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You are right that the trend within the area does not point towards a greater risk of flooding. You are right to point out that we should only make claims based

You are right that the trend within the area does not point towards a greater risk of flooding. You are right to point out that we should only make claims based on data. You are, again, right to say that climate models do nothing to predict increased flooding in Texas. I was not saying that climate models would have predicted this. What I think you have missed is that the climate is a global system and that there is a substantial amount of data to indicate that a shifting climate leads to a greater frequency of events that fall outside of local trends. This doesn't prove that the flooding event was a result of that (though some people may likely argue that point). My point was that we need to pay close attention to monitoring and warning systems, that the article says exactly this, and that a wholesale rejection of findings from climate science is unhelpful because it is counterproductive to this goal.

bluGill 1y ago
> that a wholesale rejection of findings from climate science is unhelpful because it is counterproductive to this goal. I agree. Thus claiming a single isolated local event is the result of climate change without strong evidence (which in a chaotic system is usually impossible to collect) is counter productive because there is no data to back it up and in turn it make climate change look like fools who keep yelling about things that are false. Which is why anyone who cares about climate change should refute every attempt to blame local conditions on climate change. We can state there is a trend, but we can rarely state that any specific situation wouldn't have happened without climate change.
- willguest 1y ago
  This would be a great starting point for a much wider conversation on the various factors that lead to climate events leading to loss of human life (urbanisation, lack of ecological resilience, dependency on fragile supply chains, political inaction and misdirection, etc etc). It seems to me that a HN comment thread isn't really built for that, but here's my concern - it seems that the quality of dialogue and debate (generally, but especially in the US) has degraded to the point where it's really just about "yes it is" or "no it isn't". This leads to more division, infighting and the removal of much-needed nuance at a time when a more sober digestion of the matter is quite urgently needed. Just to say, wouldn't it be nice if there was a forum where this actually happened. Perhaps if the air con was doused with oxytocin ahead of time or the participants had mandated micro-doses of something euphoric...

bluGill 1y ago

> that a wholesale rejection of findings from climate science is unhelpful because it is counterproductive to this goal. I agree. Thus claiming a single isolated local event is the result of climate change without strong evidence (which in a chaotic system is usually impossible to collect) is counter productive because there is no data to back it up and in turn it make climate change look like fools who keep yelling about things that are false. Which is why anyone who cares about climate change should refute every attempt to blame local conditions on climate change. We can state there is a trend, but we can rarely state that any specific situation wouldn't have happened without climate change.

willguest 1y ago
This would be a great starting point for a much wider conversation on the various factors that lead to climate events leading to loss of human life (urbanisation, lack of ecological resilience, dependency on fragile supply chains, political inaction and misdirection, etc etc). It seems to me that a HN comment thread isn't really built for that, but here's my concern - it seems that the quality of dialogue and debate (generally, but especially in the US) has degraded to the point where it's really just about "yes it is" or "no it isn't". This leads to more division, infighting and the removal of much-needed nuance at a time when a more sober digestion of the matter is quite urgently needed. Just to say, wouldn't it be nice if there was a forum where this actually happened. Perhaps if the air con was doused with oxytocin ahead of time or the participants had mandated micro-doses of something euphoric...