Rendered at 12:12:56 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time) with Cloudflare Workers.
bix6 10 hours ago [-]
> “Catastrophes will start unrolling without significant state and federal government response,” Shilling predicted.
Realistically how much can they do? Sandbags and berms but it’s not like they can just raise these areas a few feet.
holgerschurig 3 hours ago [-]
Well, they can do things that normally US americans never do: look at what other countries do.
High tides aren't new, and there are areas in the world that battle them since decades. E.g. at the north sea in Germany.
The the governments gave money to their universities and they made studies: how would a high tide impact the area? Some of the impact was obvious, since there have been disastrous floods. But some are not, e.g. of the economical impact. And then they again put money into universities, to let them study hydrology and water-related civil engineering to a much higher degree.
And so we got more modern versions of dams, the harbours and naval bases were protected. Even the rivers were protected, since a high tide travels upwards the river. See for example the https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eidersperrwerk (sorry, didn't find an english version -> look at the pictures, learn a foreign language, use LLM translation)
But ... all of this is weak compared what the Dutch did regarding hydrology. They not only made protection buildings, but they also made buildings to convert ex-ocean into arable and livable lands. One large example is e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delta_Works
So if you look for people that are good at studying the impact of floods (civil and economically) and that are good at doing anything against ... there are possibilities.
You must however tame your ICE. No dutch engineer is willing to work in the USA if the ICE puts him randomly in deportation camps, like they even did for a Swiss journalist of a conservative (!) outlet.
But this isn't Florida; California is an enemy state, so that won't happen.
skyberrys 11 hours ago [-]
The tides are really high right now. It's very obvious that the water is much higher than usual. Can't wait until it starts raining on me more than usual too... I'll have extra water from both directions.
xiaoyu2006 13 hours ago [-]
I am in OC and newport beach really suffered...
gumby 13 hours ago [-]
A lot of Bay Area folks thought they were immune
10 hours ago [-]
mlsu 8 hours ago [-]
I am an oceangoing person in Socal.
This El Nino phenomena is caused by something called Bjerknes feedback. There is a recurring atmospheric 'wave' of relaxed and enhanced trade winds, called the Madden-Julien oscillation (the MJO) that travels slowly west to east across the planet with a period of approximately 60 days. The "active" phase of the MJO usually comes with a burst of westerly (west-to-east) winds in the west pacific. Those slow down the normally easterly (east-to-west) trades a bit. Some years, those easterly trades are slowed down a bit more than usual; this causes the heated up water in the western pacific to 'escape containment': deep warm water moves west to east, in a Kelvin wave. A strong series of these Kelvin waves can cause a mass of deep warm water to build in the eastern pacific. Upwelling there now brings warm water to the surface, instead of cold water, which means the air above the east pacific gets hotter, which means it rises -- low pressure -- which causes the trades to slacken further (-> the air moves relatively in a westerly direction to take up this low pressure), which causes another, stronger Kelvin wave, and so on and so on. This is Bjerknes feedback; it causes El Nino.
These Kelvin waves stop when they hit South America and split: half moves S->N along the N hemi coast, half moves N->S along the S hemi coast. Warm water is less dense than cool water, so there's a big mass of warm water near the coast. This lower density warm water wants to go 'downhill', offshore. Due to Earth's rotation, it's turned right as it travels (since it's in the Northern hemisphere), and then right again, back towards the coast, which balances against the offshore push. The net effect is a consistent mass of warm water held up against the land, and a consistent S->N current along the shore.
When the water is anomalously warm enough, when the El Nino is severe enough, this effect grows to be very large. In San Diego right now the real tide is around 1-1.5ft higher than the "standard" reading from a tide chart. Dive visibility has been incredible, the best on record, since the warm upwelling is drawing from nutrient poor water. Water temps have been incredible. Water temp is 73 degrees in San Diego right now, normally this time of year I'm in a 3/2 fullsuit. Tropical moisture has been off the charts. At a couple points this year, SoCal was the hottest and most humid place in all the USA. The consistency and count of south swells, including waves from tropical storms, has been absolutely insane. Weird currents everywhere, sandbars in crazy spots. Fog, weird bird action. My neighbor's beautiful 50ft tall Monterey pine was singed by this heat, turned brown from the pine beetle, and is probably going to die. I am buying sandbags for the house and big surfboards for this upcoming winter season. It's all just very very strange, I have never seen weather like this ever in my life. Never ever. And I still have decades to go. We'll see this winter, how bad the storms get...
but the actual heat energy involved is mind boggling
I think that there will be a number of updates as to the conditions to expect bieng issued shortly, and my personal plan is to keep doubling down on having everything ship shape and ready for prolonged adverse conditions.
This kind of thing will be as regular as clockwork in a few years time. Still there are a lot of people that will simply not believe it.
adriand 11 hours ago [-]
The deniers have transitioned to doomers. Originally they said we needn’t fight climate change because it wasn’t real. Now that’s it’s undeniable they say we can’t fight climate change because it’s too late.
conception 11 hours ago [-]
That’s because the ultra wealthy are funding new talking points.
yongjik 10 hours ago [-]
These days I believe the ultra-wealthy are just a fun scapegoat. Sure, they are guilty of many sins, but most of the time people mention them, there's never any concrete plan to make things better, other than a vague "eat the rich," which we all know will never happen. (And it's really unclear how eating the rich allows us to, say, move around without burning more gas.)
These rhetorics have a distinct feeling of "I found another out-group to which I will assign all the blame, which is very convenient, because I don't want to ever hear 'The earth is going to shit and I could have done something about it.'"
conception 7 hours ago [-]
The top 0.001% has about 6% of the planet's wealth. ~60K people have a tremendous influence on politics, media and political discourse. Just a staggering amount of resources and power. Hardly an "out-group".
King-Aaron 4 hours ago [-]
No one is required to have an answer to a problem in order to just identify that problem.
One nice benefit of eating the rich, is that we're then free to use the wealth they've hoarded in ways that benefit the public.
jacquesm 8 hours ago [-]
There is a pretty good chance that within a very short few years you'd have new people like that. It's a systemic problem.
jjav 4 hours ago [-]
It would, that's why a solution needs to be paired with an aggressively progressive tax system. Beyond some point, the tax rate needs to become 100% of all wealth above it.
jstimpfle 3 hours ago [-]
About progressive taxes. That would make the super rich not super rich. But it would not fix state finances. (Also of course it's not realistic to think that the super rich will just give 100% of their money for nothing in exchange).
If the state needs money, it needs to take it from where it is, which is still with the masses. In Germany, at around maybe 90k EUR income is a particularly bad place to be. You are nominally considered to be a good earner. But at that point you already give around 70% on the next EUR you earn for various taxes and social security. If you are financially responsible not only for yourself but for other people (which is not reflected in lower taxes unless you're legally married), you can still get along fine, but it might not feel like you are a good earner. I was in a similar situation at one point in my life, it had taken me hard work to earn that money, and I have to say I was a little pissed about the tax situation.
I think I understand why progressive tax systems exist. Given our societies' structures, they probably _have_ to exist. But also I wonder if long-term they _contribute_ to income and wealth inequality. It reduces incentives for those who earn less to earn more (which of course for many people is not easily possible, but for some it would be, by working more, working harder, looking for a different job, etc.). It also allows employers to spend less on their workforce, meaning you could understand it as a kind of subsidiary for employers. Of course, lower salaries might be the only way for employers to even offer a product at prices the market wants to pay. But again it also reenforces inequalities in the income structure.
pennomi 8 hours ago [-]
Well sure, and if you only shower once, you’ll quickly get dirty again. Cleanliness takes constant effort.
jacquesm 7 hours ago [-]
That's a fair point.
chneu 7 hours ago [-]
Society idolizes the rich and then acts surprise when our society enables them.
If you call people out for their hypocrisy they act like a doomer victim.
SecretDreams 10 hours ago [-]
In addition to making us feel better, eating the rich takes them off the table and might allow democracy to slowly work again, whereby decisions are made by the people for the people. Lots of damage to undo ahead of any of this, though. And it starts with eating the rich... Or at least looking at wealth taxes, banning lobbying, getting money out of politics as best we can, etc.
We cannot solve/tackle climate change when we don't even have functional governments that actually try to genuinely support their citizens needs.
taneq 11 hours ago [-]
“We’re going to follow the Four Stage Strategy.”
gravifer 2 hours ago [-]
Yes, prime minister
12 hours ago [-]
echelon 12 hours ago [-]
The people you think don't believe it do believe it. They use it as a statistic.
I live in the Southeast and hear the "guns in America kill fewer people than lack of AC in Europe" line all the time.
The battle is "not my problem", not "that's not happening".
jimt1234 12 hours ago [-]
The line I hear all the time is: "Why do I care if sea levels rise a couple of inches? I don't own a house on the beach!"
ctkhn 12 hours ago [-]
The craziest to me is the people who do own houses on the beach who want the government to bail them out. Even without El Nino or climate change, that's a hazardous location. Do not ask for my insurance or tax dollars to (literally) bail you out!
Joakal 10 hours ago [-]
Good news, insurance companies are running for the exits on locations increasingly at risk. Homeowners are left screaming in fear of losing their homes after they realised insurance companies can just refuse to offer insurance after just 1 year. Even new homeowners desperate for a home are realising after they bought a new home in a floodplain, it turned out that developers/government tricked them into buying a massive liability where in a few years their million dollar asset becomes nearly worthless.
Bad news, neoliberal governments (even in Australia) are responding to this with socialising the risk via government insurance where rest of population who picked low-risk locations will still have to cover the high risk homes. Oh, and the government are still approving new homes in high-risk areas instead of increasing denisification of low-risk areas close to cities.
It's really painful to watch all this play out slowly.
bee_rider 9 hours ago [-]
Lots of areas have natural hazards. Should we help out people hit by tornadoes or floods?
With climate change induced problems, at least there’s some justification. We collectively (as a country… you and I personally might not have been alive or voting when the mistake was made) failed to elect governments that would prevent it, so we we collectively get to pay for it.
sagarm 7 hours ago [-]
Hell no. Those beach houses are owned by the relatively wealthy; why should the general populace bail them out?
andsoitis 7 hours ago [-]
> failed to elect governments that would prevent it
That’s a bit binary and harsh. There are other issues people also vote on, not just this one.
lazide 12 hours ago [-]
If they might convince some fool to do it, they’d be fools not too eh?
That’s a lot of money!
cucumber3732842 2 hours ago [-]
>The craziest to me is the people who do own houses on the beach who want the government to bail them out.
This should surprise nobody.
Take a step back and look at the voting patterns of coastal communities. The ones in CA might disagree with the ones in NC about guns and abortion and what values ought to be taught in schools but at the end of the day these people's core belief seems to be that the government should (with the resources it has taken from others via coercion) "do things" and so of course it follows that the government should bail them out, however unfair it may be to those who have to pay for it.
latexr 10 hours ago [-]
“You think the people [who own houses by the beach] aren’t just going to sell their homes and move?”
Why shouldn’t insurance cover it if it’s in their policy?
analog31 10 hours ago [-]
Many policies don't cover flooding. You're expected to get supplemental flood insurance, which is not cheap.
10 hours ago [-]
watwut 4 hours ago [-]
They are working so hard to make AC into culture war.
redanddead 11 hours ago [-]
RIP insurance industry
jjav 4 hours ago [-]
Insurance always wins. In the case of an event that would be unprofitable, they'll just refuse to pay.
Ralfp 11 hours ago [-]
Don't worry, most of those plans don't even cover floods.
bushbaba 10 hours ago [-]
Flood insurance is a seperate policy often through the government.
derwiki 11 hours ago [-]
Tiniest fiddle
bilsbie 12 hours ago [-]
This is more likely to be climate change related. It’s climate denial to try blaming it on El Niño.
tmnvix 12 hours ago [-]
I think a common view is that the strength (and possibly frequency?) of El Niño is a symptom of climate change.
czinck 11 hours ago [-]
Yes, several studies have concluded that climate change is making both El Niño and La Niña stronger, and making the switch between them quicker. And "stronger" here just means the temperature difference. Climate change is also raising the baseline temperature, so the actual effects of an El Niño of a given temperature difference (which this year is already the biggest on record and climbing) is expected to be worse.
maipen 2 hours ago [-]
What studies are these?
Correlation != causation.
georgemcbay 12 hours ago [-]
> This is more likely to be climate change related. It’s climate denial to try blaming it on El Niño.
It is entirely related to both and I'm pretty sure Gizmodo isn't trying to project blame away from climate change here.
Climate change is making unusually adverse weather events more common in general. El Niño is a cyclical event that results in an increase in adverse weather events from whatever the current baseline is.
As climate change worsens things on average, it'll worsen things even more when combined with amplification events like El Niño.
antonvs 10 hours ago [-]
The current El Niño has broken numerous records for ocean temperatures:
El Niño is part of the proximate cause for the current water level rise in the Pacific; climate change is the root cause.
krylonmae 10 hours ago [-]
[dead]
remusrm 11 hours ago [-]
[dead]
tiotempestade 13 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
echelon 12 hours ago [-]
Citizens vote for what speaks to their daily lives and fears. Not necessarily academic ideas or concepts.
They'll vote out of pain more readily than out of conscience.
fnordian_slip 11 hours ago [-]
How has that pain been alleviated by the current administration?
From the outside, it looks like the motivation of these voters was mainly to cause pain to perceived enemies. From my point of view, this is no longer just the effects of the two Santas strategy, this feels like it goes way beyond that.
Ninja-edit:
Is it ok to discuss under deleted comments? If not just delete this.
nusoone 10 hours ago [-]
Way too much fresh water, won’t be able to keep draining the Colorado river
chneu 7 hours ago [-]
Lol wait can you elaborate? I think I know what you're saying and I want to be sure.
chneu 7 hours ago [-]
Stop eating meat if you actually care. Stop eating beef and dairy.
Massive amounts of land are destroyed and used for cattle. It's insane. Same with water, among other things.
Going veg cuts the numbers a crazy amount. 40-75% in terms of various metrics.
Our lives are built on excess consumption. We live lives of kings. We refuse to give up the largest sources of our damage when it isn't actually that hard. The excuses are so lame.
SJC_Hacker 22 minutes ago [-]
People have been eating meat and dairy for thousands of years …. It’s not the problem
parineum 7 hours ago [-]
How would that stop El Nino?
tpm 2 hours ago [-]
climate change makes El Nino stronger
phyzix5761 7 hours ago [-]
Didn't you know? El Nino is terrified of vegans.
rationalist 12 hours ago [-]
I remember when Gizmodo just posted cool technology stuff. I even had my stuff featured on their website a couple of times.
Edit: I haven't been on Gizmodo for a long time. Do they also have a rule saying you can't criticize them?
This inspired me to checkout Hackaday again. Thankfully they still just post cool tech stuff (even after they sold the website a few years back). I'm not cool enough to have my stuff featured on HAD though lol.
Aachen 11 hours ago [-]
I didn't vote on your comment but consider that people might just find the comment nonconstructive or uninteresting (which is what the guidelines say to base votes on) rather than that there is a "rule against criticising Gizmodo"
rationalist 8 hours ago [-]
Good point, thank you.
dghlsakjg 11 hours ago [-]
Like so much in today’s world, this is kinda Peter thiel’s fault.
He bankrolled the Hulk Hogan lawsuit against Gawker as revenge because they reported on him being gay. The judgement forced gawker into bankruptcy where it was scooped up by private equity. The new managers gutted the place and forced the writers and editors to publish clickbait garbage instead of doing journalism.
That’s why Gizmodo looks nothing like what you remember.
justinhj 11 hours ago [-]
Journalism like publishing private sexual encounters that were secretly recorded and called it news?
0c3ca83 11 hours ago [-]
I forgot that freedom of the press only applies when you personally approve of what they're printing.
latexr 10 hours ago [-]
Freedom of the press, like freedom of speech, applies specifically to government intervention. As a private citizen, you are free to dislike or disapprove of what is being reported. That’s all your parent comment did, they didn’t call for censorship or infringing on freedom of the press, they simply displayed discontent with one case of tabloid-like news.
0c3ca83 10 hours ago [-]
Right, I forgot that the press needs to conform to your preferences on what they publish. It also slipped my mind that the court system wasn't government run.
Unless you're asserting that you're the government?
Realistically how much can they do? Sandbags and berms but it’s not like they can just raise these areas a few feet.
High tides aren't new, and there are areas in the world that battle them since decades. E.g. at the north sea in Germany.
The the governments gave money to their universities and they made studies: how would a high tide impact the area? Some of the impact was obvious, since there have been disastrous floods. But some are not, e.g. of the economical impact. And then they again put money into universities, to let them study hydrology and water-related civil engineering to a much higher degree.
And so we got more modern versions of dams, the harbours and naval bases were protected. Even the rivers were protected, since a high tide travels upwards the river. See for example the https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eidersperrwerk (sorry, didn't find an english version -> look at the pictures, learn a foreign language, use LLM translation)
But ... all of this is weak compared what the Dutch did regarding hydrology. They not only made protection buildings, but they also made buildings to convert ex-ocean into arable and livable lands. One large example is e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delta_Works
So if you look for people that are good at studying the impact of floods (civil and economically) and that are good at doing anything against ... there are possibilities.
You must however tame your ICE. No dutch engineer is willing to work in the USA if the ICE puts him randomly in deportation camps, like they even did for a Swiss journalist of a conservative (!) outlet.
But this isn't Florida; California is an enemy state, so that won't happen.
This El Nino phenomena is caused by something called Bjerknes feedback. There is a recurring atmospheric 'wave' of relaxed and enhanced trade winds, called the Madden-Julien oscillation (the MJO) that travels slowly west to east across the planet with a period of approximately 60 days. The "active" phase of the MJO usually comes with a burst of westerly (west-to-east) winds in the west pacific. Those slow down the normally easterly (east-to-west) trades a bit. Some years, those easterly trades are slowed down a bit more than usual; this causes the heated up water in the western pacific to 'escape containment': deep warm water moves west to east, in a Kelvin wave. A strong series of these Kelvin waves can cause a mass of deep warm water to build in the eastern pacific. Upwelling there now brings warm water to the surface, instead of cold water, which means the air above the east pacific gets hotter, which means it rises -- low pressure -- which causes the trades to slacken further (-> the air moves relatively in a westerly direction to take up this low pressure), which causes another, stronger Kelvin wave, and so on and so on. This is Bjerknes feedback; it causes El Nino.
These Kelvin waves stop when they hit South America and split: half moves S->N along the N hemi coast, half moves N->S along the S hemi coast. Warm water is less dense than cool water, so there's a big mass of warm water near the coast. This lower density warm water wants to go 'downhill', offshore. Due to Earth's rotation, it's turned right as it travels (since it's in the Northern hemisphere), and then right again, back towards the coast, which balances against the offshore push. The net effect is a consistent mass of warm water held up against the land, and a consistent S->N current along the shore.
When the water is anomalously warm enough, when the El Nino is severe enough, this effect grows to be very large. In San Diego right now the real tide is around 1-1.5ft higher than the "standard" reading from a tide chart. Dive visibility has been incredible, the best on record, since the warm upwelling is drawing from nutrient poor water. Water temps have been incredible. Water temp is 73 degrees in San Diego right now, normally this time of year I'm in a 3/2 fullsuit. Tropical moisture has been off the charts. At a couple points this year, SoCal was the hottest and most humid place in all the USA. The consistency and count of south swells, including waves from tropical storms, has been absolutely insane. Weird currents everywhere, sandbars in crazy spots. Fog, weird bird action. My neighbor's beautiful 50ft tall Monterey pine was singed by this heat, turned brown from the pine beetle, and is probably going to die. I am buying sandbags for the house and big surfboards for this upcoming winter season. It's all just very very strange, I have never seen weather like this ever in my life. Never ever. And I still have decades to go. We'll see this winter, how bad the storms get...
just a little thread of warmer water running up the california coast vissible in.this subset https://www.ospo.noaa.gov/data/sst/contour/global_small.cf.g...
but the actual heat energy involved is mind boggling
I think that there will be a number of updates as to the conditions to expect bieng issued shortly, and my personal plan is to keep doubling down on having everything ship shape and ready for prolonged adverse conditions.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50236455
This kind of thing will be as regular as clockwork in a few years time. Still there are a lot of people that will simply not believe it.
These rhetorics have a distinct feeling of "I found another out-group to which I will assign all the blame, which is very convenient, because I don't want to ever hear 'The earth is going to shit and I could have done something about it.'"
The others are surviving
If the state needs money, it needs to take it from where it is, which is still with the masses. In Germany, at around maybe 90k EUR income is a particularly bad place to be. You are nominally considered to be a good earner. But at that point you already give around 70% on the next EUR you earn for various taxes and social security. If you are financially responsible not only for yourself but for other people (which is not reflected in lower taxes unless you're legally married), you can still get along fine, but it might not feel like you are a good earner. I was in a similar situation at one point in my life, it had taken me hard work to earn that money, and I have to say I was a little pissed about the tax situation.
I think I understand why progressive tax systems exist. Given our societies' structures, they probably _have_ to exist. But also I wonder if long-term they _contribute_ to income and wealth inequality. It reduces incentives for those who earn less to earn more (which of course for many people is not easily possible, but for some it would be, by working more, working harder, looking for a different job, etc.). It also allows employers to spend less on their workforce, meaning you could understand it as a kind of subsidiary for employers. Of course, lower salaries might be the only way for employers to even offer a product at prices the market wants to pay. But again it also reenforces inequalities in the income structure.
If you call people out for their hypocrisy they act like a doomer victim.
We cannot solve/tackle climate change when we don't even have functional governments that actually try to genuinely support their citizens needs.
I live in the Southeast and hear the "guns in America kill fewer people than lack of AC in Europe" line all the time.
The battle is "not my problem", not "that's not happening".
Bad news, neoliberal governments (even in Australia) are responding to this with socialising the risk via government insurance where rest of population who picked low-risk locations will still have to cover the high risk homes. Oh, and the government are still approving new homes in high-risk areas instead of increasing denisification of low-risk areas close to cities.
It's really painful to watch all this play out slowly.
With climate change induced problems, at least there’s some justification. We collectively (as a country… you and I personally might not have been alive or voting when the mistake was made) failed to elect governments that would prevent it, so we we collectively get to pay for it.
That’s a bit binary and harsh. There are other issues people also vote on, not just this one.
That’s a lot of money!
This should surprise nobody.
Take a step back and look at the voting patterns of coastal communities. The ones in CA might disagree with the ones in NC about guns and abortion and what values ought to be taught in schools but at the end of the day these people's core belief seems to be that the government should (with the resources it has taken from others via coercion) "do things" and so of course it follows that the government should bail them out, however unfair it may be to those who have to pay for it.
https://youtu.be/RLqXkYrdmjY?t=4m05s
It is entirely related to both and I'm pretty sure Gizmodo isn't trying to project blame away from climate change here.
Climate change is making unusually adverse weather events more common in general. El Niño is a cyclical event that results in an increase in adverse weather events from whatever the current baseline is.
As climate change worsens things on average, it'll worsen things even more when combined with amplification events like El Niño.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2026/10/28/this-el-ni...
El Niño is part of the proximate cause for the current water level rise in the Pacific; climate change is the root cause.
They'll vote out of pain more readily than out of conscience.
From the outside, it looks like the motivation of these voters was mainly to cause pain to perceived enemies. From my point of view, this is no longer just the effects of the two Santas strategy, this feels like it goes way beyond that.
Ninja-edit: Is it ok to discuss under deleted comments? If not just delete this.
Massive amounts of land are destroyed and used for cattle. It's insane. Same with water, among other things.
Going veg cuts the numbers a crazy amount. 40-75% in terms of various metrics.
Our lives are built on excess consumption. We live lives of kings. We refuse to give up the largest sources of our damage when it isn't actually that hard. The excuses are so lame.
Edit: I haven't been on Gizmodo for a long time. Do they also have a rule saying you can't criticize them?
This inspired me to checkout Hackaday again. Thankfully they still just post cool tech stuff (even after they sold the website a few years back). I'm not cool enough to have my stuff featured on HAD though lol.
He bankrolled the Hulk Hogan lawsuit against Gawker as revenge because they reported on him being gay. The judgement forced gawker into bankruptcy where it was scooped up by private equity. The new managers gutted the place and forced the writers and editors to publish clickbait garbage instead of doing journalism.
That’s why Gizmodo looks nothing like what you remember.
Unless you're asserting that you're the government?