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A lot of comments deriding this article as alarmist. Excuse me if I'm incorrect in saying so, but even the data seems to tell me that alarmism is where we are a

A lot of comments deriding this article as alarmist. Excuse me if I'm incorrect in saying so, but even the data seems to tell me that alarmism is where we are at: This articles data. Incredible floods in Pakistan. Heat domes over the PNW. Fires in Australia, Canada, California. And now a warming event in the North Atlantic unlike any other. All of that and this is likely to be one of the coolest summers for the remainder of our lives. Its only getting warmer from here (barring geoengineering). What about this is not alarming? As disheartening as it is, this is what is needed for action at this point.

nomel 3y ago
> Fires in Australia, Canada, California. Please don't use California as an example here. It's supposed to be on fire. Several species of trees and plants here cannot germinate without fire. The loooong known problem [1] is mismanagement, building houses where places burn, and blaming the wrong people, which leads to overgrowth from lack of fire. Fires aren't, by any measure, optional. If you impede them, they will come back harsher the next time around, which has very recently been addressed with laws to help increase the frequency of fires [2][3]. I don't see how it's possible to even measure global warming impact with the mismanagement that has accumulated. [1] https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/decades-mismanagement-led-choked-forests-now-it-s-time-clear-n1243599 https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/decades-mismanagement-l... [2] https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/12/3/new-california-law-affirms-indigenous-right-to-controlled-burns https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/12/3/new-california-law-... [3] https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2021-10-07/newsom-signs-fire-law-paving-way-for-more-prescribed-burns https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2021-10-07/newsom-s...
- nomel 3y ago
  Please read the links. I'm not some anti climate nut. This isn't some controversial take, if you're at all familiar with local politics/policies.
- civilitty 3y ago
  Same with Australia. There’s so many pyrophytes that the Eucalyptus tree adapted to produce an oil that burns especially hot in order to wipe out competitors and prevent them from sprouting after the fire. Canada, on the other hand, is a powder keg waiting to blow. The ecosystem is too wet to have any fire adaptations and as the peatlands dry, they expose meters thick layers of undecomposed plant matter that are dense enough to be used as a cheap and dirty fuel in some parts of world. It’s one of the largest carbon stores on the planet and we’ll soon have months long fires a the peat burns.
- throwaway5752 3y ago
  Fires in CA are normal, but not all fires are equal, and the fires that have been in CA recently are worse than they would have been even with the excess ground litter. The fire season is longer, the droughts are worse, the fires are more intense, fires are happening outside of their historic range, and trees are not surviving the fire assuming they weren't dead already due to drought. Timely article, "Anthropogenic climate change impacts exacerbate summer forest fires in California" (https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2213815120 https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2213815120)
  - nomel 3y ago
    > even with the excess ground litter With the nearly 30 years of mismanagement, I'm having trouble understanding how that conclusion can be so easily made. From your link: > While an increase in temperatures and dryness has been identified to be one of the major drivers of increased summer forest burned area (BA), the extent to which such changes are due to natural variability or anthropogenic climate change remains unresolved
    - throwaway5752 3y ago
      You are cherry picking quotes. This is from the abstract: "Our results indicate that nearly all the observed increase in BA is due to anthropogenic climate change as historical model simulations accounting for anthropogenic forcing yield 172% (range 84 to 310%) more area burned than simulations with natural forcing only. We detect the signal of combined historical forcing on the observed BA emerging in 2001 with no detectable influence of the natural forcing alone. In addition, even when considering fuel limitations from fire-fuel feedbacks, a 3 to 52% increase in BA relative to the last decades is expected in the next decades (2031 to 2050), highlighting the need for proactive adaptations." - "BA" is "burned area" This is from the conclusion: "These findings strongly indicate that the observed increase in BA was primarily due to increased fuel aridity and not due to simultaneous variations in nonclimate factors such as human effects on ignitions, fire suppression, or by altering land cover (similarly to the conclusions by refs. 1 and 42). Our results suggest that changes in human environmental factors, including changes in biomass and fire management practices during the period of record, did not significantly affect the stability of the climate-fire relationship at the scales analyzed here." I'm not saying fire suppression policies had no impact. I'm saying that they are not the only cause of the fires. Furthermore, I am saying they aren't even the primary cause, and it's not close.
readthenotes1 3y ago
It's about 5⁰C cooler here today than yesterday. Crisis averted . What I am trying to say is you cannot use specific weather events to talk about climate. And of course once you go into statistics, you will lose 55.3% of your persuasiveness.
- enraged_camel 3y ago
  Weather events, by themselves, are just individual data points. But once you start looking at the big picture, it's difficult to not notice patterns. And said patterns are extremely alarming.
  - PogoPuppy 3y ago
    Climate is the conditions you expect and weather is the conditions you actually got. Always helps me to remember this.
SergeAx 3y ago
What kind of action do you have in mind?
- Ancalagon 3y ago
  Maybe actually meeting the Paris climate commitments to start...
q1w2 3y ago
Climate Change is a real threat, but listing individual weather perturbations as data points is like giving personal anecdotes as evidence of societal changes. The strongest and most accurate evidence for global climate change are GLOBAL indicators, such as sea level rise, global average temperatures, etc... Every weather event you list, can probably be countered with a mild weather event somewhere else. It's mock science, and it's the most obvious sign of hyperbole.
- data_maan 3y ago
  This post is wrong as it downplays the severity of individual events and only focusses on global ones. Last year's floods in Pakistan that displaced millions (barely reported on in the west) were such a local event. Saying "oh, this is fine, because somewhere else the weather was mild" is disturbing. The whole reason why climate change is so problematic is that the change in the global indicators will cause many many "individual weather perturbations", as you call them, which will displaced millions and disrupt supply chains. The fact that there is some mild weather event somewhere else doesn't offset these negative effects in any way! It is not mock science!
wrycoder 3y ago
The cool summers are the ones to watch out for - a harbinger of global cooling.

nomel 3y ago

> Fires in Australia, Canada, California. Please don't use California as an example here. It's supposed to be on fire. Several species of trees and plants here cannot germinate without fire. The loooong known problem [1] is mismanagement, building houses where places burn, and blaming the wrong people, which leads to overgrowth from lack of fire. Fires aren't, by any measure, optional. If you impede them, they will come back harsher the next time around, which has very recently been addressed with laws to help increase the frequency of fires [2][3]. I don't see how it's possible to even measure global warming impact with the mismanagement that has accumulated. [1] https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/decades-mismanagement-led-choked-forests-now-it-s-time-clear-n1243599 https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/decades-mismanagement-l... [2] https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/12/3/new-california-law-affirms-indigenous-right-to-controlled-burns https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/12/3/new-california-law-... [3] https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2021-10-07/newsom-signs-fire-law-paving-way-for-more-prescribed-burns https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2021-10-07/newsom-s...

nomel 3y ago
Please read the links. I'm not some anti climate nut. This isn't some controversial take, if you're at all familiar with local politics/policies.
civilitty 3y ago
Same with Australia. There’s so many pyrophytes that the Eucalyptus tree adapted to produce an oil that burns especially hot in order to wipe out competitors and prevent them from sprouting after the fire. Canada, on the other hand, is a powder keg waiting to blow. The ecosystem is too wet to have any fire adaptations and as the peatlands dry, they expose meters thick layers of undecomposed plant matter that are dense enough to be used as a cheap and dirty fuel in some parts of world. It’s one of the largest carbon stores on the planet and we’ll soon have months long fires a the peat burns.
throwaway5752 3y ago
Fires in CA are normal, but not all fires are equal, and the fires that have been in CA recently are worse than they would have been even with the excess ground litter. The fire season is longer, the droughts are worse, the fires are more intense, fires are happening outside of their historic range, and trees are not surviving the fire assuming they weren't dead already due to drought. Timely article, "Anthropogenic climate change impacts exacerbate summer forest fires in California" (https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2213815120 https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2213815120)
- nomel 3y ago
  > even with the excess ground litter With the nearly 30 years of mismanagement, I'm having trouble understanding how that conclusion can be so easily made. From your link: > While an increase in temperatures and dryness has been identified to be one of the major drivers of increased summer forest burned area (BA), the extent to which such changes are due to natural variability or anthropogenic climate change remains unresolved
  - throwaway5752 3y ago
    You are cherry picking quotes. This is from the abstract: "Our results indicate that nearly all the observed increase in BA is due to anthropogenic climate change as historical model simulations accounting for anthropogenic forcing yield 172% (range 84 to 310%) more area burned than simulations with natural forcing only. We detect the signal of combined historical forcing on the observed BA emerging in 2001 with no detectable influence of the natural forcing alone. In addition, even when considering fuel limitations from fire-fuel feedbacks, a 3 to 52% increase in BA relative to the last decades is expected in the next decades (2031 to 2050), highlighting the need for proactive adaptations." - "BA" is "burned area" This is from the conclusion: "These findings strongly indicate that the observed increase in BA was primarily due to increased fuel aridity and not due to simultaneous variations in nonclimate factors such as human effects on ignitions, fire suppression, or by altering land cover (similarly to the conclusions by refs. 1 and 42). Our results suggest that changes in human environmental factors, including changes in biomass and fire management practices during the period of record, did not significantly affect the stability of the climate-fire relationship at the scales analyzed here." I'm not saying fire suppression policies had no impact. I'm saying that they are not the only cause of the fires. Furthermore, I am saying they aren't even the primary cause, and it's not close.

readthenotes1 3y ago

It's about 5⁰C cooler here today than yesterday. Crisis averted . What I am trying to say is you cannot use specific weather events to talk about climate. And of course once you go into statistics, you will lose 55.3% of your persuasiveness.

enraged_camel 3y ago
Weather events, by themselves, are just individual data points. But once you start looking at the big picture, it's difficult to not notice patterns. And said patterns are extremely alarming.
- PogoPuppy 3y ago
  Climate is the conditions you expect and weather is the conditions you actually got. Always helps me to remember this.

SergeAx 3y ago

What kind of action do you have in mind?

Ancalagon 3y ago
Maybe actually meeting the Paris climate commitments to start...

q1w2 3y ago

Climate Change is a real threat, but listing individual weather perturbations as data points is like giving personal anecdotes as evidence of societal changes. The strongest and most accurate evidence for global climate change are GLOBAL indicators, such as sea level rise, global average temperatures, etc... Every weather event you list, can probably be countered with a mild weather event somewhere else. It's mock science, and it's the most obvious sign of hyperbole.

data_maan 3y ago
This post is wrong as it downplays the severity of individual events and only focusses on global ones. Last year's floods in Pakistan that displaced millions (barely reported on in the west) were such a local event. Saying "oh, this is fine, because somewhere else the weather was mild" is disturbing. The whole reason why climate change is so problematic is that the change in the global indicators will cause many many "individual weather perturbations", as you call them, which will displaced millions and disrupt supply chains. The fact that there is some mild weather event somewhere else doesn't offset these negative effects in any way! It is not mock science!

wrycoder 3y ago

The cool summers are the ones to watch out for - a harbinger of global cooling.