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I don't think getting into the minutiae of drought data, or the causes of wildfires, is going to get us anywhere. The claim that evidence is scant or not would

by inimino 10y ago

I don't think getting into the minutiae of drought data, or the causes of wildfires, is going to get us anywhere. The claim that evidence is scant or not would need to take into account all the evidence on the effects of climate change on current weather events. You could cherry-pick tons of evidence to support either position, if that's your thing. If you wanted to shed some light on the topic of the article, it would be more interesting to see what the author's background is and follow up some of the claims about why he was fired by 538, whether he is being unfairly attacked in the media, etc. Remember that this article isn't primarily about the science, it's about the journalism. The only reason we are talking about wildfires is because you brought it up, which was really quite a stretch.

lisper 10y ago
> which was really quite a stretch It is hard to mount one's best arguments when one is operating under tight resource constraints and time pressures. HN threads get stale very quickly. > You could cherry-pick tons of evidence to support either position, if that's your thing. Heh, this whole disagreement may actually be a mistake on my part about the meaning of the word "scant." I thought "scant" meant "rare or non-existent" but it doesn't, it means "barely sufficient or adequate." So I was about to say that if there's tons of evidence to be cherry-picked then it cannot be scant. But I suppose it could be. In any case, I did finally manage to find some drought data: http://www.cgd.ucar.edu/cas/adai/papers/Dai-drought_WIRES2010.pdf http://www.cgd.ucar.edu/cas/adai/papers/Dai-drought_WIRES201... That's a review with 137 references, so the evidence doesn't look "scant" to me. But I suppose a reasonable person might disagree.
- inimino 10y ago
  Fair enough. Here is the original article[1] and a rebuttal[2], both on 538. Doesn't read like wild-eyed denialism to me. [1]: http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/disasters-cost-more-than-ever-but-not-because-of-climate-change/ http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/disasters-cost-more-than... [2]: http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/mit-climate-scientist-responds-on-disaster-costs-and-climate-change/ http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/mit-climate-scientist-re...

by inimino 10y ago

lisper 10y ago

> which was really quite a stretch It is hard to mount one's best arguments when one is operating under tight resource constraints and time pressures. HN threads get stale very quickly. > You could cherry-pick tons of evidence to support either position, if that's your thing. Heh, this whole disagreement may actually be a mistake on my part about the meaning of the word "scant." I thought "scant" meant "rare or non-existent" but it doesn't, it means "barely sufficient or adequate." So I was about to say that if there's tons of evidence to be cherry-picked then it cannot be scant. But I suppose it could be. In any case, I did finally manage to find some drought data: http://www.cgd.ucar.edu/cas/adai/papers/Dai-drought_WIRES2010.pdf http://www.cgd.ucar.edu/cas/adai/papers/Dai-drought_WIRES201... That's a review with 137 references, so the evidence doesn't look "scant" to me. But I suppose a reasonable person might disagree.

inimino 10y ago
Fair enough. Here is the original article[1] and a rebuttal[2], both on 538. Doesn't read like wild-eyed denialism to me. [1]: http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/disasters-cost-more-than-ever-but-not-because-of-climate-change/ http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/disasters-cost-more-than... [2]: http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/mit-climate-scientist-responds-on-disaster-costs-and-climate-change/ http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/mit-climate-scientist-re...