5 ms·

Climate change literally just burnt down a town. It's here folks, the moment they warned us about for a generation.

by lenova 5y ago

biesnecker 5y ago
It's been here. The Camp Fire that destroyed Paradise, CA, was if not caused by climate change at least made worse by it.
throwawaysea 5y ago
Why are you assuming this is climate change driven? I am seeing this on a lot of social media comments and in news articles, but scientists have not proven a link to climate change in any statistically trustworthy manner. Cliff Mass, Professor of Atmospheric Science at the University of Washington and chief scientist of the Northwest Modeling Consortium mentioned in his recent blog posts that the heat wave was a perfect storm of factors like compression from sinking air coming off the West slopes of the Cascades. He also specifically noted (https://cliffmass.blogspot.com/2021/06/incredible-temperatures-are-being.html https://cliffmass.blogspot.com/2021/06/incredible-temperatur...): > Is global warming contributing to this heatwave? The answer is certainly yes. Would we have had a record heatwave without global warming. The answer is yes as well. He also said in the same article: > Let me end with the golden rule of temperature extremes: the bigger the temperature extreme the SMALLER the contribution of global warming. Think about that. I think this event has yet to be fully explored and scientifically analyzed, but currently it looks like this is a rare 1 in 1000 years event that could have occurred with or without climate change. In the past we would have written this event off as an anomaly, a record setting event that stands out but isn't the norm. But now it seems like people are very quick to shout 'climate change' for literally any kind of weather anomaly and I am trying to understand why.
- Judgmentality 5y ago
  > But now it seems like people are very quick to shout 'climate change' for literally any kind of weather anomaly and I am trying to understand why. I admittedly haven't done a statistical analysis, but aren't these "anomalies" happening significantly more frequently than before?
  - throwawaysea 5y ago
    In Seattle, which was one of the cities affected by this event (also on the West side of the Cascade mountain range), the previous days with triple digit temperatures occurred in 2009, 1994, and 1941. The earlier parts of this season were actually cooler than usual, and drier than usual. You would often see posts about having the coolest day in X years from weather posts (example: https://twitter.com/NWSSeattle/status/1401722154157187073 https://twitter.com/NWSSeattle/status/1401722154157187073).
  - kecupochren 5y ago
    Anecdotal but there was recently a tornado in Czechia. That's just nuts for such a region. I suspect the rate at which these anomalies will be happening will surprise many.
    - pphysch 5y ago
      Counter anecdote: the last tornado event in mountainous Salt Lake City, Utah was in 1999.
      - kingofpandora 5y ago
        Is that a counter anecdote or a supporting anecdote?
    - guerrilla 5y ago
      and big floods in southern Germany and a record heat wave in Sweden at the same time.
    - Applejinx 5y ago
      That is literally what you get when you pump more energy into a titanic chaotic system with more possible energy than any human war could inflict. When you boost the amount of energy in the system it's further destabilized and the amount of violence unleashed is well beyond the worst we can do with bombs and weapons of war. I'm not surprised. I've been saying this for years, along with many people who understood that climate was a chaotic system. People just do not understand what's happening.
- manmal 5y ago
  If there is no conclusive evidence towards either side, then why not choose the side more likely to protect humanity from further harm?
  - doytch 5y ago
    You can be in favour of major surgery on our civilisation to get to net-zero in order prevent climate change, and still think that this event was likely not caused by climate change.
    - manmal 5y ago
      And what would make me think that - the mere possibility of it being true is not a compelling argument.
  - seneca 5y ago
    > If there is no conclusive evidence towards either side, then why not choose the side more likely to protect humanity from further harm? Yes, completely agreed! Now we just have to figure out which side that is. Put another way, you'll go a long way towards wisdom when you realize both sides of most arguments believe they are arguing for what is genuinely the best option, including what will protect humanity. I'm not a client change denier, but it's silly to argue "why don't you just do what is clearly right?" in pretty much any disagreement.
    - jacquesm 5y ago
      That's trivial: check which side is lining their pockets, then choose the other.
      - Apes 5y ago
        Ah, the ol' "a perfect world is one where I pull everyone down to my level" logic.
      - bdamm 5y ago
        Which side is that, exactly? On one hand we have big oil and pretty much every industrial polluter globally, and on the other hand we have academia which "lines their pockets" by finding ever more questions that need answering, and stoking fear of social or environmental collapse to generate those questions. Now, I personally know which side I trust more. However, if the lens is "who is lining their pockets" well, I am not sure that's really enough.
- photojosh 5y ago
  >> Let me end with the golden rule of temperature extremes: the bigger the temperature extreme the SMALLER the contribution of global warming. Think about that. This frustrates me because "global warming" refers to the average temperature sure, but it is really only useful as a measure of the total _energy_ in the atmosphere. More energy = more extreme _events_, such as this one. Whereas the way I read his point seems to be making the claim that because the temperature of the event is further from the normal temperature, that is less about global warming. Hence why "climate change" is a more accurate phrase. > I think this event has yet to be fully explored and scientifically analyzed, but currently it looks like this is a rare 1 in 1000 years event that could have occurred with or without climate change. In the past we would have written this event off as an anomaly, a record setting event that stands out but isn't the norm. But now it seems like people are very quick to shout 'climate change' for literally any kind of weather anomaly and I am trying to understand why. Because there seem to more and more* of these "rare 1 in 1000 years" events. The increased frequency is why people shout 'climate change'. * it could just be increased reporting in our highly connected world, but I don't think so.
zamadatix 5y ago
I strongly believe climate change is playing a role in slowly increasing the severity and frequency of these weather extremes but the way you set up the validation of the claim makes it so the only way climate change predictions for the last 40 years could have been false is if no small towns in North America burned due to wildfires in the future. Climate change isn't proven or disproven or cause of a singular fire or extreme weather event, by definition it's about the change of the overall climate where more such events may occur than normal (but they don't come wrapped with a bow and a note saying "love: climate change"). This is another piece of evidence towards that aggregate but not uniquely identifiable as only being possible because of climate change.
- tshaddox 5y ago
  What you said is true, but the original commenter said that climate change burned down a town, not that this town burning down is proof that climate change is real. There’s a very big difference there.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - zamadatix 5y ago
    I talk about both, the point particular to the specific instance of the town here: "by definition it's about the change of the overall climate where more such events may occur than normal (but they don't come wrapped with a bow and a note saying "love: climate change"). This is another piece of evidence towards that aggregate but not uniquely identifiable as only being possible because of climate change." There is no way to say climate change caused this particular town to burn down, just that climate change has caused more towns to burn down than average.
- GavinMcG 5y ago
  No, you're mixing up necessary and sufficient. This being a definitive demonstration doesn't make it the only definitive reason to accept climate change - there was already plenty of good-enough evidence.
vmception 5y ago
Town of 260 residents Waiting for a city to get rocked, population 30,000 or greater
- MattGaiser 5y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_Fort_McMurray_wildfire https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_Fort_McMurray_wildfire
- asdff 5y ago
  There is not enough dry brush and debris that would sustain a wildfire within urban environments. Roads and concrete are pretty much firebreaks. All these places you see burning like this town, Paradise CA last year, etc, are places that are absolutely surrounded by kindling that has accumulated over the course of decades and was never cleared out or allowed to burn in a controlled manner. Plus, once you get close to the population centers you pretty much have a local airforce putting out fires and hundreds of firefighters.
Lendal 5y ago
We can't say for certain that any one event is caused by global warming. It's a global effect. The only thing we really need to point to is global average temperature, which should be plenty sufficient to cause alarm in everyone. Storms, fire, air quality, sea level rise, all of these things and more follow temperature rise. All of it together. Not any single event. We know that whole towns burned before the industrial age for all sorts of reasons. This alone does not prove or disprove a global effect.
bdamm 5y ago
This was said a couple years ago when Fort McMurray burned, or before that when Barriere was wiped out. And let's not forget California, which seems to lose a town every year now, or the Australian wildfires of 2020 which was very newsworthy until COVID came along. Somehow a single town getting wiped out doesn't actually register in the global awareness.
adregan 5y ago
I wonder if anyone has any suggestions as to what a software engineer could do to help fight against climate change? I'd love to know if there is a way I could help.
- Tiktaalik 5y ago
  * Don't participate in environmentally unfriendly blockchain stuff. * Vote for climate leaders
  - moistly 5y ago
    * Get others to vote. Participation rates are dismal. * Vote local, too. Change needs to be bottom-up just as much as top-down.
    - Tiktaalik 5y ago
      Local is a great point. There's significant environmental actions to be had at the municipal level that requires environmentalist city councillors. eg. Building more safe, separated bike lanes is a simple and relatively cheap thing for municipalities to do. It increases cycling ridership, helps take cars off the road, lowering CO2 emissions.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
dang 5y ago
Please don't post unsubstantive and/or flamebait comments to HN. It just makes the thread generic in a predictable way, which leads at best to low-quality, repetitive discussion, and at worst to flamewar. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=generic%20discussion%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor... https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Climate change literally just burnt down a town. It's here folks, the moment they warned us about for a generation.

by lenova 5y ago

Climate change literally just burnt down a town. It's here folks, the moment they warned us about for a generation.

It's been here. The Camp Fire that destroyed Paradise, CA, was if not caused by climate change at least made worse by it.

throwawaysea 5y ago

Why are you assuming this is climate change driven? I am seeing this on a lot of social media comments and in news articles, but scientists have not proven a link to climate change in any statistically trustworthy manner. Cliff Mass, Professor of Atmospheric Science at the University of Washington and chief scientist of the Northwest Modeling Consortium mentioned in his recent blog posts that the heat wave was a perfect storm of factors like compression from sinking air coming off the West slopes of the Cascades. He also specifically noted (https://cliffmass.blogspot.com/2021/06/incredible-temperatures-are-being.html https://cliffmass.blogspot.com/2021/06/incredible-temperatur...): > Is global warming contributing to this heatwave? The answer is certainly yes. Would we have had a record heatwave without global warming. The answer is yes as well. He also said in the same article: > Let me end with the golden rule of temperature extremes: the bigger the temperature extreme the SMALLER the contribution of global warming. Think about that. I think this event has yet to be fully explored and scientifically analyzed, but currently it looks like this is a rare 1 in 1000 years event that could have occurred with or without climate change. In the past we would have written this event off as an anomaly, a record setting event that stands out but isn't the norm. But now it seems like people are very quick to shout 'climate change' for literally any kind of weather anomaly and I am trying to understand why.

Judgmentality 5y ago
> But now it seems like people are very quick to shout 'climate change' for literally any kind of weather anomaly and I am trying to understand why. I admittedly haven't done a statistical analysis, but aren't these "anomalies" happening significantly more frequently than before?
- throwawaysea 5y ago
  In Seattle, which was one of the cities affected by this event (also on the West side of the Cascade mountain range), the previous days with triple digit temperatures occurred in 2009, 1994, and 1941. The earlier parts of this season were actually cooler than usual, and drier than usual. You would often see posts about having the coolest day in X years from weather posts (example: https://twitter.com/NWSSeattle/status/1401722154157187073 https://twitter.com/NWSSeattle/status/1401722154157187073).
- kecupochren 5y ago
  Anecdotal but there was recently a tornado in Czechia. That's just nuts for such a region. I suspect the rate at which these anomalies will be happening will surprise many.
  - pphysch 5y ago
    Counter anecdote: the last tornado event in mountainous Salt Lake City, Utah was in 1999.
    - kingofpandora 5y ago
      Is that a counter anecdote or a supporting anecdote?
  - guerrilla 5y ago
    and big floods in southern Germany and a record heat wave in Sweden at the same time.
  - Applejinx 5y ago
    That is literally what you get when you pump more energy into a titanic chaotic system with more possible energy than any human war could inflict. When you boost the amount of energy in the system it's further destabilized and the amount of violence unleashed is well beyond the worst we can do with bombs and weapons of war. I'm not surprised. I've been saying this for years, along with many people who understood that climate was a chaotic system. People just do not understand what's happening.
manmal 5y ago
If there is no conclusive evidence towards either side, then why not choose the side more likely to protect humanity from further harm?
- doytch 5y ago
  You can be in favour of major surgery on our civilisation to get to net-zero in order prevent climate change, and still think that this event was likely not caused by climate change.
  - manmal 5y ago
    And what would make me think that - the mere possibility of it being true is not a compelling argument.
- seneca 5y ago
  > If there is no conclusive evidence towards either side, then why not choose the side more likely to protect humanity from further harm? Yes, completely agreed! Now we just have to figure out which side that is. Put another way, you'll go a long way towards wisdom when you realize both sides of most arguments believe they are arguing for what is genuinely the best option, including what will protect humanity. I'm not a client change denier, but it's silly to argue "why don't you just do what is clearly right?" in pretty much any disagreement.
  - jacquesm 5y ago
    That's trivial: check which side is lining their pockets, then choose the other.
    - Apes 5y ago
      Ah, the ol' "a perfect world is one where I pull everyone down to my level" logic.
    - bdamm 5y ago
      Which side is that, exactly? On one hand we have big oil and pretty much every industrial polluter globally, and on the other hand we have academia which "lines their pockets" by finding ever more questions that need answering, and stoking fear of social or environmental collapse to generate those questions. Now, I personally know which side I trust more. However, if the lens is "who is lining their pockets" well, I am not sure that's really enough.
photojosh 5y ago
>> Let me end with the golden rule of temperature extremes: the bigger the temperature extreme the SMALLER the contribution of global warming. Think about that. This frustrates me because "global warming" refers to the average temperature sure, but it is really only useful as a measure of the total _energy_ in the atmosphere. More energy = more extreme _events_, such as this one. Whereas the way I read his point seems to be making the claim that because the temperature of the event is further from the normal temperature, that is less about global warming. Hence why "climate change" is a more accurate phrase. > I think this event has yet to be fully explored and scientifically analyzed, but currently it looks like this is a rare 1 in 1000 years event that could have occurred with or without climate change. In the past we would have written this event off as an anomaly, a record setting event that stands out but isn't the norm. But now it seems like people are very quick to shout 'climate change' for literally any kind of weather anomaly and I am trying to understand why. Because there seem to more and more* of these "rare 1 in 1000 years" events. The increased frequency is why people shout 'climate change'. * it could just be increased reporting in our highly connected world, but I don't think so.

zamadatix 5y ago

I strongly believe climate change is playing a role in slowly increasing the severity and frequency of these weather extremes but the way you set up the validation of the claim makes it so the only way climate change predictions for the last 40 years could have been false is if no small towns in North America burned due to wildfires in the future. Climate change isn't proven or disproven or cause of a singular fire or extreme weather event, by definition it's about the change of the overall climate where more such events may occur than normal (but they don't come wrapped with a bow and a note saying "love: climate change"). This is another piece of evidence towards that aggregate but not uniquely identifiable as only being possible because of climate change.

tshaddox 5y ago
What you said is true, but the original commenter said that climate change burned down a town, not that this town burning down is proof that climate change is real. There’s a very big difference there.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- zamadatix 5y ago
  I talk about both, the point particular to the specific instance of the town here: "by definition it's about the change of the overall climate where more such events may occur than normal (but they don't come wrapped with a bow and a note saying "love: climate change"). This is another piece of evidence towards that aggregate but not uniquely identifiable as only being possible because of climate change." There is no way to say climate change caused this particular town to burn down, just that climate change has caused more towns to burn down than average.
GavinMcG 5y ago
No, you're mixing up necessary and sufficient. This being a definitive demonstration doesn't make it the only definitive reason to accept climate change - there was already plenty of good-enough evidence.

vmception 5y ago

Town of 260 residents Waiting for a city to get rocked, population 30,000 or greater

MattGaiser 5y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_Fort_McMurray_wildfire https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_Fort_McMurray_wildfire
asdff 5y ago
There is not enough dry brush and debris that would sustain a wildfire within urban environments. Roads and concrete are pretty much firebreaks. All these places you see burning like this town, Paradise CA last year, etc, are places that are absolutely surrounded by kindling that has accumulated over the course of decades and was never cleared out or allowed to burn in a controlled manner. Plus, once you get close to the population centers you pretty much have a local airforce putting out fires and hundreds of firefighters.

Lendal 5y ago

We can't say for certain that any one event is caused by global warming. It's a global effect. The only thing we really need to point to is global average temperature, which should be plenty sufficient to cause alarm in everyone. Storms, fire, air quality, sea level rise, all of these things and more follow temperature rise. All of it together. Not any single event. We know that whole towns burned before the industrial age for all sorts of reasons. This alone does not prove or disprove a global effect.

bdamm 5y ago

This was said a couple years ago when Fort McMurray burned, or before that when Barriere was wiped out. And let's not forget California, which seems to lose a town every year now, or the Australian wildfires of 2020 which was very newsworthy until COVID came along. Somehow a single town getting wiped out doesn't actually register in the global awareness.

adregan 5y ago

I wonder if anyone has any suggestions as to what a software engineer could do to help fight against climate change? I'd love to know if there is a way I could help.

Tiktaalik 5y ago
* Don't participate in environmentally unfriendly blockchain stuff. * Vote for climate leaders
- moistly 5y ago
  * Get others to vote. Participation rates are dismal. * Vote local, too. Change needs to be bottom-up just as much as top-down.
  - Tiktaalik 5y ago
    Local is a great point. There's significant environmental actions to be had at the municipal level that requires environmentalist city councillors. eg. Building more safe, separated bike lanes is a simple and relatively cheap thing for municipalities to do. It increases cycling ridership, helps take cars off the road, lowering CO2 emissions.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

dang 5y ago

Please don't post unsubstantive and/or flamebait comments to HN. It just makes the thread generic in a predictable way, which leads at best to low-quality, repetitive discussion, and at worst to flamewar. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=generic%20discussion%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor... https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html