One suggestion. The chart. It's not just that the slope of the line goes from Flat to Steep. There should be a gap up. Using your analogy, the last inch of water goes from zero damage to a lot. Yet if we add a second inch on top of that, the incremental damage will be positive but not signficantly so. For example, the first inch requires replacing all the flooring and one inch of the walls. The second inch only adds another inch of wall to replace which might actually cost nothing since it's really the labor and the workmen are cutting a minimum of a foot of drywall regardless.
There is not a corresponding nonlinearity in the proposed responses to climate change. We're still bickering over how to generate power rather than moving to overthrow the ruling class that has inflicted this upon us.
Not only a good explanation of non-linear response, but also of tipping points: the extra inch of rising water brings a discontinuous change of state. Keep explaining!
The question shouldn't be "Why are climate impacts escalating so quickly?", but "Are climate impacts escalating at all?" Aside from claims by alarmists that every bit of weather is caused by climate, and repeating of those claims in various media outlets, I've heard no claims at all that there's a trend.
If you want to contribute to public knowledge, present a case that some impact is actually escalating, compared to a baseline. Please.
Thanks for taking the time to respond, but I'm not sure what point you're trying to make. I acknowledge that there has been a warming trend, so it's not surprising that there are more record high temperatures in recent years. But, if this is the only "impact", we really don't have much to worry about. The claim is that effects such as damage from rainfall are "escalating", which implies not only increasing, but increasing at an ever-increasing rate. This column provides no data to support the claim of a trend. Nor do any of the other references to climate change as a cause of flooding, storm damage, drought, wildfires, etc. All the information I've seen is that the actual damage trends are declining, not increasing.
I also have to add that this response smacks of climate change denial - in the sense that it's a call to do nothing about climate change, cos 'where's the evidence'?
Initially, this denial took the form of: "Warming? Where's the evidence for that?'
Once that had been proven it moved to:
"A degree or so warming? So what?'
And then attribution studies started to show that one of those 'what's' is that extreme events either get more extreme, or more frequent, and sometimes both.
But now there's your response:
'More extreme events? So what? Where's the evidence these are harmful?'
I may be maligning you here, and if so, my apologies. But the concern i have is that by the time there's enough evidence of massive damage being done (which is what you seem to be calling for...) then another decade or so will have passed and a) that massive damage will have occurred b) much more massive damage is going to occur in future that we can't do anything to prevent.
I don't deny that there's climate. I don't deny that there's been warming, or that the warming is caused in significant part by increased concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, and I don't deny that this warming has risks for the environment and human society. I do deny that there's a strong case that these risks are likely to be large. I deny that because every scientific paper that's invoked to support the claim of great risks doesn't actually predict great risks. They predict some ecological or economic consequences, most of which seem manageable, especially compared to the risks that were readily apparent in the 1950s and 1960s, which have been very well mitigated since.
I do doubt the claims made by activists that these threats are so great that greenhouse gas emissions must therefore be stopped very quickly. The fact is that fossil fuels are essential to the modern economy, and stopping there use would have very grave consequences for humans. There isn't a current viable path to have reliable electricity, refrigeration, fertilizers, transportation, heating or air conditioning without fossil fuels. Rich countries would see dramatic declines in their standard of living without fossil fuels. Poor countries coerced into avoiding fossil fuels would stay poor, and get a lot poorer.
I also think the current arguments about stopping fossil fuels are a waste of energy. We won't do it. Despite the lip service given by politicians from rich countries, there is no country that is taking actions that could plausibly lead to the elimination of fossil fuel use in any foreseeable future. People worldwide consider climate change much less important than just about any other public priority, which is why politicians aren't even proposing decisive action.
Whatever climate change results will happen.
The resources we're currently spending on solar cells, windmills, and subsidies for electric vehicles could be better spent improving our flood control, water supplies, natural gas pipeline network, public health, roads and bridges. For the US, we have a looming crisis in funding for Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid that will eat all discretionary spending; the green energy spending in the Inflation Reduction Act hastens that crisis. Other rich countries have their own problems.
So, there's a risk of some consequences from warming, but probably not great consequences. Whatever the consequences will be, they're coming, because no one is willing to prevent them. When I say "no one", I mean not even a noticeable minority of any polity anywhere in the world. It makes sense to work on improving fuel efficiency - this will save money and also reduce emissions. It makes sense to pursue research and engineering to try to make carbon-free energy feasible. It makes sense to prepare for the consequences. It doesn't make sense to panic. It doesn't make sense to spend scarce resources on token gestures. It especially doesn't make sense to try to coerce poor countries to forego the energy development that will allow them to become prosperous (or at least somewhat less poor).
I considered record heat events to be detrimental impacts in their own rights. The reason being that if heat records keep getting broken globally then that implies /extreme/ heat events will keep getting more numerous, and that's something we do have to worry about in terms of direct impacts on human health. There are other indirect impacts. Increased fire risks, for one.
Given the news lately (Greece, Canada) it would suggest that these are increasingly common, but i agree with you that it would be nice to try to quantify these. That's complex stuff though, and probably somewhat unreasonable to suggest climate scientists provide this info. They can provide the info about the drivers for extreme impacts - which this post by Andrew does - but then quantifying the real world impact requires specialists in other areas. Having said that, Google provided me this paper on how fire in the US has dramatically altered : https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8926334/
To quote a summarising section:
"We found compelling evidence that average fire events in regions of the United States are up to four times the size, triple the frequency, and more widespread in the 2000s than in the previous two decades."
Other things that are often blamed on climate change (hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, droughts) show no long-term trend, although there are certainly regional and global cycles. I think it's more significant that the effects of these events, particularly deaths, are decreasing, because societies are more prosperous and better able to protect themselves through better flood control, better water supplies, and better building. This is what I meant when I suggested that Mr. Dessler could contribute to public knowledge by showing some actual impacts.
Thanks for the links, but I think your examples illustrate my point.
The NPR article links to a report by the American Meteorological Society, which consists of several papers. I haven't read all the papers, but I read the first, about drought and heat in California and Nevada in 2020-2021. It doesn't claim there has been a trend. It claims that "water year" 2021 had an unusual combination of heat and drought, and that climate models suggest that climate may have exacerbated this. One unusual year does not show a trend. California and Nevada together have an area of about 274,000 square miles, which is about 0.5% of the land area of the earth. If there are no trends at all, but just random variation in some distribution of outcomes, we'd expect to see about two one-in-a-hundred-years heat/drought events in an area the size of California and Nevada every year. Also two one-in-a-hundred-years extreme precipitation/flooding events in a similar-sized area. Also two cold extremes. I'm not claiming there are no trends - there's a pretty clear trend of warming overall, which would make the heat part of this California/Nevada event more likely. But, aside from models, there's no reason I know of to link drought to climate change. And there's no evidence presented that droughts have gotten worse, on net, over the last 20, or 50, or 100 years. The paper in the AMS report makes no such claim. The NPR article doesn't quite claim this, either - but it implies it by claiming that "climate change drove unprecedented heat waves, floods and droughts in recent years."
The Yahoo article is even weaker. It purports to explain "How climate change worsens heatwaves, droughts, wildfires and floods". Aside from the obvious implication that higher temperatures lead to more heat waves (or at least hotter heatwaves), there is no claim that there have been more, or more severe, droughts, wildfires, and floods. They cite several individual cases:
1. Wildfires in Greece!
2. Failed rainy seasons in some parts of East Africa!
3. Wettest summer on record in Pakistan!
But, as I explained above, some extreme events should be expected every year, somewhere in the world. These event's don't show a trend. And the sources make claims of intensification that are speculative.
If the intensification is real, it should show in trends. Which is why I ask: Show a trend. Any trend. Don't claim a trend because there are extreme events.
Edit to add: Bjorn Lomborg has recently published a relevant article. Despite many claims that climate change is causing more wildfires, and models that explain how climate could cause more wildfires, the amount of land burned each year has been on a downward trend for the last 20 years.
Maybe you can go to work for the top insurance companies in California, and convince them to start issuing new homeowners policies again, and that they are foolishly leaving lots of money "on the table" on account of "climate alarmism". But at least I think you'll agree that if you're right, it's an uncharacteristically rash move on the part of companies whose entire business depends on accurate risk assessments. So why not explain to them that you know something they don't!
I don't claim that I know more than California insurance companies - I claim that Born Broke didn't support his claim that climate change is intensifying weather events.
As far as California, there are two causes I know of leading insurers to stop writing or renewing homeowners' policies. My information is a year old now, so it may have changed, but it was quite relevant at the time of this post.
First, California law prohibits insurers raising coverage for wildfire except based on actual loss history - they can't raise rates because of drier conditions, or because there's more brush near properties, or because new properties are built closer to risky areas. See this: (https://www.policygenius.com/homeowners-insurance/news/california-wildfires-insurance-crisis/)
Second, as insurers leave California, homeowners buy insurance from the state-run FAIR program. This program runs at a loss. Remaining insurers are liable to make up funding shortfalls in the FAIR program, meaning that even insurers who can write profitable insurance policies face unlimited losses to cover shortfalls in the FAIR program. For detailed explanation of this issue, I recommend the testimony of Ms. Nancy Watkins at 1:22:47 in this Senate testimony: https://www.budget.senate.gov/hearings/risky-business-how-climate-change-is-changing-insurance-markets
I don't claim to know something that insurers don't. I claim to be able to find things that alarmists don't bother to look for.
Perhaps FAIR (the state mandated consortium of companies that comprise an "insurer of last resort") IS writing those policies at a loss. I don't know. All I know is, even at a loss, the premiums on those policies are so astronomical, they have reportedly made it all but impossible for many people to buy and sell properties in certain parts of the state to anybody, except for buyers rich enough to completely self-insure! So if that doesn't presage a well nigh apocalyptic prognosis for you, I am at a loss to see what would.
I decided some years back that intuition is largely linear extrapolation. This was especially apparent during COVID, as people seemed completely unable to grasp exonential growth.
Good point. I’d argue with COVID we made 2 linear extrapolation errors: the spread of the virus (exponential), and the efficacy of the vaccines (the 95% infection risk reduction was only valid for a few short months but we implicitly assumed it would last much longer based on the original Pfizer study).
A recent study commissioned by the New Zealand government shows a significant minority are bonkers, and that's down-to-earth Kiwis who do not define themselves by their party vote.
I imagine the percentage is higher in the US where a pig-ignorant, narcissistic, vindictive and invincible liar may frighten the whole world by being "elected" president again. I say "elected" because the electoral college system is a rort by any definition.
Climate events are almost certainly not escalating this year--instead, there is a massive interannual event that may be once in 150 years, going on. It's 3 years of La Niña (quite unusual), followed by strong El Niño emergence. These two factors have compounded to produce a far warmer outcome than El Niño on its own would have done. After the event completes, net heat will have been expelled from the climate system, and will take a few years to catch back up to the trend.
One conspicuous source of perceived non-linearity is investment in persuading journalists to increase the incidence and persistence of tropes like Climate Crisis, and the often alarming headlines and news ledes that attend them. Covering Climate Now, a joint venture of The Nation Institute and Columbia Journalism Review kickstarted with a million dollars presented by Bill Moyers , has enlisted hundreds of outlets and overseen Crisis-friendly rewrites of the style manuals of major newspapers and new networks from The Guardian and the BBC, to PBS and National Public Radio.
One conspicuous source of perceived non-linearity is investment in persuading journalists to increase the incidence and persistence of tropes like Climate Crisis, and the often alarming headlines and news ledes that attend them. Covering Climate Now, a joint venture of The Nation Institute and Columbia Journalism Review kickstarted with a million dollars presented by Bill Moyers , has enlisted hundreds of outlets and overseen Crisis-friendly rewrites of the style manuals of major newspapers and new networks from The Guardian and the BBC, to PBS and National Public Radio.
The analogy I’ve used to illustrate the non-linearity is bending a finger backwards. Switching subjects, if you look at histograms of temperature observations, the “Q” or average part is getting flatter and the tails, especially the right (hot) side is getting longer... basically bigger extremes. No news there. Wait until ocean currents stop and sea level really rises. That’s when things will really super pick up for the worse up I’m guessing.
Earth is getting hotter by a dozen Hiroshima bombs a second but 90% of the energy is going into the oceans and the "weather" is highly variable. However, most people have noticed the warming, and so have most animals. Some have not, eg tapeworms, because they cannot look..
The measure of the number of Hiroshima bombs leads to obtuse nonsense if not scaled by the number of these measures in the existing heat reservoirs of the earth system. The earth is indeed warming, and fossil fuels are the dominant cause on the multi decadal level. On timescales of a few years, though, ENSO signals are substantially larger, leading to spikes and "hiatus" events. Presently we are in an ENSO induced spike.
Total nonsense. Planet Earth is warming with every photon and ENSO alters that not one iota. Earth's temperature is determined high up in the atmosphere where molecules like CO2 are sparse enough energy can be lost to space rather than being reabsorbed.
Maybe you'd better sit this one out, or take a climate variability course first. It is widely known that ENSO yields variability up and down about the longterm trend line. La Niña is associated with enhanced storage of heat in the western and central Pacific regions, when deepening warm surface layers tuck away warm water out of contact with the atmosphere. During El Niño, this warm water spreads out and comes into contact with more atmosphere, transferring sensible and latent heat to the atmosphere. Maybe look this up before you make such a claim.
You're looking at the surface temperature not the total temperature of the planet, which is, like the mean global surface temperature, a statistical concept.
You're talking about weather, which is the climate system moving energy around. ENSO does not add any energy to the planet Earth, whereas the greenhouse effect does, and it's adding a dozen Hiroshima bombs a second over and above what it was pre-industrial - the significance of which you more or less contradicted.
As my old dad used to say, "A little knowledge is a dangerous thing".
No, ENSO accumulates energy in the climate system, by storing it in the upper ocean in geographically narrow regions during La Niña, and then it releases it to the atmosphere (and to radiation to space) during the El Niño phase. La Niña can be thought of as a time when the earth accumulates heat, and El Niño is a time the climate system radiates the accrued heat away.
The Hiroshima bombs comparison may be true, but it only really makes sense when you contextualize it with the number of such bombs worth of energy that is held in reservoirs in the climate system. People typically use that framing to engage in hyperbolic nonsense about climate change. Such hyperbole does action on climate a disservice, because people can see that it's dishonest or misleading.
Fantastic article and excellent point.
One suggestion. The chart. It's not just that the slope of the line goes from Flat to Steep. There should be a gap up. Using your analogy, the last inch of water goes from zero damage to a lot. Yet if we add a second inch on top of that, the incremental damage will be positive but not signficantly so. For example, the first inch requires replacing all the flooring and one inch of the walls. The second inch only adds another inch of wall to replace which might actually cost nothing since it's really the labor and the workmen are cutting a minimum of a foot of drywall regardless.
Thanks again for a great article.
I agree. Not to mention that a piecewise linear function is far from the best choice to show nonlinearity.
There is not a corresponding nonlinearity in the proposed responses to climate change. We're still bickering over how to generate power rather than moving to overthrow the ruling class that has inflicted this upon us.
I loved the Goddard talk, thanks for including it.
Not only a good explanation of non-linear response, but also of tipping points: the extra inch of rising water brings a discontinuous change of state. Keep explaining!
The question shouldn't be "Why are climate impacts escalating so quickly?", but "Are climate impacts escalating at all?" Aside from claims by alarmists that every bit of weather is caused by climate, and repeating of those claims in various media outlets, I've heard no claims at all that there's a trend.
If you want to contribute to public knowledge, present a case that some impact is actually escalating, compared to a baseline. Please.
It's all right, Brian, we understand the difficulty you are having when what you see with your very own eyes conflicts with your "world view".
From May this year:
https://www.theclimatebrink.com/p/why-are-there-more-high-temperature
Thanks for taking the time to respond, but I'm not sure what point you're trying to make. I acknowledge that there has been a warming trend, so it's not surprising that there are more record high temperatures in recent years. But, if this is the only "impact", we really don't have much to worry about. The claim is that effects such as damage from rainfall are "escalating", which implies not only increasing, but increasing at an ever-increasing rate. This column provides no data to support the claim of a trend. Nor do any of the other references to climate change as a cause of flooding, storm damage, drought, wildfires, etc. All the information I've seen is that the actual damage trends are declining, not increasing.
I also have to add that this response smacks of climate change denial - in the sense that it's a call to do nothing about climate change, cos 'where's the evidence'?
Initially, this denial took the form of: "Warming? Where's the evidence for that?'
Once that had been proven it moved to:
"A degree or so warming? So what?'
And then attribution studies started to show that one of those 'what's' is that extreme events either get more extreme, or more frequent, and sometimes both.
But now there's your response:
'More extreme events? So what? Where's the evidence these are harmful?'
I may be maligning you here, and if so, my apologies. But the concern i have is that by the time there's enough evidence of massive damage being done (which is what you seem to be calling for...) then another decade or so will have passed and a) that massive damage will have occurred b) much more massive damage is going to occur in future that we can't do anything to prevent.
I don't deny that there's climate. I don't deny that there's been warming, or that the warming is caused in significant part by increased concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, and I don't deny that this warming has risks for the environment and human society. I do deny that there's a strong case that these risks are likely to be large. I deny that because every scientific paper that's invoked to support the claim of great risks doesn't actually predict great risks. They predict some ecological or economic consequences, most of which seem manageable, especially compared to the risks that were readily apparent in the 1950s and 1960s, which have been very well mitigated since.
I do doubt the claims made by activists that these threats are so great that greenhouse gas emissions must therefore be stopped very quickly. The fact is that fossil fuels are essential to the modern economy, and stopping there use would have very grave consequences for humans. There isn't a current viable path to have reliable electricity, refrigeration, fertilizers, transportation, heating or air conditioning without fossil fuels. Rich countries would see dramatic declines in their standard of living without fossil fuels. Poor countries coerced into avoiding fossil fuels would stay poor, and get a lot poorer.
I also think the current arguments about stopping fossil fuels are a waste of energy. We won't do it. Despite the lip service given by politicians from rich countries, there is no country that is taking actions that could plausibly lead to the elimination of fossil fuel use in any foreseeable future. People worldwide consider climate change much less important than just about any other public priority, which is why politicians aren't even proposing decisive action.
Whatever climate change results will happen.
The resources we're currently spending on solar cells, windmills, and subsidies for electric vehicles could be better spent improving our flood control, water supplies, natural gas pipeline network, public health, roads and bridges. For the US, we have a looming crisis in funding for Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid that will eat all discretionary spending; the green energy spending in the Inflation Reduction Act hastens that crisis. Other rich countries have their own problems.
So, there's a risk of some consequences from warming, but probably not great consequences. Whatever the consequences will be, they're coming, because no one is willing to prevent them. When I say "no one", I mean not even a noticeable minority of any polity anywhere in the world. It makes sense to work on improving fuel efficiency - this will save money and also reduce emissions. It makes sense to pursue research and engineering to try to make carbon-free energy feasible. It makes sense to prepare for the consequences. It doesn't make sense to panic. It doesn't make sense to spend scarce resources on token gestures. It especially doesn't make sense to try to coerce poor countries to forego the energy development that will allow them to become prosperous (or at least somewhat less poor).
I considered record heat events to be detrimental impacts in their own rights. The reason being that if heat records keep getting broken globally then that implies /extreme/ heat events will keep getting more numerous, and that's something we do have to worry about in terms of direct impacts on human health. There are other indirect impacts. Increased fire risks, for one.
Given the news lately (Greece, Canada) it would suggest that these are increasingly common, but i agree with you that it would be nice to try to quantify these. That's complex stuff though, and probably somewhat unreasonable to suggest climate scientists provide this info. They can provide the info about the drivers for extreme impacts - which this post by Andrew does - but then quantifying the real world impact requires specialists in other areas. Having said that, Google provided me this paper on how fire in the US has dramatically altered : https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8926334/
To quote a summarising section:
"We found compelling evidence that average fire events in regions of the United States are up to four times the size, triple the frequency, and more widespread in the 2000s than in the previous two decades."
>"if heat records keep getting broken globally then that implies /extreme/ heat events will keep getting more numerous"
That's a reasonable implication. But nearly every type of event that might be considered climate-related is tracked, regionally and worldwide. In the case of fires, the worldwide trend is actually down, although the relation to climate one way or the other is ambiguous: https://royalsociety.org/blog/2020/10/global-trends-wildfire/#:~:text=That%20noted%2C%20when%20considering%20the,up%20to%202017%20or%202018.
Other things that are often blamed on climate change (hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, droughts) show no long-term trend, although there are certainly regional and global cycles. I think it's more significant that the effects of these events, particularly deaths, are decreasing, because societies are more prosperous and better able to protect themselves through better flood control, better water supplies, and better building. This is what I meant when I suggested that Mr. Dessler could contribute to public knowledge by showing some actual impacts.
Many sources detail how climate change has intensified individual events, which, yes, escalates their impacts.
Try a Google search for "storms droughts heatwaves made worse by climate change," or start here:
https://news.yahoo.com/climate-change-causing-droughts-heatwaves-131338315.html
https://www.npr.org/2023/01/09/1147805696/climate-change-makes-heat-waves-storms-and-droughts-worse-climate-report-confirm
Thanks for the links, but I think your examples illustrate my point.
The NPR article links to a report by the American Meteorological Society, which consists of several papers. I haven't read all the papers, but I read the first, about drought and heat in California and Nevada in 2020-2021. It doesn't claim there has been a trend. It claims that "water year" 2021 had an unusual combination of heat and drought, and that climate models suggest that climate may have exacerbated this. One unusual year does not show a trend. California and Nevada together have an area of about 274,000 square miles, which is about 0.5% of the land area of the earth. If there are no trends at all, but just random variation in some distribution of outcomes, we'd expect to see about two one-in-a-hundred-years heat/drought events in an area the size of California and Nevada every year. Also two one-in-a-hundred-years extreme precipitation/flooding events in a similar-sized area. Also two cold extremes. I'm not claiming there are no trends - there's a pretty clear trend of warming overall, which would make the heat part of this California/Nevada event more likely. But, aside from models, there's no reason I know of to link drought to climate change. And there's no evidence presented that droughts have gotten worse, on net, over the last 20, or 50, or 100 years. The paper in the AMS report makes no such claim. The NPR article doesn't quite claim this, either - but it implies it by claiming that "climate change drove unprecedented heat waves, floods and droughts in recent years."
The Yahoo article is even weaker. It purports to explain "How climate change worsens heatwaves, droughts, wildfires and floods". Aside from the obvious implication that higher temperatures lead to more heat waves (or at least hotter heatwaves), there is no claim that there have been more, or more severe, droughts, wildfires, and floods. They cite several individual cases:
1. Wildfires in Greece!
2. Failed rainy seasons in some parts of East Africa!
3. Wettest summer on record in Pakistan!
But, as I explained above, some extreme events should be expected every year, somewhere in the world. These event's don't show a trend. And the sources make claims of intensification that are speculative.
If the intensification is real, it should show in trends. Which is why I ask: Show a trend. Any trend. Don't claim a trend because there are extreme events.
Edit to add: Bjorn Lomborg has recently published a relevant article. Despite many claims that climate change is causing more wildfires, and models that explain how climate could cause more wildfires, the amount of land burned each year has been on a downward trend for the last 20 years.
https://nypost.com/2023/08/01/climate-change-is-not-the-reason-for-the-rise-of-wildfires/
Maybe you can go to work for the top insurance companies in California, and convince them to start issuing new homeowners policies again, and that they are foolishly leaving lots of money "on the table" on account of "climate alarmism". But at least I think you'll agree that if you're right, it's an uncharacteristically rash move on the part of companies whose entire business depends on accurate risk assessments. So why not explain to them that you know something they don't!
I don't claim that I know more than California insurance companies - I claim that Born Broke didn't support his claim that climate change is intensifying weather events.
As far as California, there are two causes I know of leading insurers to stop writing or renewing homeowners' policies. My information is a year old now, so it may have changed, but it was quite relevant at the time of this post.
First, California law prohibits insurers raising coverage for wildfire except based on actual loss history - they can't raise rates because of drier conditions, or because there's more brush near properties, or because new properties are built closer to risky areas. See this: (https://www.policygenius.com/homeowners-insurance/news/california-wildfires-insurance-crisis/)
Second, as insurers leave California, homeowners buy insurance from the state-run FAIR program. This program runs at a loss. Remaining insurers are liable to make up funding shortfalls in the FAIR program, meaning that even insurers who can write profitable insurance policies face unlimited losses to cover shortfalls in the FAIR program. For detailed explanation of this issue, I recommend the testimony of Ms. Nancy Watkins at 1:22:47 in this Senate testimony: https://www.budget.senate.gov/hearings/risky-business-how-climate-change-is-changing-insurance-markets
I don't claim to know something that insurers don't. I claim to be able to find things that alarmists don't bother to look for.
Perhaps FAIR (the state mandated consortium of companies that comprise an "insurer of last resort") IS writing those policies at a loss. I don't know. All I know is, even at a loss, the premiums on those policies are so astronomical, they have reportedly made it all but impossible for many people to buy and sell properties in certain parts of the state to anybody, except for buyers rich enough to completely self-insure! So if that doesn't presage a well nigh apocalyptic prognosis for you, I am at a loss to see what would.
There may be an apocalypse. My point is that the apocalypse is caused by bad law and regulation, not by global warming.
I decided some years back that intuition is largely linear extrapolation. This was especially apparent during COVID, as people seemed completely unable to grasp exonential growth.
Yes, COVID is an example I use in my textbook about how people can't grasp exponential growth.
Good point. I’d argue with COVID we made 2 linear extrapolation errors: the spread of the virus (exponential), and the efficacy of the vaccines (the 95% infection risk reduction was only valid for a few short months but we implicitly assumed it would last much longer based on the original Pfizer study).
A recent study commissioned by the New Zealand government shows a significant minority are bonkers, and that's down-to-earth Kiwis who do not define themselves by their party vote.
https://www.newsroom.co.nz/quarter-of-conspiracists-say-violence-acceptable-to-achieve-change
I imagine the percentage is higher in the US where a pig-ignorant, narcissistic, vindictive and invincible liar may frighten the whole world by being "elected" president again. I say "elected" because the electoral college system is a rort by any definition.
Climate events are almost certainly not escalating this year--instead, there is a massive interannual event that may be once in 150 years, going on. It's 3 years of La Niña (quite unusual), followed by strong El Niño emergence. These two factors have compounded to produce a far warmer outcome than El Niño on its own would have done. After the event completes, net heat will have been expelled from the climate system, and will take a few years to catch back up to the trend.
One conspicuous source of perceived non-linearity is investment in persuading journalists to increase the incidence and persistence of tropes like Climate Crisis, and the often alarming headlines and news ledes that attend them. Covering Climate Now, a joint venture of The Nation Institute and Columbia Journalism Review kickstarted with a million dollars presented by Bill Moyers , has enlisted hundreds of outlets and overseen Crisis-friendly rewrites of the style manuals of major newspapers and new networks from The Guardian and the BBC, to PBS and National Public Radio.
One conspicuous source of perceived non-linearity is investment in persuading journalists to increase the incidence and persistence of tropes like Climate Crisis, and the often alarming headlines and news ledes that attend them. Covering Climate Now, a joint venture of The Nation Institute and Columbia Journalism Review kickstarted with a million dollars presented by Bill Moyers , has enlisted hundreds of outlets and overseen Crisis-friendly rewrites of the style manuals of major newspapers and new networks from The Guardian and the BBC, to PBS and National Public Radio.
The analogy I’ve used to illustrate the non-linearity is bending a finger backwards. Switching subjects, if you look at histograms of temperature observations, the “Q” or average part is getting flatter and the tails, especially the right (hot) side is getting longer... basically bigger extremes. No news there. Wait until ocean currents stop and sea level really rises. That’s when things will really super pick up for the worse up I’m guessing.
Earth is getting hotter by a dozen Hiroshima bombs a second but 90% of the energy is going into the oceans and the "weather" is highly variable. However, most people have noticed the warming, and so have most animals. Some have not, eg tapeworms, because they cannot look..
The measure of the number of Hiroshima bombs leads to obtuse nonsense if not scaled by the number of these measures in the existing heat reservoirs of the earth system. The earth is indeed warming, and fossil fuels are the dominant cause on the multi decadal level. On timescales of a few years, though, ENSO signals are substantially larger, leading to spikes and "hiatus" events. Presently we are in an ENSO induced spike.
Total nonsense. Planet Earth is warming with every photon and ENSO alters that not one iota. Earth's temperature is determined high up in the atmosphere where molecules like CO2 are sparse enough energy can be lost to space rather than being reabsorbed.
Maybe you'd better sit this one out, or take a climate variability course first. It is widely known that ENSO yields variability up and down about the longterm trend line. La Niña is associated with enhanced storage of heat in the western and central Pacific regions, when deepening warm surface layers tuck away warm water out of contact with the atmosphere. During El Niño, this warm water spreads out and comes into contact with more atmosphere, transferring sensible and latent heat to the atmosphere. Maybe look this up before you make such a claim.
You're looking at the surface temperature not the total temperature of the planet, which is, like the mean global surface temperature, a statistical concept.
You're talking about weather, which is the climate system moving energy around. ENSO does not add any energy to the planet Earth, whereas the greenhouse effect does, and it's adding a dozen Hiroshima bombs a second over and above what it was pre-industrial - the significance of which you more or less contradicted.
As my old dad used to say, "A little knowledge is a dangerous thing".
No, ENSO accumulates energy in the climate system, by storing it in the upper ocean in geographically narrow regions during La Niña, and then it releases it to the atmosphere (and to radiation to space) during the El Niño phase. La Niña can be thought of as a time when the earth accumulates heat, and El Niño is a time the climate system radiates the accrued heat away.
The Hiroshima bombs comparison may be true, but it only really makes sense when you contextualize it with the number of such bombs worth of energy that is held in reservoirs in the climate system. People typically use that framing to engage in hyperbolic nonsense about climate change. Such hyperbole does action on climate a disservice, because people can see that it's dishonest or misleading.