Funding Friday: This Place Will Be Water

Comments (Archived):

1. I’ll check it out Fred.Been spending more than a few cycles supporting things that matter to me–candidates in the mid terms, and causes (the Honu project and more to come).I am thinking that awareness without action, is a missed step.So, I like this in intent a lot as I live in the flood zone .I wonder whether why action besides awareness isn’t included.

2. http://www.climatecentral.o… this is the data source, but i don’t see the 2-degrees Celsius number. how many feet is that? it would be a graphically harder hitting message if horizontal wavy blue lines were to be wrapped around certain prominent buildings at the level the water would reach with a 2-degree Celsius increase in temperature. It would make people and businesses living and working below the line think hard. Sell your Jeep. Buy a kayak.

   1. Hi Jason! This is actually my project 🙂 The Climate Central map I’m directing contributors to is viewable here: https://seeing.climatecentr…

      1. Thanks Jon :). So a 2-degree Celsius increase in temp. equals a rise in sea level of 15 feet. Is that right?

         1. Eventually, yes. At 2-degree Celcius the ice sheets in Greenland and Antartica start melting at an uncontrollable rate. The 15 feet is actually a low estimate and we’re currently on track for a 3-degree rise in global temperatures….

3. Just analysed energy data from a supermarket chain in UK – over 25% of their sites running heating boilers / furnaces during the hottest July ever. (At least we are pointing them in the right direction).Energy is not core business for most enterprises – nor will it ever be – it is a means to an end.The purchase price of energy needs to reflect the cost of carbon mitigation if we are to have any prospect of achieving change.

4. I just got Kim Stanley Robinson’s *New York 2140,* sci fi on this topic. https://en.wikipedia.org/wi…

   1. “SuperVenice” – can you swim?

      1. Yikes.

   2. Good one!

      1. I’m going to see how much of it I can read this weekend…

5. Love it. Simple and powerful.

6. Wow, their tool is *amazing*https://disq.us/url?url=htt…My house’ll be on the beach and all the outrageous mansions in Rumson will be fish food.

   1. One year ago this time we were in the Patagonia. No big deal for Chileans because it is relatively close, 1000 kilometers down south.The glaciers there are slowly melting and retreating at an alarming rate.So we were on a boat in the fiordos contemplating one of the blue glaciers and one of the ladies in the tour which we have been sharing with during the day, said – “it is a pity this marvel will eventually disappear”. After a few seconds of thoughtful analysis I replied – “Everybody in this boat will be long gone before that happens”. She stared back at me, I’m not sure if she understood what I was trying to say. :)It is not that I don’t care, I do. But as I always say, this is our time. Every one of us.https://climate.nasa.gov/ne…will post a picture when i find them.

      1. https://uploads.disquscdn.c…

         1. The glaciers at Chamonix are also in retreat, leaving behind ugly rocky scars; https://www.ukclimbing.com/…

7. So, we are back to the NYC, NYT, Obama, Saint Laureate Al Guru quasi-religious, fit in with the tribe, screaming about the sky is falling, uh, the Mayan have to kill people and pour their blood on a rock to keep the sun moving across the sky, be afraid of the monster in the dust balls under the bed, the usual trilogy of human sin and transgression followed by terrible retribution and desperate need for redemption via sacrifice, etc.Yes, after the Publisher of the formerly revered, now highly self-esteemed NYT met with Trump and objected to accusations that his rag was a Democrat Party house organ, propaganda as in, IRCC, the Nazi J. Goebbels “If tell a lie often enough, people will believe it,” “fake news”, etc. or some such, since I want to be well informed, correct, and fair, as a test and to get up to date, I visited the NYT Web site for the first time in months.Right away I saw:(1) A pro/con debate about Trump. As I recall, the con side was essentially all opinions and charges with lots of pejorative adjectives and no objective data and no solid references to credible sources of such. To me the con side got a D-. The pro side wasn’t very good but got, maybe a C. So, yup, the NYT was trying to dump on Trump and is biased, as in a Democrat Party house organ, and as objective journalism to create an “informed electorate” is “fake news”.(2) Right away that day the NYT was touting their big, soon coming special on their favorite, long term scream that the sky is falling, “climate change”, that is, what they used to call human caused “global warming”. Since to me the whole movement of screaming about “climate change” is another case of the Nazi J. Goebbels propaganda technique, likely explained by (i) “Always look for the hidden agenda”, “money talks”, and “follow the money”, again I concluded that the NYT is still as I remembered it and I was still up to date.That is, from (1)-(2), I concluded that the NYT is junk journalism, fake news, Democrat Party propaganda (e.g., recall Obama’s big fears about “global warming”, his signing into the Paris Accords, blocking the oil pipelines from Canada, his subsidies for solar power, etc.), and, as before, on paper unable to compete with Charmin and on the Web useless for wrapping dead fish heads. So, back to ignoring the NYT.Flatly:(1) There is no credible evidence that the temperature of earth will increase by 2 C anytime soon or ever (before the sun goes nova).(2) There is no credible evidence that human activities are having any significant effect on the temperature of the earth.(3) Over the past few decades, some climate scientists tried to model the climate of the earth and the temperature effects of CO2 from human activities and made alarming predictions of much higher temperatures, rising sea levels from melting ice and from water expanding due to becoming warmer, etc. Well, by now we have solid observational data on the time intervals of their predictions and see that their alarmist predictions were wildly wrong. E.g., as athttp://www.drroyspencer.com…ishttp://www.drroyspencer.com…that compares many predicted and the subsequently observed temperatures showing that nearly all the predictions and all the alarming predictions were wildly wrong.In science, in this case, i.e., making predictions that fail, we just junk the science.There is some really good science that makes astounding predictions that hold very nicely, e.g., the prediction of the Higgs Boson and its mass and then the very, very carefully done, with two essentially independent experiments, at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) that came out beautifully agreeing with the predictions. There are lots more cases of really good science. In comparison, the alarmist “climate science” was garbage that we should junk and f’get about.(4) Lots of data from ice cores to tree rings, etc. give us some surprisingly good data on the past temperature of the earth. So there was the Medieval Warm Period where the temperature was significantly higher than now. Maybe we could get some data on sea levels then and check the prediction of flooding of NYC.Clearly for centuries, various charlatans, via superstition, ignorance, fear of the unknown, etc., e.g., the Mayans as inSusan Milbrath, ‘Star Gods of the Maya: Astronomy in Art, Folklore, and Calendars (The Linda Schele Series in Maya and Pre-Columbian Studies)’, ISBN-13 978-0292752269, University of Texas Press, 2000.withIndeed, blood sacrifice is required for the sun to move, according to Aztec cosmology (Durian 1971:179; Sahaguin 1950 – 1982, 7:8).have been scaring people and extracting various sacrifices, blood, money, domestic animals, etc.Mostly civilization filtered out such screaming just by asking for solid evidence. Uh, for extreme, alarming predictions asking for massive sacrifice, in this case a big hit to the world economy, necessarily the burden of proof is strong and falls on the proposer, else we will be back to sacrifices like killing people to pour their blood on a rock to keep the sun moving across the sky.Well, apparently in much of NYC we are back to following new versions of the old charlatans looking for people to make big sacrifices.Guys, there’s no good evidence for their claims of disaster; the predictions they made were soon seen by direct observation to be wildly false; and we need to filter out the charlatans again.Since Trump pulled the US out of the Paris Accords, approved the pipelines, approved progress on off-shore drilling for oil and natural gas, seems pleased with the oil and natural gas from fracking, likes “clean coal” and has the coal mines going again, weakened the car fuel economy mandates (CAFE), etc., apparently Trump is also rational enough to filter out the junk from the Charlatans.But, sure, NYC is strongly a Democrat Party town; “When in Rome, do as the Romans do.”, fit in with the tribe, and the Obama Democrats pushed really hard to shoot US fossil fuel energy in the gut and subsidize and otherwise push wind and solar energy. Soooo, as in “Always look for the hidden agenda.”, “Money talks.”, and “Follow the money.”, we can believe that people who were benefiting from the Obama version of machine, patronage politics want their Obama subsidies back and are still screaming about Saint Laureate Al Guru’s “global warming” and rising sea levels from CO2 from sinful humans.I live too far from Manhattan to feel I should fit in with the nonsense of that tribe. Besides, Obama’s gone; now we have Trump; lots of people have junked that NYT, Al Guru nonsense; and it’s left to just a few tribes and special interests to keep pushing that sky is falling stuff before they finally give up.But, I confess: With some people, tribal loyalties heavily outweigh rationalism.I’ve posted such rebuttals before; they are, borrowing from, IIRC, Mark Twain, like “Never try to teach a pig to sing. It wastes your time and annoys the pig.”. I should give up. Besides Trump is doing quite well on just this issue. Or I could draft a standard rebuttal and just copy and post it occasionally until this superstitious tribe gives up. More generally, I should just have less patience with such nonsense and just ignore it. It’s just nonsense; it should be ignored. Maybe I’m guilty of some excessive confidence in the role of rationality in our society and let people get me to write rational essays in response to just total nonsense. I should wise up — maybe I will.

   1. The Mathematicans of the Mahicanituck, that’s your tribe.Just checked it. 🙂

8. CONTRIBUTORS:Climate change is real! If the Obama Administration would have requested the Koch Brothers come to the table and discuss those caps the political landscape would not be what it currently is today. Trump is actually great for showing what you don’t want. A polished Politician is required to administrate this country. Can’t be mad at Trump he is actually fulfilling the campaign promises he said. Those that did’t vote HRC blame yourself. Not saying she would have been roses but it would be clear not and day direction for the country.The facts on Climate change and not the political funding that is against it to save corporations effected from the caps.https://climate.nasa.gov/ev…Captain Obvious!#UNEQUIVOCALLYUNAPOLOGETICALLYINDEPENDENT

   1. > Climate change is real!Of course. You expected something else? There is a lot of solid evidence, e.g., from ice cores going back 800,000+ years, that the climate has long been changing.What very much is NOT at all real is solid evidence that (i) the changes over the next few few thousand years will be significantly harmful, (ii) that human activity has anything to do with the changes, or (iii) there is anything humans can do about the changes.Where can I mail you a hot pink T-shirt with “Greenies — foolish but fun”?

9. Rather than respond to individual posts on here, I’m sharing a tool that you can use to run coastal sea rise projections, based on real data:Website- http://coastalresilience.org/Sea Rise Mapping Tool – http://maps.coastalresilien…This tool was developed by The Nature Conservancy (TNC) with the goal of aiding municipalities in preparing sustainability measures in current planning.DISCLOSURE: I am a contractor to TNC for projects related to sustainability planning. I’m sharing this tool because it helps people visualize what their neighborhood will look like in the future and it’s related to what Fred is talking about in this post.I personally applaud all efforts to help everyday people understand how dramatic sea rise will be — even in our lifetime.

   1. Of course no one, the IPCC, NOAA, Saint Laureate Al Guru, …, the developers of the software you mention, or your TNC have even as much as a weak little hollow hint of a tiny clue of meaningful information about sea level rise.But going along with the Greenies and fitting in with the NYC/NYT, Obama, Al Guru, etc., e.g., as athttps://www.youtube.com/wat…with Obama’s “electric rates would necessarily skyrocket”, crowd may be, as in an old movie, “foolish but fun”.But, with good leadership, e.g., Trump, we will be safe from such foolishness. But if Hillary had been elected, …, the US economy would have gotten very, very sick, with lots of people dying just because of the “foolish but fun” Greenies nonsense until enough people finally set aside no longer thought that foolish was so much fun, set aside such fun, wised up to the scam, and got back to rational, adult decision making.In this case, the Greenies are like dressing up for Halloween — fun — except, with Hillary instead of Trump, really foolish.

10. So will your place in LA

11. Fred, please stop spreading half-truths that happen to be popular.Please stop “cheering for your side.” This not a basketball game. Instead, please open your eyes, look around, gather information, and then think clearly.So-called “renewable energies” like solar and wind are becoming so cheap that fossil fuels will very likely be mostly phased out over the next few decades because they will be too expensive.And the whole “storage is too expensive [keep buying our coal and oil, or buy my battery packs which I will sell to you while I live on Mars in a Utopia]” canard is painful to listen to. Pumped storage has been used for millennium. Once solar, wind, etc are cheap enough, then pumped storage will be a cost-effective way to store energy.Of course it is possible that a cheaper and better method of storing energy than pumped storage will be devises, but at the least pumped storage can do the job.As fossil fuel use is phased out, the media will doubtless find another bogeyman to spread FUD (fear, uncertainty, and doubt) so that they can attract viewers/listeners/readers and, more importantly to them, advertising dollars. Will you jump on that bandwagon too?Despite blatant FUD being put out by those who profit from stoking the flames of global warming hysteria such as…—–Think the Big Banks Have Abandoned Coal? Think AgainFive of the country’s biggest banks are lending tens or hundreds of millions of dollars to coal companies again, in one case eclipsing what they lent in 2014, before the industry entered a nose dive, according to an analysis by Rainforest Action Network, a liberal environmental group.”https://www.nytimes.com/201…—–the facts are plain to see. Large importers of energy, such as China and Germany (and even Saudi Arabia which is, of course, a huge exporter of energy), have committed vast financial resources to cutting the cost of creating electricity from solar and wind. Not only have their successes have been remarkable over the last 10 to 20 years, but they are continuing on in the present.Huge and powerful energy interests are trying desperately to hang on but they are fighting a losing battle because, despite having a friend in the White House and in the Kremlin, alternatives to fossil fuels are getting cheaper and cheaper.Of course Big Coal and Big Gas & Oil will not “…go gentle into that good night” (Dylan Thomas). They are just like the phone companies and cable companies. They are fighting tooth and nail for their survival. At least for businesses, it is a jungle: survival of the fittest!Your penchant for succumbing to popular trends such as Crypto Nonsense and Global Warming Hysteria don’t paint you in the light which you clearly wish to be seen: as a wise and level-headed investor who is able to accurately spot trends.Which bandwagon are you going to jump on next? Maybe the new anti-Russian bandwagon that military contractors and media outlets are are trying to sell to a mostly disinterested public?Or how about “casting a bright light” on the looming threat of a war with some small country that US could quickly and easily trounce but instead will be used as way to secure enormous funding for many years for military interests?