4 ms·

How many extreme outlier events per year do we need before we can stop saying “linking any single event to global warming is complicated” in every article?

by wrs 5y ago

smt88 5y ago
It's not about how many events, but how many years. We can say that climate change would be expected to cause these weather events, but weather isn't climate until it's observed for much longer than we have so far. There's no doubt climate change can and will produce these effects, so the best articles will just say that A) these events are extreme, and B) we will see many more of them until they become the new normal.
- anigbrowl 5y ago
  While caution is laudable, it's also frequently an excuse for inaction (not by you). As a person of middle years who has regarded CC as An Issue for ~25 years now, I'd say the new normal has arrived.
  - bena 5y ago
    Yeah, environmental concerns, including climate change is part of what inspired Al Gore to run for Congress in 1976. So, is like 45 years enough? And that's the thing about incremental change, it creeps up on you. So yeah, last year wasn't that much different from last year, but compared to 5 years ago, 10, 50? There's always an excuse to do nothing.
  - smt88 5y ago
    I understand your point, but I don't consider it to be "caution" so much as "accurate". Scientists (and journalists) should tell the truth about science, even if they think it will negatively impact behavior. Otherwise they'll lose credibility later (see: CDC and "don't wear masks" ca. March 2020).
    - anigbrowl 5y ago
      They already do, and go to great lengths to qualify and quantify their uncertainty. But you seem to be arguing that onl retrospective knowledge is valid. If there's a large fire going on on in a room of your own, you can't say with total certainty that the rest of the structure will catch fire. But if you insist on delaying judgment because it's not yet accurate to say your house/apartment building is on fire, how is that going to work out for you?
stjohnswarts 5y ago
You can't take 1 year of events and extrapolate climate change from that, you have to include many years and you get a probability and not a definite, that's the way patterns work when you have incomplete information. While I believe climate change is a thing you can't say "but look at what happened last year!" and draw any conclusions. We have floods and heat waves every single year.
- tarr11 5y ago
  Yeah this article says “climate change causes an increase in flooding and this was a flood therefore it was likely caused by climate change.” which is circular. I found an article seems to imply that frequency and severity of flooding in Europe has been increasing. I couldn’t find anything specific to Germany or Belgium. https://www.newscientist.com/article/2249489-recent-decades-of-european-floods-are-among-the-worst-in-500-years/amp/ https://www.newscientist.com/article/2249489-recent-decades-...
  - loopz 5y ago
    The argument turns circular because while climate models predicts climate change, they have variations and do not predict local weather. They can imply higher risk and using statistics you can say there's a very low chance these events (magnitude and number), is due to normal weather alone. However, statistics won't tell the whole story. Since everything is changing permanently, there's only one time a dam will collapse. The best people to ask would be credible climate scientists who publish in peer-reviewed journals. For example: https://www.ipcc.ch/reports/ https://www.ipcc.ch/reports/ If determining wether a bridge is sound or not: Do you run statistics over how many people get safely across, and run trends on random internet searches? Or do you invite specialists to assess the bridge?
- IfOnlyYouKnew 5y ago
  By that logic, you'll never reach any conclusions: any weather pattern is possible, theoretically. If one year of California being on fire for 4 months can just be a coincidence, so can two years. Or twelve. One day of beating the temperature record by +5 deg F can also be less likely, and therefore better evidence of global warming, than, say, two separate events each breaking the record by +2 deg F. The magnitude matters. Here, some towns saw 150 mm of rain in 12 h. Previous monthly record (since 1945) was 200 mm. But really this is all silly. Look at that temperature color stripe and try telling anyone that the last 20 years are drawn from the same distribution as those before: https://ml1ohkphn9q1.i.optimole.com/Qi2pur4-vTGg4qbd/w:1080/h:675/q:auto/rt:fill/g:ce/https://forumeteoclimat.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/warming-stripes.png https://ml1ohkphn9q1.i.optimole.com/Qi2pur4-vTGg4qbd/w:1080/... The denial was silly even a decade ago, which is about the time the political right switched to accepting warming, but rejecting a human contribution. By now everyone has noticed that's equally silly, since it'd be quite something if science predicted warming a decade in advance with surprising precision while getting the mechanism completely wrong. So that's where we are today, and the last remaining refuge really is to debate the magnitude of the problem and the value of trade-offs: who should do what against it, i. e. "...but cars in Texas are just 5% of global CO_2, it does not matter if we stop buying SUVs". That's really about values and not entirely accessible to rational arguments, so the remaining hope is that some of the harms just randomly hit the people opposing any action, and either kill or convince them.
SideburnsOfDoom 5y ago
It's always probabilistic, but With the current North American heatwave, the idea that it is "unrelated to global warming" has been calculated as being unlikely to the point of being "virtually impossible" https://www.worldweatherattribution.org/western-north-american-extreme-heat-virtually-impossible-without-human-caused-climate-change/ https://www.worldweatherattribution.org/western-north-americ... https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/07/climate/climate-change-heat-wave.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/07/climate/climate-change-he...

How many extreme outlier events per year do we need before we can stop saying “linking any single event to global warming is complicated” in every article?

by wrs 5y ago

How many extreme outlier events per year do we need before we can stop saying “linking any single event to global warming is complicated” in every article?

smt88 5y ago

It's not about how many events, but how many years. We can say that climate change would be expected to cause these weather events, but weather isn't climate until it's observed for much longer than we have so far. There's no doubt climate change can and will produce these effects, so the best articles will just say that A) these events are extreme, and B) we will see many more of them until they become the new normal.

anigbrowl 5y ago
While caution is laudable, it's also frequently an excuse for inaction (not by you). As a person of middle years who has regarded CC as An Issue for ~25 years now, I'd say the new normal has arrived.
- bena 5y ago
  Yeah, environmental concerns, including climate change is part of what inspired Al Gore to run for Congress in 1976. So, is like 45 years enough? And that's the thing about incremental change, it creeps up on you. So yeah, last year wasn't that much different from last year, but compared to 5 years ago, 10, 50? There's always an excuse to do nothing.
- smt88 5y ago
  I understand your point, but I don't consider it to be "caution" so much as "accurate". Scientists (and journalists) should tell the truth about science, even if they think it will negatively impact behavior. Otherwise they'll lose credibility later (see: CDC and "don't wear masks" ca. March 2020).
  - anigbrowl 5y ago
    They already do, and go to great lengths to qualify and quantify their uncertainty. But you seem to be arguing that onl retrospective knowledge is valid. If there's a large fire going on on in a room of your own, you can't say with total certainty that the rest of the structure will catch fire. But if you insist on delaying judgment because it's not yet accurate to say your house/apartment building is on fire, how is that going to work out for you?

stjohnswarts 5y ago

You can't take 1 year of events and extrapolate climate change from that, you have to include many years and you get a probability and not a definite, that's the way patterns work when you have incomplete information. While I believe climate change is a thing you can't say "but look at what happened last year!" and draw any conclusions. We have floods and heat waves every single year.

tarr11 5y ago
Yeah this article says “climate change causes an increase in flooding and this was a flood therefore it was likely caused by climate change.” which is circular. I found an article seems to imply that frequency and severity of flooding in Europe has been increasing. I couldn’t find anything specific to Germany or Belgium. https://www.newscientist.com/article/2249489-recent-decades-of-european-floods-are-among-the-worst-in-500-years/amp/ https://www.newscientist.com/article/2249489-recent-decades-...
- loopz 5y ago
  The argument turns circular because while climate models predicts climate change, they have variations and do not predict local weather. They can imply higher risk and using statistics you can say there's a very low chance these events (magnitude and number), is due to normal weather alone. However, statistics won't tell the whole story. Since everything is changing permanently, there's only one time a dam will collapse. The best people to ask would be credible climate scientists who publish in peer-reviewed journals. For example: https://www.ipcc.ch/reports/ https://www.ipcc.ch/reports/ If determining wether a bridge is sound or not: Do you run statistics over how many people get safely across, and run trends on random internet searches? Or do you invite specialists to assess the bridge?
IfOnlyYouKnew 5y ago
By that logic, you'll never reach any conclusions: any weather pattern is possible, theoretically. If one year of California being on fire for 4 months can just be a coincidence, so can two years. Or twelve. One day of beating the temperature record by +5 deg F can also be less likely, and therefore better evidence of global warming, than, say, two separate events each breaking the record by +2 deg F. The magnitude matters. Here, some towns saw 150 mm of rain in 12 h. Previous monthly record (since 1945) was 200 mm. But really this is all silly. Look at that temperature color stripe and try telling anyone that the last 20 years are drawn from the same distribution as those before: https://ml1ohkphn9q1.i.optimole.com/Qi2pur4-vTGg4qbd/w:1080/h:675/q:auto/rt:fill/g:ce/https://forumeteoclimat.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/warming-stripes.png https://ml1ohkphn9q1.i.optimole.com/Qi2pur4-vTGg4qbd/w:1080/... The denial was silly even a decade ago, which is about the time the political right switched to accepting warming, but rejecting a human contribution. By now everyone has noticed that's equally silly, since it'd be quite something if science predicted warming a decade in advance with surprising precision while getting the mechanism completely wrong. So that's where we are today, and the last remaining refuge really is to debate the magnitude of the problem and the value of trade-offs: who should do what against it, i. e. "...but cars in Texas are just 5% of global CO_2, it does not matter if we stop buying SUVs". That's really about values and not entirely accessible to rational arguments, so the remaining hope is that some of the harms just randomly hit the people opposing any action, and either kill or convince them.

SideburnsOfDoom 5y ago

It's always probabilistic, but With the current North American heatwave, the idea that it is "unrelated to global warming" has been calculated as being unlikely to the point of being "virtually impossible" https://www.worldweatherattribution.org/western-north-american-extreme-heat-virtually-impossible-without-human-caused-climate-change/ https://www.worldweatherattribution.org/western-north-americ... https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/07/climate/climate-change-heat-wave.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/07/climate/climate-change-he...