During the primary debates last night, Democratic candidates said some pretty crazy stuff. Andrew Yang won the award for the best crazy talking point, in my opinion.
He was talking about how we are too late to do anything about climate change:
Yang, referring to the U.S. share of global carbon dioxide emissions, said:
“The important number in this is 15 percent of global emissions…”
“We like to act as if we’re 100 percent. Even if we were to curb our emissions dramatically, the Earth is going to get warmer. The last four years have been the four warmest years in history. We are too late. We are 10 years too late.”
So, we are too late. Chill. But then came this laughable bombshell:
“We need to do everything we can to start moving the climate in the right direction…”
“….but we also need to start moving our people to higher ground—and the best way to do that is to put economic resources into your hands so you can protect yourself and your families.”
Riiight. Yang, who’s a tech guru, apparently has no idea how fast sea level is rising, like maybe we can’t outrun it or something. For example, Honolulu is just 1.49 mm per year.
New York city, almost twice twice that, but a mere 2.84mm per year
Globally, 3.28 mm per year, still nothing to worry about:
But Yang’s advice probably comes from reading too much climate porn, like this:
My post from 2010, still valid today:
Freaking out about NYC sea level rise is easy to do when you don’t pay attention to history
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Maybe it’s the choice and sequence of quotations, but when I see what Mr. Yang says about the climate, it all seems like disconnnected buzz words, collected by some assistant probably, in order to trigger the right responses in the audience. They just don’t add up to any meaningful, consistent message about climate policy. There is no rationality left, only emotions and simplistic statements. I don’t think Mr. Yang is stupid. I think he knows this perfectly well.
Is he the one who wants the government pay everyone $1000.00 per month? Well, you know, I could get remarried ($2000 per month). Have 15 children ($15000 per month). Think Population Control. Never have to work (I’m semi retired). $17,000 per month, not bad except a cup of coffee at McMicky D’s would cost $30.00
No, the coffee would be $2 — the sales tax would be $28.
Perhaps all the panic over a temperature rise of 2C actually results from an incompetent conversion to F.
2 x 9/5 +32 = 35.6F … You see! This might result from ignorati following a recipe to convert C to F.
The ‘global sealevel rise’ from altimetry of 3.2mm/yr is wrong. There is an as yet unidentified fault in either the instrument or the data processing, or in both.
As a Dutchman knowing about changes in sealevel is or used to be almost second nature. The Dutch keep a very keen eye on their tidal gauges. Chosing between what data comes out of a black box or stuff you can see with your own eyes is not difficult. The rise in the North Sea has been 1.9 mm/yr and constantly so since at least 1880. There may be a little subsidence in the number but we reckon with a sealevel rise between 1.6 and 1.9 mm/yr.
Remember that bloke from Syracuse 2000 years ago, Archimedes? He had figured out that if the change in the North Sea is 1.9mm/yr then the change in the North Atlantic is the same. With perhaps a very tiny correction because the geodetic surface is not an exact sphere. Why? Because they are ‘communicating vessels’ in open connection with each other. And similarly for the South Atlantic, the Indian Ocean, the Pacific, and so on.
I think Yang is suggesting government subsidized canoes for the coming disaster. The canoes since they are government subsidized will cost $187,000 a piece and you must provide your own paddle.
Yang: “The last four years have been the four warmest years in history. ”
Not even wrong. Maybe warmest on record, which is far from “history”. And again, we’re referring to the completely meaningless “global average temperature”. So he gets, at least, a double dumba** for that one.
The warmest in recent history, as is recorded at the remaining sensing stations. These remaining ones, as we recall courtesy of Watts et.al., are in urban or airport areas. The rural ones, especially those in pristine locations, have been carefully retired.
Have we passed the final “tipping-point” ? (Sorry – I’m not sure how many that’s been). Whatever, I really hope so because, as presumably we can no longer do anything about it, we can all just carry on as normal.
So if “global” sea level is rising at a rate of 3.24 mm/year, this is equivalent to 12.9 inches per century. If Yang wants people to move to higher ground, it doesn’t take much effort to climb 13 inches in 100 years, if a person is lucky enough to live that long.
If low-lying cities are concerned about rising seas, they can also build seawalls. Building a 13-inch-high seawall along the seaward side of a city over the course of a century is much less expensive than trying to build enough windmills and solar panels to replace fossil fuels–the fossil fuels could even help power the earth-moving equipment needed to build the seawall.
How hard is it to build a 13-inch-high seawall in a century? Not very, since people built a 25-foot-high seawall around Galveston within 5 years of the devastating hurricane of 1900, and today’s earth-moving equipment has much more horsepower than that of 1900-05, which was literally powered by horses.
If it’s too late, then there’s no point in trying to control the climate. Since we are actually in a cooling phase, AKA Little Ice Age level cooling, maybe we can start concentrating on adapting to the new climate change instead of impoverishing society with pie-in-the-sky climate control “solutions”.
The adaptations to deal with this sort of thing are 1800s technology. Honestly, even if sea level rises 10M in 100 years, we won’t be evacuating any cities.
Run! Run for your lives, the sea level is rising! What a country and a society we have created, where someone who is smart and who works hard in one area such that he can make millions, can be so clueless in other areas. And then we have others who believe in and live in cluelessness…like Congresscritter Hank Johnson who is worried that Guam might capsize, if too many people are on one side of the island…
And Yang is considered by some to be one of the “serious” DemocRAT candidates…
If the scaremongers are really convinced that man is causing the current ( though cyclical) warming, then when will we hear about massive demonstrations being organized worldwide against the real “perpetrators”, China and India? When will these two “developing” countries be removed from the exceptions to the climate accords? Maybe then will we be able to take these folks seriously. C’mon mates, put your money where your mouth is!
It’s too late? So they are finally admitting that? Good. Maybe now we can focus on increasing prosperity and technological innovation so we can be ready for whatever the future brings, instead of wasting billions of taxpayer money to change the weather.