Climate change - which now has made refugees out of Americans (1 Viewer)

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2016 was the year when — for the first time — climate change forced Americans to move elsewhere. It's first "climate refugees"? Residents of the tiny Louisiana island of Isle de Jean Charles, which has lost 98% of its land since 1955. As CNN's John Sutter reported last April, the marsh of Louisiana's fragile coast is disappearing at a mind-blowing rate: a football field of land, on average, falls into the Gulf of Mexico per hour. Yes that's right, a football field every hour. The Mississippi River has been strangled with so many dams and levees that it doesn't deliver the soil that's needed to rebuild the island's marshes. Oil and gas canals and pipelines, meanwhile, have carved up what's left of the marsh, making it more vulnerable to collapse. Global warming delivers the knockout punch, because as the marsh crumbles, the seas rise from melting ice sheets.
 
Actually, look at the wide satellite images and studies. The things you mention besides the Mississippi not dropping sediment are less than one part in a million of the problem. Most of it really is the rise in sea level and sinking land, and it's measurably in sync with expectations from climate change. Like the fact that we have global warming, it's not a gray area of 60% consensus, it's beyond 995 out of 1000 scientists agreeing. Barrier islands and areas all the way to Florida are getting it too, so it's not just old man river, which does exacerbate it in LA. I think Ship Island and Petit Bois are both less than half their old sizes.

Louisiana's vanishing coast: Before and after images show a decade's loss | NOLA.com

and

30 years of time-lapse satellite images show coastal Louisiana wasting away | The Lens

for good visuals. Google can help you find the science if you care.
 
Gotta enjoy science now before it becomes illegal after 1/20/17...
 
Climate change has been happening for millions of years. The earth weather patterns move in cycles. Humans don't help but it's natural. If we shut down every coal manufacturer in China, Russia and the USA it wouldn't matter. Earth is going through a warming cycle. Happened before the dinosaurs and after. Nothing we do will change it.
 
Climate change has been happening for millions of years. The earth weather patterns move in cycles. Humans don't help but it's natural. If we shut down every coal manufacturer in China, Russia and the USA it wouldn't matter. Earth is going through a warming cycle. Happened before the dinosaurs and after. Nothing we do will change it.

And that cycle places us in a cooling period right now, when instead we're heating up at a rate that is unprecedented in the history of the planet.
 
Climate change has been happening for millions of years. The earth weather patterns move in cycles. Humans don't help but it's natural. If we shut down every coal manufacturer in China, Russia and the USA it wouldn't matter. Earth is going through a warming cycle. Happened before the dinosaurs and after. Nothing we do will change it.

Link?
No. Really
 
Really. We're supposed to go through constant cycles of warming and cooling, and even abrupt changes can happen in geographic regions. But we're seeing 'global' effects, not isolated to one or two areas. No debate there. What's up for debate is tying human activity to that rise.

A quick overview of earth/humans: JOURNEY OF MANKIND - The Peopling of the World


Related:

Louisiana is drowning, quickly | Grist

Maps:
Surging Seas: Sea level rise analysis by Climate Central

Oh, and climate [FONT=&quot]≠[/FONT] weather. :no:
 
Climate change has been happening for millions of years. The earth weather patterns move in cycles. Humans don't help but it's natural. If we shut down every coal manufacturer in China, Russia and the USA it wouldn't matter. Earth is going through a warming cycle. Happened before the dinosaurs and after. Nothing we do will change it.

It's not the fact of change, it's the rate. Living things need time to adapt and the current rate of warming is way too fast for them to keep up.

Trying to deny human influence is just stupid and shortsighted. If we can influence, then we can manage. Imagine what that would be worth? The ability to consciously manage the global climate.

Capitalists and conservatives should be all over this. It's an opportunity to make mind-boggling amounts of money over the long term.
 
Capitalists and conservatives should be all over this. It's an opportunity to make mind-boggling amounts of money over the long term.

Yeah, but that's long term. Why do that when they can just open up the mines again and ZOMG MONEY NOW!!1!1!
 
It's not the fact of change, it's the rate. Living things need time to adapt and the current rate of warming is way too fast for them to keep up.

Trying to deny human influence is just stupid and shortsighted. If we can influence, then we can manage. Imagine what that would be worth? The ability to consciously manage the global climate.

Capitalists and conservatives should be all over this. It's an opportunity to make mind-boggling amounts of money over the long term.

Excellent point. Now we come to the crux of conservatism. The issue is that those that profit from the current system don't want to loose their place, money and power so they resists change and inhibit new possibilities. Even though there are vast amounts of money to be made. That money potentially won't be made by those who profit from the present or old system. I'm looking at coal and oil based interests.
 
Excellent point. Now we come to the crux of conservatism. The issue is that those that profit from the current system don't want to loose their place, money and power so they resists change and inhibit new possibilities. Even though there are vast amounts of money to be made. That money potentially won't be made by those who profit from the present or old system. I'm looking at coal and oil based interests.

It's as if wagon wheel manufacturers had been able to block railroad construction.
 

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