Right-wingers are responsible for the flooding in Germany

Page 2 of 3 [ 45 posts ]  Go to page Previous  1, 2, 3  Next

magz
Forum Moderator
Forum Moderator

User avatar

Joined: 1 Jun 2017
Age: 39
Gender: Female
Posts: 16,283
Location: Poland

16 Jul 2021, 1:20 pm

thinkinginpictures wrote:
Nades wrote:
Hmmmmmmmm. I don't see the connection and I appear to not be alone on this. Why is it that every single freak weather event is always the result of global warming too? They had freak weather events like this hundreds of years ago but many seem to forget that.

You know the proverb about assumptions do you?


It's not one single event. It's many. Flooding in Germany. Ice melting at the North and South poles. 50-60 degrees celcius heat wave in California/Death Valley. You see the pattern? It's all caused by the rise of global temperatures. These events just wouldn't occur with such a high frequency back in the 19th century or before.

It was one of these events every 100th year. This now happens EVERY DAMN YEAR!

At least part of it is engineering not accounting for weather anomalies - frost in Texas wouldn't have been be so catastrophic if the power grid and water pipes were winterized, floods in Central Europe wouldn't be so tragic if people avoided building on flood plains, etc.

From what my friend atmosphere physics researcher says, global warming makes various already possible extreme weather events a bit more probable - but we should have been prepared for them anyway.


_________________
Let's not confuse being normal with being mentally healthy.

<not moderating PPR stuff concerning East Europe>


VegetableMan
Veteran
Veteran

Joined: 11 Jun 2014
Gender: Male
Posts: 5,208
Location: Illinois

16 Jul 2021, 1:21 pm

It's hard to look at the image of the flooding, and imagining all the sufferring involved, humans and animals.


_________________
What do you call a hot dog in a gangster suit?

Oscar Meyer Lansky


thinkinginpictures
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 7 May 2011
Gender: Male
Posts: 1,310

16 Jul 2021, 1:25 pm

magz wrote:
thinkinginpictures wrote:
Nades wrote:
Hmmmmmmmm. I don't see the connection and I appear to not be alone on this. Why is it that every single freak weather event is always the result of global warming too? They had freak weather events like this hundreds of years ago but many seem to forget that.

You know the proverb about assumptions do you?


It's not one single event. It's many. Flooding in Germany. Ice melting at the North and South poles. 50-60 degrees celcius heat wave in California/Death Valley. You see the pattern? It's all caused by the rise of global temperatures. These events just wouldn't occur with such a high frequency back in the 19th century or before.

It was one of these events every 100th year. This now happens EVERY DAMN YEAR!

At least part of it is engineering not accounting for weather anomalies - frost in Texas wouldn't have been be so catastrophic if the power grid and water pipes were winterized, floods in Central Europe wouldn't be so tragic if people avoided building on flood plains, etc.

From what my friend atmosphere physics researcher says, global warming makes various already possible extreme weather events a bit more probable - but we should have been prepared for them anyway.


True, something needs to be accounted for. But we're talking about people who have lived in these areas for decades, some houses are centuries old.

It haven't been a problem before. Just because you don't live there, doesn't mean it won't affect your life in some way or the other, where it wouldn't have been a problem earlier.

You can move houses away from rivers, away from water. But as the water continues to rise, you'll have to move again, and again. And just one more time, until there's no more land left for you to build on.

Within a hundred years or so, if nothing is done to prevent it - Europe will be divided into small "islands" seperated by large rivers. The Netherlands will no longer exist. Belgium will no longer exist. Copenhagen/Denmark will no longer exist. The coastline of Poland, Germany and France will eat its way into the countries. People will die from this. They'll drown.

This, because the right wingers insists we do nothing to combat the climate changes.



magz
Forum Moderator
Forum Moderator

User avatar

Joined: 1 Jun 2017
Age: 39
Gender: Female
Posts: 16,283
Location: Poland

16 Jul 2021, 1:30 pm

Actually, I'm living in a country bogged with local floods every few years since the great one in 1997. I'm living in a region prone to exactly the same issue.
I'm talking about things that need to be learned because floods have always been part of the landscape in Central Europe but bad engineering makes them much more catastrophic. Channelised rivers - something common in Germany since 20th century - can control small flooding but when exceeded its control capacity, they make catastrophic flash floods. Like I wrote before, that was the difference between regulated Odra and wild Wisła in 1997.


_________________
Let's not confuse being normal with being mentally healthy.

<not moderating PPR stuff concerning East Europe>


thinkinginpictures
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 7 May 2011
Gender: Male
Posts: 1,310

16 Jul 2021, 1:33 pm

magz wrote:
Actually, I'm living in a country bogged with local floods every few years since the great one in 1997. I'm talking about things that need to be learned because floods have always been part of the landscape in Central Europe but bad engineering makes them much more catastrophic. Channelised rivers - something common in Germany since 20th century - can control small flooding but when exceeded its control capacity, they make catastrophic flash floods. Like I wrote before, that was the difference between regulated Odra and wild Wisła in 1997.


And it will happen more often that the channelised rivers will exceed its control capacity.

You can engineer your way out of it. You can move houses away. But at some point, in some time, this too won't be an option anymore.



magz
Forum Moderator
Forum Moderator

User avatar

Joined: 1 Jun 2017
Age: 39
Gender: Female
Posts: 16,283
Location: Poland

16 Jul 2021, 1:37 pm

Humans are African apes that colonized High Arctic.
We are really adaptive.
With all our knowledge and technology, we can adapt even better.

I'm one of the people who really want to redirect the energy from blaming to finding solutions.


_________________
Let's not confuse being normal with being mentally healthy.

<not moderating PPR stuff concerning East Europe>


thinkinginpictures
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 7 May 2011
Gender: Male
Posts: 1,310

16 Jul 2021, 1:49 pm

magz wrote:
Humans are African apes that colonized High Arctic.
We are really adaptive.
With all our knowledge and technology, we can adapt even better.

I'm one of the people who really want to redirect the energy from blaming to finding solutions.


Has it never occured to you, that humans will do anything in their powers to keep you from realizing your solutions?

Scientists have solutions. But they're only allowed to a certain extend. That's because humans are evil.

When you have crabs in a bucket, and one of them almost manages to escape, the other crabs will do anything to keep everyone in the bucket. They'll pull the escaping crab back into the bucket.

That's the law of nature. Evilness.



magz
Forum Moderator
Forum Moderator

User avatar

Joined: 1 Jun 2017
Age: 39
Gender: Female
Posts: 16,283
Location: Poland

16 Jul 2021, 2:00 pm

I am one of the scientists and I think we are often deeply misunderstood. We usually don't have solutions that other people block by their evilness. We just gather and systemise knowledge and sometimes this knowledge leads to some solutions. Sometimes these solutions are blocked because of their cost in other areas - with our example, it's obviously not so easy to relocate people and businesses and rewild rivers at the cost of much worse navigation.

Nature is not always evil. Evil is a human concept. Nature does not have human morals. Nature is about survival - and self-regulating balance is part of how ecosystems survive. Interdependency is a common strategy in nature, think of flowers and bees or mycorrhiza.


_________________
Let's not confuse being normal with being mentally healthy.

<not moderating PPR stuff concerning East Europe>


Fnord
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 6 May 2008
Age: 67
Gender: Male
Posts: 59,836
Location: Stendec

16 Jul 2021, 2:54 pm

I am an engineer who sometimes works with scientists.  My underlying goal is to implement the discoveries scientists have made, and to do it in an effective, efficient, and economic way.

(No, there is no "Choose Any Two" directive involved.) :roll:

Sometimes the discovery cannot be implemented because the tools to make the tools to make the tools to complete the project have not been invented yet.  Sometimes the funds are not forthcoming.  Sometimes the effort to implement the discovery requires more human intervention than legal motivation can provide.

Sure, scientists and engineers can propose solutions; but in the case of medical science and biological engineering, we cannot even get everyone to receive a vaccine that could save their lives!


_________________
 
No love for Hamas, Hezbollah, Iranian Leadership, Islamic Jihad, other Islamic terrorist groups, OR their supporters and sympathizers.


shlaifu
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 26 May 2014
Age: 40
Gender: Male
Posts: 2,659

16 Jul 2021, 5:45 pm

hi. I'm a designer who occasionally works in science communication and also happen to live in Germany.

part of this 'blaming the right wing' that's going on is because
a) it's not the right wing being blamed, but the large centre-right party of angela merkel
b) merkel's successor is the state governor of the state the flooding happened in
c) he has a history of climate-denial, making pro-industry, and particularly pro-coal-mining decisions
d) the region has a long history of coal mining and regulating or abandoning coal would have a significant economic impact on the region
and
e) this disaster highlights the thing that merkel's party tends to ignore: that not doing anything against climate change has some significant economic impact, too.

Markel, and her successor, Laschet, keep pretending that climate change is sort of a niche interest thing, a green-party topic that's sort of a "nice-to-have", but waay to expensive to address. it's difficult to avoid feeling bemused by the irony of these floods, in an election year no less, in that particular region - of course it's a tremendous tragedy, and I don't want to make fun of that. but also: I am in my thirties. there will be many more of these, thanks to conservative parties everywhere...

I personally think the greatest mistake of the environmental movements in the 80s was to form green-parties, making environmentalism into a partisan issue. The feminists by contrast succeeded by joining all sorts of parties... (and because women in the workplace provided cheap labour without the hassle of immigration)...


_________________
I can read facial expressions. I did the test.


Mr Reynholm
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 19 Feb 2019
Age: 57
Gender: Male
Posts: 1,363
Location: Tulsa, OK

19 Jul 2021, 2:44 pm

So climate change is about metaphysics now?
As long as climate deniers exist, climate change will continue to get worse.
Everyone MUST believe in order for the Earth to heal?



shlaifu
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 26 May 2014
Age: 40
Gender: Male
Posts: 2,659

19 Jul 2021, 6:27 pm

Mr Reynholm wrote:
So climate change is about metaphysics now?
As long as climate deniers exist, climate change will continue to get worse.
Everyone MUST believe in order for the Earth to heal?

it's always been treated as eschatology by the deniers, so, yes, metaphysics and ontology in particular are involved. - after all, the ontological is political, if anything ever was.

I don't understand what you mean by "everyone must believe in order for the earth to heal"?... the earth seems fine to me


_________________
I can read facial expressions. I did the test.


Double Retired
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 31 Jul 2020
Age: 69
Gender: Male
Posts: 5,224
Location: U.S.A.         (Mid-Atlantic)

19 Jul 2021, 7:57 pm

magz wrote:
From what my friend atmosphere physics researcher says, global warming makes various already possible extreme weather events a bit more probable - but we should have been prepared for them anyway.
Some of the extreme results of climate change are awfully extreme.

NOAA "Astounding heat obliterates all-time records across the Pacific Northwest and Western Canada in June 2021"

Unfortunately some of the interesting points are only made in Fahrenheit. Here's some "translation":
* (paragraph 3) "Portland, Oregon’s, average high temperature over this period was 112 degrees Fahrenheit [44.4°C],
the hottest three-day period on record by an astonishing 6 degrees [3.3°C]...."
* (paragraph 4) "The heat reached right to the coast, too, as Quillayute, Washington, on the Pacific Ocean
reached an all-time record of 110 degrees Fahrenheit [43.3°C], a 'mere' 45 degrees [25°C] above-average,
beating the previous record by a mind-boggling 11 degrees [6.1°C]!
The heat was so intense that roads buckled across the Northwest."

Paragraph 5 does not require "translation" but is interesting reading.


The snowstorm that shutdown most of Texas' power grid was also a record-breaker.

Sea levels are being changed by dramatic changes in the Arctic sea ice and the ice sheets of Greenland and Antarctica.

Melting permafrost has not previously been a problem in human history.

And, NASA has recently added Moon wobble into the mix.


_________________
When diagnosed I bought champagne!
I finally knew why people were strange.


Mr Reynholm
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 19 Feb 2019
Age: 57
Gender: Male
Posts: 1,363
Location: Tulsa, OK

20 Jul 2021, 9:46 am

shlaifu wrote:
Mr Reynholm wrote:
So climate change is about metaphysics now?
As long as climate deniers exist, climate change will continue to get worse.
Everyone MUST believe in order for the Earth to heal?

it's always been treated as eschatology by the deniers, so, yes, metaphysics and ontology in particular are involved. - after all, the ontological is political, if anything ever was.

I don't understand what you mean by "everyone must believe in order for the earth to heal"?... the earth seems fine to me

It sounds very Disneyesque.



shlaifu
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 26 May 2014
Age: 40
Gender: Male
Posts: 2,659

20 Jul 2021, 8:14 pm

Mr Reynholm wrote:
shlaifu wrote:
Mr Reynholm wrote:
So climate change is about metaphysics now?
As long as climate deniers exist, climate change will continue to get worse.
Everyone MUST believe in order for the Earth to heal?

it's always been treated as eschatology by the deniers, so, yes, metaphysics and ontology in particular are involved. - after all, the ontological is political, if anything ever was.

I don't understand what you mean by "everyone must believe in order for the earth to heal"?... the earth seems fine to me

It sounds very Disneyesque.


no one's required to 'believe' in climate change, just as no one is required to 'believe' the earth is a round planet, rotating around the sun.
But I wouldn't vote a flat earther into office, or make him head of NASA.


_________________
I can read facial expressions. I did the test.


Mr Reynholm
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 19 Feb 2019
Age: 57
Gender: Male
Posts: 1,363
Location: Tulsa, OK

21 Jul 2021, 1:49 pm

The same people who say they follow the science are saying that The only way to end global warming is to give money to the UN.