Sea levels and impact on the United States.

[telemann.livejournal.com]

As a follow-up to airiefairie's excellent post on March 11, 2012 ("The drowning country: a case of climate migration"), I wanted to share a new report that has been released in the interim.


NBC Nightly News featured a new scientific report suggesting significant changes in sea levels will impact the United States much sooner than thought. The report entitled Surging Seas

finds the odds of “century” or worse floods occurring by 2030 are on track to double or more, over widespread areas of the U.S. These increases threaten an enormous amount of damage. Across the country, nearly 5 million people live in 2.6 million homes at less than 4 feet above high tide — a level lower than the century flood line for most locations analyzed. And compounding this risk, scientists expect roughly 2 to 7 more feet of sea level rise this century. [see graphic below]

The report has been made available online, and Climate Central has designed a super elegant and user friendly interactive map to see what impact sea level changes will have on your own community. The map draws its information from a peer reviewed study. And it uses the National Elevation Dataset, a product of the U.S. Geological Survey.



The effects of a five foot sea rise on my home town of Hampton, Virginia. The solid blue line indicates the current shoreline, gray shows the areas affected by rising sea levels with the interior blue line the new coast line. The "city" of Poquoson would be completely wiped out. This portion of Virginia is called "Tidewater" and it would be affected the most because of the low laying tidal flats and swampy areas. On a personal note, two weeks ago, my insurance agency dropped home coverage due to my proximity to living near a flood zone in Brooklyn. The letter cited increased risks from hurricanes and other issues associated with climate change (i.e. rising sea levels).

Here what happens to Staten Island, Brooklyn, and Queens (5 foot rise):




This is the full feature from NBC Nightly News (you *MAY* have to refresh your browser page to reload the embedded video correctly ;)

Comments

[spaz-own-joo.livejournal.com]

I can explain most technical issues even to people who know little to nothing about my field with only slight effort.

The question is not whether you can explain it to them so that they think they understand it.

The question is: If an equally-talented tech support person had reason to want to deceive their customer, could they craft an inaccurate explanation which sounds equally convincing, to their ears?

[mrbogey.livejournal.com]

'The question is: If an equally-talented tech support person had reason to want to deceive their customer, could they craft an inaccurate explanation which sounds equally convincing, to their ears? '

Only if the receiver accepted it and didn't try and judge its validity.

I've seen people bullshitted by bad tech support to the point where they were arguing with me over the issue. In nearly every case I informed them enough that they went back to either agnostic or to my side.

It all comes down to the layperson being able to accept the premises or at least consider them. Part of that relies on good communication. Sure, there's some people you can't teach. But I find the ones that can't learn are the ones that refuse to weigh or accept premises.

[spaz-own-joo.livejournal.com]

Luckily for your customers, you are both a good communicator and you are factually right.

Consider instead the question of whether, starting from a preconception contrary to what you're telling them, they'd be more likely to believe you're right if you were:

a) speaking in earnest but a poor communicator
or
b) speaking deceptively but a good communicator.

[mrbogey.livejournal.com]

Of course the good communicator wins.

That's why I "split hairs" so as to make sure communication is absolutely clear.

[spaz-own-joo.livejournal.com]

Good. we agree on that. Now, the more complicated question.

What if they're both good communicators, and one's telling the truth and the other isn't.

I think that you think in this case, the truth-teller wins.

I'm saying that it's a stalemate which won't be broken until the customer has in fact learned enough, by listening to both of you and fact-checking the contradictions between you, to solve the tech support issue by himself.

[mrbogey.livejournal.com]

'The question is not whether you can explain it to them so that they think they understand it.'

That's not quite what I meant. Only that they could spot errors in an argument or that they could understand the base logic of the issue enough that they can either accept or remain quiet about it till they get an aswer.

Going back to climatology, I didn't believe the temperature gains due to the primary source of the claims came from a singular entity who lost or couldn't produce a lot of their raw calculations. Recently another group critical of them replicated them results fairly closely using their own methodology and assumptions. At that point my criticism of temperature rise went away.

Logically I could understand how my argument had been answered. Even if I don't fully understand their methodology, that became irrelevant. Until someone comes up with another critique then I can't argue that.

[spaz-own-joo.livejournal.com]

In a world that has LJ, where the barriers to discourse are so low and anyone can publish a hatchet job and reach, well, however many viewers they can reach, there is always gonna be another critique. If you follow an argument back and forth until one of the experts produces a point that can't logically be answered, it will still be answered, just not logically. (and perhaps, not by a true 'expert'.)

If the illogic is subtle you won't realize that the chain of logical responses has ended. If you can indeed realize it, you're an expert too. That's what i'm sayin'.

Re: the climatology business... You may not fully understand their methodology; but assuming it's sound, are you confident you'll see the holes in any critique of it? If you are, I think you know enough about this topic that you would've seen that the methodology were flawed if it were.