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The frustrating thing for me about climate change data is that anecdotally it doesn't correspond with my personal experiences over the past decade. This is part

The frustrating thing for me about climate change data is that anecdotally it doesn't correspond with my personal experiences over the past decade. This is particularly surprising given that I've lived in 3 different continents over multiple seasons and visited several others. With the exception of 1 particularly hot European summer (I think it was 2019), it has mostly been cooler than normal everywhere I've lived both in the southern and northern hemisphere. This winter in Australia has been one of the coldest I can remember and last summer was pleasantly cool... I was in central Queensland at the time which usually has quite hot summers. Before that, I was in Europe for half a decade and most of the people I know said the temperatures were normal or cold except for that one summer I mentioned. Whenever I read articles about temperatures, the heat wave is always happening in some foreign country that I didn't visit.

2358452 3y ago
That's to be expected, the global variation over the last 2 decades has been about .2-.3 celsius. That's very difficult to notice, and basically completely swamped by local variations (what is called weather, not climate). The thing is climate change is an almost perfect example of the boiling frog parable. It occurs over several decades, just enough to cause skepticism or feelings of "it's not changing so quickly". See NASA's graph: https://climate.nasa.gov/vital-signs/global-temperature/ https://climate.nasa.gov/vital-signs/global-temperature/ This rate however is probably almost without precedents geologically, save for extreme events like giant eruptions or something. It's hard for life to adapt this quickly, on top of the many other habitat pressures we've introduced. Also, there will be significant consequences for humans (which could be catastrophic and hard to predict if we don't limit warming to say 2C). What frustrates me is that there's still significant resistance to not destroying our own home...
- jongjong 3y ago
  Given that it's such a small change... Surely this is not a problem for our generation. It definitely does not appear to be a problem that's worth destroying financial opportunities on a massive scale and enabling totalitarian governments in the current era. The way I see climate change activism is that elites want to fix the climate at the expense of the lower classes of society... In a time when wealth inequality is at an all time high and without the consent of the lower classes. This is incorrect. First, we have to fix inequality problem so that the pain of the transition will fall more or less evenly on everyone's shoulders... Then once this is the case, everyone should have more time to think about climate problems and we can expect broad support. Of course, 'we' will all be long dead by then. I feel totally fine and morally justified in leaving this problem to a future generation. Most people in my generation have way too many concrete personal problems concerning their own survival in a week's time to worry about abstract problems such as the survival of the human race in a few hundred years. ...Not to mention that in a few generations' time, if we focus on maximizing access to opportunities, through the resulting innovation, we will probably end up with extremely efficient renewable energy which will be able to fight climate change far more effectively with no sacrifices necessary. It seems literally like a no-brainer to me to just let the free market do what it does best in terms of innovation. Shut down government money printers and dismantle policies that are harmful to the free market and which centralize opportunities and create tech monopolies to control the masses. That's not the way. It needs to be done honestly. What's the point of even allowing the human race to survive if it turns the global economy into a squid game and only the most dishonest, manipulative people will remain?
- jfengel 3y ago
  ...often, here on HN, whose members pride themselves on rational thinking and scientific prowess.
- jlarocco 3y ago
  > What frustrates me is that there's still significant resistance to not destroying our own home... It's really not a big deal - humans will adapt to deal with the changes, or they'll go extinct and something else will evolve.
  - 2358452 3y ago
    Sure, but I'd rather live in paradise than burn my house. In that sense nothing's a big deal, but it is for me. I believe we all deserve good lives. The best adaptation to burning your house is the rational thought "Perhaps I should not burn my house". :) It dreads me to think we so much lost contact with living well that many don't care anymore. I think the first step in the journey would be to stop the destructive culture of desperate consumerism, greed, consumption, overwork and ill-being. Maybe that's something we should be prioritizing alongside climate change, as a species. Living well in our homes, and as a community.
    - sokoloff 3y ago
      Living well requires energy and lots of it. There are billions of people who aspire to use far more energy than they are currently using, in order to live better. Who are we to say that they can't use as much energy as we do/did? (I know you're not saying that directly, but it's hard to imagine how half the population could bring themself up to even the median energy consumption without dramatic increases in climate changing forces.)
      - 2358452 3y ago
        I think this is a false conundrum. We should use as much energy as we sustainably can, without destroying ourselves, if that improves our well being. But not more. And we should also make sure that all humans have good conditions. I think the essence of what makes a good life is surprisingly inexpensive in terms of resources. I believe that planning well, we can achieve a good compromise for everyone involved, with a larger focus on those more in need. Moreover, energy consumption isn't so significant as emissions per Watt. Our capacity for solar energy could sustain even energy growth without significant emissions. We already have the technology to make the transition. To reiterate, whatever we do, sitting back and watching the world burn (in an almost literal sense) is not a reasonable option!
- AlexandrB 3y ago
  > It occurs over several decades, just enough to cause skepticism or feelings of "it's not changing so quickly". It's also important to realize that this isn't all "natural" skepticism and there's plenty of money being thrown around to spread FUD about the causes, severity, and consequences of climate change.
  - userbinator 3y ago
    Skepticism isn't the problemj; blind belief is --- and there's plenty of money being thrown around to do that too.
    - photonerd 3y ago
      Yes, but mostly on the denialism side
      - userbinator 3y ago
        Judging by the posts here and in mainstream media, I doubt that.
        mngnt 3y ago
        Consider the economics. There are HUGE companies with a history of influencing legislature, lobbying an lying to everyone, whose existence depends on us to continue not caring about climate change. People like us can hardly imagine the amount of money they are throwing at us in the form of marketing, lobbying, astroturfing, etc. They are literally making money off us not taking action. Otoh, I cannot think of a single billion dollar company that got where it is by being climate friendly.
        userbinator 3y ago
        Media companies get views by being sensationalistic and spreading paranoia. Governments love that too, since it means another excuse they can use to enact more authoritarian policies. The Internet has taken that to the next level.
- mongol 3y ago
  > Also, there will be significant consequences for humans (which could be catastrophic and hard to predict if we don't limit warming to say 2C) I have trouble visualizing what form the catastrophe would take. The worst I can imagine is global famine, is that what we are talking about here? Or rather local famine, acting as catalysts to civil unrest, wars etc? Basically, I think the climate debate gets fuzzy here. Granted, just like you say, it gets hard to predict, but given that, what makes certain temperatures a threshold for disaster?
  - Wojtkie 3y ago
    If oceans get too hot, fisheries will collapse and wreck coastal communities. Sea level rise will make storm surges worse and make "once in a lifetime" events more common. This instability will drive a migration of people inland, essentially as ecological refugees.
    - valval 3y ago
      Then what? Keep going.
- olalonde 3y ago
  It's interesting you chose the boiling frog parable because it's a fallacy. Skeptics contend that climate change will not precipitate an abrupt catastrophe; rather, humanity will simply adapt to it. To illustrate, the Earth's temperature has already risen by approximately 1 degree since the inception of industrialization, yet our lives have arguably improved significantly during this period. Would we willingly forsake the past century of human progress to revert the global temperature back by that single degree? This seems improbable, and yet it is a viewpoint advocated by certain climate change alarmists who propose concepts like degrowth.
  - mulmen 3y ago
    > Would we willingly forsake the past century of human progress to revert the global temperature back by that single degree? Eh. I see what you are saying but have we felt the full effect? Do any of us have a perception of what was lost that would let us even make such a determination?
  - sanp 3y ago
    Why do we need to sacrifice living standards to control emissions?
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    - valval 3y ago
      How could we not? In the western world we might be able to, but that means poor people will start dying elsewhere.
  - ClassyJacket 3y ago
    It's not alarmism to say we should take action to prevent out extinction. By your logic, people who call emergency services when a building is on fire are "alarmists". There has literally NEVER been a problem anywhere near as large as climate change, including World War 2. If being concerned about literally the largest problem to have ever existed is 'alarmism', then your position is simply that it's impossible for anything bad to ever happen.
NovaDudely 3y ago
I am in Melbourne and it seems like we have had the most mild summer and winter. Last winter however was incredibly cold and you can already see that this coming summer is going to be a bad one! It is very dry and all the signs are point towards a big El nino + the Indian Ocean Di-pole being in full swing. Going to be a rough one in the south at least.
pengaru 3y ago
Hence "global warming" became "climate change". You do seem to be using the latter which is consistent with your personal experience, no?
defrost 3y ago
Think of it as more and more energy being kept within a closed space. That closed space is the thin layer of land + ocean + lower atmosphere, it's spinning and it's quite large in comparison to single human. Now think of a closed room with energy being pumped into that room, to (among other things) a fridge on the floor with door open. The energy increase makes the heat exchange coils on the back of the fridge hotter and the space inside the fridge colder. Overall the average energy within the room in increasing. This is a poor but in some ways accurate picture of the earth .. or at least one climatic cell - the earth has a number of these in the North and South hemispheres and they interact and spill energy from one to the other. Energy can express itself in many ways by cascade transfers - to wind and storms, to melting ice (at zero degrees) to create water (also at zero degrees). In Australia that energy has driven the decadal scale La Niña and El Niño oscillation that, so far, has worked out fairly well for Australia ... (a very catastrophic fire season a few years back aside). Elsewhere on the globe, not so much for others. But wait, there's more, especially in the longer term if steps aren't taken. In the near term, you can expect Australia to see a hot, dry El Niño: https://phys.org/news/2023-07-australia-hot-dry-el-niohere.html https://phys.org/news/2023-07-australia-hot-dry-el-niohere.h... https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/ninonina.html\ https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/ninonina.html\*
mliker 3y ago
For me and my network of friends, it has definitely corresponded to many personal experiences in the past 5 years. I wish I could say the opposite.
dools 3y ago
I live in Australia. Since 2019 I’ve seen outrageous nationwide bushfires, intense rain and flooding in the central coast which forced us to evacuate for a week, followed of course by 2 years of a pandemic and then an entire year of rain so heavy in the northern rivers that it catastrophically flooded the entire area and cut off our plateau town from food and fuel deliveries for about a week. Prior that I had never been evacuated or cut off from anything because of weather events, so I guess that’s why scientists are keen to distinguish between anecdotal evidence and statistical, empirical or experimental evidence.
- scripturial 3y ago
  What do you think is the connection between Australian bushfires and climate change? Did Australia not drastically cut back and stop the amount of back burning that Australia used to traditionally do in order to prevent larger bushfires? You only have to ask anyone who has lived for a while in an at risk area to discover first hand that these activities had been curtailed and stopped for quite a few years.
  - dools 3y ago
    > Did Australia not drastically cut back and stop the amount of back burning that Australia used to traditionally do in order to prevent larger bushfires? No, that didn't happen. “Hazard reduction work has increased because of increased funding to the RFS and to national parks. There has been more carried out in recent years than in previous decades.” https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/nov/12/is-there-really-a-green-conspiracy-to-stop-bushfire-hazard-reduction https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/nov/12/is-th... > You only have to ask anyone who has lived for a while in an at risk area to discover first hand that these activities had been curtailed and stopped for quite a few years. Farmers get all their information from Sky News and Facebook. I've lived in at risk areas for over 15 years, and I can't tell you first hand that the activities have been curtailed and stopped. Very few people would be able to tell you that first hand. A lot of people will tell you bullshit conspiracy theories they've read on Facebook though.
  - defrost 3y ago
sanp 3y ago
Funny. Anecdotally, my experience has been completely different. Progressively hotter summers and harsher winters. I guess that’s why we rely on accurately measured data.
mulmen 3y ago
That's why climate change is a more accurate term than global warming. Snow in Sydney is as bad as a heat wave in Seattle.
phs318u 3y ago
I'll point out a few things that maybe you have noticed but not correlated because they're not obviously "headline grabbing" (in a personal sense). I'm in Australia too (Melbourne), and have travelled to Europe several times in the last 25 years. Have you noticed that the "overnight low" temperatures and aren't as low as they used to be? If you're an avid gardener or a farmer (or know one), have you noticed plants flowering/blooming earlier/later? If you're a bird watcher, have you noticed changes in migration timing? I'd also point out that unless you're nearer the polar regions (which have sustained higher temperatures over time), you may not personally notice changes. This also depends of course on how old you are. I was born in the 60's. Winters in Melbourne are decidedly different these days from those of my childhood.
HWR_14 3y ago
Relying on other people anecdotally and probably unprompted to judge relative weather is a pretty bad methodology. Why would you rely on that in Europe? Historical local data is easily accessible, especially in the last twenty years. But yes, to make it average to a slightly higher temperature, but have some places have much hotter temperatures, some places have to cool off.

2358452 3y ago

That's to be expected, the global variation over the last 2 decades has been about .2-.3 celsius. That's very difficult to notice, and basically completely swamped by local variations (what is called weather, not climate). The thing is climate change is an almost perfect example of the boiling frog parable. It occurs over several decades, just enough to cause skepticism or feelings of "it's not changing so quickly". See NASA's graph: https://climate.nasa.gov/vital-signs/global-temperature/ https://climate.nasa.gov/vital-signs/global-temperature/ This rate however is probably almost without precedents geologically, save for extreme events like giant eruptions or something. It's hard for life to adapt this quickly, on top of the many other habitat pressures we've introduced. Also, there will be significant consequences for humans (which could be catastrophic and hard to predict if we don't limit warming to say 2C). What frustrates me is that there's still significant resistance to not destroying our own home...

jongjong 3y ago
Given that it's such a small change... Surely this is not a problem for our generation. It definitely does not appear to be a problem that's worth destroying financial opportunities on a massive scale and enabling totalitarian governments in the current era. The way I see climate change activism is that elites want to fix the climate at the expense of the lower classes of society... In a time when wealth inequality is at an all time high and without the consent of the lower classes. This is incorrect. First, we have to fix inequality problem so that the pain of the transition will fall more or less evenly on everyone's shoulders... Then once this is the case, everyone should have more time to think about climate problems and we can expect broad support. Of course, 'we' will all be long dead by then. I feel totally fine and morally justified in leaving this problem to a future generation. Most people in my generation have way too many concrete personal problems concerning their own survival in a week's time to worry about abstract problems such as the survival of the human race in a few hundred years. ...Not to mention that in a few generations' time, if we focus on maximizing access to opportunities, through the resulting innovation, we will probably end up with extremely efficient renewable energy which will be able to fight climate change far more effectively with no sacrifices necessary. It seems literally like a no-brainer to me to just let the free market do what it does best in terms of innovation. Shut down government money printers and dismantle policies that are harmful to the free market and which centralize opportunities and create tech monopolies to control the masses. That's not the way. It needs to be done honestly. What's the point of even allowing the human race to survive if it turns the global economy into a squid game and only the most dishonest, manipulative people will remain?
jfengel 3y ago
...often, here on HN, whose members pride themselves on rational thinking and scientific prowess.
jlarocco 3y ago
> What frustrates me is that there's still significant resistance to not destroying our own home... It's really not a big deal - humans will adapt to deal with the changes, or they'll go extinct and something else will evolve.
- 2358452 3y ago
  Sure, but I'd rather live in paradise than burn my house. In that sense nothing's a big deal, but it is for me. I believe we all deserve good lives. The best adaptation to burning your house is the rational thought "Perhaps I should not burn my house". :) It dreads me to think we so much lost contact with living well that many don't care anymore. I think the first step in the journey would be to stop the destructive culture of desperate consumerism, greed, consumption, overwork and ill-being. Maybe that's something we should be prioritizing alongside climate change, as a species. Living well in our homes, and as a community.
  - sokoloff 3y ago
    Living well requires energy and lots of it. There are billions of people who aspire to use far more energy than they are currently using, in order to live better. Who are we to say that they can't use as much energy as we do/did? (I know you're not saying that directly, but it's hard to imagine how half the population could bring themself up to even the median energy consumption without dramatic increases in climate changing forces.)
    - 2358452 3y ago
      I think this is a false conundrum. We should use as much energy as we sustainably can, without destroying ourselves, if that improves our well being. But not more. And we should also make sure that all humans have good conditions. I think the essence of what makes a good life is surprisingly inexpensive in terms of resources. I believe that planning well, we can achieve a good compromise for everyone involved, with a larger focus on those more in need. Moreover, energy consumption isn't so significant as emissions per Watt. Our capacity for solar energy could sustain even energy growth without significant emissions. We already have the technology to make the transition. To reiterate, whatever we do, sitting back and watching the world burn (in an almost literal sense) is not a reasonable option!
AlexandrB 3y ago
> It occurs over several decades, just enough to cause skepticism or feelings of "it's not changing so quickly". It's also important to realize that this isn't all "natural" skepticism and there's plenty of money being thrown around to spread FUD about the causes, severity, and consequences of climate change.
- userbinator 3y ago
  Skepticism isn't the problemj; blind belief is --- and there's plenty of money being thrown around to do that too.
  - photonerd 3y ago
    Yes, but mostly on the denialism side
    - userbinator 3y ago
      Judging by the posts here and in mainstream media, I doubt that.
      - mngnt 3y ago
        Consider the economics. There are HUGE companies with a history of influencing legislature, lobbying an lying to everyone, whose existence depends on us to continue not caring about climate change. People like us can hardly imagine the amount of money they are throwing at us in the form of marketing, lobbying, astroturfing, etc. They are literally making money off us not taking action. Otoh, I cannot think of a single billion dollar company that got where it is by being climate friendly.
        userbinator 3y ago
        Media companies get views by being sensationalistic and spreading paranoia. Governments love that too, since it means another excuse they can use to enact more authoritarian policies. The Internet has taken that to the next level.
mongol 3y ago
> Also, there will be significant consequences for humans (which could be catastrophic and hard to predict if we don't limit warming to say 2C) I have trouble visualizing what form the catastrophe would take. The worst I can imagine is global famine, is that what we are talking about here? Or rather local famine, acting as catalysts to civil unrest, wars etc? Basically, I think the climate debate gets fuzzy here. Granted, just like you say, it gets hard to predict, but given that, what makes certain temperatures a threshold for disaster?
- Wojtkie 3y ago
  If oceans get too hot, fisheries will collapse and wreck coastal communities. Sea level rise will make storm surges worse and make "once in a lifetime" events more common. This instability will drive a migration of people inland, essentially as ecological refugees.
  - valval 3y ago
    Then what? Keep going.
olalonde 3y ago
It's interesting you chose the boiling frog parable because it's a fallacy. Skeptics contend that climate change will not precipitate an abrupt catastrophe; rather, humanity will simply adapt to it. To illustrate, the Earth's temperature has already risen by approximately 1 degree since the inception of industrialization, yet our lives have arguably improved significantly during this period. Would we willingly forsake the past century of human progress to revert the global temperature back by that single degree? This seems improbable, and yet it is a viewpoint advocated by certain climate change alarmists who propose concepts like degrowth.
- mulmen 3y ago
  > Would we willingly forsake the past century of human progress to revert the global temperature back by that single degree? Eh. I see what you are saying but have we felt the full effect? Do any of us have a perception of what was lost that would let us even make such a determination?
- sanp 3y ago
  Why do we need to sacrifice living standards to control emissions?
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - valval 3y ago
    How could we not? In the western world we might be able to, but that means poor people will start dying elsewhere.
- ClassyJacket 3y ago
  It's not alarmism to say we should take action to prevent out extinction. By your logic, people who call emergency services when a building is on fire are "alarmists". There has literally NEVER been a problem anywhere near as large as climate change, including World War 2. If being concerned about literally the largest problem to have ever existed is 'alarmism', then your position is simply that it's impossible for anything bad to ever happen.

NovaDudely 3y ago

I am in Melbourne and it seems like we have had the most mild summer and winter. Last winter however was incredibly cold and you can already see that this coming summer is going to be a bad one! It is very dry and all the signs are point towards a big El nino + the Indian Ocean Di-pole being in full swing. Going to be a rough one in the south at least.

pengaru 3y ago

Hence "global warming" became "climate change". You do seem to be using the latter which is consistent with your personal experience, no?

defrost 3y ago

Think of it as more and more energy being kept within a closed space. That closed space is the thin layer of land + ocean + lower atmosphere, it's spinning and it's quite large in comparison to single human. Now think of a closed room with energy being pumped into that room, to (among other things) a fridge on the floor with door open. The energy increase makes the heat exchange coils on the back of the fridge hotter and the space inside the fridge colder. Overall the average energy within the room in increasing. This is a poor but in some ways accurate picture of the earth .. or at least one climatic cell - the earth has a number of these in the North and South hemispheres and they interact and spill energy from one to the other. Energy can express itself in many ways by cascade transfers - to wind and storms, to melting ice (at zero degrees) to create water (also at zero degrees). In Australia that energy has driven the decadal scale La Niña and El Niño oscillation that, so far, has worked out fairly well for Australia ... (a very catastrophic fire season a few years back aside). Elsewhere on the globe, not so much for others. But wait, there's more, especially in the longer term if steps aren't taken. In the near term, you can expect Australia to see a hot, dry El Niño: https://phys.org/news/2023-07-australia-hot-dry-el-niohere.html https://phys.org/news/2023-07-australia-hot-dry-el-niohere.h... https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/ninonina.html\ https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/ninonina.html\*

mliker 3y ago

For me and my network of friends, it has definitely corresponded to many personal experiences in the past 5 years. I wish I could say the opposite.

dools 3y ago

I live in Australia. Since 2019 I’ve seen outrageous nationwide bushfires, intense rain and flooding in the central coast which forced us to evacuate for a week, followed of course by 2 years of a pandemic and then an entire year of rain so heavy in the northern rivers that it catastrophically flooded the entire area and cut off our plateau town from food and fuel deliveries for about a week. Prior that I had never been evacuated or cut off from anything because of weather events, so I guess that’s why scientists are keen to distinguish between anecdotal evidence and statistical, empirical or experimental evidence.

scripturial 3y ago
What do you think is the connection between Australian bushfires and climate change? Did Australia not drastically cut back and stop the amount of back burning that Australia used to traditionally do in order to prevent larger bushfires? You only have to ask anyone who has lived for a while in an at risk area to discover first hand that these activities had been curtailed and stopped for quite a few years.
- dools 3y ago
  > Did Australia not drastically cut back and stop the amount of back burning that Australia used to traditionally do in order to prevent larger bushfires? No, that didn't happen. “Hazard reduction work has increased because of increased funding to the RFS and to national parks. There has been more carried out in recent years than in previous decades.” https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/nov/12/is-there-really-a-green-conspiracy-to-stop-bushfire-hazard-reduction https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/nov/12/is-th... > You only have to ask anyone who has lived for a while in an at risk area to discover first hand that these activities had been curtailed and stopped for quite a few years. Farmers get all their information from Sky News and Facebook. I've lived in at risk areas for over 15 years, and I can't tell you first hand that the activities have been curtailed and stopped. Very few people would be able to tell you that first hand. A lot of people will tell you bullshit conspiracy theories they've read on Facebook though.
- defrost 3y ago

sanp 3y ago

Funny. Anecdotally, my experience has been completely different. Progressively hotter summers and harsher winters. I guess that’s why we rely on accurately measured data.

mulmen 3y ago

That's why climate change is a more accurate term than global warming. Snow in Sydney is as bad as a heat wave in Seattle.

phs318u 3y ago

I'll point out a few things that maybe you have noticed but not correlated because they're not obviously "headline grabbing" (in a personal sense). I'm in Australia too (Melbourne), and have travelled to Europe several times in the last 25 years. Have you noticed that the "overnight low" temperatures and aren't as low as they used to be? If you're an avid gardener or a farmer (or know one), have you noticed plants flowering/blooming earlier/later? If you're a bird watcher, have you noticed changes in migration timing? I'd also point out that unless you're nearer the polar regions (which have sustained higher temperatures over time), you may not personally notice changes. This also depends of course on how old you are. I was born in the 60's. Winters in Melbourne are decidedly different these days from those of my childhood.

HWR_14 3y ago

Relying on other people anecdotally and probably unprompted to judge relative weather is a pretty bad methodology. Why would you rely on that in Europe? Historical local data is easily accessible, especially in the last twenty years. But yes, to make it average to a slightly higher temperature, but have some places have much hotter temperatures, some places have to cool off.