HACKER Q&A
📣 reimertz

Why doesn’t people see the seriousness in water levels rising 2.2mm?


It blows my mind that to some people, 2.2mm isn’t a big deal.

Seriously, the size of earth, the amount of coastlines, the amount of rivers connecting to the ocean, the snowballing effect on increased melting?

What is it that people don’t get?

  👤 PeterisP Accepted Answer ✓
I'm not sure that's what you intended (2.2mm - did you mean 2.2m ?), but people wouldn't even notice a 2.2 millimeter difference in their coffee cups, much less in oceans.

Even if you live right next to an ocean, or a river, or even run a hydro power plant, a 2.2mm difference in that water level is literally smaller than you can measure even if you really tried to - the natural random fluctuations of "your" water level (e.g. the effect of current, or small waves or ripples even in very low wind) are far greater than that.

👤 melling
A few days ago people were comparing the coronavirus to the flu.

And you want people to understand 2.2mm?

👤 aurizon
This is a hammer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hammer Some people are smart, some are dumb as hammers - no disrespect to hammers intended, but it is what it is...
👤 hanniabu
I think it's due to a multitude of factors:

1) It sounds like a trivial amount, it's not much more than your arm span. It's difficult to translate this to understanding how many places would be flooded.

2) There's an insane amount of fake news out there which leads to cognitive dissonance.

3) They simply don't care. You'll often hear people say "well what do you expect when you're right next to water? These people accepted the risk, it's their problem"