There’s always some climate change thread in here that invariably turns into an argument about whether or not climate change is actually occurring, and whether it is anthropogenic or not.
Well, this isn’t one of those threads. The overwhelming majority of all scientific research in all countries on this planet show that climate change is occurring, it is occurring at accelerated rates rarely, if ever, seen in the last several hundred thousand years, and this acceleration is almost undoubtedly due to human activity.
This is a thread where people who are concerned about the ways in which our lives will alter as climate change continues its course can discuss different measures to adjust to those changes. This isn’t necessarily a thread for discussing ways to prevent climate change or slow down its impact. So if you are going to come in here and argue that climate change isn’t occurring or whatever, get lost. Take it back to the local chapter of the circle jerk society.
I think there are tons of different areas of our lives, the economy, gov’t policy, etc. that need to be reexamined in regards to climate change. I’ll start off the thread by bringing up an area that I think could use a bit of a reevaluation: the insurance industry.
It seems to me that insurance companies should start jacking up the prices on insuring homes in areas susceptible to climate change. Live in the middle of a deciduous forest that is vulnerable to droughts and forest fires? Your insurance is going to go through the roof since you are facing a larger and larger risk every year that your home will burn in a fire.
Want to build a home on a cliff that gets pounded by the ocean all day? Great, but the cost of insuring said home will be astronomical, given that you will face increasing likelihoods of damage due to erosion, or perhaps even flooding from rising ocean levels.
It seems to me that insurance companies should start jacking up the prices on insuring homes in areas susceptible to climate change.
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Insurance companies are already doing this. That last entity you need to worry about is an insurance company–believe me, they know how to raise your rates based on both real and imagined risks.
[quote]smh_23 wrote:
The military is going to be thinking about climate change more and more as time goes on (though they already are, and worriedly).[/quote]
Oh yes. The military has already said in more than one National Intelligence Estimate that climate change is by far the largest threat to national security. People seem to forget that a large determining factor in the various “barbarian” tribes starting to invade Roman territories was due to climate change. In that case, it was a general cooling trend that forced tribes further south to the point where they encroached upon Roman territories.
We will see similar situations around the globe. Imagine everyone south of us moving northward as parts of Mexico and Central America become too hot or too arid for sustainable agriculture.
Desalination plants should be pushed more than they are. Unfortunately, they use a shitload of energy to remove the salt. You either have to do it through reverse osmosis or by distilling the water, neither of which are energy-efficient or cost-effective. There’s a desal plant down in Santa Barbara that is fully operational, but the cost of distilling the water is so high that the water produced is so expensive as to be nonviable. It’s used in emergency situations only.
And having an emergency supply of water like that is great, but I think a better use of the money invested in fossil fuel extraction is to use it to develop more energy-efficient ways to desalinate water. Some areas will see increased rainfall, but overall the trend will be for less rain, not more. The Middle East, and Syria in particular, has been ravaged for several years in a row now by a massive drought that has contributed to the unrest over there right now. Part of the unrest during the Arab Spring stems from certain governments’ inability to be prepared to handle drought situations like that. Of course, the people revolting just know that their food prices have skyrocketed, and they blame the gov’t for this.
[quote]DBCooper wrote:
So if you are going to come in here and argue that climate change isn’t occurring or whatever, get lost. Take it back to the local chapter of the circle jerk society.
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Yeah! Global warmy/coolly ‘deniers’ need to be silenced. No first amendment for them!
[quote]DBCooper wrote:
So if you are going to come in here and argue that climate change isn’t occurring or whatever, get lost. Take it back to the local chapter of the circle jerk society.
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Yeah! Global warmy/coolly ‘deniers’ need to be silenced. No first amendment for them![/quote]
I’m just trying to limit the chance that you make a fool of yourself, again, in regards to this topic.
You sound like the Board of Directors of PhilipMorris, who to this day still deny that there is any conclusive evidence linking smoking to lung cancer or heart disease.
[quote]DBCooper wrote:
So if you are going to come in here and argue that climate change isn’t occurring or whatever, get lost. Take it back to the local chapter of the circle jerk society.[/quote]
Don’t take a position if you’re not willing to defend it.
[quote]DBCooper wrote:
So if you are going to come in here and argue that climate change isn’t occurring or whatever, get lost. Take it back to the local chapter of the circle jerk society.[/quote]
Don’t take a position if you’re not willing to defend it.[/quote]
Really? So, if you take the position that the sun will rise tomorrow, do you then feel it necessary to defend that position when others argue to the contrary?
I don’t waste my time arguing about whether anthropogenic climate change is occurring or not. It’s a position I’ve taken and defended ad nauseum on this forum in the past.
What if the increased heat causes a massive increase in evaporation of the oceans and we end up with continent wide torrential rains for extended periods, resulting in way too much fresh water?
We can hypothesize about what might happen, but until it does we won’t really know.
It seems to me that insurance companies should start jacking up the prices on insuring homes in areas susceptible to climate change.
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Insurance companies are already doing this. That last entity you need to worry about is an insurance company–believe me, they know how to raise your rates based on both real and imagined risks. [/quote]
The fact that he did not grasp this tidbit of pertinent info speaks volumes.
Bert, maybe he could use some larnin on a subject you seem so passionate about…just a thought.[/quote]
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I’m aware that they already do this. I’m talking about prices that go astronomically high, beyond anything they’ve done so far.
[quote]SkyzykS wrote:
Assuming it actually exists…
What if the increased heat causes a massive increase in evaporation of the oceans and we end up with continent wide torrential rains for extended periods, resulting in way too much fresh water?
We can hypothesize about what might happen, but until it does we won’t really know.[/quote]
Assuming? Anthropogenic climate change most certainly is occurring. If you stack the totality of evidence supporting this against the evidence saying otherwise, you are left with a huge majority of the international science community on one side, and on the other you have a few lobbyists masquerading as “researchers” (such as the guys over at Unit Economics, who claim to have discovered that sunspot activity actually is the major determining factor in climate change, despite the fact that that was debunked almost a hundred years ago).
You’re right. We can hypothesize, but we will not know for certain whether we were right or not until something does or does not happen. For instance, I hypothesize that the sun will set in the west tomorrow, but until it does, I won’t really know. I also hypothesize that if I drive my truck into the center divider of a major freeway at 125 mph I will total the truck and die, but I’ll never really know unless I actually do it.
I also wonder about our immigration reform attempts. Obviously, I don’t know what has and hasn’t been discussed behind closed doors amongst the two parties’ wizards. But I wonder how much of the suggested reforms take into account the effects that climate change will have on immigration. Should we be closing off the borders, not to keep terrorists out as has been mentioned in the past, but to prevent massive, unsustainable migration northward and into this country.
Of course, that assumes that we’ll all stay put. Canada and the northernmost states might be really attractive in another decade or so. Perhaps Canada might have to deal with large swaths of the southern states’ populations moving northward.
It seems to me that insurance companies should start jacking up the prices on insuring homes in areas susceptible to climate change.
[/quote]
Insurance companies are already doing this. That last entity you need to worry about is an insurance company–believe me, they know how to raise your rates based on both real and imagined risks. [/quote]
The fact that he did not grasp this tidbit of pertinent info speaks volumes.
Bert, maybe he could use some larnin on a subject you seem so passionate about…just a thought.[/quote]
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I’m aware that they already do this. I’m talking about prices that go astronomically high, beyond anything they’ve done so far.[/quote]
I see. So you are suggesting that the government, at the point of the sword, force insurance companies to charge premiums beyond what their underwriters deem necessary, correct?
More government is the answer? More statism?[/quote]
No, that is what you are assuming I mean. You make similar assumptions all the time, and you are almost invariably incorrect when you make them about me. You assume that because I haven’t swallowed the oil industry Kool-Aid about climate change that I am a liberal statist who thinks the federal government should be forcibly enacting the changes I am suggesting. Nothing could be further from the truth.
The federal government probably WILL try to force such changes to occur, but I do not support such statism nor do I feel it is really all that necessary. I don’t know why you would make such a leap over a chasm that wide. I’m talking about private sector changes. Climate change has, unfortunately, become far too politicized for anything substantial to happen on the part of the federal gov’t in a reasonable time anyways.