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Comment by helloworld11 | Hacker News Reader

Can we not infer long-term climate change from specific unusual incidents? When climate change deniers do the same because some cold snap was unusually severe, they get derided, but the media seems to love jumping on every heat wave as a sign of catastrophe. I'm not a denier of human-caused climate change but we're talking about long term trends that are far too complex for inferring too much from isolated heat waves. Such specific events have been occurring for a very long time and sometimes in unexpected places. Just look at historical climate extremes for normally temperate or cold regions like Siberia for examples.

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As long as Senators are carrying snowballs into the Senate to "disprove" global warming I think that it's quite fair to point out specific issues in the other direction even if they don't actually indicate climate change. Climate change is likely going to cause extreme situations to become more common place - shining a light on specific disasters and making it clear, from a media perspective, that they are becoming more extreme and more frequent is likely going to be a lot more effective in convincing the general populace than the technically correct argument.

(Below is an edit in response to a dead reply which represents a not-insignificant viewpoint) In response specifically to "destroying credibility" - if media organizations want to act responsibly and highlight that these events are likely results of climate change due to their frequency while also admitting that similar events would occur without any climate just but with much lower frequency and potency then I'd be extremely pleased with the job the media is doing. The Mark Twain saying "A lie can travel around the world and back again while the truth is lacing up its boots" is extremely relevant - lies are being actively spread in the media and they need to be countered somehow. And, at the end of the day, it isn't false to say these events are related to climate change - it's just that a few happening occasionally isn't a good metric to go by.

This isn't a rational position.

"As long as the other side uses illogical arguments, then I should use illogical arguments as well."

It also helps extremists frame the conversation, whereas we should be rewarding rational nuanced conversations.

Don't give in to the theatrics. Don't get suckered into trying to counter one extremist argument with the other. Empower those of us who are rational by marginalizing extremist and hyperbolic participants.

Buddy if the media ramped up dire warnings of climate change by 1000% it probably wouldn't be enough.

People still don't fully grasp the science of this, the time scale, the dire implications - or how dirty we've been done by energy companies AND THE MEDIA over it.

It seems to be the other way around: infering specific unusual incidents from long-term climate change. Meteorologists in Canada are taking great pains to make this clear in recent days.

The media hasn't cared about being hypocritical for a while now.

Are you suggesting that scientists shouldn't investigate anomalous events that are becoming more common because ignorant people might confuse them with entirely expected but relatively rare events?

I don't think OP was suggesting that. Their comment specifically seemed to be about the media drawing unsupported conclusions from specific incidents. That is, as you say a job for the scientists.

There doesn't seem to be any conclusions at all drawn by the journalist: it's literally a quote from a scientist that talks of the conclusion.

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