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'Sinking' Pacific Nation Tuvalu Is Actually Getting Bigger (phys.org)
mi shares a report from Phys.Org: The Pacific nation of Tuvalu -- long seen as a prime candidate to disappear as climate change forces up sea levels -- is actually growing in size, new research shows. A University of Auckland study examined changes in the geography of Tuvalu's nine atolls and 101 reef islands between 1971 and 2014, using aerial photographs and satellite imagery. It found eight of the atolls and almost three-quarters of the islands grew during the study period, lifting Tuvalu's total land area by 2.9 percent, even though sea levels in the country rose at twice the global average. Co-author Paul Kench said the research, published Friday in the journal Nature Communications, challenged the assumption that low-lying island nations would be swamped as the sea rose. It found factors such as wave patterns and sediment dumped by storms could offset the erosion caused by rising water levels.
This assumes that enough vulnerable locations will have such wave and storm patterns to be able to replenish what is lost by what is essentially a global flat raise of sea levels.
I don't read AC
Uh, this isn't a boat or an iceberg we're talking about. An island that is getting bigger, by definition, isn't sinking, because 'island' only refers to the part above water.
But it seems some people would rather attack the messenger, rather than look for a scientific way that both things might be true, or otherwise not conflict. (I mean come on, it's right there in the summary, a suggestion that the bigger storms -- you know, the ones that global warming people say are the bad outcome of global warming -- are depositing soil.)
Have you already tried altering the original data? Maybe by photoshopping the picture of the island so that it's smaller after all. That seems to be the generally accepted go-to plan when data doesn't support the worst-case scenario. (I'm referring, of course, to the satellite temperature measurements being altered because they don't show warming. That was after ground temperature measurements were altered.... Whoops, forgot to save the original data, guess you'll just have to trust us!)
Nature isn't linear, despite us constantly trying to model it linearly. Tuvalu isn't rising and it isn't sinking. Sedimentation raises and extends its shores some, but overall It's still the same height, and the water surrounding it is still rising. The highest point of the entire country is 5 meters above sea level. A larger but (relatively) shallower island will be much more prone to flooding.
Scientists say it's growing. Slashdot troll trolls.
Or we could cherry pick and only listen to scientists when they say what matches our religious beliefs.
If the ring is growing in thickness because coral is being dredged from outside the ring and then deposited on the inside of the ring by more frequent king tides that wash right over the ring, then perhaps those living right on the ring don't care about the size so much. They may care more about their thin soil being lost, salinated, and replaced by coral beach. Yes, having more surface area allows for more mitigation measures to be tried, but it is still a hard battle being fought because of sea level rise.
I'm thinking about it, therefore I might be.
The island Nation of Tuwalu did not originate on the island in the first place. They settled there. So.
Just board their fast proa and move to another island, with better social security that's what them should do.
Instead we will be imposing costly policies on the developing world and painful policies to ourselves in a futile attempt to stop the Natures work.
The Netherlands is mostly below the sea level, and it is an OK place to live.
These islands don't happen to be just above the water by pure chance, but because coral reefs grow until they hit the surface and then stop. When the sea level rises, the reefs will grow to match it.
Well first, that was supposed to be a metaphor for faith, and second, the world's tallest skyscraper is now built on sand, so any practical message in the metaphor is just another thing in the Bible that's hilariously outdated, like its complete lack of criticism for the institution of slavery.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
You meab California won't be sucked into the ocean after all?
It found factors such as wave patterns and sediment dumped by storms could offset the erosion caused by rising water levels.
Please explain how you got "totally negated oceanwide" from the study's conclusion.
All of their island is literally a sediment. For it is a dead coral reef.
Coral reef is not sediment. FWIW my house is built on sediment. It is 600 feet aboove present day sea level in hills of red sandstone, sandstone being sand compressed and re-crystalised until it has become rock. Sandstone, limestone, chalk and slate are all sedimentary rocks.
Rye aye, and we can sing just like our fathers. Come on, Eileen.
It's a perfect time for being wasted.
A perfect time to watch the stars.
- Burden Brothers, "Beautiful Night"
So the area that is 5 meters above sea level will still be at the same height, correct? We've just added more, lower altitude land around that area. How does that increase the susceptibility of flooding of that 5 meter section?
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
This video discusses the research about atolls (Tuvalu is referenced around the 7:00 mark):
Climate Change -- Hurricanes, atolls and coral
HINT: This was a video published in late November 2010.
Yup. It turns out that if you can think and plan ahead it's possible to live below sea level with much more primitive technology than we have today - basically earth walls.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
The construction method of dikes has changed over the centuries. Popular in the Middle Ages were wierdijken, earth dikes with a protective layer of seaweed. An earth embankment was cut vertically on the sea-facing side. Seaweed was then stacked against this edge, held into place with poles. Compression and rotting processes resulted in a solid residue that proved very effective against wave action and they needed very little maintenance. In places where seaweed was unavailable other materials such as reeds or wicker mats were used.
Another system used much and for a long time was that of a vertical screen of timbers backed by an earth bank. Technically these vertical constructions were less successful as vibration from crashing waves and washing out of the dike foundations weakened the dike.
Much damage was done to these wood constructions with the arrival of the shipworm (Teredo navalis), a bivalve thought to have been brought to the Netherlands by VOC trading ships, that ate its way through Dutch sea defenses around 1730. The change was made from wood to using stone for reinforcement. This was a great financial setback as there is no natural occurring rock in the Netherlands and it all had to be imported from abroad.
Current dikes are made with a core of sand, covered by a thick layer of clay to provide waterproofing and resistance against erosion. Dikes without a foreland have a layer of crushed rock below the waterline to slow wave action. Up to the high waterline the dike is often covered with carefully laid basalt stones or a layer of tarmac. The remainder is covered by grass and maintained by grazing sheep. Sheep keep the grass dense and compact the soil, in contrast to cattle.
But hey, not everyone can pass the marshmallow test like Northern Europeans I suppose. So they blame Northern Europeans for climate change and demand cash.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
Stability and agriculture are the primary concerns, not just landmass. If the ocean is washing up new sandbars from storms while the island is sinking, and there's saline intrusion into the soil, the land area can increase while the island loses its arable soil, which is going to sap the islander's means to feed and support themselves.
So, representing this as any counter to Tuvalu's crisis is obtuse.
Do you remember Sunday School?
No, luckily my parents did not take me to be brainwashed into an ancient cult as a child.
Only crack the nuts that crack. You don't put the ones that don't crack in the sack.
But hey, not everyone can pass the marshmallow test like Northern Europeans I suppose. So they blame Northern Europeans for climate change and demand cash.
The U.S. is failing the marshmallow test as we speak - huge tax cuts and massive spending increases at a time when the economy is already strong, and the GOP controls ALL branches of government. Apparently there are no longer any adults in charge who realize that if you don't pay down your debt during the good times, things will get really ugly in the bad times.
Yeah? And did they get that way by doing nothing?
Only crack the nuts that crack. You don't put the ones that don't crack in the sack.
It's likely to create lagoons on land that had previously been coastal.
You are welcome on my lawn.
... it is because the Earth is flat. Get with it, people.
What I don't get is how they change the bulb.
Well these are British Commonwealth Subjects so it is NZ or Australia. They do welcome boatloads of Arabs and East Indians so a few Polynesian Proas will not make any marked difference.
Great. I'm glad you're so eager to start relocating people away from the coasts.
How many refugees are you willing to board in your home?
Of course he didn't mean to relocate them to where he lives; that would be silly.
Surely there must be a shithole country that will take them
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
Yup, that budget is a travesty.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
If by "on sand", you mean on top of nearly a thousand pilings that go up to 282 feet down into the sand, then yes. :-) I think that stretches the metaphor a bit much, though.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
The global warming the US caused by Nixon opening up to China?
People don't remember what a scam "climate change" really is... -and don't like being reminded...
...
A brief recap:
There have been wild predictions of "runaway greenhouse effects" and of "new ice ages", back-and-forth, for 35+ years now.
The people making these claims have been consistently wrong, within just one or two years of making their great predictions.
So then they got the bright idea to change to warning of "climate change", so then they don't need to predict what will happen at all... They want you to believe that ANY bad weather, of any kind, proves that they were right all along....
And also, THE SCIENCE IS SETTLED!... AND ANY SCIENTIST WHO DARES TO QUESTION IT, IS UNFIT TO BE A SCIENTIST!...
And you believe that?
These people raised the debate by making failed predictions for decades, and now they are summarily declaring an end to the debate entirely--as well as excusing all their failed past predictions, and refusing to look foolish by making any more future (incorrect) predictions.
I'm not a bullshit scientist, but that kinda sounds like bullshit to me.
If GW alarmists want to use Tortuga as a poster boy case because "sea levels in the country rose at twice the global average," then GW deniers can use Tortuga as a poster boy case for islands growing faster than they're sinking.
If you try to sway public opinion by using extreme and corner cases to alarm them, then it's hypocritical to cry foul when extreme and corner cases are used to refute you. Stick to using median and mean data and you won't have this problem.
Yeah, cause as long as your house is 4mm above *average* sea level, everything is fine. Duh.
If it's an atoll, then it's broken up coral skeletons. But that's not the whole story, coral only grows in shallow water, so underneath there must have been a volcano. It may once have extended above the then current sea level, with coral growing on it's sides. As it eroded away the sediments were caught by the coral to form a shallow plateau just under the surface of the water, and coral grew on top of that until it got too shallow. Over time the sea level rose and fell. Rising sea levels would put everything under water, where the coral could grow on top of it, falling sea levels would expose the tops of the area, and restrict coral growth to the sides. Since coral won't grow in deep water, there is a strong limit to the radius around the old volcano that the island can grow, but the coral growth keeps the volcano from eroding further.
If waves and currents are moving sediments onto the island, they must be coming from somewhere. And it's unlikely that they are coming from deep water. So they're probably coming from the sides of the volcano where the coral have been growing. Just what this means is speculation, but it could mean that at the deepest level, the ocean has gotten to deep for the corals to grow, so they died and became loose sediments. In which case the base of the atoll is shrinking, but the top is becoming flatter.
OTOH, it's been my impression that this kind of thing usually happens over a much longer time period. This could be because the books were written by geologist who tend to assume the processes happen slowly, but it could also be because they usually *do* happen slowly. That said, gradualism tends to be overstated. A natural arch doesn't collapse slowly, it stands up apparently unmoved for centuries, and collapses within a month, and usually within a day. There are lots of metastable equilibria, that appear to be stable until they suddenly change state. If you're observing it during the stable period, which is almost all the time, you'll see something that looks almost unchanging. If you're there when it happens, you may not be able to run fast enough to get out of the way.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Where is the sea level dropping? I know it's rising more slowly along the US East Coast, but I didn't know it was dropping anywhere.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Skeptical science dot com? You might as well have posted from dailykos or Fox News for all those biased jerks are worth reading.
At least SkepticalScience references peer reviews scientific literature. If you dig into the scientific literature on sea level rise over the past 4 or 5000 years you find that sea level remained pretty steady and if anything dropped a bit during the Little Ice Age. Since 1900 sea level rise has gone from around 1 mm/year to 2 mm/year in the middle of the 20th Century and over 3 mm/year since around 1993. That looks like acceleration to me.
Las Vegas
Take off every 'sig' !!
I'm not a US citizen, so US party politics is not something that matters a great deal to me. I wasn't sure if there were documented facts concerning debt levels and US Presidents, so I went digging and came up with this:-
https://www.thebalance.com/us-...
It's a single source, so of course could be complete hogwash, but it's a start. According to the records there, every single US president all the way back to Herbert Hoover [directly before Franklin D. Roosevelt] added to the US Debt.
Unfortunately, even these figures don't tell the whole story, because we have to consider both debt and deficit, in which the former is the amount the US owes, and the latter is the rate with which the former is changing.
I make this distinction because, in recent memory, Bill Clinton has been the only US president who has actually decelerated the increase in US national debt. When he left office [IIRC] he did so leaving his successor, George W. Bush, with a tiny budgetary surplus. It's also instructive to look at the scale of the change in the debt position between Presidents. For example, George H.W. Bush left office with a national debt 54% greater than the one he inherited. Bill Clinton had trimmed that to a 32% increase. George W. Bush doubled-down on his Father's spending policies and managed a 101% increase in national debt. In the case of the two Bush Presidents, the increases were likely driven mainly by military spending to support the wars that they started.
Now, I'd absolutely have to agree with you if we look at Obama's record. He added $7.917 trillion to the US national debt, a 68% increase, which puts him somewhere between Bush Father and Bush Son and way beyond Clinton's record. However, it has to be remembered that Obama won office in late 2008 and became President in Januaru 2009. In other words, less than 6 months after the 2008 financial crash had really hit home.
What Obama did during his 8 years in office was, in economic terms, kick the can down the road. These are unarguable facts - the record speaks for itself. The reason *why* this is the case is obviously going to be highly partisan and subject to fierce debate. But the fact remains that the chief reason that Obama's record on the economy stands where it does is simply because he inherited one of the worst financial crises in living memory from his predecessor. The damage was done during the 8 years that George W. Bush spent in office [with increased military spending and tax cuts]. Obama just papered over the cracks and kicked the can down the road.
But the record is pretty clear - with the exception of Coolidge and Warren Harding [who served immediately before him] every US President from the First World War to the present day has added to the US debt.
And that's why Jesus was a carpenter and not an engineer.
Worse, they'll use the money to buy votes or to prosecute yet more foreign wars. How many did Obama start, 7 in 8 years?
Really, what seven or eight wars did Obama start?
Let's count Obama's wars: begin!
Scandal-free president, everyone. Nobel Peace Prize president, everyone.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
how does sea level rise at twice the global average? I am no ocean or water flow expert so happy for someone to explain it to me, but surely the ocean depth, especially in non isolated areas like Tuvalu would have a consistent sea level with the rest of the pacific?
Here's a reason. Take a pile of sand, put water around it, as the water level rise, so the sand pile subsides and look the sand is lower and more spread around. So take a sand island, with trees and stuff up to say 3m above high tide. Raise the water level and more and more of the land is washed into the sea at high tide. A low tide you might have a larger island but at high tide it is under water, not really all that useful. Raise the water level high enough and you might have quite a large sandbar that is below sea level at high tide and supports only limited marine life, where once a smaller tree lined Island used to exist.
Of course you can do what China did and add material to raise the low lying formation and create a useful Island. In it's way much like moving a rig to the location and anchoring it or even a ship, you got there first you developed it or anchored there and no one can really drive you off with infringing international territory and vessel sovereignty or man made island sovereignty in international territory (so the island is yours but the territory around it, is not, except what is need to secure the stability of the man made island). Right up until the next major tsunami and then everyone goes for a swim.
There you go, Tuvalu could invite Chinese investors to create land, the land would be Tuvalu but the Chinese investors would own the land they create. The US would probably invade and kill everyone so maybe not, the US government is not in the control of the American voter, not in the least.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
first the going up concept is a bit weak, as I said above check the standard deviation first it is just a set of random numbers going up or down is non conclusive. Second whenever the sea rises it deposits more stuff which lifts the island, the land mass is growing so don't worry about Tuvalu. Instead worry about the conclusion being that chicken little running around calling out that the sea levels are rising. Is this crap based on the weakest of evidence (as seen here) of course a random set of values can be going up and down and if you over analyse them you can produce all sorts of erroneous stuff. Even the concept that GW will cause the sea level to rise has so many flaws. Of course there is evidence like this tide information from Tuvalu. The problem is taking the evidence and then outputting worst case conclusions.
You can't handle the truth! - Because I don't post left all my comments get modded down, bye bye Karma.
Its a pop science, not pseudo-science site. Its accurate, but simplified, and its widely respected in the scientific community as a reliable and accurate public science site.
However. You want actual papers huh?
http://www.pik-potsdam.de/~ste...
http://www.meteo.psu.edu/holoc...
http://www.meteo.psu.edu/holoc...
http://science.sciencemag.org/...
http://www.pnas.org/content/pn...
I'm sure theses others, but those where just some of the references off the *very* page you dishonestly try to handwave as 'pseudoscience".
You can't just throw mud like that at widely respected sources of information without at least justifying who so much of the scientific community is wrong, but random AC on the internet is right
Excuse the Unicode crap in my posts. That's an apostrophe, and slashdot is busted.
According to Algore we're all dead by now if you look at his inconvenient "truth". None of his stuff he predicted has happened.
Still ice in the artic.
Kilimanjaro still has snow.
The weather hasn't been worse. In fact it's been about the same or better.
15 year hiatus in "warming."
Satellite-derived temperature data showed, until the recent El Niño, no statistically significant warming trend for more than 21 years.
And so on.
His money scheme has worked. He has been paid about a billion dollars over something that isn't even true and his professor told him so in the 1970s. Al is a D student in science after all.
Yet people still listen to that man and give him money.
Let me guess, you didn't RTFA.
The people on Tuvalu will eventually be evacuated to New Zealand. But they'd prefer climate change be addressed so they don't have to. Unfortunately, humans are short-sighted, selfish and more than a little stupid, so they are already screwed. It's just a matter of time. The same applies to Miami, London, Shanghai and over a hundred other low-lying cities. They are already dead-men walking with respect to sea level rise. It may take a century for some of them to be inundated so frequently you can't live there any more, but it's just a matter of time now. You don't have to be submerged completely. A king tide that floods the city every few months is more than enough to render it uninhabitable.
Only boring people are ever bored.
You typed a lot of stuff for no reason. Sea levels ARE rising. We know this because it's being measured constantly and had been for a long time.
Only boring people are ever bored.
Yet here you can see that the evidence is so weak, yet it is 2x the average rate. Sorry but knowing the sea levels are rising is like having evidence of Murder. Evidence can point to the wrong conclusion. However you do need to move out of the Media mind control to be able to think that kind of thing for yourself. I know I will get modded down for having an opinion that is not popular. What a troll not jumping to the common conclusion
You can't handle the truth! - Because I don't post left all my comments get modded down, bye bye Karma.
Thank God there's a lot of water pouring over the edge because there's a shitload of turtles standing down there on each other's backs. And they all need water.
Let's count Obama's wars: begin!
So are you going to begin, or what?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Whoa? Someone on /. RTFA? Really? Shocked I am!
I think we're actually saying the same thing. It's not man made GW, it's a normal process.
Democrats don't hold a candle to Republicans when it comes to increasing national debt. It's already been said, but it's worth noting that the last Republican to lower the deficit on average was Nixon, yet Clinton and Obama both managed it. Reagan started what's now a time-honored tradition of Republican presidents dicking over the next generation by driving up the deficit through some combination of unfunded tax cuts and increased spending.
Dispute this with "alternative facts" all you want, but there's nothing tricky about the math - just look at the chart. And the thing is, it is DELIBERATE on the part of the "conservatives"... they decided to institute a "starve the beast" philosophy in the Reagan era, where they intentionally drive up debt to try to force government spending down. Similar to charging up your credit cards to try to force yourself to be more frugal.
Just spend 2 minutes actually reading and you'll see. The GOP has become the debt party and the instant gratification party, and this latest move of massive spending ceilings and unfunded tax cuts is just more of the same. The biggest shame is that Schumer's no better in this case, he's crowing right along with them about selling out our grandkids.
you're one of those people that find it convincing when someone on youtube pours water on an orange and screams "SEE, IT FELL OFF!??" aren't you?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Democrats don't hold a candle to Republicans when it comes to increasing national debt. It's already been said, but it's worth noting that the last Republican to lower the deficit on average was Nixon, yet Clinton and Obama both managed it.
Each one of those increased the debt
https://www.thebalance.com/us-...
Barack Obama: Added $7.917 trillion, a 68 percent increase from the $11.657 trillion debt at the end of George W. Bushâ(TM)s last budget, FY 2009.
Bill Clinton: Added $1.396 trillion, a 32 percent increase from the $4.4 trillion debt at the end of George H.W. Bush's last budget, FY 1993.
Richard Nixon: Added $121 billion, a 34 percent increase from the $354 billion debt at the end of LBJ's last budget, FY 1969.
And if you don't trust that, you can check the figures here
https://www.treasurydirect.gov...
and
https://www.treasurydirect.gov...
E.g. Nixon you subtract 1974's debt from 1969's. I.e. $475B - $353B = $121B
For Clinton you subtract 2001's debt from 1993's, i.e. $5.807T - $4.411T = 1.396T
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
So, if carbon emissions are reduced or somehow mitigated, global warming will be reversed, and the land area of those island groups will get smaller?
Science Barbie says: "Science is hard."
There's no time like the present. Well, the past used to be.
It's already been said, but it's worth noting that the last Republican to lower the deficit on average was Nixon, yet Clinton and Obama both managed it.
Each one of those increased the debt
https://www.thebalance.com/us-...
If you actually read what I wrote, you'll notice that I made a claim regarding deficits, not debt. Debt tells you very little about a given president's influence - because frequently a president inherits a massive deficit, so it's more or less a given that the debt will increase under their tenure. What you should really look at is whether the deficit is increasing, which tells us whether the president is moving the trend towards a balanced budget, or turning towards higher levels of debt. Republican presidents for the last few decades have increased the deficit, increasing the rate at which the debt grows, while Democratic presidents have decreased the deficit, or even moved us into a surplus, in Clinton's case.
If you care about the national debt, voting for a Republican president is, historically speaking, a terrible move. We can see that playing out in Washington right now. Anybody who thinks the GOP is fiscally conservative hasn't been paying attention for a very long time.
The debt is just the sum of all the deficits. And Clinton never run a surplus
https://slashdot.org/comments....
Clinton did not have a surplus of $230B in the year 2000 because he had to borrow $246.5 From numerous other off budget funds. Clinton NEVER ran a surplus during his 8 years in office, he just borrowed yearly from different budgets, (primarily the SS budget) to offset the general fund losses. In 2000 the following funds were borrowed which resulted in a $16.5 deficit.
$152.3B from Social Security
$30.9B from Civil Service Retirement Fund
$18.5B from Federal Supplementary Medical insurance Trust Fund
$15.0B from Federal Hospital Insurance Trust Fund
$9.0B from the Federal Unemployment Trust Fund
$8.2B from Military Retirement Fund
$3.8B from Transportation Trust Funds
$1.8B from Employee Life Insurance & Retirement fund
$7.0B from others
Total borrowed from off budget funds $246.5B, meaning that his $230B surplus is actually a $16.5B deficit.
($246.5B borrowed - $230B claimed surplus = $16.5B actual deficit).
The last time the federal government ran a true suplus was 1969, the total surplus was $3.2B and before that was $1960, $.3 B
If you look here you can see the debt increased each year he was in office. Which means he ran a deficit
E.g. from
https://www.treasurydirect.gov...
and
https://www.treasurydirect.gov...
you get
Each year the debt increased because each year a deficit was run. Including 2000, Clinton's claimed 'surplus year'.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
Is it a declared war? Where the US Congress has formally declared war? That's easy. No wars under Obama.
That's an extremely outdated definition of war anyway. None of our wars have been against a specific foreign government with a leadership structure capable of declaring war or ending a war in surrender.
Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Yemen, Somalia, Pakistan.
These are not different conflicts, all of these have been against the same opponent -- a people who do not recognize country borders, so they operate across many countries where the actual government is too weak to fight them.
The debt is just the sum of all the deficits. And Clinton never run a surplus
09/30/2001 5,807,463,412,200.06
09/30/2000 5,674,178,209,886.86
09/30/1999 5,656,270,901,615.43
09/30/1998 5,526,193,008,897.62
09/30/1997 5,413,146,011,397.34
09/30/1996 5,224,810,939,135.73
09/29/1995 4,973,982,900,709.39
09/30/1994 4,692,749,910,013.32
09/30/1993 4,411,488,883,139.38
09/30/1992 4,064,620,655,521.66
09/30/1991 3,665,303,351,697.03
Each year the debt increased because each year a deficit was run. Including 2000, Clinton's claimed 'surplus year'.
You're attacking a point that is at best tangential to my contention: that the GOP is the party of debt. Your own figures illustrate my point perfectly - look at the derivative of the debt figures you provide (just subtract one from the next, to find the deficit), and you'll see that the growth of the debt is shrinking, on average, throughout Clinton's administration. By your numbers, at the beginning, the deficit inherited from GHWB was adding ~$400B/yr to the national debt. At the end of Clinton's administration, the deficit was reduced to 1/4th of that. Look at the figures for Reagan, GWB, or now Trump, and you'll see the opposite trend - higher and higher deficits every year. Obama inherited a truly massive deficit, and once again lowered it dramatically over the course of his two terms.
If you care about the national debt, you should never, ever vote a Republican into the Oval Office. Their stated goal ("starve the beast" philosophy) is to increase the debt to try to force the government to shrink. Like increasing your credit card debt to force yourself to be more frugal.
If you care about the national debt, you should never, ever vote a Republican into the Oval Office. Their stated goal ("starve the beast" philosophy) is to increase the debt to try to force the government to shrink. Like increasing your credit card debt to force yourself to be more frugal.
You can see the debt increase by president here
https://www.thebalance.com/us-...
Obama D 68%
Bush R 101%
Clinton D 32%
HW_Bush R 54%
Reagan R 186%
Carter D 43%
Ford R 47%
Nixon R 34%
LBJ D 13%
JFK D 8%
Eisenhower R 9%
Truman D 3%
FDR D 1048%
Hoover R 32%
Coolidge R -26%
Harding R -7%
Wilson D 727%
So that's 8 Democrats who added 1942% to the debt, or an average of 242.75% each. And 9 Republicans who added 430% to the debt or 47.78% each.
The only real outlier is Reagan who spent a tonne of cash. Still that caused the USSR to collapse and the economy to rebound. And he did much less fiscal damage than FDR or Wilson, both of whom also had an existential crisis to deal with. If you're going to exclude them on the grounds the won WWII and WWI, why not exclude Reagan too on the grounds he was governing at the end of the Cold War.
In which case you get this result. Six Democrat presidents increased the debt by a total of 167%, or 27.83% each. Eight Republican presidents increased the debt by a total of 244 or 30.5% each.
I.e. the notion that Democrats run cause the debt to increase more slowly isn't really true. In fact, and surprisingly, there's not much difference. Especially since FDR who enormously increased the size of the peacetime government. Something which is very hard to undo, because Democrat's pet welfare recipients will riot if you do and the media will cheer them on.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
An interesting article. Most I've seen don't go back that far.
I think the take away is that modern politicians have looked back and figured out that if you want to spend a lot of money, having a war is a good way to justify it.
Although I don't think it was George W Bush's legacy of military spending or tax cuts that screwed Obama. Sure it was a lot, but no more than (relatively speaking) a lot of other instances. What screwed Obama was either deregulation or a lack of policy to create needed regulation in the financial markets around derivative trading and mortgage lending. It was the mortgage crisis, bank failures, and consequently the bailouts that were the issue. By the time Obama got the reigns he pretty much didn't have much choice in the matter.
Indeed, looking back at the "non-war" spending years, Reagan is one of the worst offenders. Though one might argue about "cold-war" being the same excuse for increase spending as the rest.
If you care about the national debt, you should never, ever vote a Republican into the Oval Office. Their stated goal ("starve the beast" philosophy) is to increase the debt to try to force the government to shrink. Like increasing your credit card debt to force yourself to be more frugal.
The only real outlier is Reagan who spent a tonne of cash.
The Republicans DID actually have a claim to the "fiscal conservative" label prior to Reagan. Trickle-down economics, unfunded tax cuts, and the intentional deficits of "starve the beast" changed all that. So again, you aren't actually addressing my argument, which is about Reagan-era Republicans, and the Republicans of today in particular. In the OP, I made the claim that no Republican since Nixon has lowered deficits on average, so attempted rebuttals based on Democrats and Republicans from more than 50 years ago aren't pertinent. The critical question is who you ought to vote for, here and now, if you care about the national debt, and the GOP of today demonstrates a far greater propensity for fiscal irresponsibility. Look at your own figures for the last several decades:
Obama D 68%
Bush R 101%
Clinton D 32%
HW_Bush R 54%
Reagan R 186%
Carter D 43%
Your own numbers show that each Democrat is adding far less to the debt than the Republican that preceded him, while every Republican that takes over from a Democrat sends the debt soaring again. Which supports my contention - that post-Reagan Republicans run up deficits, and the Democrats drive them back down like responsible adults. Step away from the familiar narrative and look at the numbers honestly.