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The over-sensationalization is purely the media. It's not coming from the models or the scientists running them. Please don't over generalize your anecdotal ex
by dbingham 8y ago
The over-sensationalization is purely the media. It's not coming from the models or the scientists running them. Please don't over generalize your anecdotal experience to an entire field. Especially not with something this important.
The models have consistently undershot the mark: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/climate-science-predictions-prove-too-conservative/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/climate-science-p...
As for climate disasters, we've had Katrina (2005) - 3rd most intense landfalling storm in the US in 100 years [1], Irma (2017) - the strongest observed in the Atlantic in terms of maximum sustained winds since Wilma [2], Wilma (2005) - the second-most intense tropical cyclone recorded in the Western Hemisphere, after Hurricane Patricia in 2015 [3], Patricia (2015) - the second-most intense tropical cyclone on record worldwide [4], Harvey (2017) - tied with Hurricane Katrina as the costliest tropical cyclone on record[5] - which also caused "500 year floods" (3rd time in 3 years [6]). And that's just a sampling.
For a while now, we've gotten a new "hottest month on record" every few months. And we've pretty consistently gotten "hottest year" on record every few years (increasingly every year or every other year). If you go look at Wunderground's calendar view, you can see the historic temperature records for each day - lows and highs. With few exceptions, the records have all been set in the past few decades. With those records have come any number of record breaking heatwaves, many of which have been very deadly. One of the most recent occurred in Pakistan and saw a temperature of 50.2C (122F) in the city of Nawabshah. [7] Seriously, just google the term "record breaking heatwave" and do some reading.
You may not have experienced the extreme effects over-exaggerating TV anchors talked about in your childhood, but the world is experiencing climate effects as bad as the models predicted, or worse. Please don't use your personal anecdotal experience to undercut the validity of climate models.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurricane_Katrina https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurricane_Katrina
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurricane_Irma https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurricane_Irma
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurricane_Wilma https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurricane_Wilma
[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurricane_Patricia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurricane_Patricia
[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurricane_Harvey https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurricane_Harvey
[6] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/08/29/houston-is-experiencing-its-third-500-year-flood-in-3-years-how-is-that-possible/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.ca3ad04bdbe0 https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/08/29/houst...
[7] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/may/02/pakistani-city-breaks-april-record-with-day-of-50c-heat-nawabshah https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/may/02/pakistani-city...
- johnmaguire2013 8y agoI agree with most of what you stated however... > If you go look at Wunderground's calendar view, you can see the historic temperature records for each day - lows and highs. With few exceptions, the records have all been set in the past few decades. How long have we been tracking these records?
- dbingham 8y agoSince 1850s: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_temperature_record https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_temperature_record
- perl4ever 8y agoIf there were no trend, then there would still be new records established over time, because the longer we keep records for, the more time there is for rare events to occur. So I think that in order to argue that new records are evidence in favor of a trend, one needs to quantify the likelihood of it not being due to chance somehow.