3 ms·

The reason Obama's flood legislation got repealed is because they conflated climate change with flooding, for which the evidence seems to not exist, if I unders

The reason Obama's flood legislation got repealed is because they conflated climate change with flooding, for which the evidence seems to not exist, if I understand the experts correctly. http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v500/n7462/full/nature12310.html http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v500/n7462/full/nature1... > A feature of the changes has been a tendency for many regions of low variability to experience increases, which might contribute to the perception of increased climate volatility. The normalization of temperature anomalies creates the impression of larger relative overall increases, but our use of absolute values, which we argue is a more appropriate approach, reveals little change. > Many climate models predict that total variability will ultimately decrease under high greenhouse gas concentrations, possibly associated with reductions in sea-ice cover. Our findings contradict the view that a warming world will automatically be one of more overall climatic variation. ... “General statements about extremes are almost nowhere to be found in the literature but seem to abound in the popular media,” climate scientist Gavin Schmidt of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies (and co-founder of the award winning climate science blog RealClimate.), “It’s this popular perception that global warming means all extremes have to increase all the time, even though if anyone thinks about that for 10 seconds they realize that’s nonsense.” ... U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [IPCC] report on extreme weather in 2011. > Global warming, in general, will mean higher temperatures. This causes more heat waves — more extreme weather. But it also causes fewer cold waves — less extreme weather. Many more people die from excessive cold than excessive heat, so fewer people will die from cold and heat in the future. By mid-century, researchers estimated in 2006, that means about 1.4 million fewer deaths per year. In the continental United States, heat waves in the past decade exceeded the norm by 10 percent, but the number of cold waves fell 75 percent. From the Washington Post https://archive.is/O3lJZ https://archive.is/O3lJZ : > Damage from flooding in the United States has declined from 0.2 percent of gross domestic product in 1940 to less than 0.05 percent today. And U.S. hurricanes have not increased in frequency, intensity or normalized damage since at least 1900.

mannykannot 9y ago
Your prominent use of an argument about fewer deaths from cold weather to justify the rolling-back of measures to reduce the impact of flooding is perhaps the most absurd part of this risible piece of denialism.
- PeachPlum 9y ago
  They aren't my arguments. It is not about "fewer deaths from cold weather" but fewer deaths from extreme weather, the opposite claim of the OP and many media outlets of "accepted science" of climate change. It is not even a denialist position but the position of the IPPC, NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies etc. My argument is using "climate change" as the reason one wants to protect from flooding is a logical fallacy. Obama's order mentioned in the OP wasn't "impact of flooding legislation" but "response to climate change legislation" and contained more than flood defences. Legislation to defend from changes to weather the climate change scientists say will not only not happen but reduce.
  - mannykannot 9y ago
    It was your choice to use this particular argument in your post, where it is an amusing non-sequitur, regardless of whether it has any relevance in any other context.
    - PeachPlum 9y ago
      It is directly related. Temperature extremes drive weather events, such as hurricanes and therefore flooding. Less extremes = less flooding = less death
      - mannykannot 9y ago
        Thank you for this fascinating look into how climate-change deniers fool themselves, beyond simply ignoring evidence they don't like. In your original claim (which is not the same as the one in your last post), you go from the specific issue (flooding) to a general one (extreme weather), introduce a point that may be relevant for one aspect of extreme weather but which has nothing to do with flooding (reduced deaths due to cold), and then switch back to the specific issue as if it somehow thereby became subject to the irrelevant argument. In your latest post, you have dropped this line of argument for one that gets no support from the IPCC report quote that you used in your original claim. It says there will be fewer extreme cold events, but also that there will be more high temperature events: we know the latter are more conducive to flooding. The quoted paragraph takes no position supporting the claim that there will be fewer temperature extremes overall, let alone that it will therefore led to fewer flooding events specifically (another case where you go from the general to the specific with no justification.) You appear to have mistaken an argument about the number of deaths overall for an argument about the number of extreme events overall, and then, in turn, mistaking that for an argument about the number and intensity of floods. In addition, your latest post is simple ignore-the-evidence denialism. In a single sentence, you dismiss decades of painstaking, quantitative, peer-reviewed research that leads to the expectation that the number of intense North Atlantic hurricanes (i.e. specifically those that are by far the biggest problem for the US) is very likely to increase. And sea-level rise is an established, measured fact (and one that contributes to the damage of coastal flooding), despite what all those latter-day King Cnuts [1] on the hill say. Finally, I find your attitude, that we should do nothing about flooding because to do so would challenge your delusions about climate change (and apparently also your opinion of Obama), to be distasteful, especially considering the distress it has just caused in and around Houston. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cnut_the_Great https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cnut_the_Great

mannykannot 9y ago

Your prominent use of an argument about fewer deaths from cold weather to justify the rolling-back of measures to reduce the impact of flooding is perhaps the most absurd part of this risible piece of denialism.

PeachPlum 9y ago
They aren't my arguments. It is not about "fewer deaths from cold weather" but fewer deaths from extreme weather, the opposite claim of the OP and many media outlets of "accepted science" of climate change. It is not even a denialist position but the position of the IPPC, NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies etc. My argument is using "climate change" as the reason one wants to protect from flooding is a logical fallacy. Obama's order mentioned in the OP wasn't "impact of flooding legislation" but "response to climate change legislation" and contained more than flood defences. Legislation to defend from changes to weather the climate change scientists say will not only not happen but reduce.
- mannykannot 9y ago
  It was your choice to use this particular argument in your post, where it is an amusing non-sequitur, regardless of whether it has any relevance in any other context.
  - PeachPlum 9y ago
    It is directly related. Temperature extremes drive weather events, such as hurricanes and therefore flooding. Less extremes = less flooding = less death
    - mannykannot 9y ago
      Thank you for this fascinating look into how climate-change deniers fool themselves, beyond simply ignoring evidence they don't like. In your original claim (which is not the same as the one in your last post), you go from the specific issue (flooding) to a general one (extreme weather), introduce a point that may be relevant for one aspect of extreme weather but which has nothing to do with flooding (reduced deaths due to cold), and then switch back to the specific issue as if it somehow thereby became subject to the irrelevant argument. In your latest post, you have dropped this line of argument for one that gets no support from the IPCC report quote that you used in your original claim. It says there will be fewer extreme cold events, but also that there will be more high temperature events: we know the latter are more conducive to flooding. The quoted paragraph takes no position supporting the claim that there will be fewer temperature extremes overall, let alone that it will therefore led to fewer flooding events specifically (another case where you go from the general to the specific with no justification.) You appear to have mistaken an argument about the number of deaths overall for an argument about the number of extreme events overall, and then, in turn, mistaking that for an argument about the number and intensity of floods. In addition, your latest post is simple ignore-the-evidence denialism. In a single sentence, you dismiss decades of painstaking, quantitative, peer-reviewed research that leads to the expectation that the number of intense North Atlantic hurricanes (i.e. specifically those that are by far the biggest problem for the US) is very likely to increase. And sea-level rise is an established, measured fact (and one that contributes to the damage of coastal flooding), despite what all those latter-day King Cnuts [1] on the hill say. Finally, I find your attitude, that we should do nothing about flooding because to do so would challenge your delusions about climate change (and apparently also your opinion of Obama), to be distasteful, especially considering the distress it has just caused in and around Houston. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cnut_the_Great https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cnut_the_Great