Yes and... Surely CO2-driven climate change is affecting potential rainfall amounts in any storm or atmospheric river and the snow > rain trend in mountains (as I wrote in 1988 - downloadable here: https://revkin.substack.com/i/133815497/the-warming-view-from - drawing on Peter Gleick's work). The and is that the plumbing was broken in key flooding regions of the Pacific Northwest generations ago - with a lake turned into a "prairie" and farms and towns built on land that historically was under water. Described neatly in Tyree: https://thetyee.ca/Analysis/2021/11/18/Mapping-Abbotsford-Flood/
Mr. Revkin, your commitment to balance is journalistic by training, and seems sincere. Yet as you well know, *false* balance is down that same slippery slope, and is a popular rhetorical tactic of professional disinformers on behalf of fossil carbon producers and investors: see, for example, "The epistemic dangers of journalistic balance" (https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/episteme/article/epistemic-dangers-of-journalistic-balance/BE1300ED448BAE016576E07AC0C237EE). Presumably that's why your former employer, the New York Times, has largely abandoned its historical straining for 'balance' with respect to the consensus of international climate science for anthropogenic global warming. That's unless you have insider information?
In any case, it's true as stated, that the total cost of the latest floods is partially attributable to large-scale anthropogenic changes to the watersheds. Indeed, Dr. Dessler ends his OP with:
'Note that this simple physical argument won’t tell you how much of the trend is due to climate change—that will require additional analysis. But for the question “Is climate change having an effect,” we can answer, “Almost certainly yes.”'
This is a substack about climate change (https://www.theclimatebrink.com/about), and its authors are at pains to explain why attribution of the cost of fossil-carbon-enhanced flooding, in money and tragedy, is always partial. Their purpose is to push back on for-profit and volunteer decarbonization obstructionism with well-supported science. Please, let's have no *misleading* balance here!
What, exactly, is the significance of this argument? Taking as a given that there is a trend in PNW floods, because the physics says it must be so, you also say that the trend is much smaller than year to year variability.
If there's a policy implication, the implication is that the PNW must be prepared to deal with the variability. The resulting questions would include
* How often are flood control measures overwhelmed?
* Are flood control measures less adequate now than they were 50 or 100 years ago?
* How much would it cost to improve flood control measures?
* What would be the benefit of improving flood control measures?
* Are floods more (or less) damaging because there is more (or less) property (and people) in the path of floods?
I'm sure these questions are probably outside the wheelhouse of climate scientists, but they seem much more relevant than theoretical arguments about undetectable trends.
Good to hear from you, Brian. I haven’t seen any comments from you and was worried something happened to you.
To answer your question, you should adopt a climate risk framework. We know the hazard is getting worse (this is what my post covers), but you’re right that you need to evaluate the exposure and vulnerability of the systems of interest to get the total impacts on humans.
Thanks for the reply. I hope we're not talking past each other. Your earlier column focused on "Why are climate impacts escalating?" without establishing that climate impacts are escalating. This seems like a variation on the theme.
As you noted, it can take a long time and lot of data to clearly show a trend in a data series with a lot of variability. It shouldn't be too hard to show how much risk our current system has. I know that's not your topic, but it seems a lot more interesting.
You imply (but don't clearly claim) that flooding in the Pacific Northwest is worse than the norm. That may be true. You imply (but don't clearly state) that floods are noticeably more damaging than the norm. That may also be true.
Whether these are true or not, it may be that better flood control measures are needed. It could be that flood control measures have been inadequate for decades. It could be that current flood control measures are more than adequate for the worst recent flooding.
Why are people who do trend analysis "climate misinformers"? Why do you need to delegitimize them so much? I would think that both types of analyses have their purposes. For me, it undermines your whole argument.
I'm guessing Prof. Dessler's argument was already undermined for you by disinformation. He just got through explaining that there are legitimate and illegitimate ways to do trend analysis. Refusal to adjust statistical methods for rare events delegitimizes itself, by reaching inaccurate conclusions!
If you're actually new to the climate-change information wars, you may not know that complaints about being delegitimized are popular with disinformationists. So is "tone trolling". They're not legitimate tactics either! See "Disinformation as an obstructionist strategy in climate change mitigation: a review of the scientific literature for a systemic understanding of the phenomenon" (https://open-research-europe.ec.europa.eu/articles/4-169/v2).
Les exploiteurs trouvent ça positif que les grandes glaces du nord fondent; Ils disent que ça libère des passages pour leurs cargos. Ils placent leur profits avant l'avenir de leurs enfants.
Very clear demonstration of the difficulty of analysing trends in rare events. We see those "no statistical trend" denialist arguments a lot. In my relative statistical ignorance: does a Bayesian approach help capture trends predicted by physics, that frequentist methods don't show?
Thumbs-up
Yes and... Surely CO2-driven climate change is affecting potential rainfall amounts in any storm or atmospheric river and the snow > rain trend in mountains (as I wrote in 1988 - downloadable here: https://revkin.substack.com/i/133815497/the-warming-view-from - drawing on Peter Gleick's work). The and is that the plumbing was broken in key flooding regions of the Pacific Northwest generations ago - with a lake turned into a "prairie" and farms and towns built on land that historically was under water. Described neatly in Tyree: https://thetyee.ca/Analysis/2021/11/18/Mapping-Abbotsford-Flood/
Mr. Revkin, your commitment to balance is journalistic by training, and seems sincere. Yet as you well know, *false* balance is down that same slippery slope, and is a popular rhetorical tactic of professional disinformers on behalf of fossil carbon producers and investors: see, for example, "The epistemic dangers of journalistic balance" (https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/episteme/article/epistemic-dangers-of-journalistic-balance/BE1300ED448BAE016576E07AC0C237EE). Presumably that's why your former employer, the New York Times, has largely abandoned its historical straining for 'balance' with respect to the consensus of international climate science for anthropogenic global warming. That's unless you have insider information?
In any case, it's true as stated, that the total cost of the latest floods is partially attributable to large-scale anthropogenic changes to the watersheds. Indeed, Dr. Dessler ends his OP with:
'Note that this simple physical argument won’t tell you how much of the trend is due to climate change—that will require additional analysis. But for the question “Is climate change having an effect,” we can answer, “Almost certainly yes.”'
This is a substack about climate change (https://www.theclimatebrink.com/about), and its authors are at pains to explain why attribution of the cost of fossil-carbon-enhanced flooding, in money and tragedy, is always partial. Their purpose is to push back on for-profit and volunteer decarbonization obstructionism with well-supported science. Please, let's have no *misleading* balance here!
What, exactly, is the significance of this argument? Taking as a given that there is a trend in PNW floods, because the physics says it must be so, you also say that the trend is much smaller than year to year variability.
If there's a policy implication, the implication is that the PNW must be prepared to deal with the variability. The resulting questions would include
* How often are flood control measures overwhelmed?
* Are flood control measures less adequate now than they were 50 or 100 years ago?
* How much would it cost to improve flood control measures?
* What would be the benefit of improving flood control measures?
* Are floods more (or less) damaging because there is more (or less) property (and people) in the path of floods?
I'm sure these questions are probably outside the wheelhouse of climate scientists, but they seem much more relevant than theoretical arguments about undetectable trends.
Good to hear from you, Brian. I haven’t seen any comments from you and was worried something happened to you.
To answer your question, you should adopt a climate risk framework. We know the hazard is getting worse (this is what my post covers), but you’re right that you need to evaluate the exposure and vulnerability of the systems of interest to get the total impacts on humans.
To the extent that we are adapted to pre-climate variability, even small increases can push us past thresholds in the system. See this for explanation of how small changes can lead to big impacts: https://www.theclimatebrink.com/p/why-are-climate-impacts-escalating
Thanks for the reply. I hope we're not talking past each other. Your earlier column focused on "Why are climate impacts escalating?" without establishing that climate impacts are escalating. This seems like a variation on the theme.
As you noted, it can take a long time and lot of data to clearly show a trend in a data series with a lot of variability. It shouldn't be too hard to show how much risk our current system has. I know that's not your topic, but it seems a lot more interesting.
You imply (but don't clearly claim) that flooding in the Pacific Northwest is worse than the norm. That may be true. You imply (but don't clearly state) that floods are noticeably more damaging than the norm. That may also be true.
Whether these are true or not, it may be that better flood control measures are needed. It could be that flood control measures have been inadequate for decades. It could be that current flood control measures are more than adequate for the worst recent flooding.
Why are people who do trend analysis "climate misinformers"? Why do you need to delegitimize them so much? I would think that both types of analyses have their purposes. For me, it undermines your whole argument.
I'm guessing Prof. Dessler's argument was already undermined for you by disinformation. He just got through explaining that there are legitimate and illegitimate ways to do trend analysis. Refusal to adjust statistical methods for rare events delegitimizes itself, by reaching inaccurate conclusions!
If you're actually new to the climate-change information wars, you may not know that complaints about being delegitimized are popular with disinformationists. So is "tone trolling". They're not legitimate tactics either! See "Disinformation as an obstructionist strategy in climate change mitigation: a review of the scientific literature for a systemic understanding of the phenomenon" (https://open-research-europe.ec.europa.eu/articles/4-169/v2).
Les exploiteurs trouvent ça positif que les grandes glaces du nord fondent; Ils disent que ça libère des passages pour leurs cargos. Ils placent leur profits avant l'avenir de leurs enfants.
Very clear demonstration of the difficulty of analysing trends in rare events. We see those "no statistical trend" denialist arguments a lot. In my relative statistical ignorance: does a Bayesian approach help capture trends predicted by physics, that frequentist methods don't show?