10 ms·

That's why in these discussions it's usually better to talk about specific statistics like 'the chance of a wildfire has gone up by 20%', or perhaps more clearl

That's why in these discussions it's usually better to talk about specific statistics like 'the chance of a wildfire has gone up by 20%', or perhaps more clearly 'the average time between extreme floods has gone down from once every 100 years to once every 60' (which I find communicates the point a bit more clearly). That said personally I think that should be as far as the discussion goes, talking about a specific event and asking whether it's because of climate change is silly and leads to counter intuitive results because by nature extreme weather events are mostly caused by bad luck. Climate changes the frequency of extreme events, but talking about the frequency of a singular specific event is impossible. And talking about just 1 or 2 of them isn't quite enough either, events will occur at a rate far above or below that predicted by the best weather models simply because of (bad) luck. I sometimes get the feeling that people try to attribute extreme weather to climate change because it improves the narrative, or as proof that climate change has happened. But personally I find this a bit silly since the fact that the global average temperature has increased and the effects this has on weather shouldn't be all that controversial.

kkylin 5y ago
Absolutely agree with all this. I'd also want to add that another thing to think about is not just how unlikely any particular event is, but the probability of multiple unlikely events occurring across the globe in a relatively short time. After all, Earth is big enough that rare events will happen somewhere. Unusual weather patterns in multiple locations start to point to a systematic cause.
dpierce9 5y ago
Replace ‘extreme weather’ with ‘lung cancer’ and ‘climate change’ with ‘smoking’ to see the soundness of this reasoning.
- sanxiyn 5y ago
  Lung cancer risk was established with control group. We don't have control group for a planet so we use climate models. The article is about remembering that we use models because of lack of alternatives, not because they are as good as control group.
  - dpierce9 5y ago
    The parent was suggesting causal inference from general statistical evidence to particulars is impossible. You seem to be suggesting there can be no causal inference where there are no control groups. Both positions are wrong.
    - sanxiyn 5y ago
      I am saying it is better to have control groups than not. Hopefully that is non-controversial.
      - dpierce9 5y ago
        That isn’t controversial. The issue is your first point, there is no control group for the Earth as a whole system. So demanding a control group as a barrier to causal reasoning about the relationship between weather and the climate is an impossible bar. Weather is real. Weather has causes. We can and do reason about those causes all the time.
- contravariant 5y ago
  No I stand by it, talking about cause when the effect is probabilistic is an endless quagmire that people should avoid. Trying to attribute an individual case of cancer to smoking is nigh impossible, which is part of the reason tobacco companies got away with it for so long. Plenty of companies have gotten away with bad practices by simply demanding proof for each individual case, the earlier we recognize this as a meaningless question the better.
  - dpierce9 5y ago
    Smoking causes cancer is true. But not everyone who smokes will get cancer and some people who don’t smoke will get cancer. Causation is hard. But we also know that particular cancers are caused by particular acts of smoking. The causal generalization is built on the observation of particulars. It might be hard but I don’t see why we wouldn’t, a priori, be able to say ‘this event was made worse by climate change because it likely affected input x’. I generally agree with you that this isn’t easy to do, the value isn’t clear, and whether we can say such things with the evidence we have for any particular event isn’t obvious.
- Proven 5y ago
labster 5y ago
As a climatologist by education and a dabbler in politics, I think you are radically misjudging the ability of most people to have rational discussions about unwelcome statistics. If you say severe weather will increase by 20% due to climate change, people will hear that there’s an 80% chance weather will stay the same. And they say I’m just being alarmist. When I say that this storm may have been enhanced by climate change, but it could also could have happened anyway, statistically: people hear natural variability, and that I don’t know for sure that climate change impacted their daily lives. And if I don’t know for sure, there must not be much of a case for climate change. Most of the world is not HN, where nuanced discussions work. Most of the world does not give a shit about climate change unless they will personally suffer in some way. So I lie. So that even if this storm or that hurricane didn’t hurt them, they will have empathy for those who did suffer from a climate-enhanced storm. Because if we wait for everyone to feel the impact in earnest, it will be far too late.
- sanxiyn 5y ago
  I think you are the problem. Don't lie. Ever.
  - Retric 5y ago
    Lies of omission are unavoidable when talking to a general audience about any deep scientific or technical issue. A physicist actually explaining Magnetism takes years. If a PHD gives you a short answer their simply lying to you. For example, no ferromagnetic materials aren’t simply all atoms arranged in a specific fashion that’s a monumental simplification.
    - Breazy 5y ago
      An omission really only becomes a lie of omission if somebody would feel deceived upon learning of the omission. Nobody would reasonably feel deceived by your omission of the 0.000000001% cosmic ray hypothesis.
    - generalizations 5y ago
      There's a pretty stark difference. The PhD would retain their credibility if someone explained the difference between the short answer and the complete answer. But that weather dude will lose his credibility, because his audience will feel deceived, not educated.

kkylin 5y ago

Absolutely agree with all this. I'd also want to add that another thing to think about is not just how unlikely any particular event is, but the probability of multiple unlikely events occurring across the globe in a relatively short time. After all, Earth is big enough that rare events will happen somewhere. Unusual weather patterns in multiple locations start to point to a systematic cause.

dpierce9 5y ago

Replace ‘extreme weather’ with ‘lung cancer’ and ‘climate change’ with ‘smoking’ to see the soundness of this reasoning.

sanxiyn 5y ago
Lung cancer risk was established with control group. We don't have control group for a planet so we use climate models. The article is about remembering that we use models because of lack of alternatives, not because they are as good as control group.
- dpierce9 5y ago
  The parent was suggesting causal inference from general statistical evidence to particulars is impossible. You seem to be suggesting there can be no causal inference where there are no control groups. Both positions are wrong.
  - sanxiyn 5y ago
    I am saying it is better to have control groups than not. Hopefully that is non-controversial.
    - dpierce9 5y ago
      That isn’t controversial. The issue is your first point, there is no control group for the Earth as a whole system. So demanding a control group as a barrier to causal reasoning about the relationship between weather and the climate is an impossible bar. Weather is real. Weather has causes. We can and do reason about those causes all the time.
contravariant 5y ago
No I stand by it, talking about cause when the effect is probabilistic is an endless quagmire that people should avoid. Trying to attribute an individual case of cancer to smoking is nigh impossible, which is part of the reason tobacco companies got away with it for so long. Plenty of companies have gotten away with bad practices by simply demanding proof for each individual case, the earlier we recognize this as a meaningless question the better.
- dpierce9 5y ago
  Smoking causes cancer is true. But not everyone who smokes will get cancer and some people who don’t smoke will get cancer. Causation is hard. But we also know that particular cancers are caused by particular acts of smoking. The causal generalization is built on the observation of particulars. It might be hard but I don’t see why we wouldn’t, a priori, be able to say ‘this event was made worse by climate change because it likely affected input x’. I generally agree with you that this isn’t easy to do, the value isn’t clear, and whether we can say such things with the evidence we have for any particular event isn’t obvious.
Proven 5y ago

labster 5y ago

As a climatologist by education and a dabbler in politics, I think you are radically misjudging the ability of most people to have rational discussions about unwelcome statistics. If you say severe weather will increase by 20% due to climate change, people will hear that there’s an 80% chance weather will stay the same. And they say I’m just being alarmist. When I say that this storm may have been enhanced by climate change, but it could also could have happened anyway, statistically: people hear natural variability, and that I don’t know for sure that climate change impacted their daily lives. And if I don’t know for sure, there must not be much of a case for climate change. Most of the world is not HN, where nuanced discussions work. Most of the world does not give a shit about climate change unless they will personally suffer in some way. So I lie. So that even if this storm or that hurricane didn’t hurt them, they will have empathy for those who did suffer from a climate-enhanced storm. Because if we wait for everyone to feel the impact in earnest, it will be far too late.

sanxiyn 5y ago
I think you are the problem. Don't lie. Ever.
- Retric 5y ago
  Lies of omission are unavoidable when talking to a general audience about any deep scientific or technical issue. A physicist actually explaining Magnetism takes years. If a PHD gives you a short answer their simply lying to you. For example, no ferromagnetic materials aren’t simply all atoms arranged in a specific fashion that’s a monumental simplification.
  - Breazy 5y ago
    An omission really only becomes a lie of omission if somebody would feel deceived upon learning of the omission. Nobody would reasonably feel deceived by your omission of the 0.000000001% cosmic ray hypothesis.
  - generalizations 5y ago
    There's a pretty stark difference. The PhD would retain their credibility if someone explained the difference between the short answer and the complete answer. But that weather dude will lose his credibility, because his audience will feel deceived, not educated.