4 ms·

I couldn't agree more. It seems to be an increasing trend in the media lately that articles are driven by narrative and emotional appeals than actual facts. Thi

I couldn't agree more. It seems to be an increasing trend in the media lately that articles are driven by narrative and emotional appeals than actual facts. This creates the bizarre scenario where you can read a 3,691 word story on how Miami will soon be underwater and yet be unable to explain Why the article is proposing this might be the case. So for instance the first thing I did after seeing this headline was to go cross-reference the data with the NOAA. They put Miami's expected sea level rise at 0 to 1 feet over the next century [1]. So what is the reason for the discrepancy? Which figure is more likely? Why? 3,691 words and the reader will be in no way whatsoever capable of even proposing a suggestion to this question. [1] - https://tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/sltrends/sltrends.html https://tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/sltrends/sltrends.html

jellicle 8y ago
> They put Miami's expected sea level rise at 0 to 1 feet over the next century That's a false description of what NOAA says. The sea level trend is an instantaneous rate, not a projection of any sort.
- zaroth 8y ago
  “The relative sea level trend is 2.39 mm/year with a 95% confidence interval of +/- 0.43 mm/year based on monthly mean sea level data from 1931 to 1981 which is equivalent to a change of 0.78 feet in 100 years.”
  - jellicle 8y ago
    That's right. It's an instantaneous rate. The instantaneous rate is constantly increasing. It's not a forecast. What's hard to understand about this?
  - southern_cross 8y ago
    The last time I did the math (it's been a while now), assuming that I did this correctly it showed that the current rate of sea level rise is something like half the average rate of the last ten to fifteen thousand years. So the current rate would basically have to double just to get us back to the long-term average. And it might very well do that someday, and do so perfectly naturally, too. (Nobody has ever said that the natural rise in sea level has stopped since the beginning of the last interglacial period.) But that wouldn't be good news for places like Miami.

jellicle 8y ago

> They put Miami's expected sea level rise at 0 to 1 feet over the next century That's a false description of what NOAA says. The sea level trend is an instantaneous rate, not a projection of any sort.

zaroth 8y ago
“The relative sea level trend is 2.39 mm/year with a 95% confidence interval of +/- 0.43 mm/year based on monthly mean sea level data from 1931 to 1981 which is equivalent to a change of 0.78 feet in 100 years.”
- jellicle 8y ago
  That's right. It's an instantaneous rate. The instantaneous rate is constantly increasing. It's not a forecast. What's hard to understand about this?
- southern_cross 8y ago
  The last time I did the math (it's been a while now), assuming that I did this correctly it showed that the current rate of sea level rise is something like half the average rate of the last ten to fifteen thousand years. So the current rate would basically have to double just to get us back to the long-term average. And it might very well do that someday, and do so perfectly naturally, too. (Nobody has ever said that the natural rise in sea level has stopped since the beginning of the last interglacial period.) But that wouldn't be good news for places like Miami.