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Climate change does not simply cause more severe weather events but also more frequent severe weather events. This means a "once in a century" event can turn in
by hnbad 3y ago
Climate change does not simply cause more severe weather events but also more frequent severe weather events. This means a "once in a century" event can turn into a yearly occurrence. It's also a cumulative process with cascading effects and emergent properties, so you can't just reduce the factors that contribute to the climate crisis and get back to where we were before the same way you a molten candle won't turn back into its original shape when you remove the heat.
A lot of climate science has been dumbed down to "it's getting warmer" in popular media, which isn't wrong, but people misunderstand this as "winters get less cold and summers get warmer" which isn't necessarily the case in every place.
There's more energy in the system. Imagine an intricate network of tiny machines all working in unison (heck, think of a road network with driverless cars if you want) and then making everything run much faster with no regard for physical constraints and mechanical properties. Eventually there will be collisions and those will have effects on other parts of the network and the more complex the initial system is the harder it becomes to predict what will happen exactly but even if you stop increasing the speed and allow for the system to stabilize, it will be very different from how you started and even if you slow it down back to the original speed, the system will look different. If you imagined this as a road network, humanity and other animals are the pedestrians trying to cross the streets and there are no traffic lights. I hope this metaphor also demonstrates how historical changes effectively just slowed down and sped up the traffic a tiny bit (say, going slightly above or under the speed limit). The implications for the system overall and for the pedestrians within are very different.
- verisimi 3y agoThank you for taking the time to respond. However, your answer has 'climate change' baked in. What evidence is there in this article to suggest climate change, rather than an intermittent event that has probably occurred numerous times in the past 2000 years? Why does the article say 'climate change'? Why do you think it? Why was the river low 2000 years ago, in pre-climate change times? The thing is that there have always been droughts, floods, etc - these were recorded in biblical times. That most people frame 'changing weather' in terms of climate change is a question of psychology and education - but has nothing to do with any evidence anyone can see and verify. We have to simply told to accept the provided 'climate change' explanation. The weather has always changed - its not running faster now, or at least I don't have any reason to this it is. What is running faster is the level of information being provided on weather.
- hnbad 3y ago> What evidence is there in this article to suggest climate change The article is not about climate change, it's about a drought. It doesn't try to present evidence for climate change. > The weather has always changed The plural of weather is not climate. Weather is an emergent effect of the climate. I don't have a collection of references to dump on you to demonstrate climate change because it's the scientific consensus, even within the United States. At this point, if you're scientifically literate enough to be on HN, you're scientifically literate enough to look up scientific explanations for why your intuitions and concerns about climate change maybe not being a thing after all are wrong. I'm not going to spend my finite lifetime trying to argue this with a person on the Internet, especially someone who might be religiously motivated.