The New Climate Math on Hurricanes

(nautil.us)

30 points | by dnetesn 7 hours ago ago

21 comments

  • vegetablepotpie 2 hours ago

    Climate Central has a model that can show how much more intense hurricanes are based on how much warmer the ocean is.

    This is an advance for attribution science, which aims to show how much of a natural disaster is attributed to climate change.

    In the future I expect a party, perhaps an insurance firm, or reinsurance firm sue oil companies for their role in accelerating climate change to pay for the cost of natural disasters.

    • bko 29 minutes ago

      > In the future I expect a party, perhaps an insurance firm, or reinsurance firm sue oil companies for their role in accelerating climate change to pay for the cost of natural disasters.

      Why make something legal and build your entire society around it and then turn around and retroactively blame them for providing legal goods? Seems insane to me.

      • js8 22 minutes ago

        It's not what happened, though. Fossil fuel companies had studies about the impact of AGW since 60s, and yet decided to fund climate change denial. That's criminal.

      • HarryHirsch 10 minutes ago

        Why make something legal and build your entire society around it and then turn around and retroactively blame them for providing legal goods?

        You mean... tobacco?

    • burkaman 2 hours ago

      Several US states have already done that, Maine just did a couple days ago: https://www.maine.gov/ag/news/article.shtml?id=13129752

    • SoftTalker 2 hours ago

      It's not like we all didn't want and buy the oil.

      • burkaman 2 hours ago

        We didn't all launch an ongoing decades-long campaign of lies about what the consequences will be though.

        • anonym29 17 minutes ago

          Right, we just blindly trusted the first things we heard on the subject, and everyone knows that's rational because humans never lie.

          Remember: as long as you trust your government, trust the corporations, trust all the information you hear, especially from large and well-known institutions, you'll always be fine.

          Never slow down, never stop to think, just keep buying, keep consuming, keep tuning into the same media sources, and NEVER EVER dare to question social consensus!

      • taneq an hour ago

        We should invent some kind of term that makes it sound like everyone had all the info since the 70s and so everyone's equally to blame.

        I know, let's say "carbon footprint" and make it sound like every single human has been deliberately stomping all over the environment.

        • openrisk 41 minutes ago

          Thats quite cynical, but more importantly, by not accepting as legitimate the so-called "consumer responsibility" angle you are missing half of the equation.

          Already in this forum there more than enough people that will viciously defend their right to consume whatever they fancy with "their hard-earned money" and would cry "tyranny" if you suggest there is a limit after which their lifestyle becomes a danger to others.

          The equation gets even more muddied if you also consider the responsibility of individuals as labor providers to the corporate entities that are responsible for environmental degradation. Again, people "got to pay the bills" etc.

          Sure, there are bad people out there, prime suspects, clear villains. But its mostly bad systems.

          • ceejayoz 39 minutes ago

            The fallacy of the “consumer responsibility” argument is the same as the problem with “ideal communism” - it requires pretending humans aren’t humans.

            • barbazoo 36 minutes ago

              I don't get it. Communism is a system, consumer responsibility is individual. Every individual changing their behavior changes the outcome.

              • ceejayoz 33 minutes ago

                Both require people to care enough about others they’ll never meet enough to significantly self-sacrifice to be successful.

                I can cut my carbon footprint to the bone, and my neighbor will run their two-stroke leaf blower all day because they like the noise it makes.

                • openrisk 22 minutes ago

                  I am not sure you are familiar with what the term consumer responsibility means in this context. It doesnt mean to rely on consumer's "good hearts" and conscience. Its a mechanism to attribute impact to final consumption, so that the costs of that impact are also priced to influence these consumers. So your neighbor would somehow pay for their mindless blowing (rather than the manufacturer or the fuel provider).

                  The comment to which I responded implied that this is unfair, that the corporate beneficiaries / polluters should "pay".

                • barbazoo 29 minutes ago

                  Totally.

                  > I can cut my carbon footprint to the bone, and my neighbor will run their two-stroke leaf blower all day because they like the noise it makes.

                  Personally I reduced our currently measurable monthly CO2 emissions from ~350kg/month to ~15kg/month. They need a lot of (gas powered) leaf blowers to offset that. If thousands or millions of people do it, it'll make a difference. I'm aware of course that not everyone is in the financial position to do what we did. For a lot of people though it's a choice they could make if they're open to changing their lifestyle a little bit.

                  (I'm not saying our emissions are down to 15kg/month, but that's based on what I can currently measure, transportation, LNG, electricity, etc. Likely they are much higher of course but I gotta start somewhere)

              • stouset 13 minutes ago

                Individuals are capable of altering their behavior. Groups behave in accordance with incentive structures.

                Hoping for and/or expecting societal change through mass application of willpower is wishful thinking.

                • lotsofpulp 7 minutes ago

                  That sounds like an argument against democracy.

    • vkou an hour ago

      The oil firms aren't half as at fault as the politicians they bought.

      • ragingroosevelt 44 minutes ago

        Personally I usually blame the puppeteer more than the puppet.

  • anonym29 14 minutes ago

    Glad we've finally figured out how to isolate the impacts of a single variable on a massive and incredibly complex system without even enumerating all of those other variables. The Science (tm) is so cool!

  • deepnet 3 hours ago

    Scary stuff