[SV_BubbleTime]

Is weather the same thing as climate?

I don’t accept when people say “see, it’s snowing, climate change isn’t real!” so why would I accept the equal but opposite statement? Just because it reinforces my beliefs?

It’s anti-science to pretend they are the same thing because you want them to be. A random anecdotal sample is a single data point, or twenty data points, etc. The actual scientific problem of estimating and anticipation climate effects are the modeling billions of those data points, almost none of which we were around to actual observe.

This blind tribalism where ”You don’t get to use x as evidence but I do” hurts climate science overall.

[retrac]

When you flip a coin five times and get heads each time, you shrug and assume you were just lucky that day. When you flip a coin a 20 times and get heads each time, you start to wonder if the coin is unevenly weighted. A consistent pattern of extremely hot weather year after year breaking established records at least suggests a trend.

[nyokodo]

> A consistent pattern of extremely hot weather year after year breaking established records at least suggests a trend.

You're right. However, it is annoying when there's a cold snap that "weather isn't climate", but, when there's a hot-snap suddenly the weather is climate. Yes, this is generally not coming from climate scientists, but, it still makes advocates for a reasonable global warming response seem like a bunch of hypocrites and enhances the idea that global warming is purely political to the people who aren't informed, aren't totally closed minded either, but, who are turned off by apparent hypocrisy.

[ruined]

it's only annoying and seems like hypocrisy if you are willfully ignoring that unusual heat waves and other climate volatility are a trend and cold snaps don't refute that?

[nyokodo]

> it's only annoying and seems like hypocrisy if you are willfully ignoring that unusual heat waves and other climate volatility are a trend and cold snaps don't refute that?

Except any given heat wave has just as much probability of being a spike up as the cold snap has of being a spike down. You're right to say that the pattern is the climate, but the reaction I'm talking about is the reaction to the spike not the pattern. That is the apparent hypocrisy.

[SV_BubbleTime]

That’s exactly what I was getting at. It’s the same as people pointing to new record temp as ”definitely climate and you are stupid if you disagree” but seeing the previous record was 1920 as “well that was just a fluke”.

I don’t know what it is about climate change that seems to encourage a tribalistic ”if you aren’t entirely with me you are entirely against me”. Because I’m super skeptical that China will abide by import tax schemes without war, but that must mean I’m a denier now!

It hurts the debate to say there is no debate. There are tons of things to debate and discover. This is poor messaging above anything else.

I think the “true believers” that exaggerate to make their point are more hurtful than any single “denier”.

[Omnitaus]

Care to explain why China is the villain here? They're the workbench of the western world that has outsourced those emissions. Per capita they use less and historically have not contributed much to atmospheric carbon dioxide levels.

We live longer than weather patterns and it's not difficult to see how things have changed within living memory. Especially in regions like Alaska

[yongjik]

> I don’t know what it is about climate change that seems to encourage a tribalistic ”if you aren’t entirely with me you are entirely against me”.

Maybe scientists getting their email server hacked and used for doxxing should quality?

https://www.theguardian.com/theobserver/2019/nov/09/climateg...

> The email that appeared on Phil Jones’s computer screen in November 2009 was succinct. “Just a quick note to encourage you to shoot yourself in the head,” it said. “Don’t waste any more time. Do it today. It is truly the greatest contribution to mankind that you will ever make.”

To be honest, your argument rather sounds like victim blaming.

> It hurts the debate to say there is no debate.

There's no moratorium on debate over the details of climate change or related policies. Scientists argue whether some specific weather event is linked to global warming all the time.

What we don't need is another "debate" on whether AGW is real. 99% of people who still want to argue on that point don't want a debate, they just want to derail discussion because otherwise they'll have to talk about "OK so we're in deep trouble, what should we do now?"

[dwaltrip]

Have you seen the graphs of world temperatures over the past 150 years?

[yongjik]

Ultimately, the problem lies in treating climate change as something that still needs to be proven. It isn't. Whether anecdote X "proves" global warming is only of academic interest because we already know it's happening.

It's like someone walking in saying "Oh my god, the rain is really pouring down, I'm soaked!" Everybody nods and silently accepts the sentence.

And then someone tries to say that doesn't prove it's raining, after all, yesterday I was also soaking wet after that incident with the sprinkler. And of course everybody's like, dude what's the matter with you, we can look at the window right now and see it's raining.

[nyokodo]

> Ultimately, the problem lies in treating climate change as something that still needs to be proven.

Proof, or as close as science ever comes to that, isn't the issue. It's science communication that's the issue. New people are being born all the time and no one is born knowing climate science proofs, some people don't care until it hurts them, some people are naturally contrarian, there are opposing special interest groups etc. Because of this it's vital that the science is proven again and again, and any appearance of hypocrisy, being politically driven, and outright alarmism (i.e. crying wolf) is eliminated as much as possible. If scientifically settled proofs aren't demonstrated again and again then pretty soon regardless of how true they are we'll end up with an expanding contrarian movement. The global warming issue is a master class on how to grow a contrarian movement despite excellent evidence in support of it!

[rufus_foreman]

In the US, record high temperatures aren't more likely to be from the present than they are to be from 100 years ago. The main effect of CO2 on temperature is that it doesn't cool off as much at night - daily low temperatures are increasing.

The typical news media coverage of weather is simply science denial. The news makes claims about weather events that aren't supported by the science, scientists don't challenge the claims (I guess because they want the public to take climate change more seriously?), and both the news media and scientists lose some people's trust. Certainly mine.