Hacker News Reader

Comment by throwup238 | Hacker News Reader

There have been maybe three such events in the 21st century (glacier or landslides producing more than a magnitude 5 quake), and none of them have happened in an area like the Himalayas. The other two were in Alaska on Mt Steller in 2005 and the Lamplugh Glacier in 2016, neither of which produced massive downstream floods.

It usually takes entire icebergs calving off to produce such seismic events and intense monsoons to create such flooding.

View on HN

> There have been maybe three such events in the 21st century

It seems that past history (especially recent) will not be a good predictor of future events.

Spoiler alert: that’s the whole point of a black swan event.

A black swan event is an event that is unpredictable because it is so rare.

While I'd wait for confirmation about the cause of this specific incident, the point you seem to be ignoring is that, due to climate change, events that would have been considered "black swans" historically will become more and more common, to the point that they are expected to occur.

I think that’s a misreading of the entire book. A black swan event is a rare, high-impact outlier that is nearly impossible to predict under normal circumstances, but is rationalized as having been inevitable in hindsight.

For whatever reason, you continue to try to ignore the point I'm making, which is that, in terms of natural disasters related to climate in particular, what would have been "rare, high-impact outlier[s]" are increasingly becoming common enough to be not rare and not outliers.

And you continue to ignore what I said (and what the book said). The whole point of a black swan event is exactly what you just described.

It’s the inflection point when our priors change.

Maybe I misunderstand (either you or the topic in general) but I don't think what you're saying is correct. A black swan event is (to my understanding) something unexpected and generally remains so. Not (as you seem to be suggesting) "oh hey that was historically unexpected but going forward it's now considered a standard contingency".

And I have no idea where you got the "rationalized as inevitable in hindsight" thing. I've never heard of that in relation to black swan events before.

Have you read the book?

If events like these are "nearly impossible to predict", how come this post is linking to a scientific paper predicting exactly this scenario?

This flood is like The Big One in California. We know it is going to happen, it is virtually a certainty. The only question is when and where.

If glacial floods come as a surprise to you, it is only because you have been deliberately ignoring all the climate change warnings. So, a short recap: we'll see massive droughts, giant wildfires, huge floods due to rainfall, significantly more intense hurricanes, mass starvation due to large-scale crop failure, and low-lying countries drowning due to sea level rise. Oh, and add a high likelihood of the AMOC collapsing triggering a cooldown of the East Coast and Europe to the list.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com