6 ms·

How about framing it differently? To say something like: "of the five recent weather catastrophes (off the top of my head: this Pakistan monsoon, Europe drough

How about framing it differently? To say something like: "of the five recent weather catastrophes (off the top of my head: this Pakistan monsoon, Europe drought, California drought, heatwave in India, heatwave in Spain), we can confidently say at least four were caused by climate change, and perhaps, perhaps one wasn't. Which one? It doesn't matter, and we don't even know if it wasn't." might be correct and understandable enough?

jfim 4y ago
To the lay person, this sounds like "the scientists can't even figure out which ones were caused by climate change, how are we supposed to believe them." A better explanation is along the lines of "we haven't seen such a drought/flood in 100 years, and climate change makes these extreme events more likely to happen."
- GauntletWizard 4y ago
  Japanese Tsunami Stones wish to have a word with you about cycles and long-term probability. https://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/21/world/asia/21stones.html https://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/21/world/asia/21stones.html
verisimi 4y ago
If there was no climate change but you have the world to look at, you would still be able to find several extreme weather events every year. As we don't have a handle on _all_ weather events, we are prone to think these events are somehow exceptional, when all that is happening is that this is where the media focus is at present. If the media decided to focus on some other topic, eg siamese twins, or accidents in the military, or whatever, we would soon think we won't get a seat on the bus for conjoined twins, or imagine that every soldier is likely to be killed by friendly fire. It is impossible for us to faithfully discern truth from the media presentation.
- anigbrowl 4y ago
  You're making two arguments here: that if we don't know everything, we don't know anything, and that we're incapable of deriving truth from media reports. Neither is true. We often have adequate priors and when individual perceptions aren't sufficient statistics offer a base of comparison. Media bias and cognitive biases exist, of course, but uncertainty and bias can also be measured and mitigated. It's notable that sometimes the loudest complaints of media bias come from competing media outlets with lesser or negative commitment to reliability.
  - verisimi 4y ago
    I'm saying that you can't know the reality, nor can you know the reality from what is presented by the media. You seem to think you can discern something useful from what the media says. I'm saying that all you can notice is when the media is pushing a particular narrative, you don't know the underlying truth. Unless you have personally verified it. And no one does.
    - anigbrowl 4y ago
      This is just solipsistic paranoia. People can and do research subjects on their own initiative. Media outlets typically credit expert opinions so people can also look into those experts and see if they're influential in their field, what their publication and citation history is etc. 'The media' is not a monolith, but rather an industry that delivers information with a distribution of timeliness, reliability, and neutrality. Your approach is less 'don't believe everything you read' and more 'you can't believe anything, everyone is lying, getting at the truth is basically impossible.'
      - verisimi 4y ago
        My approach is to be clear about the difference between what I know and believe. Accreditation, publication and citation mean nothing to me. Experts mean nothing to me. Flattering titles mean nothing to me. I want to hear the argument, and I want to understand how I can verify it for myself. If I can't verify it - and climate change as presented is unverifiable, unfalsifiable - then what am I meant to do with all these heartfelt beliefs? Should I believe them anyway because everyone else does? What relation do lots of earnest beliefs (and some dishonest, alarmist mouthpieces - the media) have to do with the truth?
briandear 4y ago
But were they? We can’t confidently say anything of the sort. Were there not extreme weather events in the past? Certain people want to attribute everything to climate change because it suits their politics. Then there is the question of what causes climate change and the further question of if those causes are human. And the further question, the one of unintended consequences — does “solving” climate change create problems we aren’t foreseeing? Did the Covid lockdowns of California have any effect on climate? And if not, then doesn’t that cast question on the premise of zero carbon fixes climate change? The near shutdown of the global air transport system during the peak of the pandemic — did that have any effect at all on climate? Why must we accept the premise that lowering human-caused carbon emissions does anything to change climate “back” when there is little actual evidence from the real world that confirms that premise? And why do those most vocal on climate oppose nuclear energy? The answer is simple: it isn’t about climate but about redistribution of the means of production.
- anigbrowl 4y ago
  Your post comes off as sealioning/strawmanning. If this was not what you intended it might benefit from more focus.
- aeroman 4y ago
  Yes, there were extreme events in the past. These events are now much more frequent thanks to climate change. Sometimes 10s to 100s of times more common. Gloal climate change is caused by human emissions of greenhouse gases. This is now very clear and there is very little evidence of anything else having more than a small impact. The COVID lockdowns had an effect on the climate, see for example the reduction in high clouds due to a decrease in flying [0]. Stopping GHG emissions only prevents further climate change. It does not fix it, just stops it from getting worse. To change the climate 'back', we have to remove CO2 from the atmosphere, not just stop emitting it. Many people who want to stop climate change are also pro nuclear energy as a means of doing that. But why would that have anything to do with redistribution of the means of production? [0] - https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/abf686 https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/abf686
- pjc50 4y ago
SamReidHughes 4y ago
That's not a correct framing because of those 5 events, climate change caused about ±0.1 of them.

jfim 4y ago

To the lay person, this sounds like "the scientists can't even figure out which ones were caused by climate change, how are we supposed to believe them." A better explanation is along the lines of "we haven't seen such a drought/flood in 100 years, and climate change makes these extreme events more likely to happen."

GauntletWizard 4y ago
Japanese Tsunami Stones wish to have a word with you about cycles and long-term probability. https://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/21/world/asia/21stones.html https://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/21/world/asia/21stones.html

verisimi 4y ago

If there was no climate change but you have the world to look at, you would still be able to find several extreme weather events every year. As we don't have a handle on _all_ weather events, we are prone to think these events are somehow exceptional, when all that is happening is that this is where the media focus is at present. If the media decided to focus on some other topic, eg siamese twins, or accidents in the military, or whatever, we would soon think we won't get a seat on the bus for conjoined twins, or imagine that every soldier is likely to be killed by friendly fire. It is impossible for us to faithfully discern truth from the media presentation.

anigbrowl 4y ago
You're making two arguments here: that if we don't know everything, we don't know anything, and that we're incapable of deriving truth from media reports. Neither is true. We often have adequate priors and when individual perceptions aren't sufficient statistics offer a base of comparison. Media bias and cognitive biases exist, of course, but uncertainty and bias can also be measured and mitigated. It's notable that sometimes the loudest complaints of media bias come from competing media outlets with lesser or negative commitment to reliability.
- verisimi 4y ago
  I'm saying that you can't know the reality, nor can you know the reality from what is presented by the media. You seem to think you can discern something useful from what the media says. I'm saying that all you can notice is when the media is pushing a particular narrative, you don't know the underlying truth. Unless you have personally verified it. And no one does.
  - anigbrowl 4y ago
    This is just solipsistic paranoia. People can and do research subjects on their own initiative. Media outlets typically credit expert opinions so people can also look into those experts and see if they're influential in their field, what their publication and citation history is etc. 'The media' is not a monolith, but rather an industry that delivers information with a distribution of timeliness, reliability, and neutrality. Your approach is less 'don't believe everything you read' and more 'you can't believe anything, everyone is lying, getting at the truth is basically impossible.'
    - verisimi 4y ago
      My approach is to be clear about the difference between what I know and believe. Accreditation, publication and citation mean nothing to me. Experts mean nothing to me. Flattering titles mean nothing to me. I want to hear the argument, and I want to understand how I can verify it for myself. If I can't verify it - and climate change as presented is unverifiable, unfalsifiable - then what am I meant to do with all these heartfelt beliefs? Should I believe them anyway because everyone else does? What relation do lots of earnest beliefs (and some dishonest, alarmist mouthpieces - the media) have to do with the truth?

briandear 4y ago

But were they? We can’t confidently say anything of the sort. Were there not extreme weather events in the past? Certain people want to attribute everything to climate change because it suits their politics. Then there is the question of what causes climate change and the further question of if those causes are human. And the further question, the one of unintended consequences — does “solving” climate change create problems we aren’t foreseeing? Did the Covid lockdowns of California have any effect on climate? And if not, then doesn’t that cast question on the premise of zero carbon fixes climate change? The near shutdown of the global air transport system during the peak of the pandemic — did that have any effect at all on climate? Why must we accept the premise that lowering human-caused carbon emissions does anything to change climate “back” when there is little actual evidence from the real world that confirms that premise? And why do those most vocal on climate oppose nuclear energy? The answer is simple: it isn’t about climate but about redistribution of the means of production.

anigbrowl 4y ago
Your post comes off as sealioning/strawmanning. If this was not what you intended it might benefit from more focus.
aeroman 4y ago
Yes, there were extreme events in the past. These events are now much more frequent thanks to climate change. Sometimes 10s to 100s of times more common. Gloal climate change is caused by human emissions of greenhouse gases. This is now very clear and there is very little evidence of anything else having more than a small impact. The COVID lockdowns had an effect on the climate, see for example the reduction in high clouds due to a decrease in flying [0]. Stopping GHG emissions only prevents further climate change. It does not fix it, just stops it from getting worse. To change the climate 'back', we have to remove CO2 from the atmosphere, not just stop emitting it. Many people who want to stop climate change are also pro nuclear energy as a means of doing that. But why would that have anything to do with redistribution of the means of production? [0] - https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/abf686 https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/abf686
pjc50 4y ago

SamReidHughes 4y ago

That's not a correct framing because of those 5 events, climate change caused about ±0.1 of them.