Climate Refugees

Justin Passing said:
You still don't get it, and you don't have a question.
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But I did have a question, it was:

What's the significance of 200 years ago? What happened then?

Eventually, after calling me thick, you sort of answered it:

Nothing implicitly happened in 1822, or 1821. There is silence on what happened before.

The original statement of yours that I questioned was:

Drought, 70,000 with heatstroke, 100mph cyclones, rising sea levels, weather not seen in 200 years...

In that statement it is not clear what the 200 years refers to or why you are choosing to use a 200 year period.
Even a non-thick person would be forgiven for asking for clarification. It would have been clearer if you have said "weather not seen since records began". Even if you had said "weather not seen since time began" I would understand what you meant, even though what you were saying was unprovable.

So JP, you might have a vast intellect but if you can't explain yourself clearly, nobody but yourself would know about that vast intellect.
 
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andy11 said:
But I did have a question, it was:

What's the significance of 200 years ago? What happened then?

Eventually, after calling me thick, you sort of answered it:

Nothing implicitly happened in 1822, or 1821. There is silence on what happened before.

The original statement of yours that I questioned was:

Drought, 70,000 with heatstroke, 100mph cyclones, rising sea levels, weather not seen in 200 years...

In that statement it is not clear what the 200 years refers to or why you are choosing to use a 200 year period.
Even a non-thick person would be forgiven for asking for clarification. It would have been clearer if you have said "weather not seen since records began". Even if you had said "weather not seen since time began" I would understand what you meant, even though what you were saying was unprovable.

So JP, you might have a vast intellect but if you can't explain yourself clearly, nobody but yourself would know about that vast intellect.
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It doesn't take much intellect to understand those words.

If something is not seen in 200 years, it's perfectly clear that means the last 200 years. As a fact, that makes it abnormal. It doesn't need "explanation".
It's perfectly clear that it doesn't refer to any period like 3600 to 3400 BC, or it would have said so.
If you said you hadn't seen someone in 6 months, you wouldn't mean the Januaries of 6 years in the 90's, now would you?

One of a forum Troll's boringly repetitive techniques is to assert that a poster said something they didn't , so they can attack it.
The "straw man" approach.
That's what you're trying to do - and it's very obvious. You trolling it in the previous post, too.
 
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Vinty said:
What is your definition of a climate refugee, as opposed to a refugee.
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I would assume a "climate refugee" would be someone in the set of refugees, who has become one as result of climate change.
You would expect there to be, if anyone were bothered to distinguish them, two subsets for example, of those who became homeless because their island found itself below the waves, and those whose homelands no longer got enough rainfall to grow crops to feed the inhabitants.

There would be all manner of arguable sets - such those whose aquifers (since it was mentioned recently) had been contaminated by seawater such that inhabitants had nothing to drink, or with which to irrigate crops. Malta, for example is in that situation but is well-off enough to desalinate sea water, though a poorer land may not have that recourse. The salty ingress may be due to rising sea level or overexploitation of the aquifer, so there might be an argument about whether the shortage, and hence any refugee status, were climate induced or not.

Water shortage may cause wars - would people fleeing be climate refugees?
Does it matter? There are likely to be more of each category.
 
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Justin Passing said:
Malta, for example is in that situation but is well-off enough to desalinate sea water, though a poorer land may not have that recourse.
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Israel also relies on desalinating sea water to supply its population, and has done for many years. It might be the raison d'etre behind its land grabbing, (without getting into any political- religeous discussion, and yes, I realise the assumption is geo-politically based)
 
Vinty said:
The planet has been a lot warmer than today without the help of humanity.
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The Earth has warmed and cooled many times over thousands of years to levels much warmer and cooler than today, no problem there, things adapt, nature deals with it. The issue though is the rate of change rather than the extremes. Instead of warming over a couple of thousand years, we are warming over a few hundred years. Changes come about too quickly, nature isn't prepared for it, instead of adapting and moving, things will die. Yes that's also happened before but the time scales meant there was nobody there to witness and record it. But we are here now and it IS happening in our lifetime for everybody to see.

Can we do anything about it? I don't know, possibly not, but pretending it doesn't exist won't make it go away.
 
Justin Passing said:
It doesn't take much intellect to understand those words.

If something is not seen in 200 years, it's perfectly clear that means the last 200 years. As a fact, that makes it abnormal. It doesn't need "explanation".
It's perfectly clear that it doesn't refer to any period like 3600 to 3400 BC, or it would have said so.
If you said you hadn't seen someone in 6 months, you wouldn't mean the Januaries of 6 years in the 90's, now would you?

One of a forum Troll's boringly repetitive techniques is to assert that a poster said something they didn't , so they can attack it.
The "straw man" approach.
That's what you're trying to do - and it's very obvious. You trolling it in the previous post, too.
Click to expand...

OK don't bust a gut. After your explanations I now understand what you meant. I am not asserting you said something you didn't, there's a lot of that goes on here, which is why I've got John D and his ilk on ignore. I was just asking you to clarify what you meant as it was unclear. Using "I haven't seen someone in six months" though is still not a clear way of explaining it. When a person says "I've not seen so-and-so in six months" it implies that he knew that person before the six month period.

Anyway, that cleared up, I can move on to the next question I was going to ask you. I've forgotten what that was now though.
 
andy11 said:
OK don't bust a gut. After your explanations I now understand what you meant. I am not asserting you said something you didn't, there's a lot of that goes on here, which is why I've got John D and his ilk on ignore. I was just asking you to clarify what you meant as it was unclear. Using "I haven't seen someone in six months" though is still not a clear way of explaining it. When a person says "I've not seen so-and-so in six months" it implies that he knew that person before the six month period.

Anyway, that cleared up, I can move on to the next question I was going to ask you. I've forgotten what that was now though.
Click to expand...

I didn't say anything about what had happened before. It's not necessary. Really that simple.
I won't bust anything...
I strongly suspect you were the only one to propose any other meaning than the clear one. You do appear to be addicted to looking for things which aren't there, to feed something of a paranoia. A type of insecurity, I suppose.
 
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Justin Passing said:
I didn't say anything about what had happened before. It's not necessary. Really that simple.
I won't bust anything...
I strongly suspect you were the only one to propose any other meaning than the clear one. You do appear to be addicted to looking for things which aren't there, to feed something of a paranoia. A type of insecurity, I suppose.
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To get back to the matter in hand, I originally asked how much of these problems are due to building on land previously thought unsuitable. I now ask a similar question: as we now have nearly 8 billion people on Earth, how can we know that these extreme weather events didn’t happen in the past when there were fewer people on Earth to witness them?
 
andy11 said:
To get back to the matter in hand, I originally asked how much of these problems are due to building on land previously thought unsuitable. I now ask a similar question: as we now have nearly 8 billion people on Earth, how can we know that these extreme weather events didn’t happen in the past when there were fewer people on Earth to witness them?
Click to expand...

Geology: That's how we know of extreme weather events in the past. Scientists use stratification to study the effects of volcanic activity, or rainfall* and compare them from samples taken around the world: Ice cores taken from the Arctic is another indicator.
It's more of a local issue where buildings are placed, rather than global, but the amount of concrete used in construction each year is a major factor - some countries, like Denmark, Germany and Japan, are looking into making wooden houses affordable and sustainable, although i doubt they'd be suitable for large scale projects, perhaps enough of them can be made to offset the amount of concrete poured over the land each day.

As our global population reaches eight billion the BBC have a long read on how we can manage this milestone and accomodate the world's population; bearing in mind the number of people on Planet Earth in 1900 was around two billion.
George Carlin pointedly observed twenty years ago that it isn't the planet we need to save but ourselves. The planet will be fine, it's been around for over four billion years: "the Earth will shake us off like a bad case of fleas."

*Did you know it rained for two million years?
Nope, me neither.
It's known as The Carnian Pluvial Event which sounds like it should be the title for an episode of The Big Bang Theory, but it really happened and can be proved through core samples taken globally.
 
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Odds said:
It's more of a local issue where buildings are placed, rather than global, but the amount of concrete used in construction each year is a major factor - some countries, like Denmark, Germany and Japan, are looking into making wooden houses affordable and sustainable, although i doubt they'd be suitable for large scale projects, perhaps enough of them can be made to offset the amount of concrete poured over the land each day.
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We do indeed need to use less concrete, and many projects (read: skyscrapers) are largely not just unnecessary, but detrimental to people and the environment. By limiting how high we build, we could use more sustainable materials, and build more people friendly buildings, and make them more efficient. Low rise, mix use neighbourhoods should be part of the climate action plan world wide.

Summary: Skyscrapers suck.
 
andy11 said:
I originally asked how much of these problems are due to building on land previously thought unsuitable.
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This is actually a prime example of how science/learning/experience works.

Years ago building on flood plains wasn't considered to be an issue at all. But science/learning/experience developed with research/studies being carried out which has identified the problem.I know you think these are "just words on a screen from other idiots" though.

Japan, for example,


www.mdpi.com

Feasibility of Traditional Open Levee System for River Flood Mitigation in Japan

An open levee system is a traditional flood mitigation system for reducing the expansion of inland flooding and decreasing the peak flow. However, there have been few quantitative studies on its feasibility. Furthermore, the differences in applicability depending on the topography and the...
www.mdpi.com www.mdpi.com


And the impact of climate change,


What didn't happen though is that someone woke up one morning and had a gut feeling that building on flood plains was a bad idea, That would be ridiculous...
 
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I'm speaking from a layman's perspective, but I would suggest that building on a flood plain would be perfectly acceptable if the presence and flow of water was not restricted. I don't mean putting it all underground, but building, including transportation, to accommodate the water.
 
denso13 said:
This is actually a prime example of how science/learning/experience works.

Years ago building on flood plains wasn't considered to be an issue at all. But science/learning/experience developed with research/studies being carried out which has identified the problem.I know you think these are "just words on a screen from other idiots" though.

Japan, for example,


www.mdpi.com

Feasibility of Traditional Open Levee System for River Flood Mitigation in Japan

An open levee system is a traditional flood mitigation system for reducing the expansion of inland flooding and decreasing the peak flow. However, there have been few quantitative studies on its feasibility. Furthermore, the differences in applicability depending on the topography and the...
www.mdpi.com www.mdpi.com


And the impact of climate change,


What didn't happen though is that someone woke up one morning and had a gut feeling that building on flood plains was a bad idea, That would be ridiculous...
Click to expand...
You don't need science or gut feelings to know not to build on land prone to flooding.
 
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