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The costs of climate change are going to be unfathomably huge. This has always been the problem with the “prioritize economic growth, it’s a tradeoff” argument:

The costs of climate change are going to be unfathomably huge. This has always been the problem with the “prioritize economic growth, it’s a tradeoff” argument: we can’t even begin to calculate the uncertainty in what we’re going to pay for using the atmosphere as a garbage dump, because we don’t have a clue what’s coming for us.

dfxm12 3y ago
This is what happens when profits are privatized and the risks are socialized. This is also because "we" probably aren't going to pay for it. Maybe we'll throw a few bucks at it, but future generations are really going to pay.
- kortilla 3y ago
  > This is what happens when profits are privatized and the risks are socialized. This statement doesn’t mean anything useful. It also describes every social safety net.
  - cooperaustinj 3y ago
    > This statement doesn't mean anything useful. That might be true if that wasn't a well known phrase that carries decades of examples behind it. > It also describes every social safety net. Social safety nets are not spending millions of billions of dollars on disasters, especially disasters we've been predicting since the dawn of industry. Social safety nets have upper bounds. Being able to handle these disasters is a benefit of society, yes. Social safety nets help people get on their feet, not prevent entire towns from being wiped out. It's disingenuous to imply America's social safety net (which it doesn't have) has anything to do with this. When individuals create liability this large, they are jailed. When corporations do it, we pretend we never could have expected this outcome.
    - kortilla 3y ago
      > That might be true if that wasn't a well known phrase that carries decades of examples behind it. It is true and there are decades of examples. It’s just meaningless because it matches every social safety net so you can use it to argue against anything you want. > Social safety nets are not spending millions of billions of dollars on disasters, especially disasters we've been predicting since the dawn of industry. They are. Look at the military, which is another example of everyone paying in but small groups receiving outsized benefits on many different fronts. > Social safety nets help people get on their feet, not prevent entire towns from being wiped out. This is what FEMA is for. > It's disingenuous to imply America's social safety net (which it doesn't have) has anything to do with this. You can’t even form a coherent sentence here. You can’t on one hand defend the safety net from a comparison and simultaneously claim it doesn’t exist. If it didn’t exist, you wouldn’t reply. > When individuals create liability this large, they are jailed. No they aren’t. People in positions of power in the government do this all of the time and receive absolutely no punishment. One regulation change can decimate people’s homes, jobs, paths to citizenship, etc. > When corporations do it, we pretend we never could have expected this outcome. No we don’t. It’s the reason many of the corporate insurance programs exist (superfund, fdic, etc).
gottorf 3y ago
From the source linked to by the other commenter[0]: - "Salt water intrudes up the Mississippi River about once every decade. It happened in 2012 and again in 2022. The ocean water usually doesn’t come this far north, but it isn’t unprecedented." - "You should prepare to some extent. Residents across Plaquemines, St. Bernard, Jefferson and Orleans parishes should be ready to conserve water to relieve pressure on the system as needed" - "Different school systems are taking different approaches, but closures aren’t likely." - "most healthy people will not see any impact from the water. But people who are more vulnerable to a higher salt diet due to pregnancy, kidney disease or high blood pressure should be vigilant." And from the OP's NYT article: "The low-water season typically runs from May through the end of October. Once temperatures cool, the river should start to rebound. “In a typical year, we typically don’t see low water conditions improving for our area until we start to get into November,” Mr. Graschel said." It doesn't sound like an unfathomably huge cost. Speaking of, the NYT had a series of hysterical articles[1,2] earlier in the summer about extremely hot ocean waters in coastal Florida, painting a picture of 90-100+ degree waters in the open ocean. It didn't elaborate on the fact that the buoy in question[3] with the "possible world record for sea surface temperature" of 101.1 degrees was less than 100 feet from land, in less than neck-deep water for the average person, in an enclosed bay that is further enclosed by the Keys; basically, a swimming pool, not the open ocean. Actual average temperatures[4] at the time were about the same as the long-term average or a degree higher. [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37703983 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37703983 [1]: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/12/climate/florida-ocean-temperatures-reefs.html https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/12/climate/florida-ocean-tem... [2]: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/26/climate/florida-100-degree-water.html https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/26/climate/florida-100-degre... [3]: https://www.ndbc.noaa.gov/station_page.php?station=mnbf1 https://www.ndbc.noaa.gov/station_page.php?station=mnbf1 [4]: https://seatemperature.net/current/united-states/florida-keys-florida-united-states-sea-temperature https://seatemperature.net/current/united-states/florida-key...
- ethanbond 3y ago
  Sorry that the buoy wasn’t at the appropriate depth for whatever arbitrary assessment you’d like to make, but yes the climate research community was and remains extremely alarmed by that data. Years of "the overall trend is extremely worrying": "errhmm idk, I need specific instances of bad things." Here's a specific, interesting datapoint -- also worrying: "sorry the bay isn't shaped to my arbitrary preference."
burkaman 3y ago
Obviously climate change is contributing to the droughts that have caused this problem, but it's also exacerbated by much more tangible climate change: we changed the river climate by digging it deeper so it could fit bigger boats, which makes it easier for saltwater to move upriver. When the Army builds a barrier to try to delay the saltwater, they have to put a big hole in it so the boats can still get through. More details: https://sph.tulane.edu/5-things-know-about-saltwater-intrusion-mississippi-river https://sph.tulane.edu/5-things-know-about-saltwater-intrusi...

dfxm12 3y ago

This is what happens when profits are privatized and the risks are socialized. This is also because "we" probably aren't going to pay for it. Maybe we'll throw a few bucks at it, but future generations are really going to pay.

kortilla 3y ago
> This is what happens when profits are privatized and the risks are socialized. This statement doesn’t mean anything useful. It also describes every social safety net.
- cooperaustinj 3y ago
  > This statement doesn't mean anything useful. That might be true if that wasn't a well known phrase that carries decades of examples behind it. > It also describes every social safety net. Social safety nets are not spending millions of billions of dollars on disasters, especially disasters we've been predicting since the dawn of industry. Social safety nets have upper bounds. Being able to handle these disasters is a benefit of society, yes. Social safety nets help people get on their feet, not prevent entire towns from being wiped out. It's disingenuous to imply America's social safety net (which it doesn't have) has anything to do with this. When individuals create liability this large, they are jailed. When corporations do it, we pretend we never could have expected this outcome.
  - kortilla 3y ago
    > That might be true if that wasn't a well known phrase that carries decades of examples behind it. It is true and there are decades of examples. It’s just meaningless because it matches every social safety net so you can use it to argue against anything you want. > Social safety nets are not spending millions of billions of dollars on disasters, especially disasters we've been predicting since the dawn of industry. They are. Look at the military, which is another example of everyone paying in but small groups receiving outsized benefits on many different fronts. > Social safety nets help people get on their feet, not prevent entire towns from being wiped out. This is what FEMA is for. > It's disingenuous to imply America's social safety net (which it doesn't have) has anything to do with this. You can’t even form a coherent sentence here. You can’t on one hand defend the safety net from a comparison and simultaneously claim it doesn’t exist. If it didn’t exist, you wouldn’t reply. > When individuals create liability this large, they are jailed. No they aren’t. People in positions of power in the government do this all of the time and receive absolutely no punishment. One regulation change can decimate people’s homes, jobs, paths to citizenship, etc. > When corporations do it, we pretend we never could have expected this outcome. No we don’t. It’s the reason many of the corporate insurance programs exist (superfund, fdic, etc).

gottorf 3y ago

From the source linked to by the other commenter[0]: - "Salt water intrudes up the Mississippi River about once every decade. It happened in 2012 and again in 2022. The ocean water usually doesn’t come this far north, but it isn’t unprecedented." - "You should prepare to some extent. Residents across Plaquemines, St. Bernard, Jefferson and Orleans parishes should be ready to conserve water to relieve pressure on the system as needed" - "Different school systems are taking different approaches, but closures aren’t likely." - "most healthy people will not see any impact from the water. But people who are more vulnerable to a higher salt diet due to pregnancy, kidney disease or high blood pressure should be vigilant." And from the OP's NYT article: "The low-water season typically runs from May through the end of October. Once temperatures cool, the river should start to rebound. “In a typical year, we typically don’t see low water conditions improving for our area until we start to get into November,” Mr. Graschel said." It doesn't sound like an unfathomably huge cost. Speaking of, the NYT had a series of hysterical articles[1,2] earlier in the summer about extremely hot ocean waters in coastal Florida, painting a picture of 90-100+ degree waters in the open ocean. It didn't elaborate on the fact that the buoy in question[3] with the "possible world record for sea surface temperature" of 101.1 degrees was less than 100 feet from land, in less than neck-deep water for the average person, in an enclosed bay that is further enclosed by the Keys; basically, a swimming pool, not the open ocean. Actual average temperatures[4] at the time were about the same as the long-term average or a degree higher. [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37703983 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37703983 [1]: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/12/climate/florida-ocean-temperatures-reefs.html https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/12/climate/florida-ocean-tem... [2]: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/26/climate/florida-100-degree-water.html https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/26/climate/florida-100-degre... [3]: https://www.ndbc.noaa.gov/station_page.php?station=mnbf1 https://www.ndbc.noaa.gov/station_page.php?station=mnbf1 [4]: https://seatemperature.net/current/united-states/florida-keys-florida-united-states-sea-temperature https://seatemperature.net/current/united-states/florida-key...

ethanbond 3y ago
Sorry that the buoy wasn’t at the appropriate depth for whatever arbitrary assessment you’d like to make, but yes the climate research community was and remains extremely alarmed by that data. Years of "the overall trend is extremely worrying": "errhmm idk, I need specific instances of bad things." Here's a specific, interesting datapoint -- also worrying: "sorry the bay isn't shaped to my arbitrary preference."

burkaman 3y ago

Obviously climate change is contributing to the droughts that have caused this problem, but it's also exacerbated by much more tangible climate change: we changed the river climate by digging it deeper so it could fit bigger boats, which makes it easier for saltwater to move upriver. When the Army builds a barrier to try to delay the saltwater, they have to put a big hole in it so the boats can still get through. More details: https://sph.tulane.edu/5-things-know-about-saltwater-intrusion-mississippi-river https://sph.tulane.edu/5-things-know-about-saltwater-intrusi...