We know that the relationship between climate change and weather is a statistical one, in that rising global temperatures will cause more extreme weather patterns to occur more frequently. But that causal arrow goes just one way, in that we cannot take any particular weather event, however extreme, and unequivocally blame it on climate change. This puts the scientifically minded at a disadvantage when arguing with climate change skeptics who have no compunction about taking isolated anomalous events (such as the recent cold snap in Texas) and using it to proclaim that global warming is not occurring or is a hoax. Most of us refrain from fighting anecdotes with anecdotes.
But this year has seen such a large number of heat waves and droughts and floods all over the globe that climate change is now being unequivocally blamed for them.
The scenes of desperation and devastation in Zhengzhou added to a portfolio of disasters this year that have raised the specter of irreversible climate change as never before and offered glimpses of what it means to live on a warming planet where human survival grows more fraught.
…Extreme weather this summer has flattened rural communities in Germany with floodwaters, triggered deadly mudslides in India and sparked heat waves and fires that can be seen from space in the Western United States and Canada. Floods have also wrought damage in parts of New Zealand, Nigeria and Iran.
Scientists have been warning for years that rising temperatures will make dry conditions for wildfires more common in some parts of the world and, in other places, trap more moisture in the atmosphere, leading to heavier rainfall during storms.
…More unprecedented heat waves also could be in store, like those experienced this month in the Pacific Northwest, where hundreds of people are believed to have died from the extreme temperatures, and Russia’s Siberia, where nearly 200 separate forest fires have choked the region in smoke that has since drifted to Alaska.
“All of this was predicted in climate science decades ago,” said John P. Holdren, a professor of environmental policy at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government. “We only had to wait for the actual emergence in the last 15 to 20 years. Everything we worried about is happening, and it’s all happening at the high end of projections, even faster than the previous most pessimistic estimates.”
I wonder how many more such extreme weather events we will have to endure before the skeptics realize that this is not something that we can ignore.
The depth of the “skeptics” willful ignorance cannot be fathomed. They will continue their denial of the science and the observable consequences even as they draw their last breaths.
Climate collapse (not change) is a symptom of a much larger problem. We are too many, we consume too much, and produce waste that nature can not handle. Therefore, the solution is bring down our number by 90%, reduce our consumption of natural resources by the same percentage, preferably within the next twenty years. If not, it is irrelevant whether one believes or does not believe in climate collapse.
Given the number of people who have continued to insist that Covid-19 is a hoax while in the hospital dying from it, I have every expectation that so long as there are ‘news’ people who make money from keeping the fear and distrust running, there will be people denying there’s a problem to the very end.
And all the money keeping that fear and distrust running is coming from people rich enough that they believe none of this will ever bother them. And as I’ve said before, we’re long since into a situation where the people brought up on a steady diet of this are now the ones dishing it out, so it’s pretty much only the people at the very top with the money who realize they’re peddling lies.
When Mar-a-Lago in Florida finally goes under water permanently, someone in Bedminister, NJ, will say that everyone there was a crisis actor. And fake newsing it.
@ 4 Bruce
I have been thinking about a fleet of glass-bottom boats for tourists to see the drowned delights of Miami. Perhaps I should consider including Mar-a-Lago?
Investor Inquiries Welcome.
These pseudoskeptics need to stop using the word skeptic. Rationalizing your bigotry/self-interest/whatever ain’t skepticism.
As to how long it’ll take for climate deniers to listen to scientists, even as the skies literally fall around us….well, Cassandra kept telling them and telling them and *telling* them not to bring that big wooden horse into the city of Troy, and how did that end?
They were probably still denying it while the Greeks were executing them and burning the city. We can expect the same.
Venkataraman Amarnath@#2
You first.
KeithRB@8,
My thought exactly. But I’m afraid the pandemic will have set some of the Venkataraman Amarnaths among us thinking about how they could produce and distribute a virus far more deadly than SARS-CoV-2.
I wonder if smoke drifting clear across North America might persuade some of those people that climate disruption will even inconvenience them?
“This puts the scientifically minded at a disadvantage”
Me not being a scientist can afford to pull off a few rhetorical tricks as well.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/may/01/as-glaciers-disappear-in-alaska-the-rest-of-the-worlds-ice-follows
Last 100 years or so exactly zero glaciers have become longer.
But as a Dutchman my favourite one is:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elfstedentocht
From 1909 -- 1963: 12 times.
From 1964 -- 2021: 3 times.
Last time was 1997. The 24 years (and we’re counting) since then is an absolute record.
So who needs extreme weather when “debating” (it really shouldn’t be called like that when fans of quack-science are involved) climate change deniers? Not me.
@8, 9: the cheapo “you first” does nothing to demonstrate @2 VA wrong. You both rather show something you have in common with climate change deniers:
https://emcperformance.nl/wp-content/uploads/struisvogel2.png
Something ostrichs actually are too smart for, unlike many human beings.
Climate change denialism goes far beyond just being skeptical of the science. My fundie, evangelical family believes god gave us this planet to use as we see fit based on a verse in Genesis. Jesus will be returning and wipe the slate clean, so that will take are of any environmental damage we do. Jesus is coming back soon in their minds, so there is no need to change behaviors. In fact, it is foolish to not use what we have been given. Keep in mind that the Apocalypse is going to do great damage to the Earth, so any damage we do now doesn´t really matter much (in their minds).
Bottom line, addressing climate change means asking people to change habits, use less, and just in general be more thoughtful about how they are living. It is too much of an ask for many people and they will not even entertain the idea.
Nonsense. The problem is the emission of greenhouse gases from burning fossil fuels.
Also, the problem of overpopulation will be made worse by your policies. It’s poor subsistence farmers that have a lot of kids. In almost every industrialized country, the birth rate per woman is already substantially below the breakeven rate. The solution for overpopulation is to raise the rest of the world out of poverty, and that means we must raise total worldwide consumption by a lot.
Protip: Malthus was wrong.
…
Several leading climate scientists such as Dr James Hansen and Dr Kerry Emanuel say that the Greens are a bigger problem than the climate change deniers because of their resistance to nuclear power, and most climate scientists and the IPCC reports say that any solution without nuclear power is basically impossible. Why aren’t you listening to the scientists?
…
LorrieAnne M
The thing is, I can sell nuclear power to Biblical literalists like that. Those people still like cleaner air, cheaper electricity, national security by controlling our own energy supply instead of importing foreign fossil fuels, less foreign wars without the need to control foreign fossil fuels.
By contrast, I can’t sell nuclear power to Greens. Greens would rather build new coal power plants and natural gas plants than run existing nuclear power plants; see Germany.
This is simply not true. The bottom line is that we need to produce less greenhouse gas emissions, and we don’t need to lower consumption to do that.