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Where are the people who said that the sea level would raise 1 foot to 1 meter per year? You didn't answer that question. Everything you wrote is a distraction

by dalke 11y ago

Where are the people who said that the sea level would raise 1 foot to 1 meter per year? You didn't answer that question. Everything you wrote is a distraction, which ends up increasing the confusion you describe and complain about. You pointed to some artists and movies. So what? I can point to movies who have depicted meteors crashing into modern day Earth, and volcanoes erupting in Los Angeles, and even have the core of the Earth stop spinning. Artists have different goals. They are not required to only depict what science predicts +/- 1 sigma. You point to a scientist who liked that "The Day After Tomorrow" used climate change as a plot device, even if the science was awful. So what? I'm sure some Spacewatch people like "Armageddon" and that some geologists like "The Core", even though the science is awful in both. Are you equally disdainful towards those scientists? Or do only climate scientists draw your ire? (BTW, "Water World" used global warming as a plot device, was almost 9 years before TDAT, and portrayed an equally scientifically absurd future.) You mentioned "An Inconvenient Truth". Does Gore make a prediction that there will be 30cm or higher water rise per year? Does he even predict that the Atlantic will have reached the base of the Empire State Building by now? How is the IPCC 2001 report not an attempt at a thorough rebuttal? What level of rebuttal would you require before you say it was sufficient? Do we all need to be like Neil deGrasse Tyson and pinpoint every single scientific flaw in a movie? Or go even further and reject every movie with a flaw? In other words, I'm not going to get into a goalpost argument with you before you even say what the goalposts are. Your argument of the structure of the argument is useless. It's so easily inverted. Watch: You have set up your own Motte and Bailey about what's going on in this HN thread, so nothing I say can dissuade you. You have inserted irrelevant commentary from your bailey to defend your views. Now you can ignore me because you think I'm using irrational arguments, because you have placed me in a spot where you think I can be ignored. Now you can enjoy your motte. I argued that the OP presented a straw man argument that misrepresents what the large majority of climatologists and policymakers like Gore were making 15 years ago. Do you agree or disagree with me? I presented the IPCC report to supports my argument. Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth" also supports my argument. If you disagree, do you have an actual examples of people who predicted 30+cm/year sea rise, or even that much of Manhattan would be underwater by now?

mseebach 11y ago
I am guilty of reading "predicting foot to meter per year seawater rise" as a satirising exaggeration for "predicting immediate, catastrophic (plausibly sea-level related) consequences" and I did not state that clearly. With that amendment, I think my comment still has merit, but it may no longer have responded to anything you wrote. Sorry about that. That said, An Inconvenient Truth did suggest a 20-foot rise as something imminent. Did it "predict" it? No, not explicitly, it suggests and imagines and calls to action. It also doesn't specify the timescale, but there is great urgency. With that, your GP, while very much on the high end, is way closer to AIT than AIT is to IPCC. A short note on movies and art: the difference between "The Core" and TDAT (and "regular" art and the "climate" ditto) is that the latter didn't use science as a plot device, it explicitly injected itself into a political debate, dominated by a scientific discourse.
- dalke 11y ago
  How do you figure it is a satirising exaggeration and not a straw man designed for ridicule? I found a transcript of "An Inconvenient Truth" at http://www.admc.hct.ac.ae/hd1/courses/blog/gw/An%20Inconvient%20Truth%20Transcript.pdf http://www.admc.hct.ac.ae/hd1/courses/blog/gw/An%20Inconvien.... The section on 20 foot sea level rise is a description of what would happen "If Greenland broke up and melted, or if half of Greenland and half of West Antarctica broke up and melted" and ends with "Is it possible that we should prepare against other threats besides terrorists? Maybe we should be concerned about other problems as well." I agree that it's a call to action. I disagree that it's a prediction of something imminent, as in, an outcome that will happen within a couple of decades of when the movie was made. I read it as a need for imminent action, to prevent one possible long-term outcome. BTW, Gore does make some short term predictions, which have proved to be incorrect. Gore said that within a decade there will be no snows of Kilimanjaro. That decade has passed. Instead, http://www.the-cryosphere.net/7/419/2013/tc-7-419-2013.pdf http://www.the-cryosphere.net/7/419/2013/tc-7-419-2013.pdf says that most of the ice cover will be gone by 2040, and the rest by 2060. http://lindseynicholson.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/Moelg-et-al.-2013.pdf http://lindseynicholson.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/Moelg... further points out that there will be snow even if there are no glaciers. (While incorrect, I do not think it seriously affects the underlying meaning. The choice of "snow" over "glacier ice" should be read as an homage to Hemingway, with some poetic license allowed.) Gore predicts Glacier Valley will have no glaciers within 15 years, or 2021. NPS estimates no later then 2030, https://www.nps.gov/glac/learn/nature/glaciers.htm https://www.nps.gov/glac/learn/nature/glaciers.htm , so Gore may be a couple years off there as well. Gore was willing to make testable predictions in the 10-15 year span, which is a clue that the 20 foot rise in sea level that he described was not meant as a prediction of something imminent.

by dalke 11y ago

mseebach 11y ago

I am guilty of reading "predicting foot to meter per year seawater rise" as a satirising exaggeration for "predicting immediate, catastrophic (plausibly sea-level related) consequences" and I did not state that clearly. With that amendment, I think my comment still has merit, but it may no longer have responded to anything you wrote. Sorry about that. That said, An Inconvenient Truth did suggest a 20-foot rise as something imminent. Did it "predict" it? No, not explicitly, it suggests and imagines and calls to action. It also doesn't specify the timescale, but there is great urgency. With that, your GP, while very much on the high end, is way closer to AIT than AIT is to IPCC. A short note on movies and art: the difference between "The Core" and TDAT (and "regular" art and the "climate" ditto) is that the latter didn't use science as a plot device, it explicitly injected itself into a political debate, dominated by a scientific discourse.

dalke 11y ago
How do you figure it is a satirising exaggeration and not a straw man designed for ridicule? I found a transcript of "An Inconvenient Truth" at http://www.admc.hct.ac.ae/hd1/courses/blog/gw/An%20Inconvient%20Truth%20Transcript.pdf http://www.admc.hct.ac.ae/hd1/courses/blog/gw/An%20Inconvien.... The section on 20 foot sea level rise is a description of what would happen "If Greenland broke up and melted, or if half of Greenland and half of West Antarctica broke up and melted" and ends with "Is it possible that we should prepare against other threats besides terrorists? Maybe we should be concerned about other problems as well." I agree that it's a call to action. I disagree that it's a prediction of something imminent, as in, an outcome that will happen within a couple of decades of when the movie was made. I read it as a need for imminent action, to prevent one possible long-term outcome. BTW, Gore does make some short term predictions, which have proved to be incorrect. Gore said that within a decade there will be no snows of Kilimanjaro. That decade has passed. Instead, http://www.the-cryosphere.net/7/419/2013/tc-7-419-2013.pdf http://www.the-cryosphere.net/7/419/2013/tc-7-419-2013.pdf says that most of the ice cover will be gone by 2040, and the rest by 2060. http://lindseynicholson.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/Moelg-et-al.-2013.pdf http://lindseynicholson.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/Moelg... further points out that there will be snow even if there are no glaciers. (While incorrect, I do not think it seriously affects the underlying meaning. The choice of "snow" over "glacier ice" should be read as an homage to Hemingway, with some poetic license allowed.) Gore predicts Glacier Valley will have no glaciers within 15 years, or 2021. NPS estimates no later then 2030, https://www.nps.gov/glac/learn/nature/glaciers.htm https://www.nps.gov/glac/learn/nature/glaciers.htm , so Gore may be a couple years off there as well. Gore was willing to make testable predictions in the 10-15 year span, which is a clue that the 20 foot rise in sea level that he described was not meant as a prediction of something imminent.