Climate Debate Should Stick to Facts

[JLM]

Climate has always changed and animals including Homo Sapiens & their ancestors have always adopted - or gone extinct.

99% of all species became extinct and more adaptable ones arose.

Sh*t happens. Nothing we can do about it (contrary to popular myth)

Adapted too, maybe!

 

[Danbones]

"We adopted adaptations."

Added Ada without much ado.

 

[spilledthebeer]

I think the point Colpy is making, Avro, is that New Orleans hasn't been seen to be following a Dutch-style model for the most part. Much of what we see is the same old same old. Adapting could be simply changing how New Orleans or other parts of Louisiana build their flood controls, from their old style into one more closely ressembling the Dutch model.

As for the OP, Chris de Freitas sounds very similar to the way I feel about climate change as a whole. The models and evidence don't support each other or many of the alarmist conclusions that some in the scientific community want to jump to. This doesn't mean I think conservationism is a bad thing for a variety of reasons, some of them pretty straightforward (some sound downright trite and cliche but...):

- messes are always more difficult/expensive to clean up when they are uncontained. Anyone who's ever had to deal with any type of industrial spill can bear witness to this
- waste is waste and is never a good thing. In the long run it always costs money, even when it is inconvenient or seemingly cost effective in the short term.
- if there is a finite supply of a resource (as in the case of fossil fuels), then a replacement for it needs to be found and sooner is better than later, to avoid shortages and the subsequent price gouging that accompany them
- fewer substances released into the environment (with VERY few exceptions) is a good thing

Yes, we as a society SHOULD be looking for clean energy sources and more efficient ones. We should also be looking for cleaner and more efficient means of producing and utilizing existing sources. Its common sense. That shouldn't mean we need to invent world altering boogeymen to do what is smart.

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NEW ORLEANS can only be compared to Holland by those CHOOSING deliberately to miss represent the situation!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


Holland was largely created by blocking out the sea and pumping land dry- big chunks of Holland were UNDR WATER TO BEGIN WITH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


Other chunks of Holland were created by dumping land fill in shallow lagoons- but coastal erosion has always been an issue!!!!!!!!


The situation in New Orleans is sharply DIFFERENT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


It is true the coastline there is sinking due apparently to the amount of oil and natural gas that has been pumped out- allowing the ground to subside into empty chambers and pockets!!!!!!!!!!!


But the MAJOR PROBLEM faced by New Orleans has been the clear cutting of Mangrove swamps which have traditionally acted as STRONG STORM SURGE BUFFERS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


With the Mangrove swamps gone there is now neither protection from coastal erosion nor from storm surges!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


New Orleans has made its own problem!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!



New Orleans is being slowly rendered uninhabitable by a combination of STUPID FLOOD CONTROL CHOICES and by the reality the city is built in a VULNERABLE SPOT that is sinking back into the ocean in the same way that the city of Venice is doing!!!!!!!!!!!


If you build a city on swampy ground you MUST EXPECT some problems!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


Only a LIE-beral would blame the subsidence problems of New Orleans or Venice on global warming!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!