The Marshall Islands Are Disappearing | Hacker News Reader

The Marshall Islands Are Disappearing

nytimes.com

132 pointsAmorymeltzer152 comments

Atolls, in an undeveloped state, will always be just a few feet about sea level. They are the result of an equilibrium between deposition and erosion. If the sea level were to drop, an undeveloped atoll (without walls, paving, etc) would erode downwards because of greater wind exposure. Attempting to fix the level of an atoll by paving it will not work in the long term, regardless of what the climate does.

That's more or less the definition of an Atoll, but nothing says something that used to be an Atoll needs to stay above water.

What's the function of "but" there?

A less formal version of However used to denote contrast. In this case the difference between current state, and future state.

There was nothing contrasting in the original reply. Just sayin'.

Try rereading it, and note the words:

"an Atoll" vs. "used to be an Atoll"

In your original reply, your first sentence was false. Your second sentence was an unrelated truism. No contrast, no point in in adding the connecting "but".

Reading your other posts demonstrates you are clueless about this and other topics. I would suggest a lot more research using textbooks to get a basic understanding going of chemistry, english, physics, and geology.

Find one error besides typos to back up your bloviating.

"CO2 isn't even the main greenhouse gas, that's water vapor."

That's ridiculously false. Nitrogen is the main greenhouse gas. It's also stable and thus not an issue for climate change, but trying to correct someone whose basic understanding is false is not worth the effort.

Reply to the above: Oh, you've built a climate model? Is it one of the ones that doesn't work? That'd be all of them. You're wrong about your correction and abuse won't substitute well. Now find an error or quitcher bloviating, bolviator.

And you still can't find the reply button? Also, note climate models are one thing weather models are another and weather models clearly do work.

PS: Thermodynamics really takes differential equations, and I suggest you read up on both of them.

I'm replying in the only place the reply button shows up in the legacy browser where I am. You finally tried to make a point with hardly any "look up X, Y or Z that I know cuz I'm so smart" stuff, so I'll quote it here:

"Remove N2 without replacing it with something else and the earth would have a much lower average temperature."

That's why N2 is not considered a greenhouse gas, because anything else replacing it would do as well or better (from the greenhouse gas POV).

Now, instead of making stupid comments like: "you are clueless about this and other topics. I would suggest a lot more research using textbooks to get a basic understanding going of chemistry, english, physics, and geology", you should try reading a commenst and replying directly to the point at hand. After a while, you might learn something.

Weather models work very well, for a few days. After that, not so much. A "Climate" model has to be correct for many years to acquire a measure of credibility. None of them have been correct even in the very short term.

Instead of pretending you know what a partial differential equation is, changing the subject, and hurling abuse, how about you stay on topic and back up anything you've said to contradict me, bloviator?

Reply to the statement just below: "Although contributing to many other physical and chemical reactions, the major atmospheric constituents, nitrogen (N2), oxygen (O2), and argon (Ar), are not greenhouse gases. This is because molecules containing two atoms of the same element such as N2 and O2 and monatomic molecules such as argon (Ar) have no net change in their dipole moment when they vibrate and hence are almost totally unaffected by infrared radiation."

But do keep trying.

Wikipedia is a great resource, though if you ever build a climate model you will find it wrong in this case. For clarity, one of the really important effects is reducing peak temperature as black body radiation is T^4. Thus nitrogen prevents IR radiation instead of absorbing it, though in either case it's still increasing average temperature.

PS: Sorry, you could not find the reply button and feel the need for sock puppets.

N2 has no net effect. That's why it's not considered a greenhouse gas. Stick with the accepted definitions (and get them right) and you'll eventually make a useful contribution. hint: pretending you know how to make a working climate model is not one.

Remove N2 without replacing it with something else and the earth would have a much lower average temperature.

You clearly don't believe me, and are unwilling to do the research. But, think for a second, 78% of the atmosphere, zero net effect on temperature, or you’re using an overly simplified model.

PS: I like most people did not build a weather model by myself. I did dig into one fairly deeply when looking into building a turn based civilization game, and I must say they get vastly more complex than you might think.

If your primary form of deposition (coral formation) breaks down, a lot of former atols will be sub-optimal investments, in the "under-water" sense that means being under water.

The main deposit is sand, as I understand it. That's why atolls change shape a lot. On the whole, they're not even as stable as coral. Building (with paving) is just a bad idea.

My understanding is seamount (underwater volcano) on which coral builds further toward the surface, from depths of < 200' (~60m), topped with sand which is almost certainly formed from coral.

The sand topping will blow way in wind, but with slow sea rise, coral can build up. Coral cannot grow above sea level, so atolls are of necessity close to sea level. With rapid rise, particularly where coral growth is retarded (carbonate levels, other forms of coral blight), you'll lose that ability entirely, and the island will flood.

More: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atoll

Correct. Atolls (the bit above water) are mainly sand, regardless of the sand's origin. Not a good place to build.

There are places like Marshall islands where relocation inland is not an option (unlike the millions of coastal population) and a significant sea level rise will simply eliminate them as dryland.

However, those places are comparatively small. Compared to the massive scale of anything we must start/stop doing to actually change global warming, for solving the particular issue of Marshall islands simply relocating the 70 000 people is the easiest and simplest solution with less impact on people lives.

A smallish military conflict displaces more civilians than that. In a sea level rise, the likely sea border disputes as islands disappear will impact far more people than those who live in atoll nations, their combined number of people is so tiny compared to, say, a couple coastal towns in Bangladesh.

  > In a sea level rise, the likely sea border disputes as 
  > islands disappear

If we're talking about UNCLOS, I doubt that anyone's going to redraw territorial water boundaries based upon rising sea levels given that there are already provisions that prevent expanding your territorial waters by building artificial islands.

You're right for borders between existing nations, however, the expected result of a large sea level rise will include a number of current countries being eliminated.

I wouldn't expect a non-existent nation to keep it's territorial waters, instead it will be re-distributed among its neighbours (possibly depending on some deal with relocation of their current inhabitants), but no matter how you do that, there is a lot of potential for disputes.

Shoutout to the kids throwing rocks at the drone: https://media.giphy.com/media/d2YUC2fu21BTda4U/giphy.gif

The article does (quietly) mention that the sea level rise in the Marshall is due to changes in the trade winds. They also mention that they are not sure of the relationship between global warming and these trade wind changes. Over the last century the Global Mean Sea Level (GMSL) has risen 4-8 inches.

The Marshall Islanders would be better served if the Paris meeting had been called off, and the millions that were spent for food, fuel, lodging, and security could be sent to keep their islands from capsizing ;-) not to mention the savings in CO2...

Global warming is not exactly solved by saving the Marshall Islands.

I think he's saying we should stop spending money on trying to stop global warming, and start spending money on dealing with the consequences.

Just to keep things in perspective, the inhabitants of the Marshall Islands are 0.000721013% of the world population. if the Paris accomplishes anything positive at all, the impact would likely be larger than saving the Marshall Islands.

I'd be interested in an explanation as to why sea level would rise more some places than others. It seems to me it should raise pretty much the same everywhere because gravity.

I'd wager that gravity isn't 100% equal over the whole globe, the pull of the moon's gravity also isn't equal over the globe, and that the circulation of water across the world's oceans also isn't 100% (so there's different salinity, water pressure, various prevailing 'currents', temperature, etc...). Of course I don't study this, so I don't know the exact reasons, but I'm sure there is a reason...

Yes, it's all of that. Tides, temperature variations, ocean surface winds, and circulation all go in to changing sea surface height, at various time scales. It amounts to order of a couple of meters, peak-to-peak, in a weekly average.

Sea surface height (SSH) has been measured from space with great accuracy, using radar altimetry, since 1992. We can now also measure sea surface temperature (SST), salinity (SSS), and surface winds. The winds are knowable because wind ruffles the water surface and this changes the radar scatter properties.

Therefore, somewhat surprisingly, we know more about the ocean than the land.

For more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocean_surface_topography; the data is at http://podaac.jpl.nasa.gov/CoreMeasurements

Apart from changes in sea level, sometimes the land is moving up, sometimes down. See for instance the still ongoing rebound of Scandinavia, taking place since the start of the current interglacial period (11,700 years).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-glacial_rebound#Vertical_...

Gravity is not the same around the Globe, there is something called the Geoid https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geoid.

Also, sea level is determined by a number of factors including astronomical and predictable, like moon, sun and other planets gravity influence, or random meteorological events like winds, low or high pressure systems and land mass configuration. All these contribute to the tide cycle and the sea level anywhere in the globle.

For example, there are places in the world with huge tide amplitudes like 12 m or so and other with no tides at all (excluding meteorological events).

The problem is the "mean sea level rise". The "mean sea level" is usually determined by and average of at least 19 years of measurements of the sea level, which is approximately the time it takes to complete a full moon cycle.

Tides in the Bay of Fundy here in the Maritimes Canada are 15m (50 feet). And in some places the water comes in so fast there is a mini-tidal wave the tidal bore.

None of this explains why a small change in ocean water volume would be distributed unevenly across the planet.

The earth is huge(compared to us), so it's hard to grasp why it doesn't work as seemingly instantaneously as bowl of water, for example. Eventually, in a perfect vacuum, that would be the case.

Maybe not evenly, but proportionally?

Tradewinds?

One simple reason is that water tends to flow towards the lowest point. Since there are height differences on earth, distribution will not be even.

Another is that polar ice, through its gravitational pull, pulls water in the direction of the poles. If it melts, it (on average) moves away from the poles, decreasing that pull towards the poles.

You are underestimating the complexity of water and land mass interactions.

The changes that are producing the change in sea water volume, also have other effects on some of the things that influence sea water distribution.

For example melting freshwater ice not only adds volume to the ocean, it also adds mass, and changes salinity, which changes temperature, which itself affects volume, and also influences ocean circulation patterns.

And since winds are powered and directed by heat energy in the atmosphere, changing the amount and/or pattern of heat in the atmosphere will also change the wind patterns.

The shape of the ocean floor is slightly affected by the weight of the sea water on top of it. Changes in sea water distribution due to other factors might also result in changes in relative ocean basin depth--areas with more water mass will depress the crust a bit farther into the mantle; while areas with less water mass will rebound slightly.

Mostly differences in the geoid [1]. The planet isn't perfectly round, and gravity varies quite a lot [2].

There are other factors, such as the cold/warm water cycle creating very slow currents that push water towards certain landmasses.

But as I understand it, gravity is the main cause.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geoid

[2] http://e360.yale.edu/feature/the_secret_of_sea_level_rise_it...

Article says: "Changing global trade winds have raised sea levels in the South Pacific about a foot over the past 30 years, faster than elsewhere. Scientists are studying whether those changing trade winds have anything to do with climate change."

Water temperature hasn't been mentioned -- though water famously expands as it freezes, at temperatures above about 4C, it undergoes normal thermal expansion. This means that warm equitorial waters show some of this effect as well.

Winds and tides are other significant factors, both of which can vary strongly regionally and globally.

>because [of] gravity

Before that, it needs to be asked if it is even rising sea level in the first place, as opposed to land subsidence.

"It looks like Kwajalein is affected by a local subsidence induced by building construction (or some sea level “correction” in order to have it going up). The Majuro records, for sure, contradicts any (sic:"and") acceleration claim; even a general “rise”.

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/07/31/the-marshall-islands-a...

I'm worried my tiny province in Canada (PEI) will be gone maybe in a 100 years or at least eroded substantially. About 224km (140 miles) long by 60km (37 miles) wide 140,000 people.

The island is all sandstone there is no native rock here the highest point is 142m (466 feet) but the average height I'd say is a metre/a few feet above sea level.

There are places around the island where 30m (100 feet) have washed away just within the last few decades. None of what washed away was replaced by the government it just keeps washing away never to return.

Sounds like it's not a great place for a permanent long-term settlement.

Where are you going to move to?

I'll be OK but if I ever find a woman crazy enough to have kids with me I'd be worried for their future here.

I think the local government should allow us to reclaim lost shore line or even build out more. It's one thing to slowly lose shore from the rising sea but to also lose the land itself is twice as bad. Usually storm surges pound the shore and large sections of a cliffside collapse but not necessarily right at the shore.

Something similar to my situation was a segment on the local news where people on Manhattan island were interviewed about the rising sea level. I guess some parts of Manhattan near sea level are going to have a park build to act as a storm surge buffer. http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/new-york-superstorm-climate-cha...

I did not expect to see another islander on here. I saw a tool or report a few years ago that would show how much of the island would remain with different sea level rises but I cannot find it now.

I think UPEI had some tool which showed something like or maybe it was sea level not so much soil loss, Wade was pushing it in Paris at the climate conference.

Being below sea level hasn't particularly bothered the Dutch. Half of Holland is at least a meter below sea level.

Of course, in the 1200's when they started, they didn't have climate change conferences and carbon credits.

The Dutch also didn't have the wide open spaces of half a continent to relocate to, but instead were rather cooped up.

Australian BOM:

http://www.bom.gov.au/ntc/IDO70052/IDO70052SLI.shtml

"Changing global trade winds have raised sea levels in the South Pacific about a foot over the past 30 years"

No.

Can't the winds cause sea water erosion of the sand in the absence of volcanic upward pressure?

Sea level was higher during the previous interglacial period:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eemian

Why do people think this process has stopped? Or do they think we're at the peak sea level rise today? Why?

Does that matter? People live there, the fact that it is disappearing is relevant. "Well, those islands used to be totally submerged 115,000 years ago!" isn't really of use to the islands' inhabitants.

>> Does that matter? People live there, the fact that it is disappearing is relevant. "Well, those islands used to be totally submerged 115,000 years ago!" isn't really of use to the islands' inhabitants.

To the people who live there, it doesn't matter. To the people trying to blame it on human activity it should.

I don't see that. Things can happen for multiple reasons, the climate is complicated. It's an exceptionally weak argument to say "sea level or temperature change has happened naturally in the past, so that means it can't be caused by human industry now". Especially when the mechanism for natural change usually involved CO2.

No it shouldn't. The Earth's climate has been at various extreme points in the past, from ice ball to covered in tropical rain-forest.

That has nothing to do with the evidence for whether we're through human activity pushing it towards one of those past extreme states at an accelerated or unnatural pace.

> To the people trying to blame it on human activity it should.

It just shows that the climate can change due to natural processes, and that it can change by a great deal if conditions are right. This could happen for a number of reasons, but the rapid, large-scale warming we've seen over the last century can only be accounted for by human activity. All other natural processes have been falsified by scientists.

Sooo, you're suggesting humans haven't committed to changing sea level?

No one could have predicted this based on any kind of evidence tho so we best go about business as usual without making any changes to our way of life.

finally a reasonable response. why change things when we can not

I don't recall ever seeing a video clip quite like the one at the top of this article. (Aren't camera drones cool!)

Take a look at some of what mapbox has done, here's a good example: https://www.mapbox.com/drone/video/ (from https://www.mapbox.com/blog/mapbox-gl-video-drone/)

couldn't they hire a dutch firm to help reclaim the land. we should create a whole sea wall around it as an alternative to seasteading.

Seems as viable as relocating them all to Greenland once it's done with its transition to lush tropical forest.

Assuming AGW is the cause--did the islanders not also benefit from the worldwide consumption of fossil fuels: supplies delivered by ship, manufacturing of the supplies themselves, worldwide communications built by an energy intensive civilization, medication and learning fostered by this development? I would pay my share to relocate them, and throw in a 'Sorry about the sea level rise' gift basket, but not anything to maintain a life there.

I would guess it is easier to float those atolls or put them on stilts. The ocean tends to get really deep fast in the Pacific, and the islands are small, giving them a high circumference to area ratio (=> you would need lots of wall per square kilometer of atoll)

That could work, but this is just a preview of more to come. That dutch firm would be kept very busy doing the same for Miami, Shenzhen, and many other coastal cities. There are also many coastal settlements who can't afford sea walls. It is doubtful that political entities that aren't interested in footing the bill to prevent such scenarios would be willing to help those settlements.

"The debate over loss and damage has been intense because the final language of the Paris accord could require developed countries, first and foremost the United States, to give billions of dollars to vulnerable countries like the Marshall Islands." [ from the NYTimes article ]

Hoo boy. This is going to have problems passing in the current U.S. Congress.

Apparently developing countries want the top nations to pay $1-2T (yes, trillion) to execute their own plans. There's also another $1-2T in damages being discussed.

Ref: http://www.presstv.ir/Detail/2015/11/30/439679/France-Paris-...

Bangladesh alone is 100,000,000 people looking for new digs.

$1T is about right. And someone is going to pay it. Only question is who.

It's distressingly possible that the answer is "Nobody," at least nobody directly to the populations. The $1T will get spent, just in preventing, not assisting, relocation.

Mass migration is an ancient trigger of wars, is what I'm saying.

If the people displaced by climate change don't get any assistance relocating, then they are the ones paying.

There is something about a NYtimes online articles. They are such an appropriate blend of investigative reporting and proper adoption of new media. Wrapped neatly in nice typography and minimal advertisements.

...Now only if I had the attention span.

Their Snow Fall piece was so well received that a startup created a platform to sell to media outlets who wanted to create similar immersive pieces.

NYT article about it: http://futurenytimes.org/reviews/interactive-storytelling/

Venturebeat article about Storied: http://venturebeat.com/2015/02/12/storied-launches-publishin...

Storied site: http://www.storied.co/welcome

Comparative article about various immersive journalism platforms: https://www.journalism.co.uk/news/9-tools-for-journalists-to...

I think Immersive.sh is currently the most widely used: http://immersive.sh/rachelbartlett/itMsUweiM

Are there any publications using Storied? My concern is that using a third party service will always be sub-par compared to a setup like that at NYTimes, where the developers, designers and journalists all work in the same building.

Looks like they list a few here: http://www.storied.co/partners

I agree re: NYT, especially. They seem to be taking platform evolution very seriously.

Gimlet Media's "Startup" recently had an episode saying that pretty much all large media companies now have a division that makes media for hire (articles, videos, whatever).

https://gimletmedia.com/episode/17-words-about-words-from-ou...

They're great for this kind of reporting. Really bad at others where their biases come out, like Israeli-Palestinian reporting.

> ... Israeli-Palestinian reporting.

That's just how American reporting and politics work. Ironically, Israeli newspapers are more likely to be critical of Israel.

I would imagine that in Israel, it's easier to criticize what Israel is currently doing without the assumption that you hate Israel's existence or, worse, Jews.

It's just factually incorrect that "the media" in Israel is more critical of Israel. Regardless of political bent, media outlets in Israel usually do a better job of reporting on the conflict than does the NYT. The Times of Israel, IMHO, does the best job of accurately reporting the issues. They have some great op-ed and analysis writers.

This guy in the US does a great job of analyzing the NYT's coverage of Israeli and Palestinian news. https://tayaravaknin.wordpress.com/2015/10/15/series-revisin...

That's actually not what I mean. It's not being critical of Israel, but rather, substandard journalistic integrity when writing on Israeli-Palestinian affairs. For example, the use of the passive voice when describing Palestinian terror attacks against Israelis, purposefully burying the lead, or other such media malpractice.

Why do folks keep on getting suckered by this "everything is global warming" and "it's all our fault" scam? The satellite data means (the only trustworthy source) haven't changed in nearly 20 years of their 35ish-year existence. CO2 isn't even the main greenhouse gas, that's water vapor. The sun's variability and its effect on climate are poorly understood. Yet the sun is the driver. The claim that anthropogenic CO2 (an unknown amount of the overall carbon cycle) is in a positive feedback loop with other processes is unproven: that's why the models are doing such a lousy job of predicting the non-warming. If it weren't a near trillion dollar proposition to keep the scam going, this would all be more widely known.

This article fails to mention the aging Cactus Dome containing gratuitous amounts of radioactive soil that will breach containment soon and cause fukushimachernobyl9/11*1000 radioactive damage

The US has missile test bases in the Marshall Islands. Watching what is done with these would seem to indicate the state's intent.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ronald_Reagan_Ballistic_Missil...

> Watching what is done with these would seem to indicate the state's intent

What intent? There is nothing the federal government can do to stop increasing sea levels or erosion. Just like the inhabitants, when it becomes untenable, they will just move.

Marshall Islands sea level, unchanged for 20 years:

http://sealevel.colorado.edu/content/interactive-sea-level-t...

No one denies the science more than alarmists.

Hm, to me it looks as if there was a slight upwards trend in the data. Some fitting would have to go on to see if that's true; however, most of the time, fitting by approximating by hand is not so bad. Look at the smoothed data too, it's more obvious there.

Also, mind that the scale is in cm and numbers given for sea level rise up to now is in the mm range. We can argue about the clear drop in 2014. And I wonder what happened in 1998. Good source, thank you!

edit: Stopped wondering about 1998, it's clearly a strong El Niño signal, and the theory fits as well. Thus, it will probably go back up after next year.

I applied a polynomial trend line to the data: seems there is a 7.5cm rise over 23 years, but most of that was in the first half and has tapered off and may actually be about to head down. I'd like to see longer-term data.

Recurring issue: climate changes. Sea levels change. Land altitudes change. Overlapping cycles interact to great effect covering hours & millennia. And when you're talking about all of these happening in regards to someplace that is no more than 2 meters above "sea level", with nearly a meter of tidal variation daily, it's not unreasonable to conclude "living on the edge of survivability isn't a good choice".

Sadly, it isn't a choice in many cases.

I'd like to see a polite HN discussion about this notion. To wit: in light of a looming existential crisis where circumstantial (mostly financial) difficulties are pitted against prospects of death/destruction, should one be resigned to one's "fate" vs "do anything necessary to move".

What smoothing are you recommending, so that we can see that it's unchanged? Hard to see anything in the raw chart.

Edit: as you can see below, what I'm contesting is the assertion that it's unchanged.

The article claims that it has increased by a foot, which is 30 centimeters:

" Changing global trade winds have raised sea levels in the South Pacific about a foot over the past 30 years"

What smoothing do you recommend I apply, so that I can see that?

That graph pretty clearly shows 10 or 15 cm over the last 20 years. I wish I could see the data for 30 years but it doesn't seem impossible that there was a 15 cm rise in those 10 years.

http://sealevel.colorado.edu/content/interactive-sea-level-t... shows about a 9 cm increase over 20 years.

http://sealevel.colorado.edu/content/interactive-sea-level-t... does less drastic smoothing, to show a bit more detail.

Maybe that refers to the maxima, which are in the same order of magnitude? Temporary flooding is also described in the article, with the main issue of destroying freshwater supplies and trees. But you're right, that phrasing is a bit weird.

While its fun to make fun of the non-scientific article, I'm actually probing at your claim that it's unchanged. You cited evidence, but it doesn't support your claim.

Most GW people are fooled by randomness. It's just this generations version of how people are going to destroy the world. Every generation needs something to freak out about.

Here's all you have to know about sea level rise...

When land in Ohio is as expensive than land in NYC, we have a big fucking sea level problem. Until then, all the smart and wealthy people in the world aren't concerned and neither should you be.

We'll try the BOM then, that goes back to '93:

http://www.bom.gov.au/ntc/IDO70052/IDO70052SLI.shtml

Try any source you like. Show me something hard to back up "The Marshall Islands are Disappearing"

The chart you linked shows sea levels are rising, but that doesn't seem to match the argument you're making?

Wow. I see - at best - a random walk. A random walk where the noise is about 5 times the amplitude of any signal you might argue is there. I also see the mean tailing off the last three years to be lower than it was in '93. What do you see? I certainly don't see the "The Marshall Islands Are Disappearing". Is this some sort of Rorschach test that I'm failing?

Look at your data. The last time it trended down significantly there was a major weather event (hint: 1997-1998)... The same major weather event is upon us right now.

Anyhow, fit a regression line, and the trend is upward for most parts of the world. Maybe someday we'll return to an ice age, I mean, we were there in some parts of the world 10000 years ago. Right now the data shows we're in a warming cycle. It may be human-caused, it may be forces beyond our understanding (after all, the planet has gone through several heating-cooling cycles), but either way it's happening.

Except NASA says El Nino warming can cause up to an inch of sea level rise due to thermal expansion, so if you see a downtrend in 1097-8 and this year, it is in spite of weather events, not because of it.

Complex systems can have strange behaviour. I'm just looking at data.

El Nino has changing wind patterns. Wind pushes the ocean water around:

It leads to the Eastern Pacific (America) being lower than the West (Asia) normally (surface wind goes west), normally about ~50cm above mean before Asia and about 20cm below mean before America.

This changes during El Nino events, when the surface wind changes direction and the water is pushed the other way (~20cm below mean before Asia and 20cm above mean before America). Those values include thermal expansion and stuff.

The Marshall islands are more to the Asia side of the Pacific. There is a ~20cm dip in 1998. [1] It fits.

[1] http://sealevel.colorado.edu/content/interactive-sea-level-t...

There's some noise, but the trend seems clear to me. The median starts out oscillating around the '1' line, but by 2008 - 2014 it barely touches the line at all.

There's a drop from 2014-2016, but it's too early to say if it's temporary like the drop between 1997-1998 (El Niño?)

We can say a priori that the sea level is not a random walk. A random walk is boundless - the sea level is not going to suddenly rise 100 meters.

This comment gives a good smoothing in the interactive data set, it might help:

https://news.ycombinator.com/reply?id=10664069&goto=item%3Fi...

from the chart "Maximum recorded level of 2.405 metres at 0430 hours 18/02/2011"

I'm really unclear on how this chart shows rising given the max was in 2011?

A good question, if all you looked at is just one chart. Next, read the scientific literature about how people interpret the chart. In this case, you appear to be confusing climate and weather? If you're looking at an effect on the average of something over decades, the fact that the maximum was 5 years ago is not that significant.

"In this case, you appear to be confusing climate and weather?"

No, I'm just looking at a suggested chart and seeing nothing

Is there a chart that goes farther back with the raw values like this one?

Ah. If you're only looking at the chart, and not the huge body of science that goes with it, then pointing out another chart with a longer baseline isn't going to help you much.

And the Maldives, supposedly in a similar situation, have been "disappearing" since the early-mid 1800s (and probably earlier).

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CVGSWCvUEAAF4pR?format=png&name=...

I don't know how you're reading that chart, but it's pretty clearly trending up, unless you're only looking at the past year or so of data points.

The data might be noisy, but what is decidedly not noisy is the intrusion of sea water into the groundwater on those islands. These people used to keep vegetable gardens. Now they have to raise them and rely on rainwater tow after them. On these atoms you can see lots of palm tree stumps where the rising salinity killed them off one by one.

http://sealevel.colorado.edu/content/map-sea-level-trends

Really hard to not take you for a crackpot. You:

* initially call everyone science-denying alarmists

* ignore all the responses that point out that there is trend in the data you linked.

* respond only to the reply that gives you the benefit of the doubt ('what smoothing do you recommend so we can see it's unchanged.') by switching datasets and trying to make the same point again (unable to defend it in with first source?)

* make a claim of your own ('it's unchanged'), but switch to a different, easier-to-defend claim when contested ('it's not a foot, like the original article claims')

So do you actually believe it's unchanged, or are you irrationally dead-set on disagreeing with the article? Can't take you seriously like this.

'Crackpot' is a several thousand word article on how climate change is submerging the Marshall Islands when all the hard data shows that sea level has done fuck all except bounce around for 23 years.

But sure, yeah, I'm a crackpot.

By the way, you will note in my initial source that the final point in the dataset is level with the initial point (slightly below). So it is, in fact, unchanged. You can quibble about smoothing methods, how to fit a regression, etc., but that is the literal english definition of 'unchanged'.

Is that defended enough for you? Right now the sea level in the Marshall Islands is roughly where it was 23 years ago. That would be UNCHANGED.

You ignored my point entirely.

I agree with you that the current sea level is about where it was 23 years ago. I don't agree with you that the graph you linked isn't trending upwards. Obviously if you have a sinusoid that slowly trends up (where the yearly delta is << the (max-min) periodic variation), it's going to oscillate in such a way that a point-in-time view of it might see lower values than the average. That's what sinusoids do.

(If it's not obvious to you that the trend, rather than the current value, is the interesting data, then this whole discussion is a waste of time.)

So now that we've gotten that out of the way:

I'm arguing that you're doing a really bad job of convincing anyone because of your hostility to rational questions and discussion on the subject. I'm doing this a) to inform you, in case it wasn't obvious to you (and it seems like it wasn't) and b) because it's fun to point these things out; Hacker News seems to often enjoy meta-discussions about arguments.

>I agree with you that the current sea level is about where it was 23 years ago.

So you'd agree that it is, um, how should I phrase this... unchanged??

Why then did you explicitly call me out, and call me a crackpot, for not defending that claim? If you agree with it?

As it turns out, a single sentence out of a comment is actually not the entire content of the comment. It's very disingenuous to cherry pick a sentence and pretend as though it's the entire point.

If you want to be utterly pedantic:

If I or anyone else claims the sea level is 'unchanged', what I and anyone else means is that 'the average sea level over a regular oscillation' is unchanged. This is clearly false; the average has increased.

No one - not me, not you, not climate scientists, not hacker news posters - means that "The sea level as of December 02 2015 is the same as the sea level as of <date in 1993>". We're interested in averages of the sea level over a year/cycle/whatever unit you want.

So you are still probably incorrect, unless you intentionally twist words against their intention. If you do that, there is no point in arguing with you; you are not interested in debate and are not genuinely trying to find truth. Though without agreeing on a method and timespan of averaging things, I wouldn't swear you're incorrect. My whole point is that your argument is failing because of your hostility to rationality and being challenged on it. Not that you're necessarily wrong. (though eyeballing it definitely suggests that you're wrong.)

> As it turns out, a single sentence out of a comment is actually not the entire content of the comment

the key to gd1's entire world view

Congratulations on scoring points with the choir. Now would you care to say something substantive?

I will have one last go at explaining my position, as simply as I can.

I used the word 'unchanged' to indicate that the sea level in the Marshall Islands is unchanged. It is currently approximately where it was 23 years ago. This is a pretty common usage. If a stock trades up and down all day and ends where it started, you will hear people say 'it ended the day unchanged'. Or 'unch'. Sea levels in the Marshall Islands are currently 'unch'. Over a period of 23 years.

And make no mistake, I acknowledge the worldwide trend in sea level is upwards, the evidence of one tidal gauge doesn't trump the evidence of thousands of tidal gauges. And it has been upwards of course this entire interglacial.

Now, your example of a linear trend superimposed on a sinusoid is a good one. So let me say this, it's a pretty fucking pathetic linear trend if, 23 years later, the bottom of the sinusoid is still overlapping the starting point. The noise in the measurement, and the seasonality, is greater than the supposed trend. It's worth considering for example the coastline of Manhattan 100 years ago. This trend you speak of is utterly insignificant on a human timescale. We can literally grow land faster should we so desire. For example, consider the fact that many Pacific islands are growing due to sediment accumulation (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/10222679), so weak is this trend. And yet, we're expected to sit here and swallow the premise of this article, the concept of 'climate refugees' and compensation...

So, I'll reply to your argument and then make a point about the meta argument.

So either:

you believe that comparing a point-in-time value today to a point-in-time value 23 years ago is a legitimate way to talk about sea levels being 'unchanged' (it's not)

you believe that the ~10cm change in the average (over various periods) is a legitimately 'unchanged' mean, in that it lies with, say, a couple standard deviations around the mean and is therefore not indicative of a trend.

The second is a legitimate stance, so I'll respond to it: I'm pretty sure your intuition is misleading you badly here. First, note that the existence of the islands and their habitability depends on the high point, not the average or the current value (okay, that's my intuition at least). The high point in 1992-95 was about 1cm; the high point in 2012-2015 was about 20cm. [I chose those bounds to try to avoid the dip in 1998 that we may be entering again - not sure how to interpret that without more historical data.] Second, they only have about 180cm of leeway, so that's ~1/10th of the way there. On a scale of 0-180, I think a shift of about 20 over 23 years is significant.

Meta point:

The whole reason I initial responded to you was that you were badly failing to argue your point. You wrote a couple posts above "Why then did you explicitly call me out, and call me a crackpot, for not defending that claim? If you agree with it?". Do you not see the difference? I called you a crackpot precisely for not defending it, and just insisting it was true several times despite challenges. It has nothing to do at all with whether I agree with it. (I don't, actually, but as above - that seems to be a difference of interpretation. I would need more data to be confident either way though.)

What are you basing your numbers on? From a quick look at the raw data [1], I see the high point in the 1992-95 timeframe as 13.74cm (early 1995). The high point in 2012-15 was 21.55cm (mid 2012). This is a difference of 7.81cm. The standard deviation among yearly high points is 5.62cm across all years, so this is not even close to being a significant change. If you look at the top 5 yearly high points starting with the largest, they occurred in 2007 (26.76cm), 2011 (21.79cm), 2012 (21.55cm), 2010 (18.56cm), and 2014 (18.24cm). Note the 2014 value is over 8cm less than the one in 2007.

Look, I get that living right at sea level isn't exactly ideal, and these people might need help. But let's not make more of this than there is.

EDIT: Also note the big difference in granularity across years. Most complete years had 36-37 measurements. 1992 only had 2 and 1995 had only 31. Thus it's quite possible (even likely) that timeframe's real high point was considerably higher than what is recorded.

[1] http://sealevel.colorado.edu/cgi-bin/table.cgi?q=content%2Fi...

Ah, I didn't see that there was a table. I was eyeballing it and did a pretty bad job. I meant to go up to that peak a bit after the 94 marker. Not the point really, though. The point is that there's a visibly larger difference in the first few years compared to the last one, if we ignore one giant dip in each, which seems as though they're an external effect. But I really don't have a strong stance about the interpretation except to say that 'you can read it in multiple ways depending on how you do it'.

This seems to be quite a change from calling gd1 a crackpot simply because his or her interpretation differs from yours.

I never did that. I called him a crackpot because his defense of his opinion was insisting that it was true, switching datasets, and avoiding challenges. Those are crackpot behaviors. I invited him to do a better job defending his point. Haven't I explained that enough times by now?

> (If it's not obvious to you that the trend, rather than the current value, is the interesting data, then this whole discussion is a waste of time.)

Both are interesting. The only thing that isn't is your needless snark. Yes, a linear regression fit shows a slight upward trend, but the current value is also worth noting because the whole point of the article is that the Marshall Islands are being submerged. If the sea level is at the same point it was 23 years ago, then it seems there are three possibilities to consider:

1. The islands were similarly submerged 23 years ago.

2. The sea level data is somehow inaccurate.

3. Sea levels are at the same point, but geological facters may be causing the islands to sink.

What's wrong with snark?

You left out a possibility:

1. The islands were similarly submerged 23 years ago. [close to submerging, but sure]

2. The sea level data is somehow inaccurate. [always must be included]

3. Sea levels are at the same point, but geological factors may be causing the islands to sink.

4. The sea levels are generally higher, but are currently in a lower point in their regular cycle - similar to what happened in 1998.

Now, I won't make any claim either way about this without doing more research. But it should be abundantly clear that the value oscillates (with several effects that have different periods) and therefore you must include those in your list of possible explanations. And also that the instantaneous value, taken in a vacuum (ignoring all predictions we can make from the periodic effects), is utterly useless for predicting what will happen in the next 1-50 years.

I think everyone agrees that the sea level is oscillating around a positive trend. The disagreement seems to be about: a) how steep it is, and b) whether the rise poses an immediate or serious problem for humanity.

gd1 posted the actual empirical sea level data which shows clearly that sea level is not rising as significantly in this region as is claimed. You then called him a crackpot, an ad hominem response. Your denialism in the face of actual scientific factual data is more likely to be the crackpot science-denialist position.

a) you don't win points for using the buzzphrase "ad hominem". fyi, the capital-L-capital-F as-taught-in-high-school Logical Fallacy 'ad hominem' refers to insulting a person in lieu of an actual argument. Hopefully we can agree that I've in fact argued my point in detail.

b) I argued that:

1. he is behaving like a crackpot, for a commonly-accepted understanding of the word 'crackpot'

2. that he has not adequately defended his position against challenges

3. that the data does not show what he claims ('refuting' and 'denying' are very different things)

Now, I agree that the data he posted " shows clearly that sea level is not rising as significantly in this region as is claimed". You'll hear no objection from me. Fortunately, that is not the claim gd1 made, nor the claim I attempted to refute.

And I stand by my (admittedly easier-to-defend) position that: my post was pointing out that he's getting harangued for defending his point abysmally. I don't really want to take a side in the actual debate, except to say that the position that the sea level HAS changed is very clearly legitimate, and if we're going to quibble over changed vs unchanged we have to agree on definitions and methodology.

Calling someone a crackpot is clearly an ad hominem argument. Claiming it is not in a followup, and then furiously downvoting is neither a valid nor legitimate response.

Hm. I think you're confused about what 'ad hominem' means. That or you're struggling to read more than one sentence at a time as a coherent thought. Do you realize that every sentence past the one with the word 'crackpot' in it was a justification of that statement?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem says "... is an attack on an argument made by attacking the character, motive, or other attribute of the person making the argument, rather than attacking the argument directly".

So can we agree, at least, that I have attacked the argument directly, at length, and therefore the "rather than..." clause is not satisfied?

Moreover, even if you don't agree with that: I have no obligation not to attack a person directly if it gets the point across faster. I am, after all, writing to the readers as much as gd1 - and if gd1 is truly irrational then I'm not particularly interested in trying to convince them of anything, nor avoiding offending them. And my attack (if you can call it that - I did say "Really hard to not take you for a crackpot", which intentionally gives him a wide benefit of the doubt) was, I think, well-justified:

The definition of the word "crackpot" that I am reaching for is that of "a person who believes absurd notions". That would be as opposed to "a person who believes rationally justifiable notions". I called gd1 a crackpot because as a way of capturing the notion that they were not defending their argument via rationality, but by insistence that it was correct, and were (as I pointed out in my original post) intentionally evading challenges to the argument - but responding to things to that did not challenge it. These to me suggest that they had no ability to defend the argument (and I invited a proper defense), and therefore that they would be a person who believes an argument without rational defense, aka a crackpot.

So I posted the argument that "gd1 is behaving like a crackpot for reasons A, B, C, D", and I listed the reasons. We can substitute the phrase "one who believes absurd notions" for "crackpot". Both the word and its substitution are derogatory terms - we can't get around that. It's a negative quality to believe absurd things.

"a person who believes absurd notions"

A person directly citing unbiased factual sources containing empirically measured data does not meet this criteria.

The data he cites refutes the claim he made so ...

You have a lot of aliases. Consider consolidating them.

He noted that the specific claims regarding amount of rise over time were not validatable from evidence, and he posted specific reliable credible third party sources that validated his claim.

Yet here we are several hours later, long enough for every last person to review the data and still many aliases claim it is not so. A notable exclusion is these person's lack of data, but rather reposted claims supposing to refute empirical data, while offering no sources whatsoever. What may we then conclude about those posters other than that they are unreliable sources of data who do not respect the scientific method and actual verifiable data?

What do you mean by 'aliases'? Do you think those posters are me? Should I be wondering if you, kevinskii, and gd1 are the same person?

S/he didn't post anything that validated his claim. S/he posted additional data that continued to leave it contentious, and then pretended like it validated the claim. How is that not clear? The whole point of this is that not defending a claim is the opposite of defending it.

No. You called gd1 a crackpot because that's an easy way to gain karma when people express views contrary to the HN consensus.

No, I didn't do it for that reason. Does karma do anything? I wrote a Chrome plugin that hides my karma score anyway so I'm not sure what it is..

I enjoy meta-arguments and there's a certain satisfaction to trying to set things straight. It devolved into a nightmare though, but it was still decently good practice at arguing.

> and then furiously downvoting

Isn't the downvote karma threshold 750?

I believe it's 500.

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