We ban accounts that post nationalistic flamebait, so please don't post like this again. Tired clichés like bickering over measurement systems aren't needed either.
I get that you intended it as a joke, but the hivemind doesn't consider that when going to war.
To preface, I am inclined to agree with the anthropogenic climate change hypothesis. But the claims in this article are no better than climate change skeptics pointing to a particularly cold winter or mild summer as evidence for their position.
How can you possibly conclude this is caused by climate change vs. being a 100, 200, or 1000 year storm? Freak weather events have been occurring for billions of years before the industrial revolution.
Climate change is a gradual process that may in fact make such storms more likely, but pinning any single storm on climate change is suspect.
"The flooding on Kauai is consistent with an extreme rainfall that comes with a warmer atmosphere," said Chip Fletcher, a leading expert on the impact of climate change on Pacific island communities.
Because no one can know the entire body of knowledge, we divide our understanding of the world among us. Some of us study the earth and climate and accumulate expertise on the subject matter.
“Consistent with” does not establish much at all, other than that the event does not disprove climate change. An event tells us nothing about climate change if it is consistent both with and without climate change.
My withdrawing $40 from my bank account is consistent with me having no cash at all left in my wallet. It’s also consistent with me already having some cash but needing more. The event, the withdrawing of the cash, does not tell us whether my wallet was empty.
What is the goal of your comments? Are you trying to convince people that when there is an increase in anomalous weather patterns we shouldn’t say it’s due to climate change? At what point would you say these things are a result of climate change? Do you deny the reality of climate change? Do you agree that it is a reality but are fighting against people ignoring the fact that an individual event might have a different cause?
Due to humans releasing massive amounts of greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere there is more energy in the system. Clearly this increase in energy leads to anomalous behavior. It’s ok to point this out.
My motivation? A commitment to truthful and honest reporting.
The claims in this article are no better than climate change skeptics pointing to a particularly cold winter or mild summer as evidence for their position.
Your last sentence is false. The difference is one of probability. There’s a much greater chance being correct with the climate change attribution over the other one.
We have to make conclusions and policies based on evidence and what is likely the cause rather than waiting for a formal proof. The most likely cause of the increase in anomalous weather events is due to the increase in energy in the system. It’s worth pointing this out when these events occur.
Do you create a statistical test and confidence interval for all of the things you believe to be true? I doubt it. Do you have expertise in all areas? I don’t.
I rely on experts. Experts tell me that there is climate change. They tell me that there has been a massive increase in energy in weather system due to human activity. They tell me that the number of anomalies is increasing. Now I encounter a story about a very strange weather occurrence and your question to me is what statistical test I’ve run?
I don’t know you and I can only guess as to the purpose of your question. I’m very skeptical that you can answer your own question when it comes to making conclusions about things outside your expertise. So it seems your purpose is lacking in genuineness.
If it is news to you that people make conclusions based on the evidence they know about and weigh the possibilities and rough probabilities without conducting a formal statistical analysis then I highly recommend that you do some soul searching.
Isn't the null hypothesis that there is nothing specific to attribute the rain?
The person I responded to said that attributing this anomalous weather event to climate change was no different than claims that a cool summer disprove climate change. My claim is that attribution of anomalous weather events to climate change have a higher probability of being true than claims that a cool summer disproves climate change.
Neither claim is provable but one is more likely to be true than the other. The claims are different in terms of probability of being true.
I think you can look at any single (weather) event and conclude that "extremes happen." They have been happening for a long long time. Attributing is, given the complexity of the system and our minuscule historic sample size, difficult. But also perhaps pointless, in an apples v oranges sense.
On the other hand, aggravated weather events become "climate." We zoom out. We see the arc. We see what looks like a delta. It's the arc and the delta that matter.
It certainly seems that climate is changing. But there are three camps, not two.
- Deniers - it ain't happening.
- Sympathizers - it's happening, but it's not man made.
- Believers - it's happening AND it's man made.
I think too often the Sympathizers get lumped with the deniers, and that wrongly clouds the discussion.
The increase I spoke of was the increase in energy into the weather system from humans spewing greenhouse gasses into the amtmosphere for the last 200 years or so. How do you know the weather event in question is a random event? Are you familiar with time series and trends? Thermodynamics? Galois theory?
If I was given all the inputs to the system then yes. If it's known that increasing the energy in the system will lead to such events then yes. I may not predict it will occur at this date/time but one can know that such events will occur when enough energy is put in.
Besides, it's not possible to prove any given event is truly random. There may always be underlying explanatory causes that are not known.
By that logic nothing is ever truly random. Just define the states of all atoms in the universe and you have full determinism. But the fact of the matter is, you can’t establish a causal link with such flimsy evidence unless your theory also _predicts the future_. And by that I mean predicts in the strong sense: you make a prediction and record it with a third party, then see if it held. Not the kind of “predictions” we often see in climate science where a hundred different models are retroactively matched to what actually happened and a handful happen to kinda sorta match the data, if you massage it well enough.
Climate is more complex than cooling or warming over a two year timeframe. There is a superposition of many oscillations [1] and these have to be separated and removed before finding a trend [2].
Climate Change is about increased energy in a system creating more frequent and more violent weather patterns. Global Warming is about year over year averages across decades not "two years".
No, it's not about a single storm. Do you agree that if that single storm is a classification more violent and part of the set of more frequent (and more violent) storms then it is indicative of climate change?
1) The likelihood of extreme rain events hasn't changed over the last hundred years. This recent extreme rain event was just a four sigma event. Such outliers sometimes happen.
2) The likelihood of extreme rain events has shifted over the past hundred years. Here's a plausible mechanism (omitted). The recent rain event was only a two sigma event.
We may not have enough data yet to definitively select one hypothesis and reject the other, but which is more likely?
Where did you get that this is a "four sigma event"? I don't even understand what it means here. Is the calculation using the distribution of the daily rainfall in any day of the year? In a day that it is raining? During the rain season?
People have lived on the north shore of Kauai since about 800 AD, and they have had houses and roads which were subject to extreme weather events since about a week after they arrived. And people have lived in the Pacific Islands for a lot longer than that - Hawaii was the last Pacific Island chain to be inhabited.
If you believe that humans “invaded” Kauai then, if you're being consistent, you should probably also believe we invaded everywhere except sub-Saharan Africa.
Also, “sympathy” is a defining human characteristic.
Passive aggressively glib. Would 'we' feel sympathy for the people of California if/when the Big One hits and flattens cities, kill thousands, and levies hundreds of billions in damage? Or if/when massive flooding from a Perfect Storm inundates a major coastal city like NOLA or Houston again? I'm sure I can come up with an appropriate analogy of ignorance for where you live.
Sometimes I feel like there's a bot-army monitoring all channels for new articles invoking the words "climate" or "global warming" and forwarding those pages to a waiting battalion of troll-soldiers.
It actually seems like several armies. It's like certain groups/companies try to control brand image by discouraging criticisms on this board. Sometimes I wonder if disallowing downvotes without a counterpoint would have an effect on that.
Is it so unbelievable that people could just disagree with you that you have to assume they’re espousing a fake or paid for position?
I consider myself a conservationist so I think outrageous and easily falsifiable claims like “this was caused by climate change and we can expect more of this” destroy the credibility of the people making the claims and the dangers of climate change in general.
The most famous was the 2000 article that claimed snowfall was a thing of the past which was finally deleted after years of mocking:
There are so many more examples including Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth being released shortly after Katrina and being advertised with a hurricane coming from the smokestack of a factory saying we can expect hurricanes like that will be much more common going forward. Instead we had hardly any hurricanes make landfall for over a decade.
easily falsifiable claims like “this was caused by climate change and we can expect more of this”
If it was easily falsifiable we wouldn't be having this discussion. Not much on this board concerning astrology, for example.
Instead we had hardly any hurricanes make landfall for over a decade.
Since you're running at 300bps you have apparently missed some news.
The fact of the matter is that by the time Al Gore put out his movie (disclosure: I never watched it) even skeptical scientists like myself were taking note. It's not that there was proof, but something happens with scientific measurements when you start sniffing the truth: As you look closer, with better technology and more detailed measurements, the results tend to go in one direction. Not always, and it's certainly not proof, but it's enough to make our spidey senses tingle.
The danger in this game is that the system is chaotic (indeed, chaos theory was invented around weather prediction). So there is a point where even a small, incremental change will lead to wildly non-proportional changes. And we still have no idea where that point is. Hell, some politicians are trying to stop people from even talking about it.
> Instead we had hardly any hurricanes make landfall for over a decade
Climate change doesn't predict more hurricanes making landfall (at least not until quite a ways in the future), nor even more total hurricanes. What it predicts is in increase in the average strength of hurricanes.
Sometimes, when a climate-denial comment on HN seems especially troll-like, and when I have time to kill, I'll look at the comment history of the apparent troll.
Occasionally the person's comments only include political opinions, but I would say that, for the majority of these posters, the technical/programming comments outweigh the political ones.
I don't know about other discussion boards. HN is the only forum on which I actively participate -- maybe because it's so good at self-policing that the trolls don't tend to survive long here.
I’m not surprised. It seems like engineers tend to have a strong contrarian streak. Climate change is an ideal target for contrarian tendencies: it’s controversial enough to not feel like you’re just tilting at windmills, but it’s still extremely lopsided. And it’s fuzzy enough that a smart person can dig into it and come up with a lot of good-sounding reasons to hold the contrary position.
It’s not just climate change. Another prominent example that comes to mind is dark matter. HN posts about dark matter tend to have lots of comments about how it’s a cop-out, or how MOND is a better theory despite failing to match many observations, or whatever.
It seems to me that for the last 10 years Hacker News comments have always leaned towards denying climate change if not outright calling it a hoax. Many HN comments are not like that of course, but it has always been this way here. A very vocal part of the community here has always denied climate change.
I’ve been here regularly for over 10 years and I disagree. There have always been some climate change deniers, just as there are everywhere online. But comments in general have not leaned that direction.
I would say that from my memory, HN has a far above average number of climate change deniers who post regularly. It frequently distracts and drowns otherwise useful and productive conversation on the topic. It is hard to quantify of course, I'd be interested in doing a study of that some day.
HN is the most environment-hostile and climate change denying community I have regularly participated in, and I say this as a personal experience.
Above average compared to what? In real life climate change denial is very common. What other online communities are you participating in that are much better? Surely not reddit.
It's hard to get a read on the politics of the "typical" HNer. As people are always quick to point out, HN is not a single person, but a group of people, each of whom may have ideosyncratic positions. All the same, people are not special snowflakes, and in the general population you can normally say that X will be associated with Y. In my experience, HN seems very:
- Liberal/socialist on economic politics.
- Liberal on privacy/digital freedom.
- Conservative/leaning regressive on gender politics.
- Conservative on climate change.
I model the "typical" HNer as a young white male techie, and this set of positions does not seem particularly surprising in that context.
Climate change (and general science) denial is largely a US thing, although it exists elsewhere, but it is largely confined to far right fringes. The US is the main nation where it is a partisan issue see http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/04/18/what-the-wor...
Outside English forums climate change deniers seem rather thinly spread to me. They certainly do exist, but, for example, I've never met/seen/read a German climate change denier who also wasn't a nutjob otherwise (e.g. far right wing, Reichsbürger/Seerechtler, Hohlerder, Reptiloidenverschwörung, Geheime Jüdische Weltherrschaft and all that fringe shit).
So this might not be due to HN being HN, but rather due to HN being very American.
We can be thankful that these kinds of event happen rarely. The thing I find interesting is the comments by the experts that these kinds of events are supposed to be an indicator of future catastrophe and they do not say that these kinds of events have occurred in the past as well.
If we were to see these kinds of events occur more and more frequently (like, every year and a couple of times a year) then we would have evidence that specific changes had occurred in the climate.
But to jump the gun and say that this is a harbinger of massive change based on just this occurrence is premature at best and at worst, well, choose your own words.
I should add that the last time this kind of event occurred at my parents town, which is in the tropics, was just before a significant years long drought. The local post office's rain gauge maxed out at about 1 metre. This was over a period of either 9 hours or 19 hours.
If we were to see these kinds of events occur more and more frequently (like, every year and a couple of times a year) then we would have evidence that specific changes had occurred in the climate.
The problem is that we don't really know the number is that means "frequently." In the US we had this Hawaii event; we had the Nor'easters[1] in what-10 days?; we had the strongest winter storm on record; we had the catastrophic Texas flooding (because of the Hurricane, but extra). In what-7 months or so?
[1] One of those Nor'easters brought enormous damage not because it was so strong, but because there was simultaneously an enormous storm in the ocean-2000 miles across or so, that was going to pound our coast with waves anyway, piling on.
Certainly, what number of events over what period of time to be considered frequently is a judgement call and different people and different groups of people will have different criteria to determine this.
The problem with records, as they currently exist, is that they are partial at best. It doesn't take much for extent records to be destroyed. As a civilisation, we do not value things like this.
As a consequence, when those looking into what has happened in the past, personal recollection is considered extremely unreliable and is often ignored.
Some time in the last year, I did a search for extreme weather events that occurred between 1850 and 1910 in Queensland, Australia. The kinds of records that are available are quite sparse. However, a couple of interesting things did arise.
1. The population of that area was quite small during the time period in question. The records come from farms and cattle stations mostly.
2. The recorded values aren't usually used today, though when I was a child and a teen, those values were regularly given during the cyclone season to warn people of the severity of the events. The values were for barometric pressure. I found the recorded values to be so much lower than what was published during the 1960's and 1970's. The inference being that these extreme weather events were spectacularly bigger and more destructive than the events recorded in recent years.
The actual destruction to human property and lives was minimal due to the low population density of those times.
There are a lot of factors that go into how "destructive" recent events are. If you look at the bigger picture, what we can see is that increasing population density and the subsequent population distribution and the subsequent greed by various factions means that there are more and more people now living in places that a century ago, no one would have lived in because they knew that to do so would be foolish as the weather events would be destructive in those areas.
When it boils down to it, people en bulk tend to be less wise and more easily manipulated. If climate scientists and those that support the anthropogenic climate change agenda want to get to be supportive, they need to be less political and less dogmatic and much more open. As I have said elsewhere, if climate scientists can answer specific question in a clear logical manner then they can have the benefit of the doubt. If they don't and they won't then one can quite logically call their utterances as rubbish. I'm still waiting fifteen years after my initial questions and still nary an answer.
Your opinion over whether or not anthropogenic causes are responsible for climate change is still, at this time, just an opinion. We do not have sufficient facts or research to determine this, nor do we have sufficient facts or research to determine what mitigation protocols will be effective in the face of climate change.
Does climate change exist? Of course it does. We have the obvious evidence before us. But, is it anthropogenic? That we cannot tell at this point. Do humans alter the environment? Yes, we have seen this over a period of a couple of millenia. Does this environmental change have gross effects on climate? We really don't know. We don't know the long term feedback cycles within the planetary system and these feedback cycles are important.
Anyone who declares that they know for certain, is just blowing smoke in your eyes. If we cannot stop the dogma and the politics about the subject, we will not even begin to understand the complexity of our planetary system. I have had arguments with scientists and all I can say is that they need a good engineering education to understand the limitations of their theories and models. Many seem to live in a fairy land that ignores reality. Maybe it is just the scientists I have come in contact with.
Maybe it is just the scientists I have come in contact with.
Perhaps.
In general you are preaching to the choir. I don't follow the politics of climate change, however. Occasionally I'll see something about a denier paper funded by somebody with skin in the game (like an oil company), so I'm sure there are shenanigans going on. But there are a lot of people out there who have some idea of a boogey-man scientific power structure that is desperate to maintain it's supremacy and therefore will corrupt scientific research to protect it. It's the same boogey-man that gives rise to theories about evolution and the origin of the universe.
Exactly what this power structure is they don't explain. These are not people who have ever been engaged in scientific research. They aren't stupid, just aren't in the field. Kind of like non-athletes who criticize an athlete who is probably in the top 100 people on the planet at doing what they do as "sucking."
So they're easily distracted by arguments like it's "all political" and "both sides have a point," which, while true, miss a very important distinction. One side very clearly has a financial stake in the game, and their investors demand (by force of law) that they protect that stake. The other side stands to gain...I'm not really sure. Does the scientist who "proves" anthropogenic climate change make 15 million dollars a year for it? Does the lab stand to gain? Maybe some research funding to pay for more trips, but they're not flying first class.
You don't make a name for yourself by saying what everybody else is saying.
But maybe there is something I'm missing. Maybe you can explain it to me.
Most work environments are "political" in nature. Within them, certain ideas are not to be questioned. Within most science research groups there will be an expectation that you will be following the "consensus" model, whatever that may be.
For example, in string theory research groups you will be expected to follow the party line of "string theory" as the basic viewpoint, and so your work will not be supported if you dispute string theory in any way. Whereas in other research groups you will be expected to discount any string theory model as valid and if you support string theory you will be frowned upon and not funded.
So it is with many different research areas. Anthropogenic climate change is the mantra for climate research, so you had better follow party line or you don't get funded. If your research doesn't produce the results that support that view then it will quickly be removed from funding.
It really doesn't matter what the subject matter is, if what you are doing doesn't follow "funding guidelines", it will be closed down. Before that happens, to keep their jobs, most people will follow the party line.
This is a shame as "science should be fun" and a way to further our understanding of the universe around us. What I find interesting is that scientists, on the whole, seem to be trained to believe that some things are "truth" because the theories on which those "truths" are based seem to work and work well.
In fact, many believe that certain things exist and spend their days, months and years trying to find those things. Occasionally after much time, some of these things seem to appear as based on their models. It seems to vindicate their belief in their theories and models. Yet, if one takes a few steps back and takes along hard look at the data collected, other things appear that raise questions about the validity of those theories and models. This is a good thing as it suggests that our theories and models may not only be incomplete but could be quite wrong. There is nothing wrong with that.
I liken it to the geocentric to heliocentric viewpoints. Both had some level of workability, but both have been superseded by later data and observations. Instead of being a tool for exploration of our universe, science appears to be getting the veneer of a religious system of belief and a pantheon of gods to go with it. Oh well.
Within most science research groups there will be an expectation that you will be following the "consensus" model, whatever that may be.
That's because you usually believe it when you sign up. That's within a lab, not a field. You don't go play guitar for a group whose music you can't stand.
Anthropogenic climate change is the mantra for climate research, so you had better follow party line or you don't get funded.
This is where you either need to show some evidence or I'm not going to believe you. Outsiders say this, but the truth is usually just the opposite: If you have some results that are counter-establishment, the funding flood comes. Fifth force, earth angular momentum-coupling, cold fusion....
It's harder to get that evidence because, duh, if it were easy then that would be the norm- the standard belief of the field. This is the popular misconception that people have outside of research. It's one of those urban legends: sounds plausible, and somebody knows a guy, aligns with my belief system, therefore must be true. But the fact is, when something outside of accepted beliefs seems to have strong evidence, there is a lot of excitement in the field and people all talk about it and rush to be a part of it. Heady days!
In fact, many believe that certain things exist and spend their days, months and years trying to find those things.
I agree. As James Randi said, "Scientists, like everybody else, tend to find what they are looking for." It does take a while to break out of old theoretical frameworks. Look at the hoops that astrophysics is jumping through to explain their observations that are based on the idea that physical constants are truly constants as well as certain conservation laws. They are inventing all kinds of exotic, not-quite-self-consistent schemas for explaining their observations.
But that's very different from the assertion that "if you don't buy into it you can't get funded." It is true that you'll have to have your ducks in a row (stars aligned? heh) to get that funding, but if you had a way to explain all of this shit in a simple, self-consistent way then you would be fine.
But you wouldn't have to fight a bunch of politically-driven opinion-makers on that front because they don't GAF. With climate change you have to do exactly that- some politicians have forbidden even its discussion.
I've been to Kaua'i multiple times as I contract for a monastery there. It is a very wet place and I remember the first time I've been there and saw houses built on "high stilts", I remember thinking that was a smart solution for flooding on my own home country of Brazil where flooding happens annually.
Then, after about 14 years without ever hearing about flooding over there in Kaua'i, this news struck quite close to home. I lost contact with the monastery on that day and then someone there messaged me: "heavy rain, the network is down". I didn't imagine the rain was that heavy... Lucky for them, the monastery is on high ground and wasn't affected as much as shore properties. Can't fathom what those in Hanalei might be handling, heck, I wanted to move to Hanalei for many years.
Climate change is something that people in the US should take more seriously, I can't believe the amount of deniers in that country. It is very depressing to watch from afar as people deny science as if it was merely opinions. Kaua'i is one of the most amazing places I've ever been, somewhere I consider a home away from home. Can't believe that government will not take action to course correct their recent snafus related to the Paris accord. They recklessness will make beautiful places such as Kaua'i suffer.
On the one hand, I'm tempted to agree. The whole reason we call it climate change instead of global warming is that, whole temperatures may rise at a global level, that doesn't necessarily manifest as a mean temperature increase in a plurality of locations. But it is theorized to add kinetic energy to the weather system resulting in more powerful weather phenomena.
On the other hand, we sure need to be careful in the way we observe trends. The human mind is suited to observe patterns even where they may not exist. Combine that with increasing distribution of news coverage, and the insatiable consumer appetite for bizarre news stories, and it would be surprising if weather didn't seem to be getting weirder over the years.
For those of us in the north, worth considering: an inch of rain is something like a foot of snow, before it gets packed down by further snow. That, for me, puts into perspective just how insane 50 inches of rain is.
Your first link is pretty light on details, but your second link from 26 years ago says that the rain was 15.33 inches in one part of the island, 10.88 in another, and 6.68 in another. Compared to that, the 50 inches in 24 hours this month are in a class of their own.
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[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 136 ms ] threadI get that you intended it as a joke, but the hivemind doesn't consider that when going to war.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
https://www.weather.gov/iwx/coop_8inch
How can you possibly conclude this is caused by climate change vs. being a 100, 200, or 1000 year storm? Freak weather events have been occurring for billions of years before the industrial revolution.
Climate change is a gradual process that may in fact make such storms more likely, but pinning any single storm on climate change is suspect.
Because no one can know the entire body of knowledge, we divide our understanding of the world among us. Some of us study the earth and climate and accumulate expertise on the subject matter.
My withdrawing $40 from my bank account is consistent with me having no cash at all left in my wallet. It’s also consistent with me already having some cash but needing more. The event, the withdrawing of the cash, does not tell us whether my wallet was empty.
Due to humans releasing massive amounts of greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere there is more energy in the system. Clearly this increase in energy leads to anomalous behavior. It’s ok to point this out.
The claims in this article are no better than climate change skeptics pointing to a particularly cold winter or mild summer as evidence for their position.
We have to make conclusions and policies based on evidence and what is likely the cause rather than waiting for a formal proof. The most likely cause of the increase in anomalous weather events is due to the increase in energy in the system. It’s worth pointing this out when these events occur.
Isn't the null hypothesis that there is nothing specific to attribute the rain? Regardless, what's your statistical test and confidence interval?
I rely on experts. Experts tell me that there is climate change. They tell me that there has been a massive increase in energy in weather system due to human activity. They tell me that the number of anomalies is increasing. Now I encounter a story about a very strange weather occurrence and your question to me is what statistical test I’ve run?
I don’t know you and I can only guess as to the purpose of your question. I’m very skeptical that you can answer your own question when it comes to making conclusions about things outside your expertise. So it seems your purpose is lacking in genuineness.
If it is news to you that people make conclusions based on the evidence they know about and weigh the possibilities and rough probabilities without conducting a formal statistical analysis then I highly recommend that you do some soul searching.
The person I responded to said that attributing this anomalous weather event to climate change was no different than claims that a cool summer disprove climate change. My claim is that attribution of anomalous weather events to climate change have a higher probability of being true than claims that a cool summer disproves climate change.
Neither claim is provable but one is more likely to be true than the other. The claims are different in terms of probability of being true.
On the other hand, aggravated weather events become "climate." We zoom out. We see the arc. We see what looks like a delta. It's the arc and the delta that matter.
It certainly seems that climate is changing. But there are three camps, not two.
- Deniers - it ain't happening.
- Sympathizers - it's happening, but it's not man made.
- Believers - it's happening AND it's man made.
I think too often the Sympathizers get lumped with the deniers, and that wrongly clouds the discussion.
Besides, it's not possible to prove any given event is truly random. There may always be underlying explanatory causes that are not known.
https://www.realclearmarkets.com/articles/2018/04/24/did_you...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_oscillation
[2] http://www.atmos.umd.edu/~ide/data/research/publication/ssa_...
1) The likelihood of extreme rain events hasn't changed over the last hundred years. This recent extreme rain event was just a four sigma event. Such outliers sometimes happen.
2) The likelihood of extreme rain events has shifted over the past hundred years. Here's a plausible mechanism (omitted). The recent rain event was only a two sigma event.
We may not have enough data yet to definitively select one hypothesis and reject the other, but which is more likely?
How is this a natural disaster when it’s only a disaster for completely unnatural, man made things?
If you believe that humans “invaded” Kauai then, if you're being consistent, you should probably also believe we invaded everywhere except sub-Saharan Africa.
Also, “sympathy” is a defining human characteristic.
Or are you implying that Earth itself has been invaded by humans?
I consider myself a conservationist so I think outrageous and easily falsifiable claims like “this was caused by climate change and we can expect more of this” destroy the credibility of the people making the claims and the dangers of climate change in general.
The most famous was the 2000 article that claimed snowfall was a thing of the past which was finally deleted after years of mocking:
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/11/12/one-of-the-longest-ru...
There are so many more examples including Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth being released shortly after Katrina and being advertised with a hurricane coming from the smokestack of a factory saying we can expect hurricanes like that will be much more common going forward. Instead we had hardly any hurricanes make landfall for over a decade.
https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0497116/?ref_=fn_al_tt_0
If it was easily falsifiable we wouldn't be having this discussion. Not much on this board concerning astrology, for example.
Instead we had hardly any hurricanes make landfall for over a decade.
Since you're running at 300bps you have apparently missed some news.
The fact of the matter is that by the time Al Gore put out his movie (disclosure: I never watched it) even skeptical scientists like myself were taking note. It's not that there was proof, but something happens with scientific measurements when you start sniffing the truth: As you look closer, with better technology and more detailed measurements, the results tend to go in one direction. Not always, and it's certainly not proof, but it's enough to make our spidey senses tingle.
The danger in this game is that the system is chaotic (indeed, chaos theory was invented around weather prediction). So there is a point where even a small, incremental change will lead to wildly non-proportional changes. And we still have no idea where that point is. Hell, some politicians are trying to stop people from even talking about it.
Climate change doesn't predict more hurricanes making landfall (at least not until quite a ways in the future), nor even more total hurricanes. What it predicts is in increase in the average strength of hurricanes.
Occasionally the person's comments only include political opinions, but I would say that, for the majority of these posters, the technical/programming comments outweigh the political ones.
I don't know about other discussion boards. HN is the only forum on which I actively participate -- maybe because it's so good at self-policing that the trolls don't tend to survive long here.
It’s not just climate change. Another prominent example that comes to mind is dark matter. HN posts about dark matter tend to have lots of comments about how it’s a cop-out, or how MOND is a better theory despite failing to match many observations, or whatever.
HN is the most environment-hostile and climate change denying community I have regularly participated in, and I say this as a personal experience.
- Liberal/socialist on economic politics.
- Liberal on privacy/digital freedom.
- Conservative/leaning regressive on gender politics.
- Conservative on climate change.
I model the "typical" HNer as a young white male techie, and this set of positions does not seem particularly surprising in that context.
So this might not be due to HN being HN, but rather due to HN being very American.
If we were to see these kinds of events occur more and more frequently (like, every year and a couple of times a year) then we would have evidence that specific changes had occurred in the climate.
But to jump the gun and say that this is a harbinger of massive change based on just this occurrence is premature at best and at worst, well, choose your own words.
The problem is that we don't really know the number is that means "frequently." In the US we had this Hawaii event; we had the Nor'easters[1] in what-10 days?; we had the strongest winter storm on record; we had the catastrophic Texas flooding (because of the Hurricane, but extra). In what-7 months or so?
[1] One of those Nor'easters brought enormous damage not because it was so strong, but because there was simultaneously an enormous storm in the ocean-2000 miles across or so, that was going to pound our coast with waves anyway, piling on.
The problem with records, as they currently exist, is that they are partial at best. It doesn't take much for extent records to be destroyed. As a civilisation, we do not value things like this.
As a consequence, when those looking into what has happened in the past, personal recollection is considered extremely unreliable and is often ignored.
Some time in the last year, I did a search for extreme weather events that occurred between 1850 and 1910 in Queensland, Australia. The kinds of records that are available are quite sparse. However, a couple of interesting things did arise.
1. The population of that area was quite small during the time period in question. The records come from farms and cattle stations mostly.
2. The recorded values aren't usually used today, though when I was a child and a teen, those values were regularly given during the cyclone season to warn people of the severity of the events. The values were for barometric pressure. I found the recorded values to be so much lower than what was published during the 1960's and 1970's. The inference being that these extreme weather events were spectacularly bigger and more destructive than the events recorded in recent years.
The actual destruction to human property and lives was minimal due to the low population density of those times.
There are a lot of factors that go into how "destructive" recent events are. If you look at the bigger picture, what we can see is that increasing population density and the subsequent population distribution and the subsequent greed by various factions means that there are more and more people now living in places that a century ago, no one would have lived in because they knew that to do so would be foolish as the weather events would be destructive in those areas.
When it boils down to it, people en bulk tend to be less wise and more easily manipulated. If climate scientists and those that support the anthropogenic climate change agenda want to get to be supportive, they need to be less political and less dogmatic and much more open. As I have said elsewhere, if climate scientists can answer specific question in a clear logical manner then they can have the benefit of the doubt. If they don't and they won't then one can quite logically call their utterances as rubbish. I'm still waiting fifteen years after my initial questions and still nary an answer.
Your opinion over whether or not anthropogenic causes are responsible for climate change is still, at this time, just an opinion. We do not have sufficient facts or research to determine this, nor do we have sufficient facts or research to determine what mitigation protocols will be effective in the face of climate change.
Does climate change exist? Of course it does. We have the obvious evidence before us. But, is it anthropogenic? That we cannot tell at this point. Do humans alter the environment? Yes, we have seen this over a period of a couple of millenia. Does this environmental change have gross effects on climate? We really don't know. We don't know the long term feedback cycles within the planetary system and these feedback cycles are important.
Anyone who declares that they know for certain, is just blowing smoke in your eyes. If we cannot stop the dogma and the politics about the subject, we will not even begin to understand the complexity of our planetary system. I have had arguments with scientists and all I can say is that they need a good engineering education to understand the limitations of their theories and models. Many seem to live in a fairy land that ignores reality. Maybe it is just the scientists I have come in contact with.
In general you are preaching to the choir. I don't follow the politics of climate change, however. Occasionally I'll see something about a denier paper funded by somebody with skin in the game (like an oil company), so I'm sure there are shenanigans going on. But there are a lot of people out there who have some idea of a boogey-man scientific power structure that is desperate to maintain it's supremacy and therefore will corrupt scientific research to protect it. It's the same boogey-man that gives rise to theories about evolution and the origin of the universe.
Exactly what this power structure is they don't explain. These are not people who have ever been engaged in scientific research. They aren't stupid, just aren't in the field. Kind of like non-athletes who criticize an athlete who is probably in the top 100 people on the planet at doing what they do as "sucking."
So they're easily distracted by arguments like it's "all political" and "both sides have a point," which, while true, miss a very important distinction. One side very clearly has a financial stake in the game, and their investors demand (by force of law) that they protect that stake. The other side stands to gain...I'm not really sure. Does the scientist who "proves" anthropogenic climate change make 15 million dollars a year for it? Does the lab stand to gain? Maybe some research funding to pay for more trips, but they're not flying first class.
You don't make a name for yourself by saying what everybody else is saying.
But maybe there is something I'm missing. Maybe you can explain it to me.
For example, in string theory research groups you will be expected to follow the party line of "string theory" as the basic viewpoint, and so your work will not be supported if you dispute string theory in any way. Whereas in other research groups you will be expected to discount any string theory model as valid and if you support string theory you will be frowned upon and not funded.
So it is with many different research areas. Anthropogenic climate change is the mantra for climate research, so you had better follow party line or you don't get funded. If your research doesn't produce the results that support that view then it will quickly be removed from funding.
It really doesn't matter what the subject matter is, if what you are doing doesn't follow "funding guidelines", it will be closed down. Before that happens, to keep their jobs, most people will follow the party line.
This is a shame as "science should be fun" and a way to further our understanding of the universe around us. What I find interesting is that scientists, on the whole, seem to be trained to believe that some things are "truth" because the theories on which those "truths" are based seem to work and work well.
In fact, many believe that certain things exist and spend their days, months and years trying to find those things. Occasionally after much time, some of these things seem to appear as based on their models. It seems to vindicate their belief in their theories and models. Yet, if one takes a few steps back and takes along hard look at the data collected, other things appear that raise questions about the validity of those theories and models. This is a good thing as it suggests that our theories and models may not only be incomplete but could be quite wrong. There is nothing wrong with that.
I liken it to the geocentric to heliocentric viewpoints. Both had some level of workability, but both have been superseded by later data and observations. Instead of being a tool for exploration of our universe, science appears to be getting the veneer of a religious system of belief and a pantheon of gods to go with it. Oh well.
That's because you usually believe it when you sign up. That's within a lab, not a field. You don't go play guitar for a group whose music you can't stand.
Anthropogenic climate change is the mantra for climate research, so you had better follow party line or you don't get funded.
This is where you either need to show some evidence or I'm not going to believe you. Outsiders say this, but the truth is usually just the opposite: If you have some results that are counter-establishment, the funding flood comes. Fifth force, earth angular momentum-coupling, cold fusion....
It's harder to get that evidence because, duh, if it were easy then that would be the norm- the standard belief of the field. This is the popular misconception that people have outside of research. It's one of those urban legends: sounds plausible, and somebody knows a guy, aligns with my belief system, therefore must be true. But the fact is, when something outside of accepted beliefs seems to have strong evidence, there is a lot of excitement in the field and people all talk about it and rush to be a part of it. Heady days!
In fact, many believe that certain things exist and spend their days, months and years trying to find those things.
I agree. As James Randi said, "Scientists, like everybody else, tend to find what they are looking for." It does take a while to break out of old theoretical frameworks. Look at the hoops that astrophysics is jumping through to explain their observations that are based on the idea that physical constants are truly constants as well as certain conservation laws. They are inventing all kinds of exotic, not-quite-self-consistent schemas for explaining their observations.
But that's very different from the assertion that "if you don't buy into it you can't get funded." It is true that you'll have to have your ducks in a row (stars aligned? heh) to get that funding, but if you had a way to explain all of this shit in a simple, self-consistent way then you would be fine.
But you wouldn't have to fight a bunch of politically-driven opinion-makers on that front because they don't GAF. With climate change you have to do exactly that- some politicians have forbidden even its discussion.
Then, after about 14 years without ever hearing about flooding over there in Kaua'i, this news struck quite close to home. I lost contact with the monastery on that day and then someone there messaged me: "heavy rain, the network is down". I didn't imagine the rain was that heavy... Lucky for them, the monastery is on high ground and wasn't affected as much as shore properties. Can't fathom what those in Hanalei might be handling, heck, I wanted to move to Hanalei for many years.
Climate change is something that people in the US should take more seriously, I can't believe the amount of deniers in that country. It is very depressing to watch from afar as people deny science as if it was merely opinions. Kaua'i is one of the most amazing places I've ever been, somewhere I consider a home away from home. Can't believe that government will not take action to course correct their recent snafus related to the Paris accord. They recklessness will make beautiful places such as Kaua'i suffer.
noho palekana, my friends.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terp
On the other hand, we sure need to be careful in the way we observe trends. The human mind is suited to observe patterns even where they may not exist. Combine that with increasing distribution of news coverage, and the insatiable consumer appetite for bizarre news stories, and it would be surprising if weather didn't seem to be getting weirder over the years.
edit: Also 26 years ago https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1991/12/16/f...