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This article does not mention why climate change is the probable cause of this extreme monsoon. I tried to search other places and found this Guardian article[1

• colechristensen 4y ago
  It is a disservice to mention global warming every time there is a major weather event. Climate is not weather, it is about statistics over decades and centuries. If you can’t say global warming is bogus because it’s particularly cold out today, you also can’t blame global warming on it being hot or rainy. People need to understand it’s not about single events, they don’t when you take every opportunity to mention global warming with bad weather.
  • simonh 4y ago
    True for weather events that are within the previously established long term range of variability. When you have completely unprecedented events, that have no known historical equivalent and it happens more than once in recent history, then I think it's legitimate. There's a clip I remember of an interview with the CEO of an oil company from I think the 90s, where he says something like "They keep saying hurricanes will become stronger and more likely. Where are they? Where are these hurricanes?". IIRC it was several years before Katrina. I wish I could find it on Youtube. Well, now those extreme weather events are happening with increasing regularity. I think it's reasonable to say, you know those extreme weather events climate scientists have been talking about for decades? There they are!
    • aperson_hello 4y ago
      But the problem with your example is that Katrina wasn't even that impressive of a hurricane and not at all unprecedented from a weather perspective. It was "only" a category 3 at landfall. A major hurricane, sure. But major hurricanes happen nearly every year (throughout recorded weather history too). It just hit a really bad spot and it was mostly human failures that created the disaster that it was. Undersized levees, broken pumps, sheer mismanagement of evacuations, total breakdown of government services, a failure to provide housing or relief afterwards. The increasing frequency of these events is climate change driven, but any given one can't be traced directly to climate change. A 10% increase in hurricanes is climate change driven. A single hurricane hitting a specific spot isn't
      • res0nat0r 4y ago
        When a "100 year storm" starts happening every 2-3 years and devastating local economies, you can attribute that to climate change.
        • tedunangst 4y ago
          Unless there are fewer than 100 places, you'd expect at least one 100 year storm somewhere every year.
          • spywaregorilla 4y ago
            Well, do you think the parent comment meant 100 year storms anywhere, or did they mean in the same area, based on the context of what they said?
            • tedunangst 4y ago
              Are we still talking about Katrina? Has New Orleans been hit by five Katrinas since 2005?
              • 4y ago
  • sebazzz 4y ago
    Climate can only be determined in hindsight, rather than weather being now or the near past.
  • pjc50 4y ago
    Global warming changes the probability distribution of weather. This is not an especially easy concept for the layperson to understand because a simple "caused by" isn't appropriate. Any reduction to global warming would result in different weather. There would still be storms. The best we can say is there would likely be fewer storms and less drastic storms if there was less global warming. But as with the pandemic, people like a nice clean binary cause/did not cause distinction to things that are fundamentally statistical processes.
    • hackerlight 4y ago
      This is the only statistically literate perspective.
    • kurupt213 4y ago
      You mean like how the Atlantic hurricane season is abnormally quiet?
      • bumby 4y ago
        There's a higher comment that addresses this. It can effect the overall range of events, meaning both ends of the spectrum. A clearer example is that is can increase the probability flooding as well as droughts; they don't have to be mutually exclusive.
        • TheOtherHobbes 4y ago
          Yes. It's always been about more extreme weather - more droughts, more floods, more tornadoes, more hurricanes, more extreme storms, heavier snow storms, and so on. Most areas will get warmer, some areas will get colder. Sometimes they'll alternate. Some years and seasons will be less extreme than others, some will seem normal, but the trend will be clear. Systems which were built for the old normal will fail more and more frequently, and at some point they'll stop working permanently.
        • WorldMaker 4y ago
          Same with it can cause unseasonably cold days and unseasonably warm days, those aren't mutually exclusive and the range of extremes is expanding in many regions. Which remains a big reason to avoid "global warming" as a term anymore when discussing climate change. Even extreme winter storms are a consequence of climate change and the additional energy in the climate affecting all types of weather. Early climatologists phrased it as a growth in heat in the planet and that earned the nickname "global warming", which is correct enough on a long enough scale, but the real problem of climate change is that it is a ton of additional energy (per Thermodynamics Laws same thing, different side of the equation) in the climate. (For instance, additional energy in the case of winter storms meaning stronger winds which mean lower wind chill temperatures and more precipitation [snow].)
  • Comevius 4y ago
    There are widespread changes in the weather pattern. A single event can be excused, tens of thousands of such events across the globe cannot be. We already understand the connection between climate change and extreme weather, no need to wait decades or centuries to act. Climate change doesn't mean that it will consistently get hotter everywhere. Paradoxically severe cold weather can also become more frequent as the temperature increases, usually as a result of Arctic warming, which warms much faster than the rest of the planet.
  • deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  • nyc_data_geek1 4y ago
    It is not a disservice in any way to associate changing weather patterns with shifts in aggregate global climate (climate change). We're all going to be living with it for the rest of our lives.
    • deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
  • lm28469 4y ago
    > People need to understand it’s not about single events, We got a whole bunch of single "once in a century" event this year, at some point single events become data
  • rayiner 4y ago
    Monsoons in South Asia causing flooding aren’t exactly new! My dad was complaining the other day that kids in his village in Bangladesh these days don’t know what it’s like to take a boat to school during monsoon season (since they implemented extensive flood controls). I suspect climate change is making the monsoons worse. If that’s true then write an article quantifying how much. Tacking it on to random other stories makes it seem very un-sciencey.
    • Bhilai 4y ago
      > Monsoons in South Asia causing flooding aren’t exactly new! I recommend you read the article. This isn't your average flood, 1/3rd of the country is affected and more than a thousand dead.
      • dredmorbius 4y ago
        Not to take away from your response, historical context can be ... illuminating. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_deadliest_floods https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_deadliest_floods>
    • baybal2 4y ago
    • random314 4y ago
      [flagged]
  • carapace 4y ago
    > It is a disservice to mention global warming every time there is a major weather event. Disservice to whom? > Climate is not weather, it is about statistics over decades and centuries. If you can’t say global warming is bogus because it’s particularly cold out today, you also can’t blame global warming on it being hot or rainy. This is not as useful as, say, a chart of weather events over the last century, but TFA lists some other events to try to show the pattern: > Last week, flash floods struck the Dallas-Fort Worth area. Last month, a record-breaking deluge swept through St. Louis before floods in eastern Kentucky killed dozens of people. Outside the United States, a state in Australia observed about 28 inches of rain last month, while record rainfall in South Korea tore up parts of the capital, Seoul, this month. > People need to understand it’s not about single events, they don’t when you take every opportunity to mention global warming with bad weather. That doesn't make sense to me. Repetition typically aids recall and understanding, no?
    • bmismyname 4y ago
      Another one from WaPo mentioning 5 different 1-in-1000 year flooding events, in the US alone: https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/08/23/flood-united-states-climate-explainer/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/08/2... One or two events is a coincidence, 5 unlikely events within the span of a few weeks is a pattern.
      • raymondh 4y ago
        WaPo leans heavily toward fitting the news to its narratives and is generally terrible with data science. Whether and to what extent these 5 unlikely events is an anomaly depends on the number of measurement locations and the expected year-to-year variability. If there were 5,000 reporting sites, would we be surprised by "5 different 1-in-1000 year flooding events" in one year? Climate change is real, but so are enthymemes and low quality news reporting.
        • carapace 4y ago
          Yeah, if there's one thing we all collectively learn from the last couple of decades I hope it's that data is better than blather.
  • tshaddox 4y ago
    > It is a disservice to mention global warming every time there is a major weather event. If global warming makes major weather events 5% more common (that number is made up, I know it’s not that simple), are you supposed to roll Math.random() every time there’s a major weather event and only mention global warming if you get less than 0.05?
    • throwaway_4ever 4y ago
      The alternative of mentioning it's "caused by" every single time because of a slight probability increase doesn't seem right either.
  • gnulinux 4y ago
    This is inaccurate, and I think some comments replying to you are incomplete. "Climate change" changes the probability distribution of weather events, in particular it changes the range (i.e. extremes) as well. So, extreme events such as record-breaking hot days, record-breaking showers etc... are still relevant to climate change. This means not only warmer/rainier days are gonna be more common but also days so hot/rainy that were not observed before will be possible. Say, if max temp observed before in a particular area was 45C, now it'll be possible to observe 50C (AND at the same time 45C will be more likely). This can be extremely rare, but the fact that 50C will be observable will be enough evidence to support this. Do we know whether this particular event was caused by climate change? Of course not, this is a philosophical question, we'd have to discuss what is causality. But statistically climate change will likely make extreme events more common, so when we do observe an extreme rain even like this, it seems worth mentioning that climate change will make events like this more prevalent.
    • Lutger 4y ago
      There is a field of climate science, called attribution studies, which is about figuring out the likelihood or degree to which climate change contributed to specific extreme events. This is of course in line with your comment, but for specific weather events we can do slightly better than just saying climate change can it more prevalent: https://news.climate.columbia.edu/2021/10/04/attribution-science-linking-climate-change-to-extreme-weather/ https://news.climate.columbia.edu/2021/10/04/attribution-sci...
    • refurb 4y ago
      You say it's inaccurate, but then your last paragraph basically agrees "Do we know whether this particular event was caused by climate change? Of course not"?
      • gnulinux 4y ago
        There is a difference between knowing that something is caused by climate change, and knowing that something is strongly correlated with climate change. There is no doubt that if we let CO2 emissions continue, extreme weather events like OP will be more likely. This doesn't mean every time it's warm or rainy or cold the effective cause is the excess CO2 buildup.
  • kergonath 4y ago
    > It is a disservice to mention global warming every time there is a major weather event. It is a disservice to muddy the waters that way every time any weather event is discussed. Yes, there might have been worse floodings about 5000 years ago. Yes, one single event cannot be attributed to climate change and freak monsoons happen from time to time. But we are very confident about the magnitude and frequency of these events being a direct consequence of global warming. Climate change and these events overall are direct consequences of global warming. There is no “yeah but”. We also know for a fact that global warning is directly responsible for the increase in melt water from receding glaciers, which was a contributor to the floods in Pakistan. It’s completely wrong to say that this would have happened without global warming. It’s like the discussions about the heat wave in Europe. You’d think people would get the message when 8 of the warmest years on record happened in the last 10 years.
    • AnimalMuppet 4y ago
      > We also know for a fact that global warning is directly responsible for the increase in melt water from receding glaciers... OK. > ... which was a contributor to the floods in Pakistan. Can you explain how that contributes to the flooding? I don't see the mechanism.
      • dahinds 4y ago
        water flows downhill?
      • kergonath 4y ago
        Pakistan has lots of rivers coming down from the Himalayas. These rivers start at the bottom of glaciers as they melt (yes, this has happened since forever: glaciers melt all the time, but they also grow from snowfall, when there is such a thing). An increase in melt water causes these rivers to overflow, which combines with the effect of the monsoon.
        • AnimalMuppet 4y ago
          D'oh. I'm an idiot. I was thinking of glaciers melting in Greenland (also in the headlines today). I forgot about the Himalayas.
  • BLO716 4y ago
    I'd tend to agree with this sentiment, since tin-foil hat pundits rarely understand the nature of research that is in the last decade, let alone the last month. Sort of sad really, but unfortunate nature of our news cycles.
  • Lutger 4y ago
    > If you can’t say global warming is bogus because it’s particularly cold out today, you also can’t blame global warming on it being hot or rainy. And yet, we care a lot about the impacts of climate change, of which a particularly important and clearly visible category are the extreme weather events. We're not talking about it being hot or rainy, but a third of a county being flooded (Pakistan) or the worst heatwave ever recorded anywhere (China). And we're not just talking about one of these, but a lot of them. Statistics is not just about averages. In fact those are often not the most interesting numbers to crunch. The chance of extreme events occuring is what matters, and when they occur we can calculate what the odds are now versus what the odss were before global warming: in this way we can 'attribute' to degree to which climate change has contributed to the chance of such events happening. I don't remember which one, but there was an event which was 100% the result of climate change, which means there was zero chance of it happening before global warming.
  • gzer0 4y ago
    It’s not a disservice. It’s important to remember that scientists always focus on the evidence, not on opinions. Scientific evidence continues to show that human activities (primarily the human burning of fossil fuels) have warmed Earth’s surface and its ocean basins, which in turn have continued to impact Earth’s climate. This is based on over a century of scientific evidence forming the structural backbone of today's civilization [1]. [1] https://climate.nasa.gov/scientific-consensus.amp https://climate.nasa.gov/scientific-consensus.amp
  • pvaldes 4y ago
    Lack of forests is also a major factor in this kind of torrential floods. Similar catastrophes and landslides happened in Colombia or Brazil after removing the trees. Pakistan has many very high peaks that provide a lot of potential energy but only the 4% is covered by forests. Maybe is time to increase that surface.
  • ignoramous 4y ago
    You're right, but changing climate affects weather, especially in the Tropics. It isn't controversial to state climate change is to blame, because the Monsoons of the Indian Subcontinent and Indochina are evident causalities of the ongoing crisis. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monsoon_of_South_Asia#Impact_of_climate_change https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monsoon_of_South_Asia#Impact_o...
  • flavius29663 4y ago
    exactly, if you do this, then don't complain when people see a cold winter/summer and say: there is no global warming
  • cannabis_sam 4y ago
    >If you can’t say global warming is bogus because it’s particularly cold out today, you also can’t blame global warming on it being hot or rainy. How does this in anyway whatsoever, relate to the multitude of supposedly rare (outside of “global warming), clearly climate induced events causing the floods in Pakistan right now? They had extreme drought, now they have extreme monsoon rain, combined with localized issues like melted glaciers and overflowing reservoirs. If you “can’t say it”, maybe that is because you don’t know what you’re talking about..?
  • EdwardDiego 4y ago
    Climate is statistics over 30 years of weather. ;) You're right, you can't say explicitly that a single extreme weather event is definitely because of climate change. But if you're seeing a trend of change in frequency and/or magnitude, then that's the climate changing.
  • patrick451 4y ago
    I agree. This contradiction that it's just weather when it's really cold but obviously anthropogenic climate change when it's really hot (etc) is one of the reasons I don't take any of this seriously anymore.
• gadders 4y ago
  And yet deaths due to climate events have never been lower: https://www.wsj.com/articles/climate-activists-disasters-fire-storms-deaths-change-cop26-glasgow-global-warming-11635973538 https://www.wsj.com/articles/climate-activists-disasters-fir...
  • Bhilai 4y ago
    Opinion pieces (specially from WSJ opinion section) are far from fact based journalism.
    • gadders 4y ago
      Did you check the author name and credentials?
  • deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  • throwaway894345 4y ago
    I don't think the big climate change risk is deaths directly from disasters as much as it is starvation, poverty, disease, unrest, etc brought on by things like crop failures. The war in Ukraine prevented the country from getting its grain to market, which drove up grain prices beyond what poor countries could afford, creating a food crisis (this also impacted the poor in more developed countries, as food prices rose). A climate-induced crop failure in a major agricultural region could have the same effect.
  • anigbrowl 4y ago
    That's largely because we have much better weather monitoring and prediction tools than we used to do, so we are able to measure, warn, and deploy resources with a fair degree of confidence. Bjorn Lomborg's whole deal is to take the focus off the frequency/severity of the problem and instead celebrate the quality of our disaster response. He also touts how disaster response/mitigation is but a small part of impressively growing GDP, even though things like forest destruction from wildfires aren't well-reflected in GDP figures.
• AnimalMuppet 4y ago
  > > Basic physics is the reason rainfall is becoming intense around the world – warmer air holds more moisture. And also warmer oceans evaporate more. But... if warm air holds more moisture, sure, there's more moisture in the air. But there's no greater tendency for it to condense out in the form of rain, because warm air holds more moisture. Can someone ELI5 why warmer air should lead to more rain, not just to more water vapor in the air?
  • Mordisquitos 4y ago
    > Can someone ELI5 why warmer air should lead to more rain, not just to more water vapor in the air? Prior disclaimer: IANAC and IANAM It can lead to either, depending on the local climate and circumstances. For an oversimplified explanation, compare the flooding in Pakistan and the drought in Europe: - In Europe, abnormally high temperatures have increased the evaporation of top level water, because a greater proportion of water can evaporate into the atmosphere. As a result, even when it does rain, the water is more likely to evaporate again rather than soak into the soil and feed into the local drainage basin and eventually its river. - In Pakistan, abnormally high temperatures have increased the water-holding capacity of the atmosphere. As a result, when the factors that normally trigger monsoon rains come into play, the amount of water that is released is disproportionately larger than the normal average.
  • aeroman 4y ago
    Water provides the 'energy' that drives many storms. As a bubble (or parcel) or air rises, it cools. Eventually it gets cold enough to condense water (some of which forms rain). This heats the parcel of air, making it less dense than it was and so more buoyant - so it rises faster and invigorates the cloud/storm. If you have more water around, this process is stronger (as you have more available water to condense and energise the storm), eventually producing more rain. This is the reason why you see the biggest thunderstorms in the tropics, where it is warm and moist.
• guywithahat 4y ago
  Specific weather should not be correlated with climate. Saying X natural disaster was caused by climate change should be looked down upon in the same way conservatives might say X cold snap proves climate change isn't real/is exaggerated. We should use averages to build evidence for climate change, not specific weather patterns on any particular day, especially considering monsoons have been happening for millions of years
  • throwaway894345 4y ago
    We absolutely can say objectively that climate change contributed to an increase in frequency and/or severity of a particular weather event. We can't say anything with certainty, but we can say it with a particular (often high) probability.
• zosima 4y ago
  Or maybe this event had some influence? https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/tongas-volcanic-eruption-blasted-an-enormous-plume-of-water-vapor-into-the-atmosphere-180980538/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/tongas-volcanic-er...