US Politics Mega-thread - Page 6308

On November 25 2016 00:40 farvacola wrote:
Trump's coalition won't give anyone "power for decades".......

On November 25 2016 00:42 xDaunt wrote:

Trump stole the Democrat's blue collar base. If he cements that with his policies and then undoes some of the hardened opposition against him from the past election, the democrats are fucked.

MIAMI — Real estate agents looking to sell coastal properties usually focus on one thing: how close the home is to the water’s edge. But buyers are increasingly asking instead how far back it is from the waterline. How many feet above sea level? Is it fortified against storm surges? Does it have emergency power and sump pumps?

Rising sea levels are changing the way people think about waterfront real estate. Though demand remains strong and developers continue to build near the water in many coastal cities, homeowners across the nation are slowly growing wary of buying property in areas most vulnerable to the effects of climate change.

A warming planet has already forced a number of industries — coal, oil, agriculture and utilities among them — to account for potential future costs of a changed climate. The real estate industry, particularly along the vulnerable coastlines, is slowly awakening to the need to factor in the risks of catastrophic damage from climate change, including that wrought by rising seas and storm-driven flooding.

But many economists say that this reckoning needs to happen much faster and that home buyers urgently need to be better informed. Some analysts say the economic impact of a collapse in the waterfront property market could surpass that of the bursting dot-com and real estate bubbles of 2000 and 2008.

The fallout would be felt by property owners, developers, real estate lenders and the financial institutions that bundle and resell mortgages.

Over the past five years, home sales in flood-prone areas grew about 25 percent less quickly than in counties that do not typically flood, according to county-by-county data from Attom Data Solutions, the parent company of RealtyTrac. Many coastal residents are rethinking their investments and heading for safer ground.

“I don’t see how this town is going to defeat the water,” said Brent Dixon, a resident of Miami Beach who plans to move north and away from the coast in anticipation of worsening king tides, the highest predicted tide of the year. “The water always wins.”

These concerns have taken on a new urgency since the presidential election of Donald J. Trump, who has long been a skeptic of global warming, claiming in 2012 that it was a concept “created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing noncompetitive.”

A real estate developer, Mr. Trump is also the owner of several South Florida properties, including Mar-a-Lago, a 20-acre site that stretches between the Atlantic Ocean and the Intracoastal Waterway in Palm Beach.

Mr. Trump’s recent selection of Myron Ebell to lead his Environmental Protection Agency transition team intensified these worries in Florida and among many climate scientists. Mr. Ebell has helped lead the charge against the scientific consensus that global warming exists and is caused by people.

On November 25 2016 01:25 RvB wrote:

Tell that to people living in countries of which half is under sea level like my own. Realising somethibg is a danger doesn't mean you're a fanatic.

Anyway the 'water always wins' argument is bullshit. We've been battling the water for decades and it's possible. It does cost a lot of money though.

On November 25 2016 01:32 farvacola wrote:
How is nakedly asserting that water levels will rise, global warming notwithstanding, a fair point?

ow High Will It Go?

Most predictions say the warming of the planet will continue and likely will accelerate. Oceans will likely continue to rise as well, but predicting the amount is an inexact science. A recent study says we can expect the oceans to rise between 2.5 and 6.5 feet (0.8 and 2 meters) by 2100, enough to swamp many of the cities along the U.S. East Coast. More dire estimates, including a complete meltdown of the Greenland ice sheet, push sea level rise to 23 feet (7 meters), enough to submerge London

On November 25 2016 01:42 farvacola wrote:

Thank you for the source, the lack of which I was previously referring to. That said, the article doesn't support the notion that sea levels are rising as part of an irreversible trend, it merely describes the manner in which they are rising. Whether or not the three factors mentioned can be at least partially remedied by human intervention is really what is at issue here, and simply asserting that there is nothing we can do is not a fair point without some kind of evidence.

On November 25 2016 01:44 RvB wrote:
I've been living below sea level my whole life without any problems. There are things like dikes, dunes etc. to keep out the water. It's a big industry in The Netherlands because a lot of our country is below sea level. Of course this costs money but it's certainly possible.

On November 25 2016 00:42 xDaunt wrote:

Trump stole the Democrat's blue collar base. If he cements that with his policies and then undoes some of the hardened opposition against him from the past election, the democrats are fucked.

A think tank funded by Donald Trump’s Secretary of Education pick recently advocated for putting kids back in the workforce.

The Acton Institute, a conservative nonprofit that is said to have received thousands of dollars in donations from Betsy DeVos and her family, posted an essay to its blog this month that called child labor “a gift our kids can handle.”

“Let us not just teach our children to play hard and study well, shuffling them through a long line of hobbies and electives and educational activities,” said the post’s author, Joseph Sunde. “A long day’s work and a load of sweat have plenty to teach as well.”

Child labor isn’t universally forbidden in the U.S.― actors and newspaper deliverers are two exceptions― but it is tightly regulated.

DeVos was a member of Acton’s Board of Directors for 10 years and while it’s unclear how much influence she currently has on the organization, its homepage now prominently features a message congratulating DeVos on her nomination.

The essay raises serious questions about the woman who would potentially be in charge of U.S. public schools. Education advocates have already expressed concern about DeVos’ history of supporting school voucher programs.

“In nominating DeVos, Trump makes it loud and clear that his education policy will focus on privatizing, defunding and destroying public education in America,” American Federation of Teachers president Randi Weingarten said.

“She has lobbied for failed schemes, like vouchers — which take away funding and local control from our public schools — to fund private schools at taxpayers’ expense,” the National Education Association said. “These schemes do nothing to help our most-vulnerable students while they ignore or exacerbate glaring opportunity gaps. She has consistently pushed a corporate agenda to privatize, de-professionalize and impose cookie-cutter solutions to public education.”

Trump’s team did not immediately return a request for comment.

On November 25 2016 01:50 BigFan wrote:

The question is, if say water levels keep rising, do you really think that the Netherlands can just keep pouring tons of money into it and it'll stay afloat as a result? When I visited Italy, there was talk about Venice going underwater in the next 50 years or so due to rising water levels. Not saying that will happen to the Netherlands but it certainly puts things into perspective.