11 ms·

‘Potentially the worst drought in 1,200 years’: scientists on the US heatwave

144 points by ciconia 5y ago

DangitBobby 5y ago
By the time the "I told you so"s can be deployed, there isn't much we can do. With brains optimized for short-term thinking and over-optimism against all evidence (or just the innate ability to compartmentalize and ignore an imminent threat), it's like this crisis was custom built to kill off humans.
- orf 5y ago
  Humans are great at long term thinking, however capitalism is not
  - onlyrealcuzzo 5y ago
    There's a lot of evidence monarchy, dictatorship, socialism , mercantilism, and fuedalism also aren't great at long-term thinking. What's your solution? Be China during it's golden age of credit expansion? Why not be the US during it's golden age of credit expansion? I don't think there's a governing/economic silver-bullet.
    - RedXIII 5y ago
      The solution is to shift away from a system that hijacks our species' selfishness in the name of domination over nature to one where we live in harmony with the environment. Only one of the forms of government you mentioned has threatened human extinction.
      - Tempest1981 5y ago
        Can someone explain why orf and RedXIII are being heavily downvoted without explanations? Aren't their claims generally (or often) true... sure, not 100%. Please explain why you are downvoting to enhance the discussion.
        objectivetruth 5y ago
        The HN "mob consensus" is that anything even vaguely hinting at socialism or communism is ungood, and anything explicitly condemning capitalism is doubleplus ungood. It's totally safe to ignore the people who respond to this with "there is no 'what HN thinks about X', HN is just a bunch of different people..."
        loopz 5y ago
        They like many of us now, dare speak up against the official dogma of the day. However, most will argue capitalism has proven to be the most efficient way to allocate resources correctly. So it's quite unclear how to ie. incorporate externalized costs into the system, without breaking it. Accountants make for terrible leadership.
      - seryoiupfurds 5y ago
        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aral_Sea https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aral_Sea
        orf 5y ago
        Yes. This is a thing that exists. I’m not sure why it’s relevant to parents comment though.
  - ericmay 5y ago
    Looking around it seems to me these are failures of government and government policy (i.e. failures of the people - I can't even convince people to stop buying plastic bottles of water) . Capitalism and businesses operate within the context of the environment they're in. China has lots of environmental problems and they have an autocracy. Maybe the less capitalistic you country is the less environmentally friendly your country is instead. One has to think that to the extent that resources aren't subjected to the tragedy of the commons, capitalists tend to be concerned with not killing the golden goose. Look around and ask yourself which countries are at least on paper most concerned with the environment and then ask yourself what kind of economies they have. Look at Europe: Norway, Switzerland, Sweden, United Kingdom, France, Denmark, Belgium, etc... -> all highly concerned with the environment and all highly capitalist countries.
    - RedXIII 5y ago
      "Maybe doing all this cocaine is actually good for me," he said, blood dripping from his crusted nose. "Maybe it's everyone else who has a problem."
  - darkerside 5y ago
    Many individuals are pretty good at it. Many more are bad at it. Groups typically end up taking action based on the lowest common denominator. This is irrespective of ideology.
    - orf 5y ago
      Irrespective of a ideology focused around consumerism, overconsumption and short-term gain by huge corporations who pay no cost for the future damage they are causing? There isn’t any biological or otherwise necessary reason why Coke and Pepsi need to exist, and yet we are generating a huge amount of greenhouse gasses to produce it whilst choking the environment with their plastic refuse after it is consumed. I think it’s disingenuous at best to say “well capitalism has nothing to do with the current state of the captialist-run world”
      - darkerside 5y ago
        An authoritarian communist regime has proven to be just as focused on the short term, even more narrowly scoped to a small group of oligarchs, and without name of the positive byproducts of a capitalist society. Is there an alternative system that you have in mind? Because that's really the way to demonstrate this is a property of capitalism in particular, and not humans in general.
      - exporectomy 5y ago
        Coke and Pepsi give pleasure to people. In a way, that's the most important reason for anything to exist. Do you want a world without any pleasures that have any environmental costs? What would it look like? What else wouldn't exist and what would you keep despite the environmental cost?
  - missedthecue 5y ago
    If capitalism is geared for short term next quarter thinking like everyone says, why do companies like Plug Power, with their negative revenue have $17 billion valuations?
- kayodelycaon 5y ago
  “I told you so” doesn’t work as people who didn’t listen in the first place aren't likely to listen when they are clearly in the wrong. Instead, they double down and will find a way to make you the person who was wrong.
  - DangitBobby 5y ago
    I generally don't condone "I told you so"s myself. But it's very difficult to stay silent in this case when they've basically doomed the future inhabitants of this planet.
    - exporectomy 5y ago
      You don't get to say "I told you so" until after the doom has occurred. Otherwise it might turn out to be them having told you so.
      - DangitBobby 5y ago
        And now we are back to square one: my initial comment.
  - justin66 5y ago
    In the decades to come, many of those in denial and angry at those who warn about the realities involved in climate change will instead angrily blame those who issued the warnings for not having been persuasive enough. There's a relevant scene in The Last King of Scotland. [0] [0] https://blog.codinghorror.com/but-you-did-not-persuade-me/ https://blog.codinghorror.com/but-you-did-not-persuade-me/
- Arubis 5y ago
  There’s some interesting selection bias here; “survivorship bias” would be misleading in this case. Specifically, any crisis that _wasn’t_ so well-tuned to run against our species’ inbuilt shortcomings wouldn’t be so threatening, as we’d likely have addressed it and moved on.
- trhway 5y ago
  > it's like this crisis was custom built to kill off humans. dialectics instilled in me by USSR education sees nothing surprising here. Increasing quantity of human activity creates qualitatively new conditions. All systems develop from crisis to crisis, each time being forced to undergo qualitative transformation to overcome another crisis or perish otherwise (i.e. exploit the current state as much as possible, hit the crisis resulting from the over-exploitation, explore for a new state, get into it if successful, exploit...). Human civilization has become a planet scale factor while lacking planet scale means to manage its impact - that is a classic dialectical quantity vs. quality mismatch leading to a crisis which if not proactively "soft landed" will settle on its own through a catastrophic style readjustment. And if to look as an outside observer - there is some logic to it as giving that humans are on the edge of becoming a space faring civilization the humans are either to deal with the climate change on their own planet or shouldn't be able to move to the next levels of energy/technology, handling other star systems and civilizations.
- exporectomy 5y ago
  Climate change is not expected to kill off humans. You're spreading misinformation.
  - freshpots 5y ago
    It already has. What are you talking about? https://www.who.int/heli/risks/climate/climatechange/en/ https://www.who.int/heli/risks/climate/climatechange/en/
    - exporectomy 5y ago
      "kill off" not "kill".
      - freshpots 5y ago
        Like "kill off" entire villages, right?
        exporectomy 5y ago
        No. Like "kill off humans", as the OP said.
  - DangitBobby 5y ago
    There are speculative theories on a future "hothouse earth" scenario which could, in fact, drive human extinction (as if human extinction is all that matters). But yes, speculation on global human extinction or mere catastrophic societal collapse is just that: speculative. Our models aren't predictive enough to tell us, for example whether the drier, hotter climate and unpredictable weather patterns will cause food instability, mass migration, and collapse in certain regions. We can be fairly confident of one thing; people like you and me who probably won't be materially affected will continue to drive the "wait and find out" strategy.
    - exporectomy 5y ago
      The problem of climate extremists is that they have no idea what the risks to humans are, yet they want to cripple or destroy civilization just in case it's bad. There's a cost-benefit balance to be struck and people screeching about the end of the world are incapable of doing that. It's like banning the use of radio just in case hostile aliens pick up our signals and know we're here and come and attack Earth. Yea, it's a risk, yea it might kill off humans, or at least cause food instability, but it's a low risk so we decide to employ the "wait and find out" strategy. You might say aliens invading is a ridiculously low risk, unlike the catastrophes caused by climate change, but to compare them, you have to quantify the risk climate change. Nobody has, as far as I know. I've seen some predictions of costs, lives lost, sea level rise, temperature rise, but all of them are extremely tame and no worse that common disasters that we already experience and tolerate.
01100011 5y ago
CA drought is nothing new and our native plant community is evidence of such. Human driven climate change is not likely to help the situation, but without it CA would still face periodic droughts and mega droughts which would cause problems for society. If you live in CA, please take the time to learn about our native plant community and encourage the use of natives in landscaping: https://www.laspilitas.com/advanced/advecology.htm https://www.laspilitas.com/advanced/advecology.htm
- gentleman11 5y ago
  By definition, a 1200 year event is at least a little unusual
  - BuyMyBitcoins 5y ago
    >” By definition, a 1200 year event is at least a little unusual” For humans, yes. But for an ecosystem on a geologic timescale? It makes sense that native plants would be adapted to withstand events.
    - jeffbee 5y ago
      I don't see how that follows. Many forests in California are fossil remnants of a wetter, cooler climate. They cannot spread nor establish themselves in this climate, so when they get damaged by drought, disease, or fire they don't return. The native plants are not adapted to it.
      - loopz 5y ago
        Ecological systems tend to die out when confronted with extreme, lasting change. It may take thousands of years for natural systems "to adapt". On planetary scale this is just a blink of the eye, but for humans and current life it could mean devastation.
      - 01100011 5y ago
        Which forests? Redwoods?
Daishiman 5y ago
Should me more like "the new normal: like the worst droughts in 1200 years".
fencepost 5y ago
It's like rolling 2d6 for the weather each year - 2, 3, 4, 5 is a cool summer, 6-8 is human comfortable normal and most likely, 9-12 is hotter or drier than normal. Oh, and every half degree C of warming adds a pip to each side of one of the dice. 1 degree of warming? Each of those dice is now 2-7 not 1-6. 1.5 C? Now there's a 2-7 and a 3-8. Doesn't change that "6-8 is comfortable" though. Edit: I noticed but blew past the dice mention in the article, and what I'm describing is different. Dr Hayhoe describes it as replacing sides with additional 6s, but that's different. What we're experiencing is a gradual change of where the center point of the distribution curve is, but without a corresponding change in the values at which humans are comfortable (or even able to live, look up "wet bulb" in the context of climate change). Edit2: if what gets you massive heat waves are rolls of 12 or higher, adding a pip means there are now more ways to get there - (6,6) but also (5,7) and (6,7). Adding yet another pip would mean even more ways, along with the corresponding reduction in ways to get the bottom of the previous range.
- tolbish 5y ago
  The article uses that exact analogy.
  - bruce343434 5y ago
    I've noticed a trend on HN were a commenter will literally take something verbatim from the article, or maybe put it in their own words, and farm a bunch of votes.
    - paulcole 5y ago
      I do this because the market for karma-rich HN accounts is pretty vibrant. DM if interested in making an offer.
      - bruce343434 5y ago
        Who would possibly want to buy such an esoteric thing?
nabla9 5y ago
,
- gentleman11 5y ago
  Axis does not start at zero so the magnitude of the effect is exaggerated
  - delecti 5y ago
    It also looks a bit less dire when you display 2016.
- simondw 5y ago
  That's potentially misleading in a couple ways: * By default, years before 2019 aren't turned on. 2016 in particular looks fairly close to 2021. * At first glance, it looks like 2021 is plunging straight toward 0 -- but wait, the y axis starts at 1065. The whole chart only covers the range 1065-1100. This year's level is currently 98.3% of last year's! Are things still bad? Maybe, but I would want an expert interpretation, not a confusing chart.
leoh 5y ago
No problems if we just got serious about desal.
Flatcircle 5y ago
Overly dramatic articles like this do a disservice to helping convince people to be more proactive about climate change. There’s obviously no data going back 1200 years and the temperature proxies used, like ice cores, or tree rings, haven’t been consistently reliable. The truth is, no one knows what the annual temps of major cities were before about 1870. Real scientists lack the hubris to be sure of basic truths like whether dinosaurs were warm blooded or cold blooded, how general anesthesia works, how great whites mate, or even why we sleep, much less the exact ebbs and flows of 350,000 daily temperatures. So for these scientists to say they have an understanding of what the previous thousand years temps were before that, turns the science into faith and adds fuel to those who argue climate science is more religion than science. Focusing on the last 50 years is more than enough quality data to definitively prove the world is getting hotter, start there. Then provide a list of 3 basic things people can do to help lower temps themselves. ie, Campaign for nuclear power. Eat less meat, Adjust your thermostat, Change your tires, Buy an electric car, Buy better bulbs, Plant trees with friends.
- linuxftw 5y ago
  Much of the northern hemisphere was under ice thousands of years ago. Of course the Earth is warming, it has been warming since the end of the last ice age. 99% of the worlds ice coverage melted before 1900, and some people are ringing alarm bells because the remaining 1% is melting faster than whatever completely fabricated baseline.
  - treeman79 5y ago
    A look at historical sea levels is a fun way to outrage people. https://www.usgs.gov/faqs/how-does-present-glacier-extent-and-sea-level-compare-extent-glaciers-and-global-sea-level?qt-news_science_products=0#qt-news_science_products https://www.usgs.gov/faqs/how-does-present-glacier-extent-an...
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
  - 5y ago
linuxftw 5y ago
> This current drought is potentially on track to become the worst that we’ve seen in at least 1,200 years. And the reason is linked directly to human caused climate change. So, if there were worse droughts 1200+ years ago, what caused those? Of course, saying a drought is linked to warming doesn't make any sense. More heat should result in more water vapor, which should result in more rain. What I like about the climate change nonsense is any and all weather phenomenon can be linked to it. Too hot? Climate change. Too cold? Climate change. Too wet or too dry? Climate change. There's literally nothing that can't be attributed to climate change in some way.
- AlexandrB 5y ago
  > More heat should result in more water vapor, which should result in more rain. I think the reason you're being downvoted is that this is very "first-order" thinking that fails to consider changes to pressure systems, wind patterns, etc that might affect where rain falls not just how much. Even assuming you're right about rainfall increasing with warming, rain falling in the ocean does not stop a drought on land. Meanwhile, most people who have dedicated their careers to studying second and third order effects of increased temperature on the weather seem to think these things are connected. I'm more inclined to agree with them than with you.
  - mypalmike 5y ago
    It's not even accurate to a first order approximation. Ignoring all else, higher temperatures lead to higher vapor density and lower relative humidity. That is, more evaporation and less precipitation.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- polotics 5y ago
  Are you aware of the concept of greenhouse gases?
aazaa 5y ago
> We need to continue to push for urgent action on climate change The other scientists echoed that thought. The problem is that there's little consensus on what that "urgent action" entails. Fossil fuel overconsumption and the culture/economics of waste are deeply engrained behaviors for a lot of the world. There's this widespread sense that technology and/or legislation will somehow be able to roll back increases in CO2 and other greenhouse gas emissions. I think that's baloney. The last year offered a window into the future. Many industrial economies were taken offline to an unprecedented degree. And the result was... a new record high in atmospheric CO2. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/apr/07/carbon-dioxide-levels-in-atmosphere-reach-record-high https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/apr/07/carbon-d... Assuming that the underlying hypothesis is correct (that the CO2 increase is in fact what's driving temperature increases and that humans are responsible for it), the only thing that seems capable of addressing the problem in a meaningful way within the time we have left is immediate, large-scale cutbacks in consumption across the board, with industrial economies bearing the highest burden. And this is the one thing that never seems to be on the table.
- mempko 5y ago
  And just to clarify, the underlying hypothesis is correct. And your conclusion is also correct.
- abeppu 5y ago
  I finally read/listened to Jared Diamond's "Collapse" earlier this year. It discusses several cases of societies collapsing or being challenged, especially in the face of environmental damage and climate change, but also issues with neighbors. Two of the lessons that he highlights are the importance of long-term, bold plans to confront problems before they are crises, and the ability to reconsider cultural values and actually change the way that people live and society functions. That book was published in 2005 and last updated in 2011, and it was depressing to get to the last chapter which focuses on the environmental problems we face today with a kind of call to action, and acknowledge that we haven't done anything substantial yet.
  - jcranmer 5y ago
postalrat 5y ago
If this drought is caused by climate change driven by humans wouldn't it mean the science is wrong?
- guerrilla 5y ago
  What science are you referring to specifically and why would it mean that?
mmcgaha 5y ago
Back in the early/mid 80s (don't remember the year) the brook behind our house dried up. Unless that thing dries up again, I am calling bs on this 1200-year drought.
rossdavidh 5y ago
So, I believe in anthropogenic climate change, and I don't doubt that there are areas (California) seeing droughts the likes of which have not been seen in a long time, but...they are throwing a lot of things together here. In central Texas, where I live, the reservoirs are near to full, because we had a lot of rain in May. The problem is a higher than normal abundance of mosquitoes, and the foliage is all growing out of control because they have the water to do so. We are definitely having issues with power, but that's mostly due to increased population (and other issues related to changing power sources), not from excess heat. Temperatures in central Texas are in the mid 90's, which is not unusual for Texas. There's problems, sure, but not really related to climate change. When scientists try to link anything that is going wrong currently to anthropogenic climate change, they don't convince more people. If anything, they create more skeptics, because people can tell that they're not getting an objective read on the situation. There are probably scientists who are willing to provide a nuanced, balanced read on things, who would probably say that drought and wildfires in California might be related to climate change, but power shortages in Texas are not. They are not the sort of scientists who get their pictures in The Guardian.
- nverno 5y ago
  > And the reason is linked directly to human caused climate change. Lines like this seem to imply there is a single reason behind climate events, and that single reason is human caused. It's so blatantly false/misleading that anybody will read it as such.
- letitbeirie 5y ago
  The nuanced, balanced (albeit uselessly high-level) read would be that our systems were designed for more stable weather than we can reasonably expect going forward. As far as Texas' power issues go, climate change certainly isn't helping, but it's hard to blame it for Texas' power issues. Why? Because it's very easy to blame Texas' power market for Texas' power issues. The cold snap in 1989 was colder and longer, but the result was largely the same as if it had happened in Michigan. https://www.houstonchronicle.com/business/energy/article/A-tale-of-two-freezes-How-the-Texas-grid-stayed-16005807.php https://www.houstonchronicle.com/business/energy/article/A-t... Silver lining though for the environment - the invisible hand has pushed 5GW worth of Cold War-era coal plants offline since wind got cheap.
a0-prw 5y ago
1200 years is nothing. The earth is laughing at you.
guerrilla 5y ago
Here's some pictures and video of the drought if anyone's curious: https://news.sky.com/story/in-pictures-how-blistering-heatwave-is-fuelling-extreme-mega-drought-in-western-us-12336472 https://news.sky.com/story/in-pictures-how-blistering-heatwa...

144 points by ciconia 5y ago

By the time the "I told you so"s can be deployed, there isn't much we can do. With brains optimized for short-term thinking and over-optimism against all evidence (or just the innate ability to compartmentalize and ignore an imminent threat), it's like this crisis was custom built to kill off humans.

orf 5y ago
Humans are great at long term thinking, however capitalism is not
- onlyrealcuzzo 5y ago
  There's a lot of evidence monarchy, dictatorship, socialism , mercantilism, and fuedalism also aren't great at long-term thinking. What's your solution? Be China during it's golden age of credit expansion? Why not be the US during it's golden age of credit expansion? I don't think there's a governing/economic silver-bullet.
  - RedXIII 5y ago
    The solution is to shift away from a system that hijacks our species' selfishness in the name of domination over nature to one where we live in harmony with the environment. Only one of the forms of government you mentioned has threatened human extinction.
    - Tempest1981 5y ago
      Can someone explain why orf and RedXIII are being heavily downvoted without explanations? Aren't their claims generally (or often) true... sure, not 100%. Please explain why you are downvoting to enhance the discussion.
      - objectivetruth 5y ago
        The HN "mob consensus" is that anything even vaguely hinting at socialism or communism is ungood, and anything explicitly condemning capitalism is doubleplus ungood. It's totally safe to ignore the people who respond to this with "there is no 'what HN thinks about X', HN is just a bunch of different people..."
      - loopz 5y ago
        They like many of us now, dare speak up against the official dogma of the day. However, most will argue capitalism has proven to be the most efficient way to allocate resources correctly. So it's quite unclear how to ie. incorporate externalized costs into the system, without breaking it. Accountants make for terrible leadership.
    - seryoiupfurds 5y ago
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aral_Sea https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aral_Sea
      - orf 5y ago
        Yes. This is a thing that exists. I’m not sure why it’s relevant to parents comment though.
- ericmay 5y ago
  Looking around it seems to me these are failures of government and government policy (i.e. failures of the people - I can't even convince people to stop buying plastic bottles of water) . Capitalism and businesses operate within the context of the environment they're in. China has lots of environmental problems and they have an autocracy. Maybe the less capitalistic you country is the less environmentally friendly your country is instead. One has to think that to the extent that resources aren't subjected to the tragedy of the commons, capitalists tend to be concerned with not killing the golden goose. Look around and ask yourself which countries are at least on paper most concerned with the environment and then ask yourself what kind of economies they have. Look at Europe: Norway, Switzerland, Sweden, United Kingdom, France, Denmark, Belgium, etc... -> all highly concerned with the environment and all highly capitalist countries.
  - RedXIII 5y ago
    "Maybe doing all this cocaine is actually good for me," he said, blood dripping from his crusted nose. "Maybe it's everyone else who has a problem."
- darkerside 5y ago
  Many individuals are pretty good at it. Many more are bad at it. Groups typically end up taking action based on the lowest common denominator. This is irrespective of ideology.
  - orf 5y ago
    Irrespective of a ideology focused around consumerism, overconsumption and short-term gain by huge corporations who pay no cost for the future damage they are causing? There isn’t any biological or otherwise necessary reason why Coke and Pepsi need to exist, and yet we are generating a huge amount of greenhouse gasses to produce it whilst choking the environment with their plastic refuse after it is consumed. I think it’s disingenuous at best to say “well capitalism has nothing to do with the current state of the captialist-run world”
    - darkerside 5y ago
      An authoritarian communist regime has proven to be just as focused on the short term, even more narrowly scoped to a small group of oligarchs, and without name of the positive byproducts of a capitalist society. Is there an alternative system that you have in mind? Because that's really the way to demonstrate this is a property of capitalism in particular, and not humans in general.
    - exporectomy 5y ago
      Coke and Pepsi give pleasure to people. In a way, that's the most important reason for anything to exist. Do you want a world without any pleasures that have any environmental costs? What would it look like? What else wouldn't exist and what would you keep despite the environmental cost?
- missedthecue 5y ago
  If capitalism is geared for short term next quarter thinking like everyone says, why do companies like Plug Power, with their negative revenue have $17 billion valuations?
kayodelycaon 5y ago
“I told you so” doesn’t work as people who didn’t listen in the first place aren't likely to listen when they are clearly in the wrong. Instead, they double down and will find a way to make you the person who was wrong.
- DangitBobby 5y ago
  I generally don't condone "I told you so"s myself. But it's very difficult to stay silent in this case when they've basically doomed the future inhabitants of this planet.
  - exporectomy 5y ago
    You don't get to say "I told you so" until after the doom has occurred. Otherwise it might turn out to be them having told you so.
    - DangitBobby 5y ago
      And now we are back to square one: my initial comment.
- justin66 5y ago
  In the decades to come, many of those in denial and angry at those who warn about the realities involved in climate change will instead angrily blame those who issued the warnings for not having been persuasive enough. There's a relevant scene in The Last King of Scotland. [0] [0] https://blog.codinghorror.com/but-you-did-not-persuade-me/ https://blog.codinghorror.com/but-you-did-not-persuade-me/
Arubis 5y ago
There’s some interesting selection bias here; “survivorship bias” would be misleading in this case. Specifically, any crisis that _wasn’t_ so well-tuned to run against our species’ inbuilt shortcomings wouldn’t be so threatening, as we’d likely have addressed it and moved on.
trhway 5y ago
> it's like this crisis was custom built to kill off humans. dialectics instilled in me by USSR education sees nothing surprising here. Increasing quantity of human activity creates qualitatively new conditions. All systems develop from crisis to crisis, each time being forced to undergo qualitative transformation to overcome another crisis or perish otherwise (i.e. exploit the current state as much as possible, hit the crisis resulting from the over-exploitation, explore for a new state, get into it if successful, exploit...). Human civilization has become a planet scale factor while lacking planet scale means to manage its impact - that is a classic dialectical quantity vs. quality mismatch leading to a crisis which if not proactively "soft landed" will settle on its own through a catastrophic style readjustment. And if to look as an outside observer - there is some logic to it as giving that humans are on the edge of becoming a space faring civilization the humans are either to deal with the climate change on their own planet or shouldn't be able to move to the next levels of energy/technology, handling other star systems and civilizations.
exporectomy 5y ago
Climate change is not expected to kill off humans. You're spreading misinformation.
- freshpots 5y ago
  It already has. What are you talking about? https://www.who.int/heli/risks/climate/climatechange/en/ https://www.who.int/heli/risks/climate/climatechange/en/
  - exporectomy 5y ago
    "kill off" not "kill".
    - freshpots 5y ago
      Like "kill off" entire villages, right?
      - exporectomy 5y ago
        No. Like "kill off humans", as the OP said.
- DangitBobby 5y ago
  There are speculative theories on a future "hothouse earth" scenario which could, in fact, drive human extinction (as if human extinction is all that matters). But yes, speculation on global human extinction or mere catastrophic societal collapse is just that: speculative. Our models aren't predictive enough to tell us, for example whether the drier, hotter climate and unpredictable weather patterns will cause food instability, mass migration, and collapse in certain regions. We can be fairly confident of one thing; people like you and me who probably won't be materially affected will continue to drive the "wait and find out" strategy.
  - exporectomy 5y ago
    The problem of climate extremists is that they have no idea what the risks to humans are, yet they want to cripple or destroy civilization just in case it's bad. There's a cost-benefit balance to be struck and people screeching about the end of the world are incapable of doing that. It's like banning the use of radio just in case hostile aliens pick up our signals and know we're here and come and attack Earth. Yea, it's a risk, yea it might kill off humans, or at least cause food instability, but it's a low risk so we decide to employ the "wait and find out" strategy. You might say aliens invading is a ridiculously low risk, unlike the catastrophes caused by climate change, but to compare them, you have to quantify the risk climate change. Nobody has, as far as I know. I've seen some predictions of costs, lives lost, sea level rise, temperature rise, but all of them are extremely tame and no worse that common disasters that we already experience and tolerate.

01100011 5y ago

CA drought is nothing new and our native plant community is evidence of such. Human driven climate change is not likely to help the situation, but without it CA would still face periodic droughts and mega droughts which would cause problems for society. If you live in CA, please take the time to learn about our native plant community and encourage the use of natives in landscaping: https://www.laspilitas.com/advanced/advecology.htm https://www.laspilitas.com/advanced/advecology.htm

gentleman11 5y ago
By definition, a 1200 year event is at least a little unusual
- BuyMyBitcoins 5y ago
  >” By definition, a 1200 year event is at least a little unusual” For humans, yes. But for an ecosystem on a geologic timescale? It makes sense that native plants would be adapted to withstand events.
  - jeffbee 5y ago
    I don't see how that follows. Many forests in California are fossil remnants of a wetter, cooler climate. They cannot spread nor establish themselves in this climate, so when they get damaged by drought, disease, or fire they don't return. The native plants are not adapted to it.
    - loopz 5y ago
      Ecological systems tend to die out when confronted with extreme, lasting change. It may take thousands of years for natural systems "to adapt". On planetary scale this is just a blink of the eye, but for humans and current life it could mean devastation.
    - 01100011 5y ago
      Which forests? Redwoods?

Daishiman 5y ago

Should me more like "the new normal: like the worst droughts in 1200 years".

fencepost 5y ago

It's like rolling 2d6 for the weather each year - 2, 3, 4, 5 is a cool summer, 6-8 is human comfortable normal and most likely, 9-12 is hotter or drier than normal. Oh, and every half degree C of warming adds a pip to each side of one of the dice. 1 degree of warming? Each of those dice is now 2-7 not 1-6. 1.5 C? Now there's a 2-7 and a 3-8. Doesn't change that "6-8 is comfortable" though. Edit: I noticed but blew past the dice mention in the article, and what I'm describing is different. Dr Hayhoe describes it as replacing sides with additional 6s, but that's different. What we're experiencing is a gradual change of where the center point of the distribution curve is, but without a corresponding change in the values at which humans are comfortable (or even able to live, look up "wet bulb" in the context of climate change). Edit2: if what gets you massive heat waves are rolls of 12 or higher, adding a pip means there are now more ways to get there - (6,6) but also (5,7) and (6,7). Adding yet another pip would mean even more ways, along with the corresponding reduction in ways to get the bottom of the previous range.

tolbish 5y ago
The article uses that exact analogy.
- bruce343434 5y ago
  I've noticed a trend on HN were a commenter will literally take something verbatim from the article, or maybe put it in their own words, and farm a bunch of votes.
  - paulcole 5y ago
    I do this because the market for karma-rich HN accounts is pretty vibrant. DM if interested in making an offer.
    - bruce343434 5y ago
      Who would possibly want to buy such an esoteric thing?

nabla9 5y ago

gentleman11 5y ago
Axis does not start at zero so the magnitude of the effect is exaggerated
- delecti 5y ago
  It also looks a bit less dire when you display 2016.
simondw 5y ago
That's potentially misleading in a couple ways: * By default, years before 2019 aren't turned on. 2016 in particular looks fairly close to 2021. * At first glance, it looks like 2021 is plunging straight toward 0 -- but wait, the y axis starts at 1065. The whole chart only covers the range 1065-1100. This year's level is currently 98.3% of last year's! Are things still bad? Maybe, but I would want an expert interpretation, not a confusing chart.

leoh 5y ago

No problems if we just got serious about desal.

Flatcircle 5y ago

Overly dramatic articles like this do a disservice to helping convince people to be more proactive about climate change. There’s obviously no data going back 1200 years and the temperature proxies used, like ice cores, or tree rings, haven’t been consistently reliable. The truth is, no one knows what the annual temps of major cities were before about 1870. Real scientists lack the hubris to be sure of basic truths like whether dinosaurs were warm blooded or cold blooded, how general anesthesia works, how great whites mate, or even why we sleep, much less the exact ebbs and flows of 350,000 daily temperatures. So for these scientists to say they have an understanding of what the previous thousand years temps were before that, turns the science into faith and adds fuel to those who argue climate science is more religion than science. Focusing on the last 50 years is more than enough quality data to definitively prove the world is getting hotter, start there. Then provide a list of 3 basic things people can do to help lower temps themselves. ie, Campaign for nuclear power. Eat less meat, Adjust your thermostat, Change your tires, Buy an electric car, Buy better bulbs, Plant trees with friends.

linuxftw 5y ago
Much of the northern hemisphere was under ice thousands of years ago. Of course the Earth is warming, it has been warming since the end of the last ice age. 99% of the worlds ice coverage melted before 1900, and some people are ringing alarm bells because the remaining 1% is melting faster than whatever completely fabricated baseline.
- treeman79 5y ago
  A look at historical sea levels is a fun way to outrage people. https://www.usgs.gov/faqs/how-does-present-glacier-extent-and-sea-level-compare-extent-glaciers-and-global-sea-level?qt-news_science_products=0#qt-news_science_products https://www.usgs.gov/faqs/how-does-present-glacier-extent-an...
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- 5y ago

linuxftw 5y ago

> This current drought is potentially on track to become the worst that we’ve seen in at least 1,200 years. And the reason is linked directly to human caused climate change. So, if there were worse droughts 1200+ years ago, what caused those? Of course, saying a drought is linked to warming doesn't make any sense. More heat should result in more water vapor, which should result in more rain. What I like about the climate change nonsense is any and all weather phenomenon can be linked to it. Too hot? Climate change. Too cold? Climate change. Too wet or too dry? Climate change. There's literally nothing that can't be attributed to climate change in some way.

AlexandrB 5y ago
> More heat should result in more water vapor, which should result in more rain. I think the reason you're being downvoted is that this is very "first-order" thinking that fails to consider changes to pressure systems, wind patterns, etc that might affect where rain falls not just how much. Even assuming you're right about rainfall increasing with warming, rain falling in the ocean does not stop a drought on land. Meanwhile, most people who have dedicated their careers to studying second and third order effects of increased temperature on the weather seem to think these things are connected. I'm more inclined to agree with them than with you.
- mypalmike 5y ago
  It's not even accurate to a first order approximation. Ignoring all else, higher temperatures lead to higher vapor density and lower relative humidity. That is, more evaporation and less precipitation.
deleted 5y ago
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polotics 5y ago
Are you aware of the concept of greenhouse gases?

aazaa 5y ago

> We need to continue to push for urgent action on climate change The other scientists echoed that thought. The problem is that there's little consensus on what that "urgent action" entails. Fossil fuel overconsumption and the culture/economics of waste are deeply engrained behaviors for a lot of the world. There's this widespread sense that technology and/or legislation will somehow be able to roll back increases in CO2 and other greenhouse gas emissions. I think that's baloney. The last year offered a window into the future. Many industrial economies were taken offline to an unprecedented degree. And the result was... a new record high in atmospheric CO2. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/apr/07/carbon-dioxide-levels-in-atmosphere-reach-record-high https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/apr/07/carbon-d... Assuming that the underlying hypothesis is correct (that the CO2 increase is in fact what's driving temperature increases and that humans are responsible for it), the only thing that seems capable of addressing the problem in a meaningful way within the time we have left is immediate, large-scale cutbacks in consumption across the board, with industrial economies bearing the highest burden. And this is the one thing that never seems to be on the table.

mempko 5y ago
And just to clarify, the underlying hypothesis is correct. And your conclusion is also correct.
abeppu 5y ago
I finally read/listened to Jared Diamond's "Collapse" earlier this year. It discusses several cases of societies collapsing or being challenged, especially in the face of environmental damage and climate change, but also issues with neighbors. Two of the lessons that he highlights are the importance of long-term, bold plans to confront problems before they are crises, and the ability to reconsider cultural values and actually change the way that people live and society functions. That book was published in 2005 and last updated in 2011, and it was depressing to get to the last chapter which focuses on the environmental problems we face today with a kind of call to action, and acknowledge that we haven't done anything substantial yet.
- jcranmer 5y ago

postalrat 5y ago

If this drought is caused by climate change driven by humans wouldn't it mean the science is wrong?

guerrilla 5y ago
What science are you referring to specifically and why would it mean that?

mmcgaha 5y ago

Back in the early/mid 80s (don't remember the year) the brook behind our house dried up. Unless that thing dries up again, I am calling bs on this 1200-year drought.

rossdavidh 5y ago

So, I believe in anthropogenic climate change, and I don't doubt that there are areas (California) seeing droughts the likes of which have not been seen in a long time, but...they are throwing a lot of things together here. In central Texas, where I live, the reservoirs are near to full, because we had a lot of rain in May. The problem is a higher than normal abundance of mosquitoes, and the foliage is all growing out of control because they have the water to do so. We are definitely having issues with power, but that's mostly due to increased population (and other issues related to changing power sources), not from excess heat. Temperatures in central Texas are in the mid 90's, which is not unusual for Texas. There's problems, sure, but not really related to climate change. When scientists try to link anything that is going wrong currently to anthropogenic climate change, they don't convince more people. If anything, they create more skeptics, because people can tell that they're not getting an objective read on the situation. There are probably scientists who are willing to provide a nuanced, balanced read on things, who would probably say that drought and wildfires in California might be related to climate change, but power shortages in Texas are not. They are not the sort of scientists who get their pictures in The Guardian.

nverno 5y ago
> And the reason is linked directly to human caused climate change. Lines like this seem to imply there is a single reason behind climate events, and that single reason is human caused. It's so blatantly false/misleading that anybody will read it as such.
letitbeirie 5y ago
The nuanced, balanced (albeit uselessly high-level) read would be that our systems were designed for more stable weather than we can reasonably expect going forward. As far as Texas' power issues go, climate change certainly isn't helping, but it's hard to blame it for Texas' power issues. Why? Because it's very easy to blame Texas' power market for Texas' power issues. The cold snap in 1989 was colder and longer, but the result was largely the same as if it had happened in Michigan. https://www.houstonchronicle.com/business/energy/article/A-tale-of-two-freezes-How-the-Texas-grid-stayed-16005807.php https://www.houstonchronicle.com/business/energy/article/A-t... Silver lining though for the environment - the invisible hand has pushed 5GW worth of Cold War-era coal plants offline since wind got cheap.

a0-prw 5y ago

1200 years is nothing. The earth is laughing at you.

guerrilla 5y ago

Here's some pictures and video of the drought if anyone's curious: https://news.sky.com/story/in-pictures-how-blistering-heatwave-is-fuelling-extreme-mega-drought-in-western-us-12336472 https://news.sky.com/story/in-pictures-how-blistering-heatwa...