Here is another non-sensical argument I saw for the first time today: “climate disaster costs are rising at a rate slower than GDP so it isn’t a problem.”
Set aside for a moment whether or not the statement is factually true, and you are left with we can “afford the cost” of climate disasters so what’s the problem?
People who do not want to see the elephant either because they deliberately close their eyes or are so short-sighted all they see is grey, will refuse to believe there is in fact an elephant in the room.
The obvious response, of course, is "climate disaster costs are rising compared to what they would be without global warming. How high do they need to get before you'll vote for collective action to cap the warming?"
I suggested that this individual find some beachfront property in Florida… after one good faith response linking to the insurance industry report on the future risks of climate fuelled disasters.
A better response would be "climate disaster costs are rising because there's more property, and more expensive property, in disaster areas." This would suggest more prudent development to keep expensive development out of flood zones, which would be technically much simpler to implement than decarbonization. Although maybe the political difficulties would be comparable.
Brian, why is that a "better" response? I know what RPJr says. What part of "climate disaster costs are rising *compared to what they would be without climate change*" do you not understand? Smarter people than you or me have estimated the costs quantitatively attributable to climate change to date. I'm guessing you haven't read recent peer-reviewed estimates, e.g. "The global costs of extreme weather that are attributable to climate change" (https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-023-41888-1). Those authors conclude:
"We find that US$143 billion per year of the costs of extreme events is attributable to climatic change. The majority (63%), of this is due to human loss of life. "
If you contest those numbers, argue with the authors. Do you think the net cost of climate change to date, in money and grief, is actually zero? Or is it just not high enough to motivate your cooperation with collective decarbonization yet?
Technically, they are not the same thing. Whatever the past costs, the questioning is, what investments should be made to reduce costs of future emissions?
It's a better response because it has some possibility of being implemented, at least in some places. Stopping climate change has no chance of being implemented in any of our lifetimes, unless it turns out that we reach the saturation point for CO2-induced temperature increase.
...and saying "Stopping climate change has no chance of being implemented in any of our lifetimes" requires you to possess second sight. I dare say we've seen no evidence of that!
It doesn't require second sight to say humans aren't going to stop climate change in our lifetimes if you understand human behavior and count the increasing number of fossil fuel lobbyists attending each annual COP.
Wealthier governments are more inclined to spend on adaptation (protecting *their* turf) than decarbonization where the benefit is spread across the planet. The same goes for wealthier people as a whole. Does the owner of the expensively fortified house that survived the storm surge drive an SUV?
No second sight required - only observation of actions to date. Despite 30 years of pledges, no country is close to actions that will plausibly lead to Net Zero on any time scale. And even if all the "cool kid" countries were to achieve Net Zero, the poor countries that don't want to stay poor will continue to increase their fossil fuel use.
Ahh, you place your trust in some undiscovered "saturation point for CO2-induced temperature increase". My turn to ask, "Can you point me to the studies you referenced?" The ones I've seen find no such saturation point, only an ascent of the IR escape altitude as added CO2 mixes into the air column. Is there any point in linking to RealClimate.org? How about "A Saturated Gassy Argument" (https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/06/a-saturated-gassy-argument/)?
What is it with bringing up "expensive development"? We're talking about a PLANET here. You know, plants, animals, coral reefs, Bangladesh, Mediterranean Sea, mountain glaciers, small islands?
What about the many long-established coastal communities that never had to deal with "high tide flooding" before?
What about municipal wells that are failing to salt water intrusion?
What about the floods from record rainfall (like places in Louisiana not considered a "flood zone" before flooding in 2016)?
What about the shifting of rain belts away from places (people, ecosystems) that relied on that precipitation?
What about the increase in forest crown fires putting nasty wildfire smoke in our lungs?
What about "tornado alley" shifting eastward to more highly populated areas?
What about the measurably slowing AMOC?
What about the homes of millions of Bangladeshis slipping into the Bay of Benghal?
And just *where* are people who live in places that are no longer livable going to move?
The energy imbalance at top of atmosphere is caused by increasing carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases caused by human activities. Certain!
As a result the oceans are warming year after year and the air above the oceans are warmer and moister (relative humidity remains about the same).
The results is increased atmospheric activity. This is where the complexity arises, because wrt hurricanes and Tropical Cyclones (TCs) it might be manifested as:
increased numbers
increased intensity
increased lifetime
increased size
increased rainfall.
The increase in intensity is directly related to increased moisture. The numbers are instead expected to drop overall because of changes in atmospheric structure (increased stability). This is complex because although true for increased dry static stability (changes in lapse rate of temperature), it is the reverse for CAPE: convective available potential energy) when moisture is accounted for. CAPE increases and so more activity. But even this is complex because strong activity in one area necessarily creates changes in large-scale overturning (like monsoons) and while increased convection occurs in one region decreases occur elsewhere due to changes in subsiding air and wind shear (which can blow incipient vortices apart).
There are very poor or no decent stats on lifetime or size.
An example:
One somewhat unpredictable aspect of TCs is the eyewall formation and replacement. Because of the strong winds around the eye of the storm, the spiral arm bands wrap around and can shut off the flow of moisture into the original eyewall, causing it to die, and a new eyewall forms farther from the center. In the past, this process often led to the demise of the storm (e.g. Katrina), but nowadays the TC often recovers as a bigger storm and it spins up again. So it lasts longer and is bigger. Irma in 2017, underwent several eyewall replacements and got bigger and bigger and straddled Florida, and had a long life. It cost over $100M.
Should this count as one storm or 5? Numbers are meaningless without duration and intensity.
(See Trenberth, K. E., L. Cheng, P. Jacobs, Y. Zhang, and J. Fasullo, 2018: Hurricane Harvey links to ocean heat content. Earth’s Future, 6, 730-744, https://doi.org/10.1029/2018EF000825 .
While it's true that the IPCC finds no evidence for flood trends, this is mainly about seasonal flooding, like when snowpack melts in the spring. A close look shows that there are trends.... more flooding in wet regions, less in dry regions, net no trend but the usual business of the water cycle being intensified. More important, there IS a distinct global trend in extreme downpours, which is what we're dealing with here. Maybe not a statistically significant increase in Texas, but that's a tiny part of the globe; overall the trend is clear.
Rodell, Matthew, and Bailing Li. "Changing Intensity of Hydroclimatic Extreme Events Revealed by GRACE AND GRACE-FO." Nature Water 1, no. 3 (2023/03/01 2023): 241–48 [https://doi.org/10.1038/s44221-023-00040-5]
Zhang, Shulei, Liming Zhou, Lu Zhang, Yuting Yang, Zhongwang Wei, and et al. "Reconciling Disagreement on Global River Flood Changes in a Warming Climate." Nature Climate Change 12 (2022): 1160–67 [ https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-022-01539-7]
Westra, Seth, Lisa V. Alexander, and Francis W. Zwiers. "Global Increasing Trends in Annual Maximum Daily Precipitation." Journal of Climate 26 (2013): 3904–18 [http://dx.doi.org/10.1175/JCLI–D–12–00502.1].
Yes, if by river flooding you mean long-duration flooding--as opposed to downpour floods that come from one storm or a burst of storms from a short-lived weather pattern. There's other work on long-duration floods but it's not worth pursuing here, trends depend on land-use changes (like deforestation), levee building and so forth as well as climate change. The argument for climate change impacts works only for downpours like the ones in recent years in Texas, Europe and Vermont and from cyclonic storms (where, as in e.g. Sandy, sea-level rise contributed along with enhanced precipitation).
Dude, you have access to all the data ChatGPT does. After it gives you a preliminary response to a quoted comment, you can type "show sources" in the input box, like I did above. You don't have to take its word, or mine. But I'll say it again: if generative AI generates the same answer I would from my own knowledge, I'm not going to waste my time typing.
"Imagine there’s a fatal accident caused by a driver running a red light. Someone says the driver was texting, causing the crash. But another person counters, “Traffic fatalities aren’t rising, even though texting is increasing, so texting couldn’t have caused this accident.”
This is literally the argument that climate misinformers are making and I hope you can intuitively tell how dumb it is."
I'm sorry, but that example destroys your argument and supports the argument you are objecting to. Here's why:
===
Texting while driving is a major contributor to distracted driving, which in turn plays a significant role in U.S. traffic fatalities. Here are the key findings based on the most recent data available:
• Annual Distracted Driving Fatalities: About 3,300 to 3,300 people are killed each year in the U.S. in crashes involving distracted drivers, with cellphones—including texting—being a factor in about 12% of these deaths [1] [2] [3] [4].
• Recent Trends: Distracted driving fatalities—of which texting is a part—increased by nearly 14% from 2018 to 2022 [2].
• Magnitude of Texting Risk: Texting while driving increases the risk of crashing by as much as 23 times compared to undistracted driving. In fact, one in four car accidents reportedly involves texting and driving [5] [6].
• Proportion of Fatal Crashes: In 2022, distracted driving caused 8% of all traffic deaths in the U.S.; texting is the 5th leading cause of traffic deaths, especially impacting younger drivers [1] [7].
• Effect of Anti-Texting Laws: States that have implemented and enforced bans on texting while driving have seen small but significant reductions (about 3%) in traffic fatalities [8].
Conclusion:
Texting remains a serious risk—statistically, both fatal crashes and total crash counts are rising alongside persistent and often underreported texting behaviors. Enforcement and prevention efforts have shown some positive effect but texting behind the wheel continues to pose a growing public health threat [9] [2] [3].
IF "global warming" caused or exacerbated the flood, it would have been revealed by an increase over time in Texas flooding. The globe has been warming, in fits and starts, since the depths of the Little Ice Age around 1700.
If more warming causes more or worse Texas floods, as Andrew seems to be arguing, it would have shown up as a long-term trend in Texas flooding.
But as Andrew admits … there is no such trend.
Given that indisputable fact … just what was the point of his analogy that I "missed"?
Willis, now I don't have to rebut Andrew's analogy-you did it for me, thanks. I was also going to add that if perchance deaths due to texting didn't significantly factor in to total MVA deaths then texting while driving deaths would therefore be largely irrelevant because the number is to small to make a difference. Just like deaths by lightning may have increased by 200% year over year but no change in overall weather related deaths, makes deaths by lightning way to small to have any relevance in what is being measured.
I could go on about how bad the analogy is, but alas, the echo chambers that surround the common University halls have grown far too loud to let anyone dare question the "consensus". So I no longer try to engage Andrew substantively. I'm glad to see someone else doing that for me. I do enjoy coming here now and again for comedic relief though...I hope they keep it up.
It we are truly on a "climate brink" of some enormous disaster just waiting down the road, why are weather related deaths plummeting? Willis, you know and I know that there is no way, no how that either Andrew, Mal, NSAlito et. al. will EVER engage you or I in a public debate. It would just be too darn embarrassing for them. Of course they'll come in with all their hand-waving but no references at all to back them up. Sad, yet hilarious at the same time.
"Another equally curmudgeonly senior colleague3 said that, because the 1-day rainfall from a 1-in-100 year event in this region had increased around 10-15% in this region over the last 40 years, his best guess was that climate change increased the rainfall by about that amount, give or take."
Are you calling him a curmudgeon because his answer was tautological*? If we estimate the contribution of climate change to a single event by drawing from the observed trend for the population, isn't the partial attribution of that event's rainfall amount to climate change identical to the statistical trend line at that rainfall volume? I'm probably missing something here.
* "Listen up. The first rule of tautology club is the first rule of tautology club." -R. Munroe
Many folks look at the issues surrounding extreme weather, flood draught, record busting heat domes. It is troubling though that many even somewhat scientists refer to the reason for these extremes, now no longer anomalies, as climate change.
The result of human manipulations to natural rythms, and mostly other human intended or unintended impacts can be lumped into the causing of climate change .
Lets get this right and not forget: Climate change is a direct result of mostly human impacts with some naturally occurring phenomena. Again climate change is the result of particular significant human impacts.
Climate change is not I repeat not the cause of this problem! it is the result of several human impacts? And, Are we 100%certain that we know which impacts are the most significant and troubling impacts we need to address?
Lately there is a lot of talk about moving away from all the carbon theories that science seems to be fixated on. And there's renewed interest in the planets hydrological cycle that clearly appears to be way off balance. This is the beginning of a discussion of what significant human impacts we and scientists may have overlooked or decided to discount.
there is literally no talk among anyone with functioning brain cells to move away from "carbon theories". the mainstream theory as described by the IPCC explains (almost) everything we see — no other theory does.
"And there's renewed interest in the planets hydrological cycle that clearly appears to be way off balance. This is the beginning of a discussion of what significant human impacts we and scientists may have overlooked or decided to discount."
Uh - there's your original dogged interest in the planets hydrological cycle. And this is far from the beginning of casting doubt on the climate-science consensus, as represented by the IPCC: a thriving for-profit disinformation industry has matured from its origins in the tobacco wars of the last century (https://open-research-europe.ec.europa.eu/articles/4-169/v2). By 'we' you are over-pluralizing: I'm afraid you're late to the discussion, at best. It's already led to a consensus. It discounts your claims because the economically-driven transfer of fossil carbon to the atmosphere is more than quantitatively sufficient to account for the global heat accumulation of the last century and a half. There's no residual unknown forcing that would accommodate your proposal, which means some already verified CO2 radiative forcing would have to be somehow explained away. You're up against Occam's Razor. Deal.
Yes I did make a wrong statement carbon certainly has and is a factor. Unfortunately there are other much more localized factors, ongoin g and occurring in highly climate sensitive regions to anmy human impacts. These cryological ,atmospherical, and thermal hydrologicals are not factored into the climate models and need to be. These factors, impacts, now going on for over 60 years, increasing every year. are very significant
If or When you want to see data and backup studies at that point we certainly could debate. We have very current discharge data from former rivers, now impounded sea-size bodies, current severe water vapor wind vectors from Northeastern Quebec carried by predominant winds over to Southern Greenland. If interested we can provide all the data and studies you might want to look at.
Humility is golden, arrogance well we all fall prisoner to this from time to time.
"If or When you want to see data and backup studies at that point we certainly could debate. "
No we couldn't. Neither of us is a professional climate scientist. Scientific debates are carried out among specialist peers. Until you publish your claims and data in a legitimate peer-reviewed venue, you'll get nowhere. Your reviewers get first shot!
"Humility is golden, arrogance well we all fall prisoner to this from time to time."
Snort! Humility is recognizing that your ideas are guilty until proven innocent. If you can't convince at least a significant minority of trained, mutually-disciplined professional skeptics, then you're almost certainly fooling yourself. Perseverating in the face of massive professional disinterest is a manifestation of the Dunning-Kruger effect: the arrogant presumption that when a large majority of genuine experts disagree with you, they're the ones fooling themselves.
Speaking of the wrong questions, the relevant questions here should be "Did recent warming make the (rain, flood) more likely? By how much? How could we demonstrate that there is a change in the distribution of (number, intensity) of storms?"
Attribution studies that use models to calculate that some event was 25% more likely, or 25% more destructive, aren't definitive unless actual data can demonstrate the change. For this level of probability on very infrequent events, it takes a very long time (many decades) to accumulate enough data to demonstrate a change in the distribution. And even then, it doesn't demonstrate a change from long-term baselines.
You mentioned hurricanes - hurricanes have famously increased in frequency over the past 50 years. It's easy to demonstrate that hurricanes became more frequent in the 2000s than in the 1970s, but as you noted, there's no trend in the longer term data. For years, there have been modelers and advocates claiming that hurricane trends are up, and that it's caused by warming. But actual data doesn't support this claim.
Thanks. That was the post I was thinking of. You cite models that cyclones will have more rainfall, and the IPCC claims high confidence that TC rainfall was increased by warming. But there's no claim that TC rainfall has increased over any particular timeframe.
You claim that hurricanes will become more destructive because rising sea levels will cause more frequent overwhelming of storm surge protections, but it would be very hard to find examples. You don't explain why you don't have confidence in improved flood protection as a mitigation measure.
You note that the IPCC finds it "likely" that the proportion of Category 3-5 cyclones has increased over the past 40 years, but you don't note that the number of Category 3-5 cyclones has not increased - the increase in proportion is due to fewer lower-category storms.
I respect the model-builders and their efforts to forecast changes in climate. I'd appreciate some effort to turn the model outputs into concise predictions, and then gathering data to support or refute the model outputs.
Here is another non-sensical argument I saw for the first time today: “climate disaster costs are rising at a rate slower than GDP so it isn’t a problem.”
Set aside for a moment whether or not the statement is factually true, and you are left with we can “afford the cost” of climate disasters so what’s the problem?
People who do not want to see the elephant either because they deliberately close their eyes or are so short-sighted all they see is grey, will refuse to believe there is in fact an elephant in the room.
The obvious response, of course, is "climate disaster costs are rising compared to what they would be without global warming. How high do they need to get before you'll vote for collective action to cap the warming?"
I suggested that this individual find some beachfront property in Florida… after one good faith response linking to the insurance industry report on the future risks of climate fuelled disasters.
A better response would be "climate disaster costs are rising because there's more property, and more expensive property, in disaster areas." This would suggest more prudent development to keep expensive development out of flood zones, which would be technically much simpler to implement than decarbonization. Although maybe the political difficulties would be comparable.
It should not be either or. We should invest in adapting to the CO2 already emitted AND invest in avoiding further CO2 emissions.
Brian, why is that a "better" response? I know what RPJr says. What part of "climate disaster costs are rising *compared to what they would be without climate change*" do you not understand? Smarter people than you or me have estimated the costs quantitatively attributable to climate change to date. I'm guessing you haven't read recent peer-reviewed estimates, e.g. "The global costs of extreme weather that are attributable to climate change" (https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-023-41888-1). Those authors conclude:
"We find that US$143 billion per year of the costs of extreme events is attributable to climatic change. The majority (63%), of this is due to human loss of life. "
If you contest those numbers, argue with the authors. Do you think the net cost of climate change to date, in money and grief, is actually zero? Or is it just not high enough to motivate your cooperation with collective decarbonization yet?
Technically, they are not the same thing. Whatever the past costs, the questioning is, what investments should be made to reduce costs of future emissions?
It's a better response because it has some possibility of being implemented, at least in some places. Stopping climate change has no chance of being implemented in any of our lifetimes, unless it turns out that we reach the saturation point for CO2-induced temperature increase.
...and saying "Stopping climate change has no chance of being implemented in any of our lifetimes" requires you to possess second sight. I dare say we've seen no evidence of that!
It doesn't require second sight to say humans aren't going to stop climate change in our lifetimes if you understand human behavior and count the increasing number of fossil fuel lobbyists attending each annual COP.
Wealthier governments are more inclined to spend on adaptation (protecting *their* turf) than decarbonization where the benefit is spread across the planet. The same goes for wealthier people as a whole. Does the owner of the expensively fortified house that survived the storm surge drive an SUV?
No second sight required - only observation of actions to date. Despite 30 years of pledges, no country is close to actions that will plausibly lead to Net Zero on any time scale. And even if all the "cool kid" countries were to achieve Net Zero, the poor countries that don't want to stay poor will continue to increase their fossil fuel use.
Ahh, you place your trust in some undiscovered "saturation point for CO2-induced temperature increase". My turn to ask, "Can you point me to the studies you referenced?" The ones I've seen find no such saturation point, only an ascent of the IR escape altitude as added CO2 mixes into the air column. Is there any point in linking to RealClimate.org? How about "A Saturated Gassy Argument" (https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/06/a-saturated-gassy-argument/)?
What is it with bringing up "expensive development"? We're talking about a PLANET here. You know, plants, animals, coral reefs, Bangladesh, Mediterranean Sea, mountain glaciers, small islands?
What about the many long-established coastal communities that never had to deal with "high tide flooding" before?
What about municipal wells that are failing to salt water intrusion?
What about the floods from record rainfall (like places in Louisiana not considered a "flood zone" before flooding in 2016)?
What about the shifting of rain belts away from places (people, ecosystems) that relied on that precipitation?
What about the increase in forest crown fires putting nasty wildfire smoke in our lungs?
What about "tornado alley" shifting eastward to more highly populated areas?
What about the measurably slowing AMOC?
What about the homes of millions of Bangladeshis slipping into the Bay of Benghal?
And just *where* are people who live in places that are no longer livable going to move?
A comment on TCs.
The energy imbalance at top of atmosphere is caused by increasing carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases caused by human activities. Certain!
As a result the oceans are warming year after year and the air above the oceans are warmer and moister (relative humidity remains about the same).
The results is increased atmospheric activity. This is where the complexity arises, because wrt hurricanes and Tropical Cyclones (TCs) it might be manifested as:
increased numbers
increased intensity
increased lifetime
increased size
increased rainfall.
The increase in intensity is directly related to increased moisture. The numbers are instead expected to drop overall because of changes in atmospheric structure (increased stability). This is complex because although true for increased dry static stability (changes in lapse rate of temperature), it is the reverse for CAPE: convective available potential energy) when moisture is accounted for. CAPE increases and so more activity. But even this is complex because strong activity in one area necessarily creates changes in large-scale overturning (like monsoons) and while increased convection occurs in one region decreases occur elsewhere due to changes in subsiding air and wind shear (which can blow incipient vortices apart).
There are very poor or no decent stats on lifetime or size.
An example:
One somewhat unpredictable aspect of TCs is the eyewall formation and replacement. Because of the strong winds around the eye of the storm, the spiral arm bands wrap around and can shut off the flow of moisture into the original eyewall, causing it to die, and a new eyewall forms farther from the center. In the past, this process often led to the demise of the storm (e.g. Katrina), but nowadays the TC often recovers as a bigger storm and it spins up again. So it lasts longer and is bigger. Irma in 2017, underwent several eyewall replacements and got bigger and bigger and straddled Florida, and had a long life. It cost over $100M.
Should this count as one storm or 5? Numbers are meaningless without duration and intensity.
(See Trenberth, K. E., L. Cheng, P. Jacobs, Y. Zhang, and J. Fasullo, 2018: Hurricane Harvey links to ocean heat content. Earth’s Future, 6, 730-744, https://doi.org/10.1029/2018EF000825 .
Thanks for this comment, Kevin.
While it's true that the IPCC finds no evidence for flood trends, this is mainly about seasonal flooding, like when snowpack melts in the spring. A close look shows that there are trends.... more flooding in wet regions, less in dry regions, net no trend but the usual business of the water cycle being intensified. More important, there IS a distinct global trend in extreme downpours, which is what we're dealing with here. Maybe not a statistically significant increase in Texas, but that's a tiny part of the globe; overall the trend is clear.
Thanks for that note. Can you point me to the studies you referenced?
Rodell, Matthew, and Bailing Li. "Changing Intensity of Hydroclimatic Extreme Events Revealed by GRACE AND GRACE-FO." Nature Water 1, no. 3 (2023/03/01 2023): 241–48 [https://doi.org/10.1038/s44221-023-00040-5]
Zhang, Shulei, Liming Zhou, Lu Zhang, Yuting Yang, Zhongwang Wei, and et al. "Reconciling Disagreement on Global River Flood Changes in a Warming Climate." Nature Climate Change 12 (2022): 1160–67 [ https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-022-01539-7]
Westra, Seth, Lisa V. Alexander, and Francis W. Zwiers. "Global Increasing Trends in Annual Maximum Daily Precipitation." Journal of Climate 26 (2013): 3904–18 [http://dx.doi.org/10.1175/JCLI–D–12–00502.1].
Thanks! I'll take a look. It looks like only one of these articles (Zhang, Zhou, et al) addresses river flooding - do I have that right?
Yes, if by river flooding you mean long-duration flooding--as opposed to downpour floods that come from one storm or a burst of storms from a short-lived weather pattern. There's other work on long-duration floods but it's not worth pursuing here, trends depend on land-use changes (like deforestation), levee building and so forth as well as climate change. The argument for climate change impacts works only for downpours like the ones in recent years in Texas, Europe and Vermont and from cyclonic storms (where, as in e.g. Sandy, sea-level rise contributed along with enhanced precipitation).
And do check the IPCC reports as noted by our AI pals. ... here, it took me one minute to look at IPCC AR6, https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg1/downloads/report/IPCC_AR6_WGI_FullReport.pdf
search for "precipitation event"
ChatGPT to your aid: https://chatgpt.com/share/68880b44-de44-8013-a6ca-5826796cd852
Again with ChatGPT as the expert? Does it claim more flooding in wet regions and less in dry regions?
Dude, you have access to all the data ChatGPT does. After it gives you a preliminary response to a quoted comment, you can type "show sources" in the input box, like I did above. You don't have to take its word, or mine. But I'll say it again: if generative AI generates the same answer I would from my own knowledge, I'm not going to waste my time typing.
Thanks, Andrew. You say:
"Imagine there’s a fatal accident caused by a driver running a red light. Someone says the driver was texting, causing the crash. But another person counters, “Traffic fatalities aren’t rising, even though texting is increasing, so texting couldn’t have caused this accident.”
This is literally the argument that climate misinformers are making and I hope you can intuitively tell how dumb it is."
I'm sorry, but that example destroys your argument and supports the argument you are objecting to. Here's why:
===
Texting while driving is a major contributor to distracted driving, which in turn plays a significant role in U.S. traffic fatalities. Here are the key findings based on the most recent data available:
• Annual Distracted Driving Fatalities: About 3,300 to 3,300 people are killed each year in the U.S. in crashes involving distracted drivers, with cellphones—including texting—being a factor in about 12% of these deaths [1] [2] [3] [4].
• Recent Trends: Distracted driving fatalities—of which texting is a part—increased by nearly 14% from 2018 to 2022 [2].
• Magnitude of Texting Risk: Texting while driving increases the risk of crashing by as much as 23 times compared to undistracted driving. In fact, one in four car accidents reportedly involves texting and driving [5] [6].
• Proportion of Fatal Crashes: In 2022, distracted driving caused 8% of all traffic deaths in the U.S.; texting is the 5th leading cause of traffic deaths, especially impacting younger drivers [1] [7].
• Effect of Anti-Texting Laws: States that have implemented and enforced bans on texting while driving have seen small but significant reductions (about 3%) in traffic fatalities [8].
Conclusion:
Texting remains a serious risk—statistically, both fatal crashes and total crash counts are rising alongside persistent and often underreported texting behaviors. Enforcement and prevention efforts have shown some positive effect but texting behind the wheel continues to pose a growing public health threat [9] [2] [3].
[1] https://www.moneygeek.com/resources/distracted-driving-statistics/
[1] https://www.moneygeek.com/resources/distracted-driving-statistics/
[2] https://baderlaw.com/research/distracted-driving-in-america-2025/
[3] https://injuryfacts.nsc.org/motor-vehicle/motor-vehicle-safety-issues/distracted-driving/
[4] https://www.thezebra.com/resources/research/distracted-driving-statistics/
[5] https://jminjurylawyer.com/car-accidents/which-states-have-most-distracted-driving-accidents-in-2025/
[6] https://www.forthepeople.com/blog/dangers-texting-and-driving-real-life-stories-and-statistics/
[7] https://www.coloradolaw.net/practice-area/auto-accidents/auto-accidents-texting-and-driving-statistics/
[8] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4103220/
[9] https://www.millerandzois.com/car-accidents/more-accident-types-valuing-accidents/texting-and-driving-accident-and-death-statistics-2023-updated/
===
So … given that your underlying example is 100% wrong, I fear everything that follows after that is wrong as well.
Look, if climate change were making Texas floods worse, it would absolutely show up as a trend in the flood data … but it hasn't.
You do the math.
My best to you and yours,
w.
*cough*
I think you missed the point of his analogy.
Thanks, NSAlito.
IF "global warming" caused or exacerbated the flood, it would have been revealed by an increase over time in Texas flooding. The globe has been warming, in fits and starts, since the depths of the Little Ice Age around 1700.
If more warming causes more or worse Texas floods, as Andrew seems to be arguing, it would have shown up as a long-term trend in Texas flooding.
But as Andrew admits … there is no such trend.
Given that indisputable fact … just what was the point of his analogy that I "missed"?
Best to you and yours,
w.
Nah, I think he got the point. That's the point of his point.
Willis, now I don't have to rebut Andrew's analogy-you did it for me, thanks. I was also going to add that if perchance deaths due to texting didn't significantly factor in to total MVA deaths then texting while driving deaths would therefore be largely irrelevant because the number is to small to make a difference. Just like deaths by lightning may have increased by 200% year over year but no change in overall weather related deaths, makes deaths by lightning way to small to have any relevance in what is being measured.
I could go on about how bad the analogy is, but alas, the echo chambers that surround the common University halls have grown far too loud to let anyone dare question the "consensus". So I no longer try to engage Andrew substantively. I'm glad to see someone else doing that for me. I do enjoy coming here now and again for comedic relief though...I hope they keep it up.
It we are truly on a "climate brink" of some enormous disaster just waiting down the road, why are weather related deaths plummeting? Willis, you know and I know that there is no way, no how that either Andrew, Mal, NSAlito et. al. will EVER engage you or I in a public debate. It would just be too darn embarrassing for them. Of course they'll come in with all their hand-waving but no references at all to back them up. Sad, yet hilarious at the same time.
"Another equally curmudgeonly senior colleague3 said that, because the 1-day rainfall from a 1-in-100 year event in this region had increased around 10-15% in this region over the last 40 years, his best guess was that climate change increased the rainfall by about that amount, give or take."
Are you calling him a curmudgeon because his answer was tautological*? If we estimate the contribution of climate change to a single event by drawing from the observed trend for the population, isn't the partial attribution of that event's rainfall amount to climate change identical to the statistical trend line at that rainfall volume? I'm probably missing something here.
* "Listen up. The first rule of tautology club is the first rule of tautology club." -R. Munroe
Curmudgeonliness is a factor of the attitude, not the facts.
Also age: I anticipate transitioning to curmudgeonhood within the next decade.
Another factor to consider - climate change is exacerbating drought, making soil drier, and decreasing its ability to absorb the floodwaters.
Many folks look at the issues surrounding extreme weather, flood draught, record busting heat domes. It is troubling though that many even somewhat scientists refer to the reason for these extremes, now no longer anomalies, as climate change.
The result of human manipulations to natural rythms, and mostly other human intended or unintended impacts can be lumped into the causing of climate change .
Lets get this right and not forget: Climate change is a direct result of mostly human impacts with some naturally occurring phenomena. Again climate change is the result of particular significant human impacts.
Climate change is not I repeat not the cause of this problem! it is the result of several human impacts? And, Are we 100%certain that we know which impacts are the most significant and troubling impacts we need to address?
Lately there is a lot of talk about moving away from all the carbon theories that science seems to be fixated on. And there's renewed interest in the planets hydrological cycle that clearly appears to be way off balance. This is the beginning of a discussion of what significant human impacts we and scientists may have overlooked or decided to discount.
there is literally no talk among anyone with functioning brain cells to move away from "carbon theories". the mainstream theory as described by the IPCC explains (almost) everything we see — no other theory does.
"And there's renewed interest in the planets hydrological cycle that clearly appears to be way off balance. This is the beginning of a discussion of what significant human impacts we and scientists may have overlooked or decided to discount."
Uh - there's your original dogged interest in the planets hydrological cycle. And this is far from the beginning of casting doubt on the climate-science consensus, as represented by the IPCC: a thriving for-profit disinformation industry has matured from its origins in the tobacco wars of the last century (https://open-research-europe.ec.europa.eu/articles/4-169/v2). By 'we' you are over-pluralizing: I'm afraid you're late to the discussion, at best. It's already led to a consensus. It discounts your claims because the economically-driven transfer of fossil carbon to the atmosphere is more than quantitatively sufficient to account for the global heat accumulation of the last century and a half. There's no residual unknown forcing that would accommodate your proposal, which means some already verified CO2 radiative forcing would have to be somehow explained away. You're up against Occam's Razor. Deal.
Yes I did make a wrong statement carbon certainly has and is a factor. Unfortunately there are other much more localized factors, ongoin g and occurring in highly climate sensitive regions to anmy human impacts. These cryological ,atmospherical, and thermal hydrologicals are not factored into the climate models and need to be. These factors, impacts, now going on for over 60 years, increasing every year. are very significant
If or When you want to see data and backup studies at that point we certainly could debate. We have very current discharge data from former rivers, now impounded sea-size bodies, current severe water vapor wind vectors from Northeastern Quebec carried by predominant winds over to Southern Greenland. If interested we can provide all the data and studies you might want to look at.
Humility is golden, arrogance well we all fall prisoner to this from time to time.
"If or When you want to see data and backup studies at that point we certainly could debate. "
No we couldn't. Neither of us is a professional climate scientist. Scientific debates are carried out among specialist peers. Until you publish your claims and data in a legitimate peer-reviewed venue, you'll get nowhere. Your reviewers get first shot!
"Humility is golden, arrogance well we all fall prisoner to this from time to time."
Snort! Humility is recognizing that your ideas are guilty until proven innocent. If you can't convince at least a significant minority of trained, mutually-disciplined professional skeptics, then you're almost certainly fooling yourself. Perseverating in the face of massive professional disinterest is a manifestation of the Dunning-Kruger effect: the arrogant presumption that when a large majority of genuine experts disagree with you, they're the ones fooling themselves.
Speaking of the wrong questions, the relevant questions here should be "Did recent warming make the (rain, flood) more likely? By how much? How could we demonstrate that there is a change in the distribution of (number, intensity) of storms?"
Attribution studies that use models to calculate that some event was 25% more likely, or 25% more destructive, aren't definitive unless actual data can demonstrate the change. For this level of probability on very infrequent events, it takes a very long time (many decades) to accumulate enough data to demonstrate a change in the distribution. And even then, it doesn't demonstrate a change from long-term baselines.
You mentioned hurricanes - hurricanes have famously increased in frequency over the past 50 years. It's easy to demonstrate that hurricanes became more frequent in the 2000s than in the 1970s, but as you noted, there's no trend in the longer term data. For years, there have been modelers and advocates claiming that hurricane trends are up, and that it's caused by warming. But actual data doesn't support this claim.
I've covered that here: https://www.theclimatebrink.com/p/climate-change-is-making-hurricanes-caf
Thanks. That was the post I was thinking of. You cite models that cyclones will have more rainfall, and the IPCC claims high confidence that TC rainfall was increased by warming. But there's no claim that TC rainfall has increased over any particular timeframe.
You claim that hurricanes will become more destructive because rising sea levels will cause more frequent overwhelming of storm surge protections, but it would be very hard to find examples. You don't explain why you don't have confidence in improved flood protection as a mitigation measure.
You note that the IPCC finds it "likely" that the proportion of Category 3-5 cyclones has increased over the past 40 years, but you don't note that the number of Category 3-5 cyclones has not increased - the increase in proportion is due to fewer lower-category storms.
I respect the model-builders and their efforts to forecast changes in climate. I'd appreciate some effort to turn the model outputs into concise predictions, and then gathering data to support or refute the model outputs.