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Most Americans see catastrophic weather events worsening
- mayneack 7y agoThey may be right, but likely not for the right reasons. People also consistently think crime is getting worse even when it's getting better. https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/11/16/voters-perceptions-of-crime-continue-to-conflict-with-reality/ https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/11/16/voters-perc...
- wcunning 7y agoEven at the end of the parent article here, it says that scientists have no proof that hurricanes are hitting land more often. Other sources I've read say that they're not even more powerful or more frequent (the data is too noisy to draw a conclusion), though this one says that they are bringing greater masses of water onto land, which increases flooding. The real stat that's generally used to support worsening impacts is the cost of each storm. That's a poor statistic because it conflates the increased urbanization, general higher cost of buildings and real property and the greater number of buildings in coastal areas.
- ashleyn 7y agoClimate change is nothing to sneer at but it seems like it's now acceptable to make dubious claims about weather disasters and link every single one to climate change in some fashion. When really the picture is more nuanced; there's not necessarily any solid proof beyond cost of rebuilding that link recent hurricanes to climate change. Perhaps another example of primarily-political "junk" climate science is the 12-year figure. All these claims with no proof actually hurt the movement to remedy the very real, yet long-term issue facing us. When discussing climate change with the average person, I get strong vibes of post-9/11 US, the idea that there is now a problem so incredibly urgent that any justification for extreme and illiberal policy is suddenly acceptable. Reddit now casually bandies about the idea of raiding Brazil to preserve its forest, in a rather disappointing mirror-image of early-2000s neoconservatism. In the face of fear we seem lose our values as Americans incredibly quickly.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- Scarblac 7y agoAny extreme and illiberal policy is now acceptable - - except for just burning less fossil fuel.
- kickopotomus 7y agoI am not sure about what other weather disasters you are referring to but hurricanes in particular are closely tied to ocean temperatures. Warmer water increases both the formation rate and severity of hurricanes[1][2]. As the oceans get warmer, we should expect longer hurricane seasons more intense storms as a result. [1]: https://spaceplace.nasa.gov/hurricanes/en/ https://spaceplace.nasa.gov/hurricanes/en/ [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulf_Stream https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulf_Stream
- wcunning 7y agoBut the data are too noisy to draw the conclusion that we are already observing that predicted effect with certainty. It's not that that hypothesis is unreasonable, in fact my non-climatologist understanding is that it's very likely true. The question is what is the effect size for the recorded temperature increase to date, and what I've read says that it's both been up and down enough that we're not sure yet [0]. This is in contrast to the myriad news stories that state that we're losing billions of dollars per year due to global warming caused hurricanes. They do not provide nuance, but rather use terms that outright state causal links and major consequences. Also, before you say that Reason is right wing (sorta granted, though less so these days as libertarians move out of coalition with the right), Ron Bailey is not a climate change denier. Read some of his other coverage before you slam the source. [0] https://reason.com/2019/01/17/hurricane-losses/ https://reason.com/2019/01/17/hurricane-losses/
- Isamu 7y ago>scientists have no proof that hurricanes are hitting land more often For the curious, data by decade is here (for the US): https://www.nhc.noaa.gov/pastdec.shtml https://www.nhc.noaa.gov/pastdec.shtml This topic sometimes comes up because there are graphs that show the total number of hurricanes increasing, but the criticism is that shows bias because over time we began to observe more hurricanes that never made landfall. [edit] and here is by-year, up to 2018. https://www.aoml.noaa.gov/hrd/tcfaq/E23.html https://www.aoml.noaa.gov/hrd/tcfaq/E23.html By a quick check it seems these numbers do not match the landfall-by-decade counts above. But these are labeled "impacts/landfalls", so maybe there is some categorization difference? Is an "impact" different from a "landfall"? [edit 2] here's one difference: * - Indicates that the hurricane center did not make a U.S. landfall (or substantially weakened before making landfall), but did produce the indicated hurricane-force winds over land. In this case, central pressure is given for the time that the hurricane winds along the coast were the strongest.
- mehrdadn 7y agoIn 2019 we assess the current state of the world by using data that goes until... 2004?!
- mehrdadn 7y agoI see the number of category 5 hurricanes since 2000 (that's 19 years ago) was 13. The previous 13 were since 1955 (that's 45 years before that). Is it unfounded to think there's been a statistically significant increase? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Category_5_Atlantic_hurricanes#Systems https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Category_5_Atlantic_hu...
- refurb 7y agoCould be. Until someone does the analysis to look at variability over decades, that could be due to natural variations.
- mehrdadn 7y agoYou are imagining this >3x increase "could be" natural variation... with what probability? Are you sure you're hanging on to something more like a 50% hope rather than a <5% hope here? Until someone does the analysis (which I bet they very much have, if you look for it), you find it somehow more plausible that it's natural variation, rather than the quite-obvious explanation that the rate has in fact increased?
- Junk_Collector 7y agoIt appears that Hurricanes are fairly clustered when broken down by decades so that the most active time period for category 5 hurricanes was the 2000's with the second most active being the 1930's followed by the 1960's. It's also difficult to determine the actual number of Cat 5 hurricanes in the past because previously they could only be measured roughly at Landfall and more modern measures can monitor any hurricane in existence meaning that there will be an increase in Cat 5's because of measurement bias. The impact of this is unfortunately, almost impossible to say with certainty. This is all covered in the first few paragraphs of the link you posted. To claim a 3x increase would be an example of binning your data to exaggerate effect.
- mehrdadn 7y ago
- mc32 7y agoRight. I don’t know for sure either. The constant alarmist nature of news does contribute to people being alarmed and believing that things are worse. In any event even if the frequency and magnitude aren't deviating from historical records, coastal populations are increasing all over the world, so all else being equal vastly more people are affected.
- newnewpdro 7y agoCrime often is getting worse while statistics saying the contrary are cherry-picked or plain lies. There have been numerous reports of police departments changing their reporting and classification of crimes as their regions came under scrutiny for crime rates. Furthermore, sometimes the crime rate per capita goes down but the population size increases more than enough to make up for it. What you see on the news and the streets is absolute crime numbers, not how much of it exists per person in a given region.
- dsfyu404ed 7y ago>Crime often is getting worse while statistics saying the contrary are cherry-picked or plain lies. Outside a select few urban areas that actively have a policy of not engaging in enforcement action against petty property crime (which results in an increased amount of this crime per capita because the people that do it do it a lot more and more people do it at the margins) this is not true. Violent crime is down across the board and has been trending down since the 90s (though the decline isn't as steep as it used to be) by basically any measure you care to use.
- jeffdavis 7y agoNo, what you see on the news is whatever sells news. If murder is commonplace, then it's not news. If murder is rare, each event becomes a media storm. Read The Better Angels of our Nature by Steven Pinker. Violence has consistently been on a long downward trend. There may be spikes localized by time or space, but it's doubtful we are reversing the trend on any long timescale or large area. Police can change some classifications here or there, but it's kind of hard to reclassify homicides.
- camjohnson26 7y agoExactly. 561 people were murdered in Chicago in 2018, 337 people were killed in mass shootings across the entire United States. The media unsurprisingly focuses on the mass shootings because they are unexpected and rare.
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- mehrdadn 7y agoPeople sometimes think crime is getting worse because the total amount of crimes actually does increase (so they really do see more of it), whereas the per-capita amount falls. I don't see this clearly translating to the hurricane situation.
- glenra 7y agoNope! In recent decades the violent crime rate has dropped in the US faster than the population has increased so the total number of crimes is actually fewer today than it was in 1990, even as a raw non-population-adjusted number. My own theory is that as bad events get rarer they cross some threshold that makes them become more newsworthy when they do happen, so that we hear about them more, and salience bias - the fact that examples quickly come to mind - make us think it's happening more. This applies as much to hurricanes and mass shootings and "hate crimes" and violent crime in general as it did to shark attacks in the mythic "summer of the shark". Once the media has an existing narrative they can hang a story on (eg "it's just like Columbine!") they find it easy to report more stories like that, until eventually we all get sick of that topic and move on to something else.
- mehrdadn 7y agoI wasn't referring to the US as a whole, but just instances where I've seen this happen. Most recently it was just in the past few weeks right here on HN that someone said crime had risen in Seattle and someone else said it had fallen, and it turned out the discrepancy was due to population adjustment. But I'd expect there's a fair bit of the effect you're saying too.
- jsight 7y agoIn really general terms: An average climate change skeptic is a person who believes that strong hurricanes are just the weather and cold winters are proof that climate change isn't happening. An average climate change believer is a person who believes that cold winters are just the weather and strong hurricanes are evidence of climate change. Neither of those parties have fully thought out positions.
- westurner 7y agoHow about a link to a chart indicating frequency and severity of severe weather events? The Paris Agreement is predicated upon the link between human actions, climate change, and severe weather events. 195 countries have signed the Paris Agreement with consensus that what we're doing is causing climate change. Here are some climate-relevant poll questions: Do you think the costs of disaster relief will continue to increase due to frequency and severity of severe weather events? Does it make sense to spend more on avoiding further climate change now rather than even more on disaster relief later? How can you help climate refugees? Do you donate to DoD and National Guards? Do you donate to NGOs? How can we get better at handling more frequent and more severe disasters?
- simplecomplex 7y ago1 in 4 Americans think the sun orbits the earth. More Americans can identify the Three Stooges than the three branches of government. Almost half of Americans don’t believe in evolution. What most Americans believe doesn’t hold much weight.
- kyleblarson 7y agoWhen those Americans vote their beliefs do hold demonstrable weight.
- ryeights 7y agoI absolutely agree. If you look at Atlantic hurricane statistics reaching back to the 1920s it’s apparent that hurricanes aren’t actually becoming more frequent or more intense. This headline sounds like the NYPost suggesting falsehoods to support a narrative and offloading responsibility for those falsehoods onto a vague “majority of Americans”.
- tabtab 7y agoMost Americans probably think news quality is getting worse.
- magduf 7y agoThese things may all be true, but remember that these people also vote, so you can't just casually dismiss them.
- westurner 7y agoThe stratifications on this are troubling. > But there are wide differences in assessments by partisanship. Nine in 10 Democrats think weather disasters are more extreme, compared with about half of Republicans. It's not a partisan issue: we all pay these costs. > Majorities of adults across demographic groups think weather disasters are getting more severe, according to the poll. College-educated Americans are slightly more likely than those without a degree to say so, 79 percent versus 69 percent. Weather disasters are getting more severe. It is objectively, quantitatively true that weather disasters are getting more frequent and more severe.
- jvagner 7y agoBeen spending the better part of this week with the "Yeah, but sh*t happens.." relatives. They don't deny what you say, but it doesn't seem plausible that we will do anything about it, so why worry? and why are you worked up? These are the same relatives whose house was destroyed by Sandy and they're still waiting on paperwork and final checks so they can own the rebuild free and clear.
- dsfyu404ed 7y agoThere's no reason to worry when you have enough clout to get a check. It's not the jerks with beach-front cottages that get flooded that are gonna get screwed here, it's the people who's trailers are blown away who will be screwed. When you have a safety net (in this case that safety net it enough combined clout to convince the government to bail you out) you have much less incentive to do anything about the problem.
- magduf 7y ago>it's the people who's trailers are blown away who will be screwed I don't really see the problem here. They're the ones voting for the leadership that denies climate change, they're the ones watching Fox News, they're the ones who go to churches where their pastors tell them that God loves rich people more and that climate change is a hoax. They're also the ones who refuse to give up their guns and vote for anyone who sides that way, and they're the ones who insist on driving huge, gas-guzzling vehicles everywhere (and then complaining about gas prices) instead of living in town, and want the rest of the country to finance their unsustainable rural lifestyle. I have no sympathy.
- bluedino 7y agoIs there any explaination for the severe weather in the 1930's? From Wikipedia: >> Only in six seasons—1932, 1933, 1961, 2005, 2007 and 2017—has more than one Category 5 hurricane formed. Assuming global warming is to blame for the last 20 years.
- mfer 7y agoIf you take a look at the studies you'll find old data has issues because of changes in how hurricanes were measured. Hurricanes are now monitored by satellites. Many of them are short lived and never seen by a ship or other system that would record it. Data collection prior to satellites would not have observed these. A good resource can be found at https://www.gfdl.noaa.gov/global-warming-and-hurricanes/ https://www.gfdl.noaa.gov/global-warming-and-hurricanes/. They talk about normalizing the data and look at the impact of global warming on hurricanes. Numerous studies are quoted.
- Izkata 7y agoThey both coincide roughly with the sunspot maximum of the Gleissburg cycle.
- mfer 7y agoDo people feel a change or observe a change? People aren't logical and are easily lead. Looking at why people perceive something can be insightful. For example, in the Atlantic basin there has been a bunch of work to try to measure hurricane changes. See https://www.gfdl.noaa.gov/global-warming-and-hurricanes/ https://www.gfdl.noaa.gov/global-warming-and-hurricanes/. So far, the impact has been minimal (small increases in rain amounts). Do we build more in the hurricane zones? Is more talk on it leading people to feel things are worse? Are they worse and if so what measurements show it? Are more people impacted because of population growth?
- dvtrn 7y agoDo people feel a change or observe a change? I'm inclined to put down chips on the former; I often see and participate in conversations about local weather and often people making the conflation that a one off weather event == climate. The two are linked, but I've always understood the difference to be that climate = (weatherevent() x time) where time is usually on the scale of years; that it's much harder to fully assess climate by remarking on a couple days of severe thunderstorms. Opening myself up to correction here
- nategri 7y agoWhether or not it's factually true, this is good news.
- nemo44x 7y agoThere are more people on Earth than ever before. There is more media on Earth than ever before. Because of the fact there are more people, there are many more developments. Places that were uninhabited now have large communities, infrastructure, etc. Weather that occurs in these places is going to create more damage than before. There is now more media to report on it. So, yes perhaps there are more catastrophic weather events than before. Is climate change the reason for this? Or are there simply more things to be destroyed by weather than ever before? A combination of this?
- tehjoker 7y agoI talked to a climate scientist about hurricanes a few years ago. He said that while the frequency of hurricanes is probably not increasing (forming a hurricane is a tricky thing) there is some evidence that they are becoming more intense (there's more heat energy to increase speeds). https://www.gfdl.noaa.gov/global-warming-and-hurricanes/ https://www.gfdl.noaa.gov/global-warming-and-hurricanes/
- rambojohnson 7y agoamericans are generally a hyper-sensationalized people.