[jonas21]

> The report’s authors estimated the initial cost of protecting the study area to be $78 million, based on the premise that water levels around Wilmington would rise 2 feet by 2050.

That's a drop in the bucket compared to Amtrak's $38 billion maintenance backlog or the $13 billion Hudson tunnel project.

Out of all the potential effects of climate change, this seems like one of the least worrisome -- we even know how to fix it already!

[freehunter]

>this seems like one of the least worrisome -- we even know how to fix it already!

The biggest struggle with climate change (in the US at least) is trying to convince businesses that they're going to be impacted financially. If anything we need more industry-specific reporting to try to show companies how ignoring climate change will impact their bottom line.

[chiefalchemist]

> "convince businesses that they're going to be impacted financially"

Yes and no. My take is this: there's too much time and energy being put into why and who does or doesn't believe (it's human-made), and not enough focus is on "solutions" (to the higher waters). Often this distraction seems to be generated by politicians.

I wish I had $10 for every time I've seen an article misuse the phrase "climate-change deniers" My sense those people are very few. That is, flat out deniers are few. Most everyone else sees it coming. The debate is why it's happening (human vs natural).

Even if we settle on why (which we won't), it seems to me Amtrak, etc. are still going to be impacted. At some point we need to focus on the ends, and let the means go.

Note: I realize that __if__ we settle on human-made there is, at least in theory, opportunity to slow the change. I understand that. My faith breaks down on ever being able to agree on why. It's as if the building is on fire and we're so busy debating why the fire started that we've forgotten we still need to do something about the fire.

[belorn]

Like you I see very few climate-change deniers, here or elsewhere. I see instead most disagreement and heavy discussion on what to do and what is the most efficient way to go forward. I have gotten many downvotes in the past referencing the recent study that listed "the most effective individual steps to tackle climate change", since it lists car ownership as being worse than eating meat.

I would therefore say that the debate is on what action that both individually and as a society that needs to be done. Abolishing coal mining vs replacing coal power plants with nuclear power plants, car ownership vs vegetarianism, carbon tax vs bans, and so on. We are collectively so divided that even if we all mostly agree that climate-change exists and is directly caused by us humans we can still not agree on what to do next.

[recusancy]

> "The debate is why it's happening (human vs natural)."

There is no debate. When people say "climate-change deniers" they mean "rapid anthropogenic caused climate-change deniers"

[PhasmaFelis]

There are still people who insist that the whole thing is made up. See "40 years ago they predicted global cooling!", "It was below freezing last night, so much for global warming!", etc., etc.

They're getting rarer, though. As the evidence piles up, more and more of them are switching to "global warming is real but it's nobody's fault and there's definitely nothing we can or should do about it."

[ams6110]

I don't think it's made up but I think there's a good chance we're wrong about the cause. The theory is not falsifiable. There are too many interacting variables. The models have all been fit to the data and not vice versa. We've been wrong about other things that were universally accepted as true (e.g. dietary fat is bad) and later turned out to be wrong.

Doesn't really matter what I think though. I'm one person, not in a position of influence, and my beliefs and behavior on the matter are inconsequential.

I don't think that moving away from coal and petroleum is bad though. Those are dirty, polluting energy sources. I think we should be developing nuclear and electrically powred transportation and battery technology. So either way, I support moving away from burning fossil fuels.

[mirimir]

> The models have all been fit to the data and not vice versa.

How else could it work? This is a system that's vastly too complicated to actually model from fundamental principles. Or at least, in any simple way. As I understand it, the components are all based on fundamental principles. But they're tweaked as needed to fit historical data.

[Scaevolus]

Impugning the broad base of climate science by comparing it to some garbage results from dietary research is unfair.

[windexh8er]

Just to be clear, dietary fat is not good as implied by your statement:

https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/abs/10.1161/CIR.000000000000...

[the8472]

> The theory is not falsifiable.

That is fundamentally wrong. At the worst you would have to run an experiment with many earth-replicas and individual changed variables. Quite impractical but not relevant for determining falsifiability of a theory.

But more importantly models don't just have to fit data of the past, they also make predictions of the future which will automatically be tested as time advances. And pretty much all climate models do not make a singular prediction they map some input domain to an output domain. Decrease factor A by x% and the global averages of effect M will stay within some confidence interval with the mean y% lower etc.

Of course it is complex, but complexity is no excuse to throw up your arms and claim we can't possibly know anything when it's inconvenient.

[hexane360]

The thing is, it's not a debate against people who are well informed and honestly think the above (or outright denial). It's against lobbyists who will say anything to prevent regulation, and the uninformed who repeat whatever they heard last from those lobbyists (or some false middle ground between science and lobbyists).

Whatever actual argument is stated (geologic, sun cycles, not happening, no big deal), the end objective is the same: we shouldn't do anything about it.

[jacobolus]

There’s a team of guys with flamethrowers running around the house lighting everything on fire, and some of the inhabitants are saying “well you can’t discount the possibility that the fires started themselves, and having a house on fire isn’t really so bad, and we probably can’t do anything to fix it anyway.”

And now you are standing up for them.

Our problems cannot be summarized as “higher waters”. We are talking about not just sea-level rise displacing hundreds of millions (if not billions) of people, but also lethal heat waves every summer in many parts of the world, permanent severe drought in some places, raging wildfires, severe storms, collapse of many ecosystems, collapse of agriculture in many places, etc.

[chiefalchemist]

"And now you are standing up for them."

Um. That's not what I said. Not at all. Please re-read the Note: at the end and my (lack of) faith in human nature. I'm not defending anyone. But by the time we get done running around in circles and settle on what punched a whole on the bottom of the boat, we're going to be water-above-head. Is that not what we're seeing? Still?

As for "higher waters", the original article was about water levels and Amtrak. I stuck to that. If you want you make the problem bigger and even more overwhelming, sure, we can go your route. But from what I've seen that kitchen-sink approach - again see the Note: - isn't working out well. At some point we have to come to terms with what isn't working, and try another approach.

I agree with you (sans the "standing up for them" bit). But I'm far less naive, far less trusting of human nature.

[mirimir]

Funny :)

But we're all running around with flamethrowers. And we can't imagine life without them. That's the hard part.

[ahje]

Not just that: The rest of the world are running around with matches and lighters, are watching us, thinking "Damn, I want one of those" and have started building their own flamethrowers.

Now we're telling them to stop building flamethrowers while we keep insisting that we keep our own.

[mirimir]

Just so.

[magduf]

The problem is that we really can't do anything to fix it; it's much too late. And there's zero possibility we're going to convince enough people and leaders to change things to alleviate the problem, so we might as well just sit back and watch it burn. The wise course of action is to get yourself out of the house and let the rest of the inhabitants suffer the consequences of their own making.

[anigbrowl]

You can't have a meaningful conversation about solutions with someone who rejects the premise on which your predictions are based, in my experience. At best you'll end up being asked to build sea walls at taxpayer expense to protect oil refineries before anything else.

[flukus]

> Yes and no. My take is this: there's too much time and energy being put into why and who does or doesn't believe (it's human-made), and not enough focus is on "solutions" (to the higher waters). Often this distraction seems to be generated by politicians.

The President of the United States thinks it's a hoax (from snopes https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/donald-trump-global-warmin...):

  The concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive. — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 6, 2012

  Ice storm rolls from Texas to Tennessee – I’m in Los Angeles and it’s freezing. Global warming is a total, and very expensive, hoax! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 6, 2013

  NBC News just called it the great freeze – coldest weather in years. Is our country still spending money on the GLOBAL WARMING HOAX? — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 25, 2014

  Snowing in Texas and Louisiana, record setting freezing temperatures throughout the country and beyond. Global warming is an expensive hoax! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 29, 2014

  Give me clean, beautiful and healthy air – not the same old climate change (global warming) bullshit! I am tired of hearing this nonsense. — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 29, 2014

If you want solutions we need to stop elected politicians that go out of their way to block solutions.

[forkandwait]

It's crazy to say, but no one with a college degree takes the current president at all seriously.

[krapp]

None of those people with college degrees are running the country or setting environmental policy, though. The man who thinks global warming is a Chinese communist plot is.

[mirimir]

It's a dangerous assumption that he thinks that. Arguably, he's just playing a role that's designed to increase net support. That is, he's a classic populist. And so what he gives us is a mirror to contemplate. Plus lots of policy that benefits his real supporters.

[mortivore]

I don't think it matters if you show businesses that climate will impact them financially. The people running the show may not be running it when the financial burden actually comes around.

If there is no impact or very little for the person/people currently running the business, then there is no reason to make a move to prevent/mitigate the problem.

[Joeri]

Not only that but I’m pretty sure that when the climate change bill comes due businesses will demand government help pay it, with the argument that the whole thing is the government’s fault anyway. And they’ll get what they want, because they always do.

[8ytecoder]

When there's water under the bridge, it would literally be a decision between putting the past behind and fixing the issue vs trying to point fingers and pin the blame on who was wrong. We'll bite the bullet and pay for all the necessary upgrades necessary. Businesses know it. Govt knows it. People will forget and move on as well. Human memory is short.

[Udik]

> when the climate change bill comes due businesses will demand government help pay it

What is the difference between having the government- the totality of citizens- pay for climate change mitigation; and adopting extremely expensive global measures that will make everyone poorer for a number of decades? I'm asking seriously. It seems very similar to me: in both cases the whole collectivity will pay (which is fair, since it's the whole collectivity that is enjoying the benefits of freely polluting the environment now).

[hexane360]

One takes disproportionately from those hurting the environment, providing incentives to cease and desist destructive behavior, while the other assumes that everyone and everything hurts the climate equally.

[munk-a]

Amtrak is weirdly a company that will suffer from climate change and could actually start addressing it (they end up shipping the vast majority of coal and could at least tax the movement of that good to recoup this expense) but most companies that will be hit by the effects of climate change won't be significantly contributing to it.

Industries that see ever more profit in fields with high externalities won't have direct a motivation to address those externalities even if they're aware of them - assuming they're unaware in any way.

(aside, coal isn't actually that terrible in terms of contribution to climate change, but reliance on it is definitely contributing, there may be bigger fish but this one has a good bit of meat on it)

[howard941]

> they end up shipping the vast majority of coal

You may be thinking of the entity that used to be known as Conrail. Amtrak is passenger only.

[azeotropic]

>could at least tax

GP may also be thinking of the U.S. House of Representatives. Amtrak has no power to levy taxes.

[munk-a]

Amtrak (or carriers, in this case I believe Conrail may be what I meant) can charge money for their services. When I mentioned taxing the goods I didn't mean sending in the IRS and instead I was referring to levying an additional fee for the costs induced by the usage of their service.

The word tax has multiple meanings, and my usage above was indeed correctly utilizing one of those meanings.

[zaroth]

Discriminatory pricing on government subsidized rail lines based on pet policy objectives seems like a really bad idea. I would expect there is some sort of legislation on this, we could call it rail neutrality or something.

[Aloha]

Conrail doesn't really exist anymore as a Class 1 carrier.

[whatshisface]

Companies can use their political influence to get other companies to change. This isn't happening today because everyone on Earth is happier when electricity and gas are cheaper, from the poorest consumer to the wealthiest executive.

[njarboe]

If the most vocal people shouting about the problem of climate change were advocating for the mass adoption of nuclear power, huge money into fusion power research, and investment in the R&D of removing CO2 from the air instead of advocating for reduced power usage, transportation restrictions (mass transit), and human population decline as the solutions to "climate change", US society would be a lot more likely to get behind doing something about it.

Using climate change as a club to push ideological policies did not work and now has us in a real pickle. The other side did not fight back by advocating for better solutions to the CO2 pollution problem but instead just decided to ignore reality as an easier short-term tactic.

[sandworm101]

They would get more done if they didn't ball in societal changes. It's like the autonomous car advocates who also want to do away with private vehicle ownership. People are open to new technologies. They aren't open to political rants. I want an electric car. I don't want a lecture about how people shouldn't be allowed to own cars. I want solar panels on my house. I don't want someone telling me to turn off my TV and read newspapers to save power.

[Spooky23]

CSX is what you’re thinking of.

Amtrak is passenger only. They share track with CSX and many others.

[selectodude]

Amtrak owns all their own trackage on the Northeast Corridor.

[jcranmer]

Actually, the track from New Haven to New Rochelle is not owned by Amtrak but by Metro North (the local commuter rail). Apparently Massachusetts (via the MBTA, also the local commuter rail) also owns the NEC in Massachusetts.

[Spooky23]

Good point. I always conflate the Empire Service and western ny train as that’s how I get to the corridor service!

[magduf]

Amtrak doesn't ship cargo, only passengers. They don't own most of the railways either; they lease them from the cargo railways that own them, and Amtrak trains have lower priority than the cargo trains, causing scheduling problems and delays.

It'd honestly be easier to just shut down Amtrak and do without rail service. As a nation, we simply are not willing to do what it takes to have a decent passenger rail service, and that isn't going to change.

[Udik]

> most companies that will be hit by the effects of climate change won't be significantly contributing to it.

Hmm. And how do you measure this? Yes, Company X ships the coal, but everybody uses the steel that is produced with that coal. Tax the coal, and the steel will be more expensive. Same for the cement. Or electricity. Companies that don't profit from coal transportation still enjoyed a good price for the steel and concrete of their headquarters and warehouses; for the steel structures of the bridges and the hulls of the ships that move their goods; for the machinery that produce all this stuff. The value of the salary they pay to their employees is measured in relation to what can be bought with it: make stuff more expensive, and the people will be poorer. Everybody is profiting from cheap stuff. Everybody should, and will, pay.

[Udik]

> The biggest struggle with climate change (in the US at least) is trying to convince businesses that they're going to be impacted financially.

You also need to convince them that any local mitigation action (maintenance, waters management, etc.) will impact them financially more than a global concerted effort to stop co2 emissions. Which seems a very difficult argument to make.

[arduanika]

It must be nice to have a mental model where "businesses" is this big fuzzy blob containing all the fat cats at either the giving or receiving end of an externality. Show the moneypants how much it will hurt him! Then the other moneypants will stop ignoring things!

[reddog]

>If anything we need more industry-specific reporting to try to show companies how ignoring climate change will impact their bottom line.

The life span of the average business is about 10 years. The median employment tenure (years that wage and salary workers had been with their current employer) in 4.2 years. It's awefully tough to get anyone today to care about the bottom line in Q3 2068.

[lostlogin]

> If anything we need more industry-specific reporting to try to show companies how ignoring climate change will impact their bottom line.

It’s going to be a positive thing for many companies. Defences need to be engineered, built and maintained. It isnt bad for everyone.

[matt_j]

A lot of business will make a lot of money before climate change affects them, and after, when they pivot to take advantage of a population that all of a sudden needs X (sandbags? boats? water purification?).

Change needs to happen at the government level and be imposed on businesses in spite of what they think. It needs to happen at the alliance level (UN) because governments don't want to act against their economic interests unless they have to, even if their economic foresight is short (a presidential term, maximum).

That they (people with short term economic advantage) have succeeded in making climate change an optional belief is the biggest worry of all. Now we have sheeple (half the general population) blindly running to the precipice while loudly proclaiming anyone that can see it coming as stupid/liar/hands in ears/la la la.

[cabaalis]

> based on the premise that water levels around Wilmington would rise 2 feet by 2050.

I'm curious. I've been hearing about the expected effects of climate change for many years. At least since ~2005 or 2006. Are there any predictions of conditions in 2000, or 2020, which have panned out as predicted?

[koops]

I don't know about sea level rise prediction accuracy, but temperature "hindcasts" hold up pretty well:

https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-how-well-have-climate-m...

[pdonis]

> I don't know about sea level rise prediction accuracy

We have no way of knowing because no predictions were made for periods of time prior to now, so we have nothing to compare with the data.

The dire predictions of rapid rise in the future are based on the future predictions of climate models being correct, but the models are already known to over-predict future warming.

https://judithcurry.com/2018/11/27/special-report-on-sea-lev...

> temperature "hindcasts" hold up pretty well

But temperature forecasts don't. Hindcasts aren't predictions.

https://judithcurry.com/2015/12/17/climate-models-versus-cli...

[EPress1970]

What's noteworthy is that the IPCC forecast for sea level rise is not accepted anymore by many, for some reason. The IPCC used to be gold standard, now it's not alarmist enough. From the report:

> Subsequent to the 2013 IPCC AR5, there has been a focus on the possible worst-case scenario for global sea level rise. Estimates of the maximum possible global sea level rise by the end of the 21st century range from 1.6 to 3 meters [5-10 feet], and even higher. These extreme values of possible sea level rise are regarded as extremely unlikely or so unlikely that we cannot even assign a probability. Nevertheless, these extreme, barely possible values of sea level rise are now becoming anchored as outcomes that are driving local adaptation plans

[neuronexmachina]

https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Judith_Curry

> Climate scientists criticize her uncertainty-focused spiel for containing elementary mistakes and inflammatory assertions unsupported by evidence. Curry is a regular at Anthony Watts' denier blog, as well as Steve McIntyre's Climate Audit, another denier site. She has further embarrassed herself (and her university) by using refuted denier talking points and defending the Wegman Report, eventually admitting she hadn't even read it in the first place.[1] Curry has agreed with Trump's description of climate change as a "hoax", writing in 2016 that the UN's definition of manmade climate change "qualifies as a hoax".

[kevinskii]

I'm not sure if you're aware, but "denier" is a loaded term that is used to equate the questioning of climate science with Holocaust denial. It has no place in a civilized discussion.

As for Climate Audit, the Wegman Report, and Judith Curry: Maybe try reading one of them sometime. I think you'll find that they are nothing like their detractors try to portray them to be.

[cagenut]

It is astounding how spot on it has all been. The data is so crystal clear.

[rfinney]

I keep seeing charts that say otherwise: https://cei.org/sites/default/files/Figure%201.JPG . This suggests the models are not accurate.

Who is right?

[makerofspoons]

Certainly not the CEI's (Competitive Enterprise Institute) who distributed your figure. They have a long history of spreading disinformation, going back to the fight over tobacco policy: https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Competitive_Enterprise...

[lifeformed]

I never understood why "climate skeptics" don't see past this glaringly obvious fact: almost every time there is some "rebuttal" against climate change, the source comes back to a conservative think tank or oil company. Hello??? It's so frustrating.

[pdonis]

> Certainly not the CEI's (Competitive Enterprise Institute) who distributed your figure.

The CEI is only one of many places that "distribute" this figure. As you can see from the lower left of the figure, it was actually made by John Christy, a climate scientists who showed it in testimony before the US House of Representatives in 2015. A good discussion of the chart and what it means is given in the Judith Curry article I linked to in another post upthread.

[Symmetry]

Notice that all the graphs in the previous charts have that weird step where warming stops for while around 2005 then suddenly shoots up after 2015 to get back to predicted levels? Your graphs end at 2014.

[nfg]

There’s a good analysis of what seems to be the same chart (and more like it) here: http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2016/05/compar...

TL;DR: it is using every trick in the book to mislead.

[rfinney]

Every trick in the book?

https://climateaudit.org/2016/04/19/gavin-schmidt-and-refere...

Who is right?

[300bps]

My favorite article on this topic was from The Independent in 2000 that stated snowfalls in England were a thing of the past and children would not know what snow is within a few years.

The Independent finally deleted the article but here’s a summary of it:

http://www.globalwarming.org/2010/12/27/headline-2000-snowfa...

[Retric]

Sea level rises is currently only 8cm in the last 20 years, but it has happened. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_level_rise#/media/File%3...

PS: It’s all’s up 18 cm from 1897 but recent rise has been much more obvious.

[koops]

The $78 million is for ten miles of the 457-mile corridor for the sea-level rise estimated for 2050. And the rise will only accelerate after 2050.

But yes, that does seem like a low figure.