Hurricane Ian

Rory2u wrote:I was talking to a former resident of FL. He told me that Homeowners Insurance rates in FL are 3x the norm. So many people cannot afford Flood Insurance too.

Owned a home in Flood Zone AE (1 block from a bay).  Was not required to buy FEMA flood insurance (no mortgage) but stupid not to since premium was relatively low ($1500 per year in 2014).  We challenged the FEMA flood map designation and won!  But we kept buying flood insurance, at the reduced rate of $475 per year.  In 2014 FL housing was much cheaper; our purchase price was within FEMA max coverage of $250K per house.  As housing prices soared, we were forced to look for private flood insurance...ouch!!  It was a major reason in deciding to sell.  

ALL FL insurance is high--not just home owners; our car insurance on same car moved from AZ more than doubled.  Our home insurance premium was around 6K; our 1940's little cottage had wooden single pane windows and not much wind mitigation for the roof.  We were lucky to find an insurer, frankly.  

FL politicians hype FL's lack of an income tax, but the insurance burden wipes out that incentive.  Local taxes are quite high too.  Localities need money to pay the bills; if there's no revenue sharing from a state income tax, then it's funded by property taxes.  

The Federal government did try to make all homeowners in flood zones pay more of the real cost for insurance and to ban homeowners from re-building a 2nd time after a flood claim on same property.  Congress passed the Biggert-Waters Act in 2012 and it was signed by President Obama.  But once it took effect and premium notices were sent out, all hell broke loose and in 2014 it was severely amended; it grandfathered in existing home premiums and zone protection, put caps on further increases and deleted the re-building ban.

Death toll stands at 54 in FL. 4 in South Carolina.

Ft Meyers Beach has been wiped off the map. Sanibel Island absolutely devastated. I think they will find a lot of victims there yet. Some people survived as I saw video of cars driving down flooded streets. Where they were going I have no idea. The highway that connected Sanibel to the main land is washed away in places. You can see it here:
https://news.yahoo.com/aerial-video-shows-damage-homes-151246408.html

RoyD

Better video here.

https://weather.com/storms/hurricane/video/eerie-shots-from-helicopter-tour-of-sanibel-to-fort-myers-florida

RoyD

Horrific. I agree they’re going to find more dead people.

While anyone losing their life in such catastrophes is horrific, just to give some perspective, over 1600 people have died in the Pakistan floods.

https://www.rawstory.com/hurricane-ian-toll/

"Hundreds of bodies".

mudgirl wrote:While anyone losing their life in such catastrophes is horrific, just to give some perspective, over 1600 people have died in the Pakistan floods.

True, but most of us don’t know anyone in Pakistan nor have most of us been to Pakistan.

Climate change has been happening for billions of years and will continue to happen billions of years from now after mankind is long gone. Yes, the planet has been warming over the last 100 years. Yes, there has been an increase in planet warming gasses into the the atmosphere over the last 100 years. The two seem to coincide, but are there other factors such as solar cycles, volcanoes, where are we in this galaxy compared to thousand of years ago, that also affect our environment. We have not been around long enough to really know, but scientists keep looking for clues to guide us. We know from core samples that the planet has been warmer in the past with higher levels of CO2 than we have now, and we have been a frozen snowball too. Where are we in that cycle? We do not really know.

I am all in favor of Solar, wind, hydrogen and even nuclear (different type of pollution there) in order to reduce CO2 admissions. John Kerry himself said that even if we did all that, it would not help to offset the amount of pollution being churned out by China and India, the two biggest polluters on the planet. Who is over there protesting that?

My point is, we cannot look at one event and say global warming is responsible. There may be a trend upwards over time but we do not really know. We should be good custodians of our world and try to do everything we can to reduce pollutants without destroying our country in the process. It is a worldwide problem and if the the countries of the world do not come together on it, there may be serious problems ahead.

I do know that mankind is good at adapting. I put my faith in that. Just do not go building your home anywhere close to the Gulf Coast of any state. Too risky.

RoyD

"My point is, we cannot look at one event and say global warming is responsible."

Your post is simply a ubiquitous repetition of man-made climate change deniers' talking points.
And the worlds' expert climatologists do not look at one event to inform their conclusions.

"We do not really know"- you mean YOU do not really know. Scientific experts do know, but dismayingly, some people refuse to listen or understand.

And I guess the thousands of dead around the world from recent unprecedented natural disasters caused by man-made climate change were "good at adapting".

Expert climatologists also deny there is a link. Which group do we listen too? Which group is right? We all have our opinions and I am not going to change yours and you are not going to change mine. It is an open discussion of differing opinions.

RoyD

RoyD wrote:Expert climatologists also deny there is a link. Which group do we listen too? Which group is right? We all have our opinions and I am not going to change yours and you are not going to change mine. It is an open discussion of differing opinions.

RoyD

You made that claim before and I asked you to present your sources for that claim, which you haven't done, yet now repeat.

Rigorous peer-reviewed science is not a matter of "opinion" simply because you choose to believe whatever you want. But you are certainly right in that no one is going to change your opinion if your choice is to believe unsupported BS.

"More than 99.9% of peer-reviewed scientific papers agree that climate change is mainly caused by humans, according to a new survey of 88,125 climate-related studies."

https://news.cornell.edu/stories/2021/10/more-999-studies-agree-humans-caused-climate-change

And:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_consensus_on_climate_change#:~:text=A%202019%20review%20of%20scientific,human%20cause%20of%20climate%20change.

RoyD wrote:Expert climatologists also deny there is a link. Which group do we listen too? Which group is right? We all have our opinions and I am not going to change yours and you are not going to change mine. It is an open discussion of differing opinions.

RoyD

Agree with most points.   In any scientific endeavor, there are always differences of opinion. "Science" has a process for getting to the most likely determination.  In the case of 'climate change' most of the world's professionals are in agreement that our Earth is in a rapidly escalating and alarming climate warming period resulting in "Human derived" activities.

RoyD earlier mentioned that our Earth has gone through many cycles of severe climate change over millions of years. This, of course, is accurate as proven by the Scientific research approach. The difference this time is the extraordinary and never before 'seen' RATE OF CHANGE. Since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, and the World's exponential population growth since that beginning, the Earth has been warming at a rate unparalleled in millions and millions of years of cycles. Startling! Without question, a fact! It is THIS situation that has most of the world's population worried and trying to do something to counter the inevitable results if left to non-actions.

Failed microbiology major here. I remember watching the life cycle of bacteria in a pétri dish. I remember seeing bacteria multiplying until eventually they run out of food and die off. Mind you our life cycle is much more complicated but the lesson to be learned is that we affect our environment and become its victims if we dont adapt.

RoyD wrote:Which group do we listen too?
RoyD

Let me ask you something, Roy. If 99%, or even 80% of medical researchers concluded and reported that ingesting a certain substance will lead to certain death, would you choose to believe the small percentage of medical researchers who called those findings into question and go ahead and ingest that substance?

Intelligent people believe what the vast majority of experts in their field of study report, and if they have doubts, they read the actual studies, they research who has funded the research to assess whether there could have been bias involved, and research the researchers, to see if their studies and reporting have been discredited as false or flawed in the past.

That's how you decide what is the truth and what is not, rather than basing your opinions upon what you heard or read on your favored news sites or blogs.

IMO, RoyD  gets to believe anything he wants to believe. If he Posts something that, IMO, is not factual I get to state my doubts about his Post.  But I probably don't get to include him in a class of individuals who don't have enough intelligence to believe as I do.

RickS wrote:IMO, RoyD  gets to believe anything he wants to believe. If he Posts something that, IMO, is not factual I get to state my doubts about his Post.  But I probably don't get to include him in a class of individuals who don't have enough intelligence to believe as I do.

That isn't what I said at all. Roy asked how one decides what to believe, to which I gave some ways that people intelligently decide what information is true and what is false or to be doubted.

Roy is welcome to, and I'm sure, capable of, doing the things I mentioned in order to inform his opinions if he so chooses. That doesn't imply that he is unintelligent just because he may not have been forming his opinions in that way up til now.

It has nothing to do with believing as I do, it has to do with understanding how to sort the barrage of information and disinformation which we are bombarded with, and forming one's views based upon facts and legitimate research, rather than others' opinions and interpretations.

mudgirl wrote:

RickS wrote:IMO, RoyD  gets to believe anything he wants to believe. If he Posts something that, IMO, is not factual I get to state my doubts about his Post.  But I probably don't get to include him in a class of individuals who don't have enough intelligence to believe as I do.

That isn't what I said at all. Roy asked how one decides what to believe, to which I gave some ways that people intelligently decide what information is true and what is false or to be doubted.

Roy is welcome to, and I'm sure, capable of, doing the things I mentioned in order to inform his opinions if he so chooses. That doesn't imply that he is unintelligent just because he may not have been forming his opinions in that way up til now.

It has nothing to do with believing as I do, it has to do with understanding how to sort the barrage of information and disinformation which we are bombarded with, and forming one's views based upon facts and legitimate research, rather than others' opinions and interpretations.  

There is one important logical fallacy in the post: comparing critters in a Petri dish to the human race with both its foolishness and intelligence. Let's get real.

gringal wrote:

mudgirl wrote:

RickS wrote:IMO, RoyD  gets to believe anything he wants to believe. If he Posts something that, IMO, is not factual I get to state my doubts about his Post.  But I probably don't get to include him in a class of individuals who don't have enough intelligence to believe as I do.

That isn't what I said at all. Roy asked how one decides what to believe, to which I gave some ways that people intelligently decide what information is true and what is false or to be doubted.

Roy is welcome to, and I'm sure, capable of, doing the things I mentioned in order to inform his opinions if he so chooses. That doesn't imply that he is unintelligent just because he may not have been forming his opinions in that way up til now.

It has nothing to do with believing as I do, it has to do with understanding how to sort the barrage of information and disinformation which we are bombarded with, and forming one's views based upon facts and legitimate research, rather than others' opinions and interpretations.  

There is one important logical fallacy in the post:  comparing critters in a Petri dish to the human race with both its foolishness and intelligence. Let's get real.

Neither I nor Rick, the 2 posters you quoted here, said anything about petri dishes. That was someone else.

Looking back, it was JReboll with the original post. Sorry.

Countries By Percentage Of World Population
Rank Country / Territory % of world population
1 China 18.0%
2 India 17.5%
3 United States 4.23%
4 Pakistan 2.83%
5 Brazil 2.71%
6 Bangladesh 2.17%
7 Indonesia 3.39%
8 Nigeria 2.41%
9 Russia 1.88%
10 Mexico 1.62%

The two biggest polluter's in the world have 35.5% of the worlds population. Population growth is a contributing factor to our climate problem. There are many other contributing factors.

I certainly would not compare humanity to a petri dish full of bacteria, but this world we live in has finite resources and I wonder if we have not already passed the tipping point in population where there will not be enough resources to go around?

RoyD

Pessimistically speaking, the "haves" will let the "not haves" starve. The starvation is already happening in some parts of the world, according to the news.

Soylent Green....

Actually RoyD the US is a bigger polluter than India. And per capita we are the largest!   So hard to point our fingers at the rest of the world and also blame China for 'everything'. And maybe reason for the US to take a hard stance on Climate.

2019 figures....
China, with more than 10,065 million tons of CO2 released.
United States, with 5,416 million tons of CO2
India, with 2,654 million tons of CO2
Russia, with 1,711 million tons of CO2
Japan, 1,162 million tons of CO2

With respect to this 'petri dish' comment....   my sense from his/her previous Posts is that Jreboll is, in fact, an intelligent person and was just trying to make a point.  AND a very good point it was in case one overlooked it:  "the lesson to be learned is that we affect our environment and become its victims if we dont adapt".

What to wear next time you go to Florida:

Roy, as Rick points out, the US is the largest polluter per capita. It is really important to look at more than total pollution output of a country and population. You could have a village full of people who produce next to no pollution, living simple lives, having no cars, growing and gathering their own food, etc, and the entire village is responsible for far less CO2 emissions than one US middle class suburban couple.

And the high pollution numbers for China And India- why do you think they are that high? Sure, they might not have adequate regulations for emissions, but the manufacturing that causes the pollution is largely creating products for first world consumers, not the average Chinese or Indian.
Worldwide consumerism, people thinking they need this and that, or should be entitled to what they want, is just as much the issue as population.

And why is all this stuff produced in places like China and India? Because labor is cheap. We are all responsible for this, because we want to pay less, not more for the things we buy.

Jreboll wrote:What to wear next time you go to Florida:

That's friggin' hilarious.