During the primary debates last night, Democratic candidates said some pretty crazy stuff. Andrew Yang won the award for the best crazy talking point, in my opinion.

Democratic Candidate Andrew Yang during televised debate – image: screencap from YouTube

He was talking about how we are too late to do anything about climate change:

Yang, referring to the U.S. share of global carbon dioxide emissions, said:

“The important number in this is 15 percent of global emissions…”

“We like to act as if we’re 100 percent. Even if we were to curb our emissions dramatically, the Earth is going to get warmer. The last four years have been the four warmest years in history. We are too late. We are 10 years too late.”

So, we are too late. Chill. But then came this laughable bombshell:

“We need to do everything we can to start moving the climate in the right direction…” “….but we also need to start moving our people to higher ground—and the best way to do that is to put economic resources into your hands so you can protect yourself and your families.”

Riiight. Yang, who’s a tech guru, apparently has no idea how fast sea level is rising, like maybe we can’t outrun it or something. For example, Honolulu is just 1.49 mm per year.

Sea level rise, Honolulu, HI (NOAA)

New York city, almost twice twice that, but a mere 2.84mm per year

Sea level rise, The Battery NY, (NOAA)

Globally, 3.28 mm per year, still nothing to worry about:

But Yang’s advice probably comes from reading too much climate porn, like this:

My post from 2010, still valid today:

Freaking out about NYC sea level rise is easy to do when you don’t pay attention to history

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