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Comment by cannonpr | Hacker News Reader

Something that I notice in a lot of comments in threads like this: “but it snowed massively at N event, thus climate change is expected variance and false” What most models show across the board is actually more energetic events, and more chaotic events. Yes there is also a general trend towards hotter, but in general the main noticeable thing for a while will be more energy for weather events to do spectacular things. This could be hot, could be cold, could be windy, either way it’s gonna get more spectacular over time. This is bad, humans, and human crops and animals rely on boring predictable weather that they evolved for.

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> “but it snowed massively at N event, thus climate change is expected variance and false”

A lot of confusion in those comment could be cleared up by agreeing on this one simple fact:

CLIMATE CHANGE IS HAPPENING. We already know it, and it doesn't need to be proven again, because IT'S ALREADY PROVEN, beyond any reasonable doubt.

(Sorry for yelling.)

In other words, it's not like asking "Can we say the dice is loaded because we got three consecutive sixes?" It's more like asking, "OK, we know the dice is loaded, we understand the basic mechanism behind it, we even know who did it, and now we just got three consecutive sixes from this known loaded dice. What does it mean?"

"OK, we know the dice is loaded, we understand the basic mechanism behind it, we even know who did it, and now we just got three consecutive sixes from this known loaded dice. What does it mean?"

Probably not much if the premise is true. In which case bringing up such news basically invites those knee-jerk responses like “but it snowed massively at N event, thus climate change is expected variance and false”

>This is bad, humans, and human crops and animals rely on boring predictable weather that they evolved for.

As an example: a comment on reddit mentioned a documentary highlighting animals becoming easier prey as their naturally occuring winter/summer coats were no longer helping them hide from their predators in their natural environment. Quite the opposite in fact, if you happen to have a white winter coat when there's no snow.

Exactly this. Anthropogenic climate change means more extreme oscillations in either direction, and more frequently.

Humans have evolved to be overfit to only what we can immediately perceive, hence "but it snowed, obviously climate change is a hoax."

This weakens the case in my opinion. First it was everything will get hotter, then it was the climate will change, now it’s weather events will get more spectacular.

Each claim is progressively harder to nail down and prove. If there’s one thing modern forms of media is good at, it’s make mundane things seem spectacular.

Due to higher CO2, more heat is captured in the atmosphere. Early on the naive messaging of that was “global warming”.

That added energy is changing the climate but it does not just mean that everything gets evenly warmer. The added energy means that some places get warmer than other. The differences mean that some areas get dryer and some get wetter.

Those increased differences in temperature and moisture result in storms and other weather events that have more energy and cause more problems. The large scale weather events like the Jet Stream or El Niño become more erratic . You get bigger storms, bigger floods. Sometimes you get bigger dumps of snow with the greater moisture. Some places get less moisture and are warmer for years at a time and fall into drought.

Those erratic weather and climate changes cause problems for humans, animals, and plants. More food sources underproduce or are destroyed. Hunger drives people to migrate. That causes disruptions in neighboring nations. Politics becomes more strident and antagonistic. Small wars eventually break out.

Yes, the messaging has changed a little over the years. That is partially as scientists have studied this more and learned more about both the primary and secondary effects of climate change. The media simplifying it so the public can understand has adjusted the terms they use as our understand realizes that this is not just a matter of simple warming but of a complicated system getting more unstable.

Good description of what awaits.

> Small wars eventually break out

I wonder if that isn't happening already here and there.

Bigger ones? What'll happen when areas large as a country, becomes mostly uninhabitable.

One more thing: There might be more authoritarian regimes in countries not affected that badly by the climate changes -- because the migrants will want to go there. And then the voters in those places, choose more brutal and authoritarian governments who build borders and use violence to keep the migrants away.

So, more war and dictatorships in the future, is one scenario?

Yes, I didn’t want the person I was responding to to say that I was being dramatic but when food and water are unstable and migrations disrupt those around them, societies get more desperate and can become more aggressive and war is the result.

The media isn't making the case. Scientists who have been studying this for decades are. It's a failing of the media perhaps (not the science) that you perceive a shifting of the goal posts.

The "case" is settled, by the way. It's only special interest groups with a financial incentive in the status quo that try to muddy the water with disinfo and make it seem otherwise. Those, and people who don't want to believe it's happening because it's uncomfortable.

What’s easier to prove?

A. The climate is getting hotter.

B. Weather events are more “spectacular”.

If the evidence supports the claim, A is clearly easier. If there’s a lack of evidence, B is clearly easier to prove because level is “spectacular ness” has no clear definitions.

Of course someone could probably come up with a spectacularness metric, but at that point there’s so many assumptions you have to make it’s almost a circular argument.

> A. The climate is getting hotter.

This is, of course, easier to prove. In fact, mountains of evidences support this claim. It can be considered "proven" in the same way the heliocentric theory or the existence of Pangea is considered proven.

The problem is that people don't understand what "average" means, and keep saying things like "If the earth is warming how come my town got record snowfall last winter? This disproves global warming!"

In other words, the renaming of "Global Warming" to "Climate Change" has got nothing to do with the abundance (or lack) of evidences. It's a purely pedagogical issue.

Scientists will say whatever they need to say in order to get funding. "Science" should be looked at with as much skepticism as the media

Vested interests that depend on oil, gas, and coal are even more motivated by funding and have definitely seeded a lot of doubt into the public discourse. This is sometimes called astro-turfing. It looks like grass but it was manufactured. People then pickup those false “facts” and misleading questions and feed it back into conversations about climate change. One of their favorite tactics is to claim that scientists only talk about climate change to get rich on funding.

Scientists go into science not to make a lot of money (they don’t) they tend to go into it because they have a passion for investigating things, answering questions, and because they see big problems that they want to help solve.

You’re claiming an entire extremely diverse set of people is not motivated by money?

What do you think scientists are doing when writing grant proposals?

No there was no such claim.

They aren't primarily motivated by money. But the oil companies are.

I agree. Scientific claims should be looked at with the MOST skepticism. That’s literally the point of science.

Good scientific claims hold up to skepticism.

Exactly.

Good scientific claims don’t need to form a pseudo-religion around their “findings” and push to censor anyone who disagrees.

The reason the messaging changed was precisely because “it will get a few °C hotter” was not nuanced enough. While true, it neither laid out the actual problems (extremes get more extreme, weather gets less predictable, fires become more common) nor looked true to laymen (“but it’s cold out now!”).

> First it was everything will get hotter, then it was the climate will change, now it’s weather events will get more spectacular.

The problem was thinking people cared about the first two. They’re both true but only “every few years a natural disaster will wipe a town off the map” seems to get people interested.

> humans, and human crops and animals rely on boring predictable weather that they evolved for.

Do they though? Or are large variations in weather over the course of a century actually really normal, and mother nature is just a cruel mistress that is constantly decimating populations and then giving them just enough reprieve to recover before doing it again? It's really hard for me to have any confidence in "climate science" because I see how horribly wrong other areas of science are _all the time_ and the only way to be proven wrong in climate science is to wait for decades or centuries to see what happens.

Except we have excellent geological records on the matter so we know what weather was like mostly across periods. This isn’t really something we have been wrong on for a while. Ofcourse we can always be proven otherwise.. This is also backed by mass extinction events being relatively rare.

Geology is so exact it can tell you whether Scotland was snow-free four times in six years in the 1500s?

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