
It’s Time to Ditch the Concept of ‘100-Year Floods’ - sndean
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/its-time-to-ditch-the-concept-of-100-year-floods/
======
MarkMc
Why does the government need to place restrictions on where people build? If I
build a house without flood insurance and it gets washed away, it's my loss -
why does the government care?

Perhaps there are costs associated with emergency aid during a crisis. But
then the solution is to force people to buy 'crisis cover' from private
insurance companies. When a crisis occurs, the government collects the payout
from the insurance companies.

~~~
mannykannot
Politics does not work that way. People all across the political spectrum
demand to be bailed out when their risks go bad, and it is pointless to adopt
an ideology that ignores this reality. Then there is the issue of people whose
prudent choices were nullified by rampant development upstream.

> But then the solution is to force people to buy 'crisis cover' from private
> insurance companies.

I see you are not opposed to government intervention, you just want it in a
different form.

~~~
MarkMc
> I see you are not opposed to government intervention, you just want it in a
> different form.

That's right - I want it in a reduced, more efficient form.

Personally I don't think the government should bail out property damage of
people whose risks go bad and who don't have insurance. But I can accept that
maybe this is the minority opinion - but even in this case it's still more
efficient for people to be forced to buy private insurance rather than have
the government say 'you must pay us $X flood risk premium' or 'you cannot
build here'. Private insurance companies (with money on the line) will more
accurately assess flood risks than a government official (who has no financial
interest in the accuracy of his assessment).

~~~
mannykannot
We have been down this route with flood insurance, so we know what happens -
the electorate pressures the legislature to make insurance available at below-
market rates, which it does by interfering in the market. As the notably
conservative states along the Gulf coast have not done anything to make the
situation truly market-driven, it is unrealistic to think of this as a
solution.

Maybe if the legislature did not have to respond to the populace... is that
the more efficient form of government you prefer?

~~~
MarkMc
There are plenty of examples in history where the majority opinion changes,
even with regard to deep, long-held ideas. In any case it's reasonable to
support a policy on principle, even if it's unlikely to be implemented.

------
PeachPlum
The reason Obama's flood legislation got repealed is because they conflated
climate change with flooding, for which the evidence seems to not exist, if I
understand the experts correctly.

[http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v500/n7462/full/nature1...](http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v500/n7462/full/nature12310.html)

> A feature of the changes has been a tendency for many regions of low
> variability to experience increases, which might contribute to the
> perception of increased climate volatility. The normalization of temperature
> anomalies creates the impression of larger relative overall increases, but
> our use of absolute values, which we argue is a more appropriate approach,
> reveals little change. > __Many climate models predict that total
> variability will ultimately decrease under high greenhouse gas
> concentrations __, possibly associated with reductions in sea-ice cover.
> __Our findings contradict the view that a warming world will automatically
> be one of more overall climatic variation. __

...

“General statements about __extremes are almost nowhere to be found in the
literature but seem to abound in the popular media __,” climate scientist
Gavin Schmidt of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies (and co-founder
of the award winning climate science blog RealClimate.), “It’s this popular
perception that global warming means all extremes have to increase all the
time, even though if anyone thinks about that for 10 seconds they realize
that’s nonsense.”

...

U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [IPCC] report on extreme
weather in 2011.

> Global warming, in general, will mean higher temperatures. This causes more
> heat waves — more extreme weather. But it also causes fewer cold waves —
> less extreme weather. Many more people die from excessive cold than
> excessive heat, so fewer people will die from cold and heat in the future.
> By mid-century, researchers estimated in 2006, that means about __1.4
> million fewer deaths per year __. In the continental United States, heat
> waves in the past decade exceeded the norm by 10 percent, but the number of
> cold waves fell 75 percent.

From the Washington Post [https://archive.is/O3lJZ](https://archive.is/O3lJZ)
:

> Damage from flooding in the United States has declined from 0.2 percent of
> gross domestic product in 1940 to less than 0.05 percent today. And U.S.
> hurricanes have not increased in frequency, intensity or normalized damage
> since at least 1900.

~~~
mannykannot
Your prominent use of an argument about fewer deaths from cold weather to
justify the rolling-back of measures to reduce the impact of flooding is
perhaps the most absurd part of this risible piece of denialism.

~~~
PeachPlum
They aren't my arguments. It is not about "fewer deaths from cold weather" but
fewer deaths from extreme weather, the opposite claim of the OP and many media
outlets of "accepted science" of climate change. It is not even a denialist
position but the position of the IPPC, NASA Goddard Institute for Space
Studies etc.

My argument is using "climate change" as the reason one wants to protect from
flooding is a logical fallacy.

Obama's order mentioned in the OP wasn't "impact of flooding legislation" but
"response to climate change legislation" and contained more than flood
defences.

Legislation to defend from changes to weather the climate change scientists
say will not only not happen but reduce.

~~~
mannykannot
It was your choice to use this particular argument in your post, where it is
an amusing non-sequitur, regardless of whether it has any relevance in any
other context.

~~~
PeachPlum
It is directly related. Temperature extremes drive weather events, such as
hurricanes and therefore flooding.

Less extremes = less flooding = less death

~~~
mannykannot
Thank you for this fascinating look into how climate-change deniers fool
themselves, beyond simply ignoring evidence they don't like.

In your original claim (which is not the same as the one in your last post),
you go from the specific issue (flooding) to a general one (extreme weather),
introduce a point that may be relevant for one aspect of extreme weather but
which has nothing to do with flooding (reduced deaths due to cold), and then
switch back to the specific issue as if it somehow thereby became subject to
the irrelevant argument.

In your latest post, you have dropped this line of argument for one that gets
no support from the IPCC report quote that you used in your original claim. It
says there will be fewer extreme cold events, but also that there will be more
high temperature events: we know the latter are more conducive to flooding.
The quoted paragraph takes no position supporting the claim that there will be
fewer temperature extremes overall, let alone that it will therefore led to
fewer flooding events specifically (another case where you go from the general
to the specific with no justification.) You appear to have mistaken an
argument about the number of deaths overall for an argument about the number
of extreme events overall, and then, in turn, mistaking that for an argument
about the number and intensity of floods.

In addition, your latest post is simple ignore-the-evidence denialism. In a
single sentence, you dismiss decades of painstaking, quantitative, peer-
reviewed research that leads to the expectation that the number of intense
North Atlantic hurricanes (i.e. specifically those that are by far the biggest
problem for the US) is very likely to increase. And sea-level rise is an
established, measured fact (and one that contributes to the damage of coastal
flooding), despite what all those latter-day King Cnuts [1] on the hill say.

Finally, I find your attitude, that we should do nothing about flooding
because to do so would challenge your delusions about climate change (and
apparently also your opinion of Obama), to be distasteful, especially
considering the distress it has just caused in and around Houston.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cnut_the_Great](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cnut_the_Great)

~~~
PeachPlum
Enjoy

[https://scontent-
lhr3-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t31.0-8/21272815_1015...](https://scontent-
lhr3-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t31.0-8/21272815_10155973144383968_2429428809021619842_o.png?oh=aa35014e9ab50f8cb29ada40d92694a2&oe=5A29A8DA)

You keep calling me a denialist, yet I am saying "climate change won't have
the effects the media says, even though the IPCC says different"

If I was a denialist I would be saying "there is no change"

see the difference ?

~~~
mannykannot
In your previous posts, you were not saying what you now say you were saying,
because of the faulty logic you employed, and the conclusions you drew from
employing it. In fact, even your latest, considerably watered-down statement
is ambiguous at best, unless you did really mean to say that the IPCC says
that climate change _will_ have the effects that the media says.

One of your original claims was that it is right to roll back flood
regulations simply because they were justified (in part) as a response to
climate change. Putting aside the obvious point that it makes sense to plan
for the future, that is moot anyway, because recent events in Houston, NY/NJ
and New Orleans have demonstrated that there is a flooding problem right now,
with the climate we have now. Your position puts ideology, and preserving the
facade of an illusion, over pragmatism.

All but the most dogmatic of climate change deniers have moved away from
denying that it is happening at all, to denying that it will have negative
consequences, or denying the evidence is good enough to predict anything,
or... Eventually, the only thing left for them to deny will be that anything
can be done about it, and by then they might finally be right, thanks in part
to their efforts.

