Americans Perceive a Rise in Extreme Weather, Pew Finds (yahoo.com) 91
Americans are taking notice of extreme weather events, according to a new Pew Research Center survey. From a report: Two-thirds of Americans say extreme weather events in the U.S. have been occurring more frequently than in the past, while only 28% said they've been taking place about as often, and just 4% perceiving a dropoff in frequency. So far in 2021, the U.S. has seen a record 18 billion dollar extreme weather events. When it comes to extreme weather events in their backyards, 46% of U.S. adults say the area where they live has had an extreme weather event over the past year. The area with the greatest number of people reporting an extreme weather event was the South Central Census Division. It includes Louisiana, a state hit hard by Hurricane Ida and heavy rainfall events.
Al Gore was right! (Score:3, Insightful)
Al Gore was right!
Re:Al Gore was right! (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Al Gore was right! (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes.
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About inventing the internet?
Can you find me his statement saying the He invented the internet?
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Ugh, this again. ARPANET existed long before Al Gore - in the 1960s, and the internet by 1969. Gore was involved in a bill called the HPCA (High Performance Computer Act) in 1991, and later said "I took the initiative in creating the Internet" and his term the "information superhighway."
In any case, it is like saying "I created the pizza" - it is laughably wrong, but then finding out he created the Hawaiian pizza. It isn't technically wrong, but isn't right, either - a perfect political answer.
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From his mouth [youtu.be]: "I took the initiative in creating the Internet". Now get off my lawn!
P.S. This is the part where you tell me "inventing" and taking the initiative in creating the Internet aren't the same thing.
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From his mouth [youtu.be]: "I took the initiative in creating the Internet". Now get off my lawn!
P.S. This is the part where you tell me "inventing" and taking the initiative in creating the Internet aren't the same thing.
And then there is context. When we live in a world where people
https://gizmodo.com/did-al-gor... [gizmodo.com]
Whether you want him to roast in hell or like him, the guy really did enable the internet as we know it today. The bills he sponsored and spearheaded and pushed have allowed AGW deniers to spout their denial in a bit of irony. . Anyhow, that gizmodo article is a pretty good and informative read.
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About Manbearpig?
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I perceive an extreme rise in the use of memes. Prove me wrong.
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Al Gore was right!
Even he admits he was wrong about his 2000 lies. Arctic is still there. Miami is still right where it was 20 years ago. Since Katrina we've had fewer and weaker hurricanes overall. The Antarctic just set an all time lowest ever recorded temperature even though we have historic high levels of CO2. Using the scientific method CO2 as the cause is busted. Remember it only takes one counter example to disprove a theory. It was busted 20 years ago when Hansen had to admit the 1930s was the hottest decade of the 1
Americans programmed to think more extreme (Score:1, Insightful)
Americans perceive more extreme weather, because they are being told all the time this is so.
Well I've lived in the same area nearly my whole life (moved away for college) and it doesn't seem much different to me. There's variations year to year of course (weather is not climate) but the fundamental patterns are still the same.
But that's just anecdotal of course, what does actual data tell us?
There isn't a noticeable increase [iii.org] in hurricanes for example.
Colorado snowpack per year [usda.gov] remains similar.
In Californi
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It doesn't seem that much harder for LA and the rest of the Gulf Coast.
You have hard years and softer ones...we had really light hurricane seasons, like 2-3 in a row not many years back.
And the NE of the US thinks it is getting hit harder.
It HAS been a long time for a hurricane to hit like the NYC area, but people seem to forget that NYC has the same doomsday scenario that New Orleans does...and it is WAY overdue for a hit.
I believe there used to be a vacation island just off the coast of NYC, I
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You have hard years and softer ones...we had really light hurricane seasons, like 2-3 in a row not many years back.
Mild hurricane seasons are also a fluctuation. Extremes include both ends. Last year, we went A-Z and then 9 letters into the Greek alphabet. Most of the recent years, the more severe hurricanes are persisting later and later into the season.
Re:Americans programmed to think more extreme (Score:4, Informative)
Right, because the two data points of California and Colorado are indicative of the planet. Meanwhile in the real world https://www.nasa.gov/press-rel... [nasa.gov]
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Meanwhile in the real world https://www.nasa.gov/press-rel... [nasa.gov]
Your link shows evidence of a general warming trend.
It does not show a rising frequency of extreme weather events.
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2/3 of his links were temperature related. But since you appear to be a dipshit similar to him https://e360.yale.edu/digest/e... [yale.edu]
Re: Americans programmed to think more extreme (Score:1)
In what way? (Score:1)
Look at Colorado June snow pack for the past couple years. It's either an extreme one way or the other.
I don't know if you know how to look at snowpack tables but it's really better to look at around the march or April column to get a sense of what the winter did.
Looking at those, there are not really figures that are any more extreme than long ago in the past. As I said, there are variations year to year but the variations are either higher and lower, so there's not really a trend of it leading one way or
Re: In what way? (Score:4, Informative)
Nice data... (Score:3)
Wow, you point to a few very small data points and then make some very big claims based on them.
How about global average temperature https://www.climate.gov/news-f... [climate.gov]
Or how about the wealth of big contrary data here https://www.epa.gov/climate-in... [epa.gov]
Pointing to absurdly small data points to make such a big claim isn't much better than just providing your initial anecdote.
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Re:Americans programmed to think more extreme (Score:4, Interesting)
Well I've lived in the same area nearly my whole life, Oregon, and it seems much different to me.
We have significantly less snow, much warmer summers, way more fires and incredible smoke, wells are going dry in places where they've produced water for 100 years, dying trees, changes to flora and fauna, it just goes on and on. Anecdotal, to be sure, but backed up by a lot of people way smarter than me telling us there is a high probability we're in some deep doo-doo, and maybe we can't even do anything about it anymore. Picking random places and data points really doesn't equal all the qualified scientists producing pretty convincing results.
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According to http://demographia.com/db-stat... [demographia.com] you had about 413,536 in the year 1900. In 1970 it was 2,091,385. Now, according to this site, https://www.census.gov/library... [census.gov] in 2020 you have about 4.2 million.
So I would say your massive population increase in such a short period of time is likely have devastating effects on your water and land usage.
I don't know how you manage your forest, but if it is anything like California, you've helped contribute to your massive forest fires as well.
It's not all cl
Re:Americans programmed to think more extreme (Score:5, Informative)
In California record temperatures have mostly not been set very recently [coolweather.net].
People are more and more being driven to fear EVERYTHING - weather is just one aspect of this.
Yeah... that's because your source hasn't been updated in over 10 years.
There's a bunch of records in 2010, 2017, and 2020 [plantmaps.com]
In fact, your source says Santa Maria set its all-time high in 1987 when it set a record high in 2017 [lompocrecord.com] and then in 2020 it actually broke heat records 5 days in a row [santamariatimes.com].
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In Buffalo, NY, when I was growing up, we could play hockey outdoors for several winter months. No more. Nope, no warming there.
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Holy shit, you too?? same here. (but there was a few blizzards I'll never forget...)
Re: Americans programmed to think more extreme (Score:1)
The fact you cannot go outside in Buffalo has to do with the crime rates, not the weather.
You can still play hockey outside if you go outside the city.
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Well, if we're swapping anecdotes, I'm sixty years old and when I was young kids used to play pond hockey every year. Those ponds have frozen enough to skate on maybe a half dozen times in the last twenty years, and only once in the last decade.
You're immediately dismissing this, and rightfully so, because it's *just one place* and it doesn't prove a global pattern of change. Nor does things not changing much in your neighborhood disprove a global pattern of change.
The metrics you have chosen to prove th
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I'm not saying but;s not getting warmer. I'm only saying, weather is not more extreme.
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In that case, your examples don't show that either. They only disprove the idea that weather is getting more extreme by *every* measure in *every* place, which nobody so far as I know claims.
If you look at less noisy measures, like the number of days exceeding some threshold in a year, you'll see lots places with upward trends. This does not *per se* prove the *world* as a whole is getting more extreme weather, because even under a generally steady state some places will get more extreme weather and other
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You're immediately dismissing this, and rightfully so, because it's *just one place* and it doesn't prove a global pattern of change.
If you could get lots of "just one place" reports, that could indicate a global pattern, but it still is not very objective.
I see one problem with basing a study on an aggregation of anecdotes. People report unusual things, and don't bother to mention things happening as normal. This is a fundamental problem in news reporting as well. People being nice to each other and just getting on with life as usual does not make a good news story.
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There's no appreciable change in Atlantic hurricanes, in total, but there is a very marked upward trend for hurricanes that are making landfall.
That would definitely drive peoples opinions of "extreme weather events", since generally, people are a bit more likely to remember a hurricane that actually made landfall.
Re: Americans programmed to think more extreme (Score:1)
Back in the day, it did make landfall as well, we just didnâ(TM)t have people around to notice or satellites to detail it. The Florida panhandle alone has grown by 25% in the last decade alone with population to be adding on an extra 15-25M people in the next 50 years.
Areas that were marshes and swamps in Southern states have regularly flooded and simply been built over. Where previous generations had left area like the Midwest when storms destroyed their farms, people are now coming back seeking relie
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Back in the day, it did make landfall as well, we just didnâ(TM)t have people around to notice or satellites to detail it. The Florida panhandle alone has grown by 25% in the last decade alone with population to be adding on an extra 15-25M people in the next 50 years.
This effect almost certainly influences the perception factor, however it doesn't influence the trend that I plotted.
In the last 20 years, I'm quite sure hurricane land-fall hasn't been determined by swamp people reporting that the wind is real strong.
I.e., the trend is clearly established in the era of satellites. Hurricane tracks are getting longer. Which would make sense for a warmer ocean.
Perception (Score:2)
Re:Perception (Score:4, Insightful)
IIRC the public tends to perceive a rise in violent crime as well
Public perceptions of crime are correlated with the number of cop shows on prime time TV.
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IIRC the public tends to perceive a rise in violent crime as well
Public perceptions of crime are correlated with the number of cop shows on prime time TV.
I believe you are referencing this [colorofchange.org] "study" that makes a lot of bold claims, but contains very little substance.
There is also a claim in that document that police procedurals normalize injustice.
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IIRC the public tends to perceive a rise in violent crime as well, though it's rarely true (last year's widespread riots and arson being a glaring exception).
This is correct. [pewresearch.org] It's believed to be caused by news media fooling the availability heuristic. [wikipedia.org]
The same thing might be happening for extreme weather.
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IIRC the public tends to perceive a rise in violent crime as well, though it's rarely true...
I think this is largely down to news media reporting violent crimes, because they make good news stories. Responsible news sources also report crime statistics, which should give a more realistic picture, but I assume most people are not very good at interpreting statistics, or maybe they find that stuff boring.
Regarding extreme weather events, there are objective measures rather than just anecdotes and selective reporting to rely on. For example, the frequency and intensity of storms is measurable. On that
News cycle (Score:4, Insightful)
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Fox spreads the same bullshit as the rest, they just package it differently.
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FTFY.
Also, to quote Futurama: "I choose to believe what I was programmed to believe!"
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Americans only perceive what the media tells them.
So where else do you suggest that people get information about the world outside their little home area? There could be an official government source of information, but if you are not careful, that ends up as something like Pravda in Soviet Russia. I am actually more inclined to trust journalists than politicians these days.
As a UK resident, I get some idea of what is going on the USA by reading the Washington Post online. It is quite interesting. There are stories that don't make it into news reports in t
I perceive (Score:1)
I perceive a rise in extreme Americans, over the last 50 years. Just co-incidental, I'm sure. Correlation, causation, and all that.
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Fear generates ratings and clicks.
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So does sex. Why aren't we having more of it?
Meaningful for policy, not science (Score:2)
People are absolutely awful and measuring long-term trends.
As others have noted, all this really means is that people are hearing that extreme weather is becoming more common and that's getting reinforced by whatever extreme weather events they hear of or experience.
However, this doesn't mean it's meaningless. An increase is extreme weather events is widely known to be an outcome of climate change. So if people believe that extreme weather is becoming more common it means they also believe that climate chan
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However, this doesn't mean it's meaningless. An increase is extreme weather events is widely known to be an outcome of climate change. So if people believe that extreme weather is becoming more common it means they also believe that climate change is happening, and that means they're probably willing to do something about it.
This basically sums up the tactic used to sell invasion of Iraq. If people believe Saddam was in on 9/11 and had WMD they are probably willing to do something about it.
Integrity is not something that can be switched on and off whenever it happens to be convenient or the issue happens to align with your world view. Just because you might prefer a certain outcome does not justify the means of achieving it.
Sure... but the problem with the lead-up to the invasion of Iraq wasn't the media informing the public, it was the media informing the public about WMDs that never existed.
The media is talking about extreme weather events increasing because.... extreme weather events are increasing [yale.edu].
And the media informing the public about a thing that is really happening is the media working exactly as intended.
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Sure... but the problem with the lead-up to the invasion of Iraq wasn't the media informing the public, it was the media informing the public about WMDs that never existed.
WTF kind of doublespeak is this???
The media is where people got the idea Saddam = 9/11. Polling at the time had 3/4 of the US population believing Saddam was in on 9/11. There was no evidence at all for this not even snowballs and made up yellowcake evidence to support this but they knowingly promulgated that message anyway. When the president got on TV and invoked terrorism and Iraq in the same sentence the media literally said nothing.
The problem with the leadup to the Iraq war wasn't that the media was reporting things and people therefore believed those things. It's that the media was reporting things that were wrong, and therefore people believed those wrong things.
Some of that was the fault of the Government, some was the fault of members of the media, but it wasn't the fault of the concept that the media can be used to present people with information.
For example using the very same dataset this report is relying on there is a full 15% rise of geophysical disasters between the years of 1980-1999 and 2000-2019 ... is this because people are causing earthquakes and volcanic eruptions? No its because more data is being recorded.
Well according to the article I linked:
Much of this increase, the report notes, can
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I suggest you read this from the report:
The statistics in this report are from the Emergency Events Database (EM-DAT) maintained by the Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters (CRED) which records disasters which have killed ten or more people; affected 100 or more people; resulted in a declared state of emergency, or a call for international assistance.
This being the case doesn't mean that there are more extreme weather events. With the plant nearly having twice the population, you're going t
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However, this doesn't mean it's meaningless. An increase is extreme weather events is widely known to be an outcome of climate change. So if people believe that extreme weather is becoming more common it means they also believe that climate change is happening, and that means they're probably willing to do something about it.
Yes and no. There's plenty of conservatives nowadays that will tell you that global warming is happening but that either it's not caused by people, that it's not going to be that bad so don't worry about it, or that it's caused by people but at this point it cant be stopped so whatever.
People go through all sorts of mental gymnastics over this stuff just so they can stick to their ideology.
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Yes and no. There's plenty of conservatives nowadays that will tell you that global warming is happening but that either it's not caused by people, that it's not going to be that bad so don't worry about it, or that it's caused by people but at this point it cant be stopped so whatever.
Most of their arguments don't really make any sense because, whether or not it's "that bad" and/or caused by people global warming is (will be) a problem to some segment of the planet/country/population. Ignoring it won't make go away and only caring about yourself is a dick move. Like it or not, everything is pretty interconnected. For example, some Conservatives may not care about California, but if the state has agricultural problems, it will be a problem for the rest of us. From California Agricultu [ca.gov]
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Yeah, sure.
I was just addressing the point I quoted. More people perceiving extreme weather does not necessarily mean more people supporting action on global warming.
idiots (Score:2)
I'm much more concerned about the extreme rise in idiots.
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I'm much more concerned about the extreme rise in idiots.
There are many people, who you might call "idiots", who evidently can't cope with change, and prefer fantasy to unpleasant facts. People probably have not changed that much, but the world has changed around them, and by and large, they don't like it.
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Call it cognitive dissonance if you want. No matter what you call it, these are the conscious decisions of idiocy. It goes beyond moronic and imbecilic.
Americans perceive reality (Score:5, Funny)
I mean, it's a nice change of pace.
When climate practices extremism. (Score:3, Interesting)
Why on Earth are Winters Getting Worse if the Planet is Getting Warmer? [youtu.be]
Is the recent wave of severe weather across the U.S. a harbinger for climate change? [youtu.be]
Germany and the impact of extreme weather [youtu.be]
Well (Score:3)
We used to go to Florida in the Winter, so we keep tabs on the weather in places we've stayed.
During the summer, we've often been warmer than most of the places we've stayed, although Marathon has given us a run for our money. (see what I did there?)
We not only haven't had a frost yet, in mid October, but it's been August - like lately. It's 75 degrees out now, after dark, and I'm running my air conditioner. Was 85 earlier today. Weird to have the leaves falling off the trees in Summer weather.
And lawd, it's been rainy. The rivers are running at spring levels. Warm and rainy is just plumb weird.
Anyhow - yeah, that's weather. But at some point the anomaly gets to be the climate.
Media-driven perceptions (Score:2)
After being harangued about climate change for the past several decades, some people are now repeating what they have been hearing from the media for so long. There have always been extreme weather events. They are no more or less frequent than they were in the past, unless you are reading something written by a "climate scientist" whose grant money depends on global warming.
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They are no more or less frequent than they were in the past
[Citation Required]
If you're making snow angels almost at the Gulf.. (Score:1)
Like during 2020 Austin Snowpocalypse, then you know the climate be fuqd.
NEWSFLASH (apparently): Propaganda works (Score:3)
After literally DECADES of false news stories telling the public about increasingly extreme weather, people think the weather is increasingly extreme, duh!.
The weather's NOT, actually getting extreme, though the dollar amounts of damage from things like hurricanes IS which creates very deceptive headlines. The simple fact is that we have vastly more expensive things now in places that used to be remote and sparsely populated, and we get live video and multi-mega-pixel color photos in real-time as any severe event happens, so more expensive stuff gets wiped out and needs to be rebuilt with insurance money and government disaster assistance and we all get to watch it happening live on TV or the web from out homes. Each person's perspective on such things is limited to their own lifetime, plus what they've heard others talk about - so when a person experiences a bad storm or wildfire etc he/she tends to think it was vastly out of normal even though something twice as bad might have hit the same area a hundred years earlier. People need to look up some of the brutal hurricanes of the past and see the amazing death tolls and destruction. Same thing for tornadoes, floods, wildfires, blizzards, and more. In every case there were weather events in the past so severe that nobody alive today has witnessed anything like them.
So... Fucking... What? (Score:2)
Who the hell cares what each person "perceives"? Whether or not Joe Schmoe in Tulsa perceives any difference at all matters not one whit to the powers that may change the ecosystem. In fact, it's counterproductive. Caring about perception means addressing endless anecdotes.
Challenge: "Hey! I don't believe in global warming. It snowed last February where I live and it NEVER does that! NEVER... except for that once last year, and twice the year before that... but practically NEVER! It's a hoax."
Response: "Wel
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Who the hell cares what each person "perceives"? Whether or not Joe Schmoe in Tulsa perceives any difference at all matters not one whit to the powers that may change the ecosystem.
It matters a hell of a lot what Joe Schmoe perceives, if you have a democratic government. Government will be much more inclined to take action to mitigate climate change, if they think it might win them votes from people who think climate change is a problem. That is not the only incentive, of course, but it is a significant one.
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Exactly. If enough morons believe something, they will elect an idiot to act on those beliefs. That is the principle on which all politics is based.
You can fool all of the people some of the time, some of the people all of the time, but you can't fool all of the people all of the time, but it doesn't matter as long as you have fooled a plurality.
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If enough morons believe something, they will elect an idiot to act on those beliefs. That is the principle on which all politics is based.
So I presume you would prefer a dictatorship, without all that tiresome election business, because everybody except you is a thicko.
Maybe I live in a particularly blessed part of the world, but most people I meet are not morons. I know plenty of people whose views I disagree with, but I do not consider them mentally defective.
What are we willing to do about it? (Score:3, Informative)
If the solutions to global warming does not include nuclear power then I guess the people thinking up the solutions are not taking the problem seriously.
I'm anticipating the usual replies...
Nobody want's nukes!
Again, if your list of solutions to global warming does not include nuclear power then you are not taking the problem seriously. How bad does global warming have to get before the morons that want to ban the safest source of energy ever in human history is acceptable to them? Not only are they morons for thinking global warming is preferable to nuclear power they are morons for thinking any option is safer than nuclear power.
Nuclear power costs too much.
Yes, and it's not going to get cheaper by doing nothing. We didn't see wind or solar power get cheaper without a lot of development. Development means building things.
Nuclear power plants take too long to build and we need solutions now.
Irrelevant. We need reliable energy sources, and renewable energy is not reliable. This is especially true if extreme weather events become more common. Also, with development we can learn how to build them more quickly.
Nuclear power is not safe.
Demonstrably false. Also, even if true then we can learn to make it safer with development. No matter how dangerous the danger of global warming, extreme weather events, and failures of renewable energy are greater risks.
Nuclear power produces too much CO2
Demonstrably false. Even if proven true we can lower CO2 emissions with development, and we will need reliable energy sources.
What am I missing? Oh...
[citation needed]
Why is it that only the nuclear power advocates need to cite sources? I'll cite sources after the opponents to nuclear power start citing sources. I've followed this global warming debate for a long time and I learned a couple things. One is that there's no point in debating the facts with someone that will not bring their own data. I'll cite something and instead of showing data of their own they find reasons to dismiss my source. So, I'll show you mine if you show me yours. If you don't like my claims then you must have a reason why, show me.
The other lesson I learned, there's no point in arguing over the details of global warming if nobody is going to do anything about it. I don't care what the effects of global warming are, if you say it's bad then I'll agree it's bad. The more interesting discussion is solutions. All too often a disagreement on solutions is considered a disagreement that global warming is a problem. No, that's not how this works. Two surgeons can agree the patient has an infection but disagree on the best means to treat it.
We will not be able to get enough power to maintain our standard of living on power from only wind, water, and sun. We will need nuclear fission power. Denying that is worse than denying global warming is happening. I don't need people to agree that global warming is a problem to get them to agree that we need nuclear power. We will need nuclear power, global warming or not. But if someone thinks global warming is a big problem then that only adds urgency to adopting nuclear power as a replacement to fossil fuels.
Re: What are we willing to do about it? (Score:2)
I think the objection to nuclear power is mostly related to the waste product it produces which have to be secured for centuries.
good thing weather isn't climate (Score:2)
...I mean that's what I'm told every time I point out something contrary to the eco-terror paradigm.
Too much news (Score:1)