Hacker News

El Niño is flooding California's coasts with the highest tides to come(gizmodo.com)

111 points by gumby 5 hours ago | 38 comments

The tides are really high right now. It's very obvious that the water is much higher than usual. Can't wait until it starts raining on me more than usual too... I'll have extra water from both directions.

[–] xiaoyu2006 4 hours ago

I am in OC and newport beach really suffered...

[–] gumby 4 hours ago

A lot of Bay Area folks thought they were immune

[–] bix6 1 hour ago

> “Catastrophes will start unrolling without significant state and federal government response,” Shilling predicted.

Realistically how much can they do? Sandbags and berms but it’s not like they can just raise these areas a few feet.

[–] jacquesm 3 hours ago

Four days ago.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50236455

This kind of thing will be as regular as clockwork in a few years time. Still there are a lot of people that will simply not believe it.

[–] adriand 2 hours ago

The deniers have transitioned to doomers. Originally they said we needn’t fight climate change because it wasn’t real. Now that’s it’s undeniable they say we can’t fight climate change because it’s too late.

[–] conception 2 hours ago

That’s because the ultra wealthy are funding new talking points.

[–] yongjik 1 hour ago

These days I believe the ultra-wealthy are just a fun scapegoat. Sure, they are guilty of many sins, but most of the time people mention them, there's never any concrete plan to make things better, other than a vague "eat the rich," which we all know will never happen. (And it's really unclear how eating the rich allows us to, say, move around without burning more gas.)

These rhetorics have a distinct feeling of "I found another out-group to which I will assign all the blame, which is very convenient, because I don't want to ever hear 'The earth is going to shit and I could have done something about it.'"

[–] fwip 51 minutes ago

One nice benefit of eating the rich, is that we're then free to use the wealth they've hoarded in ways that benefit the public.

[–] SecretDreams 1 hour ago

In addition to making us feel better, eating the rich takes them off the table and might allow democracy to slowly work again, whereby decisions are made by the people for the people. Lots of damage to undo ahead of any of this, though. And it starts with eating the rich... Or at least looking at wealth taxes, banning lobbying, getting money out of politics as best we can, etc.

We cannot solve/tackle climate change when we don't even have functional governments that actually try to genuinely support their citizens needs.

[–] taneq 2 hours ago

“We’re going to follow the Four Stage Strategy.”

[–] echelon 3 hours ago

The people you think don't believe it do believe it. They use it as a statistic.

I live in the Southeast and hear the "guns in America kill fewer people than lack of AC in Europe" line all the time.

The battle is "not my problem", not "that's not happening".

[–] jimt1234 3 hours ago

The line I hear all the time is: "Why do I care if sea levels rise a couple of inches? I don't own a house on the beach!"

[–] ctkhn 3 hours ago

The craziest to me is the people who do own houses on the beach who want the government to bail them out. Even without El Nino or climate change, that's a hazardous location. Do not ask for my insurance or tax dollars to (literally) bail you out!

[–] bee_rider 44 minutes ago

Lots of areas have natural hazards. Should we help out people hit by tornadoes or floods?

With climate change induced problems, at least there’s some justification. We collectively (as a country… you and I personally might not have been alive or voting when the mistake was made) failed to elect governments that would prevent it, so we we collectively get to pay for it.

[–] Joakal 1 hour ago

Good news, insurance companies are running for the exits on locations increasingly at risk. Homeowners are left screaming in fear of losing their homes after they realised insurance companies can just refuse to offer insurance after just 1 year. Even new homeowners desperate for a home are realising after they bought a new home in a floodplain, it turned out that developers/government tricked them into buying a massive liability where in a few years their million dollar asset becomes nearly worthless.

Bad news, neoliberal governments (even in Australia) are responding to this with socialising the risk via government insurance where rest of population who picked low-risk locations will still have to cover the high risk homes. Oh, and the government are still approving new homes in high-risk areas instead of increasing denisification of low-risk areas close to cities.

It's really painful to watch all this play out slowly.

[–] latexr 1 hour ago

“You think the people [who own houses by the beach] aren’t just going to sell their homes and move?”

https://youtu.be/RLqXkYrdmjY?t=4m05s

[–] lazide 3 hours ago

If they might convince some fool to do it, they’d be fools not too eh?

That’s a lot of money!

[–] bathtub365 2 hours ago

Why shouldn’t insurance cover it if it’s in their policy?

[–] analog31 1 hour ago

Many policies don't cover flooding. You're expected to get supplemental flood insurance, which is not cheap.

[–] redanddead 2 hours ago

RIP insurance industry

[–] Ralfp 2 hours ago

Don't worry, most of those plans don't even cover floods.

[–] bushbaba 1 hour ago

Flood insurance is a seperate policy often through the government.

[–] bilsbie 3 hours ago

This is more likely to be climate change related. It’s climate denial to try blaming it on El Niño.

[–] tmnvix 3 hours ago

I think a common view is that the strength (and possibly frequency?) of El Niño is a symptom of climate change.

[–] czinck 2 hours ago

Yes, several studies have concluded that climate change is making both El Niño and La Niña stronger, and making the switch between them quicker. And "stronger" here just means the temperature difference. Climate change is also raising the baseline temperature, so the actual effects of an El Niño of a given temperature difference (which this year is already the biggest on record and climbing) is expected to be worse.

[–] georgemcbay 3 hours ago

> This is more likely to be climate change related. It’s climate denial to try blaming it on El Niño.

It is entirely related to both and I'm pretty sure Gizmodo isn't trying to project blame away from climate change here.

Climate change is making unusually adverse weather events more common in general. El Niño is a cyclical event that results in an increase in adverse weather events from whatever the current baseline is.

As climate change worsens things on average, it'll worsen things even more when combined with amplification events like El Niño.

[–] antonvs 1 hour ago

The current El Niño has broken numerous records for ocean temperatures:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2026/10/28/this-el-ni...

El Niño is part of the proximate cause for the current water level rise in the Pacific; climate change is the root cause.

[–] nusoone 1 hour ago

Way too much fresh water, won’t be able to keep draining the Colorado river

[–] rationalist 3 hours ago

I remember when Gizmodo just posted cool technology stuff. I even had my stuff featured on their website a couple of times.

Edit: I haven't been on Gizmodo for a long time. Do they also have a rule saying you can't criticize them?

This inspired me to checkout Hackaday again. Thankfully they still just post cool tech stuff (even after they sold the website a few years back). I'm not cool enough to have my stuff featured on HAD though lol.

[–] Aachen 2 hours ago

I didn't vote on your comment but consider that people might just find the comment nonconstructive or uninteresting (which is what the guidelines say to base votes on) rather than that there is a "rule against criticising Gizmodo"

[–] dghlsakjg 2 hours ago

Like so much in today’s world, this is kinda Peter thiel’s fault.

He bankrolled the Hulk Hogan lawsuit against Gawker as revenge because they reported on him being gay. The judgement forced gawker into bankruptcy where it was scooped up by private equity. The new managers gutted the place and forced the writers and editors to publish clickbait garbage instead of doing journalism.

That’s why Gizmodo looks nothing like what you remember.

[–] justinhj 2 hours ago

Journalism like publishing private sexual encounters that were secretly recorded and called it news?

[–] 0c3ca83 2 hours ago

I forgot that freedom of the press only applies when you personally approve of what they're printing.

[–] latexr 1 hour ago

Freedom of the press, like freedom of speech, applies specifically to government intervention. As a private citizen, you are free to dislike or disapprove of what is being reported. That’s all your parent comment did, they didn’t call for censorship or infringing on freedom of the press, they simply displayed discontent with one case of tabloid-like news.

[–] 0c3ca83 1 hour ago

Right, I forgot that the press needs to conform to your preferences on what they publish. It also slipped my mind that the court system wasn't government run.

Unless you're asserting that you're the government?