America's First Climate Refugees

[ordnance11]

Surprisingly, from Alaska:
http://www.npr.org/2013/05/18/185068648 ... e-refugees
Any takers that they won't be the last?
__________________
Into terror!,  Into valour!
Charge ahead! No! Never turn
Yes, it's into the fire we fly
And the devil will burn!
- Scarlett Pimpernell

[Rajvik]

Its an NPR story, I take it with a splash of salt, a lick of lime and a shot of tequila. Rivers meander, they naturally erode one direction or anothrr and then the rown has to move a bit, this was part of the reason they put the levee system on the Mississippi river. News flash, ice and snow melt even in Alaska, and of course the runnoff is causing the river to rise, just like rain and snowmelt runoff swell the Mississippi every year.
 

[Rod.H]

I believe there's other places in the US that this could apply to, but it's a problem the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers have been dealing with since their founding, though I think they mainly advocate relocation for small communities, for while it would make their job easier they could never do the same with places like New Orleans.

[khagler]

The first climate refugees in the Americas where the ancestors of the Indians who came here over the Bering land bridge during the last ice age, around 16,000 years ago.

[Logan Darklighter]

An interesting aspect of this situation is this:  the villagers didn’t originally choose to live there, they were forced to by the Alaskan government, they were refugees back in 1959: According to an article at the US Fish and Wildlife site - 

The Yup’iks, who had lived in these parts of Alaska for hundreds of years, had traditionally used the area around present-day Newtok as a seasonal stopping-off place, convenient for late summer berry picking. Even then, their preferred encampment, when they passed through the area, was a cluster of sod houses called Kayalavik, some miles further up river. But over the years, the authorities began pushing native Alaskans to settle in fixed locations and to send their children to school.
It was difficult for supply barges to manoeuvre as far up river as Kayalavik. After 1959, when Alaska became a state, the new authorities ordered villagers to move to a more convenient docking point.

Hmm, I’ll trust the Yup’iks to know better where to camp, after all, they had thousands of years of experience before the US Gov set foot in Alaska. When you get relocated to an island surrounded by running rivers on all sides, do you think erosion might be a problem in your future?

[Black Aeronaut]

Rajvik wrote:

---

Its an NPR story, I take it with a splash of salt, a lick of lime and a shot of tequila.

You're gonna honestly tell me that NPR makes a habit of bad reporting?  Cite please.
Also, more on topic...  Okay, I can see that if it was just a sudden thing.  100-year and 500-year floods happen.  But this is permanent... or at least as close enough to 'permanent' for government work.  You know what, let's just say 'indefinite' so we're all PC here.
So, that water is gonna flood the town... in about two years.  And it's not gonna recede.  At least, not anytime soon.  And the ACoE says this is a definite thing that's gonna happen - and these guys have many decades of dealing with these things.
So, where's your concrete proof that this has nothing to do with climate change?  Because seasonal ice-melts do not permanently change maps like that, let alone so quickly.  Really, for that to happen there has to be something else involved... like a soft bed of water soluble minerals that was heretofore unknown.
And yes, permafrost thaw happens.  But that's NOT A GOOD THING.  You think we release a lot of carbon now?  If the permafrost in Alaska thaws, it will release four times as much carbon as the entire human race currently produces.
I get what you're saying.  Shit happens.  Deal with it.
Now, get what I'm saying: we've evolved in a ridiculously short amount of time on this planet.  And while part of our evolution deals in the curveballs that our world's climate shifts would throw at us, this was at a time where migration would be an easy enough thing.  But that was then, this is now.  We've settled just about every corner of this planet and everyone has got a political stake somewhere.  If entire tracts of land suddenly become uninhabitable, it is going to hurt so bad that, in the right conditions, a war could possibly start over it.  I know that's a little hysterical, but look at what Russia is doing right now in Crimea.
It behooves us to mitigate climate change as much as possible, or else the costs of dealing with it are going to far outweigh the costs of mitigation.

[ordnance11]

Black Aeronaut wrote:

---

Rajvik wrote:

---

Its an NPR story, I take it with a splash of salt, a lick of lime and a shot of tequila.

You're gonna honestly tell me that NPR makes a habit of bad reporting?  Cite please.
Also, more on topic...  Okay, I can see that if it was just a sudden thing.  100-year and 500-year floods happen.  But this is permanent... or at least as close enough to 'permanent' for government work.  You know what, let's just say 'indefinite' so we're all PC here.
So, that water is gonna flood the town... in about two years.  And it's not gonna recede.  At least, not anytime soon.  And the ACoE says this is a definite thing that's gonna happen - and these guys have many decades of dealing with these things.
So, where's your concrete proof that this has nothing to do with climate change?  Because seasonal ice-melts do not permanently change maps like that, let alone so quickly.  Really, for that to happen there has to be something else involved... like a soft bed of water soluble minerals that was heretofore unknown.
And yes, permafrost thaw happens.  But that's NOT A GOOD THING.  You think we release a lot of carbon now?  If the permafrost in Alaska thaws, it will release four times as much carbon as the entire human race currently produces.
I get what you're saying.  Shit happens.  Deal with it.
Now, get what I'm saying: we've evolved in a ridiculously short amount of time on this planet.  And while part of our evolution deals in the curveballs that our world's climate shifts would throw at us, this was at a time where migration would be an easy enough thing.  But that was then, this is now.  We've settled just about every corner of this planet and everyone has got a political stake somewhere.  If entire tracts of land suddenly become uninhabitable, it is going to hurt so bad that, in the right conditions, a war could possibly start over it.  I know that's a little hysterical, but look at what Russia is doing right now in Crimea.
It behooves us to mitigate climate change as much as possible, or else the costs of dealing with it are going to far outweigh the costs of mitigation.

BA..there are people I know who distrust NPR...mainly because anything public funded is suspicious.  At this stage of the game, there are enough people in the U.S. who are concerned about it...just not enough people who want to do something about. That might change, when cropland disappears because of drought, their beachfront property starts washing away due to storm surges..and more frequent/powerful hurricanes/typhoons start hitting the coasts of nations. What really has making shaking my head is down by the Gulf coast of Alabama, they developing beach front property right up the waters edge. The locals have their homes perched on stilts 10 feet up. I'm not sure if the developers are pulling a scam or not.
__________________
Into terror!,  Into valour!
Charge ahead! No! Never turn
Yes, it's into the fire we fly
And the devil will burn!
- Scarlett Pimpernell

[robkelk]

BA..there are people I know who distrust NPR...mainly because anything public funded is suspicious.

As a civil servant, this makes me sad.

At this stage of the game, there are enough people in the U.S. who are concerned about it...just not enough people who want to do something about. That might change, when cropland disappears because of drought, their beachfront property starts washing away due to storm surges..and more frequent/powerful hurricanes/typhoons start hitting the coasts of nations. ...

By then, it'll be too late.
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."

- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012

[Bob Schroeck]

BA..there are people I know who distrust NPR...mainly because anything public funded is suspicious.

Get rid of all those socialist roads, bridges and highways! In a true capitalist system, the free market would determine where roads are needed, and charge what the traffic can bear (<rimshot>) to use them! It's the only real Murrikin way! And if you want to go somewhere it's not profitable to build a road to, well, you're just not patriotic. Or need to buy an off-road vehicle and help support the auto industry.

-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.

[Rajvik]

Black Aeronaut wrote:

---

Rajvik wrote:

---

Its an NPR story, I take it with a splash of salt, a lick of lime and a shot of tequila.

You're gonna honestly tell me that NPR makes a habit of bad reporting?  Cite please.
Also, more on topic...  Okay, I can see that if it was just a sudden thing.  100-year and 500-year floods happen.  But this is permanent... or at least as close enough to 'permanent' for government work.  You know what, let's just say 'indefinite' so we're all PC here.
So, that water is gonna flood the town... in about two years.  And it's not gonna recede.  At least, not anytime soon.  And the ACoE says this is a definite thing that's gonna happen - and these guys have many decades of dealing with these things.
So, where's your concrete proof that this has nothing to do with climate change?  Because seasonal ice-melts do not permanently change maps like that, let alone so quickly.  Really, for that to happen there has to be something else involved... like a soft bed of water soluble minerals that was heretofore unknown.
And yes, permafrost thaw happens.  But that's NOT A GOOD THING.  You think we release a lot of carbon now?  If the permafrost in Alaska thaws, it will release four times as much carbon as the entire human race currently produces.
I get what you're saying.  Shit happens.  Deal with it.
Now, get what I'm saying: we've evolved in a ridiculously short amount of time on this planet.  And while part of our evolution deals in the curveballs that our world's climate shifts would throw at us, this was at a time where migration would be an easy enough thing.  But that was then, this is now.  We've settled just about every corner of this planet and everyone has got a political stake somewhere.  If entire tracts of land suddenly become uninhabitable, it is going to hurt so bad that, in the right conditions, a war could possibly start over it.  I know that's a little hysterical, but look at what Russia is doing right now in Crimea.
It behooves us to mitigate climate change as much as possible, or else the costs of dealing with it are going to far outweigh the costs of mitigation.

Bad reporting, not so much. Heavily slanted reporting certainly. Do i personally believe that the climate is shifting, yes, but i do have yet to see anything that conclusively links it to man's technological advancements as being the cause. The East Anglia data has been refuted as cherry picked as per their own emails, and all i've heard otherwise has been scare tactics and lawyerese double talk that the speaker was later quoted as saying he didn't believe himself but was perfectly willing to make money off what he felt was the "masses stupidity".
As for the situation, the US government has a very bad habit, (and has since its inception so its not either sides fault alone) of telling indigenous migratory tribes that they have to settle in one single spot and it be a very bad spot.  As for the town going under the river as i stated the meandering of the Mississippi has put more than one town under the waves, New Orleans was up for the same treatment when the ACoE was called in to install the concrete dikes that channeled the river through the city. They are constantly re-dredging  the section of the river where the two meet to keep the river on course. You want to argue that this is going to lead to loss of cropland in the future, i think if that was the case we would have never recovered from the dustbowl, you know that series of bad drought years in the midwest during the 30's that after a few years reversed itself.

the long and short of my argument is this is natural, it happens. we are 150 years out of the deepest part of the the little ice age so the world climate warming is going to be normal and considering that the world climate hasn't warmed in the last 10 years seems to back this up. the following is a link to a website debunking the myths of global warming.

http://www.friendsofscience.org/index.php?id=3
 

[Rev Dark]

Friends of Science.
Sounds so inviting.  So trustworthy.  Like a bunch of people in white coats ready to make you trust them.
Let's peel back as to where they reporting is coming from and where there particular biases lie.  Lie being the operative word.
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?ti ... of_Sciencehttp://deepclimate.org/2009/12/02/in-th ... -brothers/
About as trustworthy as kick in the nuts.
In science, failing to disclose conflict of interest is a blacklisting offense.

[Rajvik]

As is cherry picking your data to support your hypothesis Rev. That was just the first site I came to, I could have linked Phil Valentines little movie as well.
 

[robkelk]

As is cherry picking your data to support your hypothesis Rev. That was just the first site I came to, I could have linked Phil Valentines little movie as well.

Who is Phil Valentine, and where did he earn his science degree? (The only "Phil Valentine" I can find in a quick search is a talk-show host - if we're counting them as reliable sources, then somebody's going to start citing Jenny McCarthy on vaccines...)
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."

- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012

[ordnance11]

robkelk wrote:

---

Rajvik wrote:

---

As is cherry picking your data to support your hypothesis Rev. That was just the first site I came to, I could have linked Phil Valentines little movie as well.

Who is Phil Valentine, and where did he earn his science degree? (The only "Phil Valentine" I can find in a quick search is a talk-show host - if we're counting them as reliable sources, then somebody's going to start citing Jenny McCarthy on vaccines...)

And Al Gore about the internet?
Rajvik, if you are right 10, 20 or 30 years from now, we call laugh about this. But if you're wrong....then what?
__________________
Into terror!,  Into valour!
Charge ahead! No! Never turn
Yes, it's into the fire we fly
And the devil will burn!
- Scarlett Pimpernell

[Rev Dark]

As is cherry picking your data to support your hypothesis Rev. That was
just the first site I came to, I could have linked Phil Valentines
little movie as well.

????  The first site you came to - given this a lot of thought then have you?
How about linking published papers from reputable journals next time then.

[Rajvik]

robkelk wrote:

---

Rajvik wrote:

---

As is cherry picking your data to support your hypothesis Rev. That was just the first site I came to, I could have linked Phil Valentines little movie as well.

Who is Phil Valentine, and where did he earn his science degree? (The only "Phil Valentine" I can find in a quick search is a talk-show host - if we're counting them as reliable sources, then somebody's going to start citing Jenny McCarthy on vaccines...)

Yes Phil Valentine is a Radio Talk Show host, he narrates and produced the movie, here is a link to the wiki on it. The long, short and point of the movie was and is that it refutes Al Gore's "Movie" (wiki link, Trailer link)
Ordnance, part of me wants to revert the argument back to you saying that if your right and we do manage to accomplish something along those lines and "reverse the global warming" you can tell me you told me so, but if i'm right we've possibly created the next ice age. But that's the part of me that is a jackass. As for "What will we do" if i'm wrong? The short answer is adapt, its what we humans are good at. How will we adapt, i don't know off the top of my head, but we will. What i refuse to do is join in the panic that seems to fill the media because "This is the next thing that will kill us all"

I'll look for it later on but i don't think we've even hit the temps that the world had during the Mid evil warm period, so we would have a lot of room to work with considering they were supposedly cultivating parts of Greenland during that point in time that as of 1950 were still permafrost. Also, lets just look at temp trends and their hysteria since 1900. Warming because we were coming out of the little ice age, drought due to climate shifting during the 30's (dustbowl) and yet in the 1970's Time magazine asked "Are we entering a new Ice Age". Earth's climate seems cyclical, people scream, "The arctic ice caps are melting" and fail to note or ignore that the antarctic ones are growing. 

The thing that started this thread and has been lost in the argument of "Climate Change" is that a town is going to disappear because it was built on a flood plain and the river it is next to is shifting its course through the town. This is a tragedy in a sense that the people that live there will have to uproot their lives and move and that nothing can really be done about it. Is it because of climate change, i highly doubt it. Rivers shift unless the ACoE actively work to keep them where they are, sometimes this is a small change, sometimes its a huge one. In the 30 years that i can remember the creek behind my house has shifted its banks 20ft in various directions multiple times, the only reason my home hasn't gone under is because its up a hill from the creek itself so we are fairly protected. 
 

[Logan Darklighter]

Lets add another dimension to this discussion. 
For all of you that want to do something about climate change - 
What do you propose should be done? 
Or - to put it another way, since most of us aren't experts - what are the most common things suggested?

[Logan Darklighter]

Another question: 
Is there a specific range of temperatures or type of climate that is "ideal"? What's the end goal? And are we prepared to ramp back and adjust/moderate the proposed mandates, taxes incentives, tariffs, and regulations if we achieve that range?
I mention that last part because you don't want to overcompensate and trigger global cooling or the next Ice Age by mistake. We seem to be overdue for one anyway. What if our current actions as a species are keeping an Ice Age from starting?

[Logan Darklighter]

Lastly - can you coerce or force the entire world and all its various governments to adhere to the "Carbon Standard"? 
We've made great strides in anti-pollution measures here in the US, Canada, England and Europe in the last half-century. But have you checked out the air over Beijing, Shanghai, Mexico City lately? It's not pretty. 
How do you get the human race as a whole to cut back on its carbon footprint when at least half of them live in areas that ignore your control or suggestions?

[Black Aeronaut]

Well, whatever we do, it needs to be soon. Because, like I said, once the permafrosts start melting en masse, the release of all that carbon is gonna screw everything up for certain.

It might not be quite so bad in the end... But getting there in the meantime is gonna be messy as all hell.

Prevention... There are two major fronts for this: Automobiles and Power Grids.

For autos: getting most automobiles onto some kind of low-emission system would be a great start. We don't even have to go completely without fossil-fuel here. Use a setup much like diesel-electric locomotives here in the US, and collect regeneration from braking into some capacitors. Also, make them all plug-in diesel-electrics, so you can charge the main batteries while your doing the shopping or at work, etc. Gas stations will probably disappear for the most part, though convenience stores will still be a thing (plenty here in my city that don't sell gas at all). Reason being people will probably top off their tanks at home. (Don't laugh. Automotive diesel is not far removed from home heating oil. And people usually have 400 gallon tanks right in their basements.) Advantage: you can get your auto-fuel straight from the distributor. Disadvantage: careful budgeting will be required to make sure you have all the fuel you need for the month.

Truckstops as fueling stations will probably still be around, though.

For the Power Grid: Nuclear Power- full stop. Fully carbon-free, high density, and even renewable to an extent. Safety issues abound, but they would be largely rendered moot if they would switch to carefully managed pebble-bed reactors instead of light-water boilers. These can be heavily backed by solar, wind, hydroelectric, geothermal, and even tidal energy. Also, super-conductive power lines are feasible now. You can even use them to transmit a secondary form of energy by making the superconductor coolant simple liquid hydrogen. Nuclear power plants can crack it easily from water because they operate that hot, so it's two birds with one stone. This will also make it easier to centralize large nuclear complexes and get power to areas that are deficient.

Can we coerce everyone to get in on this? Maybe. The technology for all the above is present and readily available. All it needs is for someone to free up the funding so we can get cracking on the biggest infrastructure overhaul ever. (This would mean hundreds of thousands of jobs along all parts of the educational spectrum for decades to come, but try explaining that to the Republicans.)

China is the one that I can imagine that people would be most worried about, but don't be. Everyone in Beijing knows how bad it is - they only need to look out their windows to see it. The PRC knows this and understands this... the problem is making the technology cheap enough that they can jump onboard with it. However, as with many things, if we can get this to be mainstream here in North America, I'm pretty sure the rest of the world will follow.

Places where we'll really have a lot of trouble are developing nations that are clearcutting and burning forests for grazing and farmland. This does pretty much the exact opposite of what we need - exchanging greenhouse-gas neutralizing old-growth forests for greenhouse-gas producing farms. It's pretty bad in Africa, but it's an even bigger issue in South America. This is because we're losing all kinds of biochemistry goldmines in the name of cheaper food. (While a bit preachy, the movie Medicine Man staring Sean Connery is a very realistic scenario.)

As for where we want to set the planetary thermostat? Easy. Average out the almanac for the two-decades before and after 1900. That was about the time when America (and other big countries) REALLY got industrialized, and the temperatures should still have been fairly normal. If we can keep it in that range, then I think we should be fine.

And yes, I know that there's gonna be factors that we have little-to-no control over, such as fluctuations in our sun's output, volcanic eruptions, polar shifts, etc. However, this is all the more reason to get things in-hand so when the time comes we can adjust on the fly.

Also, getting more funding into our space programs so we can start working on space colonies is not a bad idea at all. We're just one modest-sized space rock away from cataclysm, ya know?

[ordnance11]

http://www.pbs.org/saf/1404/segments/1404-1.htm
http://www.slate.com/articles/technolog ... ather.html
And it seems that the Florida governor had decreed that any words like "global warming" will not be spoken or written off officially..unofficially off course.
http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/opinion/f ... ygQ#page=1
For me the irony is the impacts of putative rising sea levels are already being felt in Miami..
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/sou ... ea-levels/
__________________
Into terror!,  Into valour!
Charge ahead! No! Never turn
Yes, it's into the fire we fly
And the devil will burn!
- Scarlett Pimpernell