssissippi River Delta. The Port of New Orleans is doomed and should be relocated to a site above the continental shelf.

  16. The coastline isn't disappearing... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    ... it's just moving north.

  17. Thanks Trump! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Definitely Trump's fault.

    1. Re: Thanks Trump! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      @anonymouscoward Fake news! We have created a boom in new beachfront housing. Fame media has gotten even worse! #RealNews #MAGA @FoxAndFriends

  18. The problem with your explanation by Bruce+Perens · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The problem with your explanation is that it's fact-based, and stands on good science. This is the post-truth era. Thus, the counter to your argument will be:

    • Evidence for a human cause of erosion is thin and controversial, and is being pushed by loony liberals.
    • We need those oil and shipping jobs, and jobs building and maintaining levees, not more regulation that stifles them!
    • Cause and effect is not a real thing, except for one cause, God is behind everything.
    • This is part of God's plan for us. The end time is coming, and when the Rapture arrives it will not matter that Louisiana's coast has eroded. Cease your pursuit of unholy science and pray to save your soul!
    1. Re:The problem with your explanation by Penguinisto · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Query: Why would those arguments even exist, considering that the vast majority of the levees, dams, and canals we have today were built during the Great Depression as jobs programs, viz the WPA. Last I checked, these programs was spawned by Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and LA's governor at the time (who happily agreed) was the infamous Huey Long... neither of whom were members of the party you seek to demonize.

      Maybe it would benefit you to realize that the problems in TFA were caused by misguided engineering efforts held throughout the first half of the 20th century?

      --
      Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
    2. Re:The problem with your explanation by Bruce+Perens · · Score: 1

      Oh, of course they were caused by misguided engineering efforts. Everything from the Army Corps of Engineers to Smoky Bear goes under that heading. The most basic problem is the fact that we locate cities next to resources and transportation, which means water, without realizing where the 400-year flood plane is. Etc. We have learned something since then.

      Our problem, today, is fixing these things. Which is blocked by folks who don't believe in anthropogenic climate change, or even cause and effect at all. They don't, for the most part, register Democratic.

    3. Re:The problem with your explanation by CanadianMacFan · · Score: 1

      Or maybe the problem started back then but as time has progressed the problem has gotten worse as the protection provided by thousands of years of silt has been washed away and climate change has raised sea levels? There used to be sand bars protecting the coastline so not as much would have been taken away but without the silt from the river over these past 80 years the sandbars have gone. If the engineering efforts of the past decade or so were to blame there would be still more protection and the loss of the coastline wouldn't be as bad as it is yet.

    4. Re:The problem with your explanation by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The end time is coming, and when the Rupture arrives it will not matter that Louisiana's coast has eroded.

      FTFY

    5. Re:The problem with your explanation by green1 · · Score: 2

      We have learned something since then.

      I'd love to think you're right, but I just can't.

      We see it over and over again, in many places the oldest parts of the city is fine but the newer parts are the problem, 150+ years ago the people settling areas often looked at the terrain before building and built on hills, but since then we gave up and decided that riverfront was a selling feature instead of a hazard.

      A few years ago we had major flooding here, the original historic properties (first houses in a city founded at the junction of 2 rivers) were high and dry (of course now they're a park), but the modern skyscrapers had their basements full of water.

      Interestingly enough, in rich countries riverfront, lakefront, and oceanfront properties are where the wealthiest people live, but in poorer countries the wealthy people live up on hills and the poor people live on the floodplains, maybe we could learn something? when you live right beside water, water may come to visit you!

    6. Re:The problem with your explanation by Bruce+Perens · · Score: 1

      What you are observing is economics. As a city or town population grows, the best land becomes unavailable and those who arrive later or have less funds available must settle for less desirable land. Thus many cities have been extended using landfill which liquifies as the San Francisco Marina District did in the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake, or floods. Risks may not be disclosed by developers, or may be discounted by authorities as the risks of global warming are today.

      Efforts to protect people who might otherwise buy such land or to mitigate the risks are often labeled as government over-reach or nanny state.

    7. Re:The problem with your explanation by green1 · · Score: 1

      But again, the most expensive land is what you just called "less desirable". It seems in fact that the floodplain land in most cities is the most expensive, not the least. People WANT to live beside the water, even though it's a horrible idea. The most expensive properties in my city tend to have a river running through their backyard, they're also the first to flood. So every time they flood, the government pays out millions of dollars in disaster relief to the richest people in town.

      You can hardly say that the risks weren't disclosed either, the river is *IN* their yard!

    8. Re:The problem with your explanation by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The impetus for that work was the Great Flood of 1927 and it was spawned by Calvin Coolidge and Herbert Hoover.

      I don't believe that bit of history is relevant, but since you evidently believe it is, you should at least get it right.

    9. Re:The problem with your explanation by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Well, either that or scream that it's related to climate change.

    10. Re: The problem with your explanation by Bruce+Perens · · Score: 1

      I understand your point about view land being desirable even though it's a flood risk. I live a mile or so from the Hayward fault. But I have California's risk pool earthquake insurance. The government wouldn't be paying me except from a fund that I've already paid into. I imagine that the government does pay some rich people in similar situations, but as far as I'm aware disaster funds go to the States from the federal government and should not in general become a form of rich people's welfare. Maybe you can find some direct evidence to show me that would make the situation more clear.

    11. Re: The problem with your explanation by green1 · · Score: 1

      Unless your government disaster relief is means tested, it by default goes mostly to whomever lives closest to the rivers, in the case of my city, the richest people.

    12. Re: The problem with your explanation by Bruce+Perens · · Score: 1

      If you look in the FEMA site, they say that they provide gramts to perform repairs not covered by insurance. And no, they don't do a needs test. Now, the typical rich person does not let their insurance lapse just so that they can get a FEMA grant. Because such a grant is no sure thing. They also point out that SBA loans are the main source of assistance following a disaster. You get a break on interest, but you have to pay them back.

    13. Re: The problem with your explanation by green1 · · Score: 1

      Where I live you simply can not buy overland flood insurance. It is not available at any price. So the wealthy don't have it either. Meaning they are just as eligible for government disaster relief as the poor, but far more likely to need it.

  19. By 2040 4/5th of Lousiana will be under water by WillAffleckUW · · Score: 2

    At the current rate of carbon emissions pumping energy into storms and glacial melt in Greenland, along with sad attempts to stop flood plains from renewing decaying soil mass by siltration deposit of alluvial soils, four fifths of Lousiana will be under water for part of the year.

    Look, flood plains are supposed to flood. Stopping the river deposits is why it's getting worse. Destroying the biomass buildup from salt infiltration from Gulf storms.

    Florida is way worse off, quite frankly. And it's all the fault of people sticking their heads in the sands (which will also disappear).

    --
    -- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
    1. Re:By 2040 4/5th of Lousiana will be under water by Fly+Swatter · · Score: 1

      80 percent you say..

    2. Re:By 2040 4/5th of Lousiana will be under water by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      oh, thanks god. asshole brothers ex-wife-scum-looser-worthlesspieceofhumanfilth, lives in Baton Rouge.that place is a murder capitol. WHY can't they get the job done? its way past time.

  20. Re:msmash sure does love everything political by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    So, the truth?

  21. Did they try prayer? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I mean, REALLY tried it? I guess they just aren't Jesusy enough to be saved.

  22. Theft! or Lousiana vs. Earth Lawsuit by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    LOL Is Lousiana filing theft charges for the missing coastline?
    I don't understand, the coastline is NOT disappearing, it is moving. And land is not disappearing, it may just now be underwater.
    Isn't erosion a natural process? Are natural processes now evil?

  23. Meh. What is science but a guess by smooth+wombat · · Score: 4, Interesting

    CNN has a similar article about disappearing Louisiana coastline. One of the people interviewed has been shrimping for 54 years. His best comment, "It doesn't concern me.What is science? Science is an educated guess," Dotson says defiantly. "What if they guess wrong? There's just as much chance as them to be wrong as there is for them to be right."

    Mind you, Louisiana is the top most uneducated state in the nation and this particular area of Louisiana, Cameron county, has the highest percentage of people who do not believe climate change has an effect on plants or animals. Not man-made climate change, but any climate change.

    Another person in the article says he likes his AC and gas at reasonable prices so therefore, why, based on a prediction alone, should humans try to limit CO2 production?

    --
    We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
  24. That's A Lot! No Wait... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    "It loses the equivalent of one football field of land every hour."

    Holy shit, that's a lot! That's 57,600 square feet!

    Oh wait, that's probably spread out along Louisiana's 397 mile long coastline (IDK the difference between method 1 and method 2, so I decided to give them the best possible odds and chose the smaller number), which then becomes 2,096,160 feet, which to get to 57,600 square feet along a 2,096,160 foot long length of shore, equates to nothing more than 0.027 feet.

    I'm all for doing something about climate change, but scaremongering like this only harms your cause. Assuming that the football field amount is accurate, you could have just as easily expressed it as over 200 feet per year (0.027 feet per hour * 24 hours per day * 365.25 days per year = 236.682 feet per year). Which, sure, doesn't sound as impressive as "one football field", but is a lot harder for someone to dismiss as insignificant.

  25. Turmp doesn't believe, not happenig just fake news by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Trump doesn't believe in science, global warming, climate change or sea the level could rise so this can't be happening its all just fake news..
    Alternative facts show science is wrong

  26. Old news: New Orleans is artificial and a mistake by knorthern+knight · · Score: 5, Informative

    From a 2005 post https://pesn.com/archive/2005/...

    Summary... the City of New Orleans is sinking, and sliding off the continental shelf. It's doomed even if sea levels did *NOT* rise.

    > The river is moving away from the city. The city is sinking because of its
    > weight, because no upbuilding by new muck for many decades, because of
    > being cut off from the fresh water, because it is sliding off a cliff (the Continental Shelf),
    > and because the Oil and Gas Industry is extracting oil out from under it.
    > It is a city that for all intents and purposes is now Sea domain.

    And, oh yeah, the very fact that ships can navigate from the Gulf of Mexico, up the Mississippi River is an anthropogenic artifact.

    > To understand the City of New Orleans one must first understand the
    > massive Mississippi River delta. New Orleans was built at the site of the old
    > "French Quarter" on the high ground adjacent to the Mississippi river.
    > This location was picked because the Mississippi River didn't have a mouth
    > into the ocean. The river simply went into the "Black Swamp" and disappeared.
    > This was where ships headed down river had to stop and unload their
    > goods to be transshipped across Lake Pontchartrain to the sea. This was
    > done by unloading the goods at the docks and then hauling them to the
    > lake where shallow draft boats would take the goods to the seagoing ships.
    >
    > By using some ingenious methods, Henry Shreve -- after whom
    > Shreveport, La., is named -- forced the river to dig its own channel out to
    > the sea where it now goes. This allowed the ocean-going boats access to
    > the enormous Mississippi river. This, together with the work of the US Army
    > Corps of Engineers, produced what is functionally the largest ocean port on earth.

    --

    I'm not repeating myself
    I'm an X window user; I'm an ex-Windows user
  27. Pumping from underground lowers the ground by cyberspittle · · Score: 1

    Out in California, during the drought, a lot of water was pumped from underground. This ended up in lowering the ground level. Maybe the oil and gas industry are doing the same in LA?

  28. With Republicans have destroyed the EPA by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    You can kiss the rest of it goodbye.

  29. No more NCIS: New Orleans! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Thank goodness. The show was starting to grate.

  30. Finally! by Dareth · · Score: 1

    I will have ocean front property in North Louisiana! If you buy that I will throw the Golden Gate in free!

    --

    I only look human.
    My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
  31. Re:Meh. What is science but a guess by sl3xd · · Score: 2

    The fact is that many people have dearly held religious beliefs. These beliefs are held with a bond that is far more than any combination of logic or emotion; such conviction in any human is not to be trifled with.

    You can't attack people on such a personal, intimate, foundational level and expect people to follow you, or your ideas.

    Unfortunately, for decades, many claiming to represent science have been loudly proclaiming (without evidence, as it's unprovable either way) that "science" says that religion, and by extension the listener's very being, is false. It's a normal human reaction that, provided a choice between dismissing dearly held, foundational beliefs, and unprovable claims made by a "scientist", that the unprovable claims will be rejected wholesale - and religion is retained.

    Consequently, whenever there is a real, insight with multiple independent lines of evidence all pointing to a very similar conclusion (ie. good science), it is immediately discarded with prejudice -- all because of the asshat making unprovable claims about religion, often in an entirely different subject.

    There are a few assclowns that need to realize that human beings are not logical, rational creatures, never have been, and it's important to work within that constraint.

    It's harmful to both science and the world to evangelize science against religion (and by extension, saying that somebody who has a religion cannot be scientific), the result is exactly what we see in Louisiana: "What is science? Science is an educated guess" -- ie. contempt for science.

    --
    -- Sometimes you have to turn the lights off in order to see.
  32. emergency? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    "Decades of..." "emergency"

    You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

  33. They Made This Mess by EndlessNameless · · Score: 2

    Louisiana consistently elects small-government, anti-EPA, anti-climate Representatives and Senators. Now they want an environmental conservation bailout? They decry federal handouts, and then they turn around begging for help. How about "No".

    They cite:

    "Decades of saltwater intrusion, subsidence and rising sea levels"

    Yet, they ousted their only politician who even pretended to care about the environment and replaced her with Cassidy, whose policies will only hasten that outcome.

    New Orleans couldn't be arsed to maintain their levees, then Hurricane Katrina happened. Now this. Louisiana should change their motto to "The No Foresight State".

    --

    ---
    According to the latest ruleset, this post should be modded as Vorpal Flamebait +5.
  34. Arkansas waterfront property? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Should I purchase land along the southern border of Arkansas in order to resell it at a profit when the waters of the Gulf of Mexico start lapping along the Arkansas shores?

    And isn't much of Louisiana just silt from the Mississippi River anyway?

  35. Comment removed by account_deleted · · Score: 1, Interesting

    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  36. The end for the southern coastal towns by Mysticalfruit · · Score: 2

    I've long mused that despite the climate deniers howls, at some point we're going to hit an impasse. Due to historical reasons, we'll save New Orleans and other big name towns on the gulf coast in regions that sit at or below the water line.

    However, if you're from some town nobody's ever heard of that's on the coast, you're pretty much fucked. If we believe the models and so far they've been spot on, every year some percentage of these towns are going to get flooded and/or walloped by hurricanes.

    Each year the federal government and insurance agencies swoop in (for some value of swooping) and rebuild these towns. At some point insurance companies are going to cry uncle. They'll boost rates so high that literally nobody will be able to afford to rebuild. I could even see a situation where after a federal government has to step in and say "We're moving your entire community 50 miles in land and combining it with this other community" Why? Money and resources. At some point as wasteful as the government is, they're going to see the folly of rebuilding a town over and over and as the tide rises it's going to become less and less financially tenantable and take more and more resources.

    --
    Yes Francis, the world has gone crazy.
    1. Re:The end for the southern coastal towns by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Or you could use a republican solution
      How much waste does America produce?
      dump it all there until the land rise higher than the water.
      the waste disposal problem and the drowning of the coast solved in one
      And lets stop the talks about environmental problems, people in India live and work in piles of junk and don't comply,all these lazy hobos liberals living in Louisianan had been having it too good for too long
      Lets make Louisiana higher again

  37. Wrong by DogDude · · Score: 2

    Can I ask why you left off the third reason that the article you link to very clearly explains: sea level rise?

    "All of this results from three processes that reinforce and amplify each other’s effects: levee construction, oil and gas exploration and sea level rise."

    --
    I don't respond to AC's.
    1. Re:Wrong by green1 · · Score: 1

      because the amount of sea level rise to date is minuscule by comparison to those other reasons and can't be taken seriously as a cause of this issue.

    2. Re:Wrong by DogDude · · Score: 1

      Says who? The author or the report didn't say that.

      --
      I don't respond to AC's.
    3. Re:Wrong by green1 · · Score: 0

      It's political suicide for a scientist to avoid blaming climate change for anything these days. That doesn't mean it's a credible reason for this particular issue. If a difference of a few inches will cause your city to flood or not, you already flooded any time there was a storm anyway. Keep in mind that on an average day (not a storm) the wave heights are more than that difference.

    4. Re:Wrong by DogDude · · Score: 1

      You're welcome to your somewhat paranoid opinion, but we're discussing this report, which most definitely says that seal level rise is a factor.

      --
      I don't respond to AC's.
    5. Re:Wrong by green1 · · Score: 1

      Exactly, we're discussing the report, not worshipping it. Part of the discussion is to talk about how reasonable the various factors cited actually are.

    6. Re:Wrong by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I don't think you understand the problem. An inch of sea level rise doesn't flood cities under everyday circumstances, it adds another inch to once-a-decade storm surge levels, turning them into once-a-century storm surges. Since few cities prepare against such rare events, they get overwhelmed when it starts happening every 10 years or so. And then the sea levels go up another inch...

  38. When New Orleans disappears under the waves.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Let's see Trump and his cronies ignore climate change when there's no more New Orleans to go to for Mardi Gras. N.O. is a cultural center in the U.S. and you can't just ignore losing it.

    Of course it'll get swept under the rug just as fast as it's swept under the waves. It doesn't suit anyones' agenda to pay attention to any of it. Get used to losing things, people, that's about how things are going to go for the next 100 years, until we're all living in Kansas, because that's where the coastline will end up being.

  39. Louisiana's coastline is the Mississiopi delta by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Unless the river floods over its banks the delta is not replenished and sinks as the sediments compact.If you want your land back get rid of the levees and build on stilts.

  40. It's not simply a Louisiana problem ... by gordguide · · Score: 1

    Where Louisiana is going to come up against the biggest hurdle isn't it's own particular issue, but the problem with regard to the entire Eastern Seaboard, the Gulf, and to perhaps a lesser extent, but just as fraught with pitfalls, the West Coast.

    This scares the living daylights out of the White House and Congress, because anything they do in Louisiana will be under a huge microscope, will set perhaps irreversible precedents, and is going to have other states lining up for the same treatment.

    Paralysis is clearly the best option, from the Fed's perspective. They see a seemingly endless range of issues, they fear any response will bite them in the future, and, frankly, they can't afford to do much in the first place.; It's like a 30-state Disaster Zone they don't want to know anything about.

  41. Re: Meh. What is science but a guess by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I agree with a lot of what you said about people, but you have not followed your own argument to its logical conclusion: some people are beyond the reach of argument and reason. They will NEVER change their belief. Therefore, it is WRONG to tone down science promotion on behalf of people who can never be reached anyway, since this weakens promotion for those who CAN BE.

    Let's not do a false equivalence either between science haters and religion haters. The former are far more active and numerous than the latter. The reason why is because science provides alternative explanations for things and does so with objective, reproducible proof, whereas religion can't. It's a direct threat to their community's faith. If
    not them, then their kids...

  42. Flood Control in Mississippi River by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Flood control along the Mississippi River contributes to this.... the sediment load formerly carried by the river isn't there to help replenish the delta. The shoreline erosion/loss processes continue unabated, but much less sediment comes down the river.

    Blame people and infrastructure, not climate.

  43. In other news... by 101percent · · Score: 1

    Elon Musk declares state of emergency over disappearing hairline.

  44. Re:Meh. What is science but a guess by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    You can't attack people on such a personal, intimate, foundational level and expect people to follow you, or your ideas.

    Why would I want these ignorant rubes following me around!?

    Because they will frustrate me by voting for Republicans who screw them over to give me a tax cut? I'll get over it.

  45. Oh please... Fake News!!! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Everyone knows coastal erosion isn’t real. It’s a plot by the Chinese to undermine our economy and the so called scientists are funding by the intellectual elite. Prove it with fact I will believe (be aware I only believe facts and polls that I agree with)

  46. Claim they are Salt Water Mexicans by tekrat · · Score: 1

    And only THEN will Trump allow you to build a wall.

    --
    If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
  47. Re:Meh. What is science but a guess by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    >[...]all because of the asshat making unprovable claims about religion[...]

    You can flip the same argument to be critical of the religious, too: they can't prove their deity of choice exists.

  48. Sea level rise? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    While the IPCC and its boy scouts present wilder and wilder sea level predictions for the near future, the real observational facts demonstrate that sea level has remained virtually stable for the last 40-50 years.

    http://nzclimatescience.net/im...

  49. Re: Meh. What is science but a guess by sl3xd · · Score: 1

    some people are beyond the reach of argument and reason. They will NEVER change their belief.

    That's a contemptible attitude. Considering human being a lost cause because you're not interested in accommodating their humanity is abhorrent.

    It's entirely possible to promote science while respecting other people's religions, even for subjects like evolution. I've seen it done superbly by professors who took the time to understand their students, and were able to show they actually cared about the student and their humanity.

    The bottom line is we're all part of the human family, and denying the humanity of another - including their religious beliefs - is the essence of evil.

    It's very practical to promote science to everyone. As with most things,getting half of the work done is easy. The other half is not as easy, but no less important.

    --
    -- Sometimes you have to turn the lights off in order to see.
  50. Cunts by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Democrats are Cunts.

    That will never change.

    1. Re: Cunts by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Speaking of sinkholes, this type of reply is why Slashdot is considered to be the garbage dump of the Internet.

  51. Was Edgar Cayce right? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    See subject: He wasn't wrong about a LOT (the rich & powerful came to him to cure diseases galore after all) - is he right about the flooding he predicted?

    * FOOD FOR THOUGHT!

    (There's more to life that what meets the eye...)

    APK

    P.S.=> Interesting & THOUGHT provoking stuff that Mr. Cayce - I suggest you all look into what I am alluding to here... apk

  52. Re: Meh. What is science but a guess by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    In response to your reply to me:

    So I express an opinion other than yours, and I am *contemptible*
    and *evil* ? Try following some of your own advice, my hypocritical friend. I only said that some people are not reachable by reasoned, scientific argument. I don't advocate doing anything to these people, just not to waste effort past a certain point trying to "convert" them.

  53. move then poofters by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    then just fuckin move you idiotic poofters of poofters of poofs you poofs. and while we are on the subject, then, go and get fucked you poof gay faggots of poofs. now fuck off you cunty cunts.

  54. Dialing For Dollars And Wallowing In Self Pity by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Ah. The March For Lies is tomorrow! The LA Gov will have a lot of company to commiserate with. Maybe the march organizers will hand out free condoms and HIV shots!

    And the Fed is moving toward a partial shutdown or another continuing resolution, continuing resolution is winning the bets, on 28 April.

    LA has this really BIG thing, called the Mississippi River Delta and active for more than 65 million years! Congress may encourage people to breathe but LA citizens and everyone else has to begin by sucking.

    Jajajajajajajajajajaj

  55. Re: Meh. What is science but a guess by sl3xd · · Score: 1

    There is a significant difference between labeling a behavior versus labeling a person.

    I have no problems with describing a behavior as contemptible; there's nothing hypocritical in that. How any reader decides to apply it to themselves is their own problem, not mine.

    Moreover your initial response is that people were beyond help, which is quite different than and your most recent response — that consider it a waste of effort. The first implies impossibility, the other that you're not willing to spend the effort. They are very different attitudes.

    I clearly diffe in opinionr: I believe in a democracy, its vitally important to help everyone understand that science is a process to understand the world, and that understanding the world helps us make better decisions.

    Alienating people en masse is never wise in a democracy, and a little extra effort can make all the difference for all of humanity

    --
    -- Sometimes you have to turn the lights off in order to see.
  56. Abuse of Emergency Orders by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    These Emergency Orders are completely out of hand. It seems like another one is issued every other month when there is no true emergency.

  57. Re: Meh. What is science but a guess by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    That's an awfully fine distinction to draw, and one that lets you claim to love people... just as long as they do what you say. Otherwise, they fall in the "evil" bin on this topic. Sorry, but that goes beyond uncivil and doesn't acknowledge MY right to dignity and a different opinion. This is also why I don't advocate pushing an agenda onto someone who is adamantly unreceptive to it. People are free to accept it or not, and it is not my duty to force them. In fact, this is impossible to do. You can lead a horse to water...

  58. They need to move inland already. by Jastiv · · Score: 1

    People should have moved inland already. We aren't more powerful than the sea. Here is a relevant web cartoon I made from 2006. http://jastiv.keenspace.com/d/...

  59. Re:Meh. What is science but a guess by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Cameron county? Did you mean Cameron parish?

  60. My take is... by martinfb · · Score: 1

    My take is:
    1) Smart move by the gov to improve Fed response to obvious urgent needs.
    2) Global warming is a natural cycle here on Earth.
    3) Based on all the research I have seen, global climate change (including warming) IS, in apparent fact, ACCELERATED by mankind's careless spewing.
    4) Mankind would be prudent to get fully active on remediation ASAP.
    5) Coastal dwellers need to understand, and accept responsibility for, choosing to live in such challenging locations.
    6) Politicians need to take an extensive aptitude test prior to even running for office so as to prove that they have a grasp of how to UNDERSTAND issues, especially those that are out of their regular scope of education.
    7) MONEY needs to be removed from all legislative and political endeavors (laws, elections, etc...); so as to allow PERTINENT FACTS to rule our decisions.
    8) Corporations need to have their power severely curbed. Their ability to control anything at any capacity of more than ONE individual threatens any and most all of (us).

    --


    Self-importance and self-indulgence is the root of ALL evil.
  61. Hark! Sounds like pigeon wings... by BoogieChile · · Score: 1

    And I think a little whirlwind-reaping won't be far behind.

  62. the "benefits" of emergencies by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    the sweet, sweet Federal grant money

    the ability to extend and abuse power during an "emergency"

    all you gotta do is get a politically correct reason to declare.

    EVERYTHING is an "emergency" nowadays. Because non emergencies don't "raise awareness"

    FUD is always the game to play. Power mongers win, people lose.