As Disasters Worsen, Cities and Researchers Eye Social Resilience | Hacker News Reader

As Disasters Worsen, Cities and Researchers Eye Social Resilience

citylab.com

29 pointspseudolus13 comments

It's a pity they decided to put anything about climate change in the story, and especially in the sub-heading - this story has good information in it that could be beneficial to tons of people - and it's going to make many discount the accuracy of the information as a whole, right from the beginning.

If this story had taken out 3 of the 5 mentions of climate, it would have had the same info: there are steps that can be taken before and during a disaster to help people survive and thrive a disaster.

these bits are not needed in the article at all, they add nothing, taking them away takes away nothing (other than making people question legitimacy): "As climate change makes disasters more severe" "As climate change makes natural disasters more common" "As the climate continues to change"

Good info that could have many benefits for many people that almost seems packaged into a "submarine article" for pushing the climate change agenda with 'think of the children' - pity indeed.

"As climate change makes disasters more severe, researchers say we can prepare by being informed, volunteering, and staying socially connected."

If that was the case, we wouldn't be in this situation. Why are we expecting things to change?

Why are we attributing weather to climate? I hear this many times during a discussion when someone mentions cold weather and global warming, yet so many of these articles do exactly this.

You can't have it both ways.

Yes you can, reality is complex.

What you think of a paradox is actually not a paradox but a chain of events so complex that we as the humans struggle to describe it.

It's not being an intellectual to give vague answers and give up.

But advocates on either side of this debate (or others) often times are sufficiently aware of that struggle with complexity as to exploit it in argumentation. So what you point out is absolutely fair... as is the observation of the original poster.

In this subject or any other where speakers are likely to be strongly emotionally or philosophically bound to their position, you must first consider the speaker/writer/etc. and then use that to gauge any particular argument they might make. ...and this is complex, too... you can be right and still engage in undue overstatement or trivialization to make your point.

tl;dr: Don't take anything at face value. Facts can be painted in many different colors. Don't merely accept, be judgmental.

Ah ok. It's been really cold this month where I live. I guess global warming isn't happening after all.

Scientific consensus is slowly (very slowly) turning around in favour of an upcoming/ongoing solar minimum.

https://electroverse.net/nasa-predicts-next-solar-cycle-will... https://spaceweatherarchive.com/2018/09/27/the-chill-of-sola...

The difficulty caused by current climate advocates is that even if they are alarmed to the right degree, they're alarmed in the wrong direction.

This is actively harmful because the strategies for dealing with problems caused by cold temperatures are different than the strategies for warmth. An example is crop failure: you can breed for frost or you can breed for flooding, but you may or may not be able to breed for both, but are more likely to find strategies for just one or the other depending on where your investment goes. If we've just invested in growing crops which are flood-resistant instead of frost-resistant, our food supply can be blind-sided.

This implies that through climate advocacy, billions of dollars have been invested in a systematically biased way which is not only wasteful to some extent or another, but amplifies our fragility/reduces our resilience. That's a lot to chew on. The consequences are far-reaching.

It's generally a bad approach to resilience if you're not dealing with each worst case rather than some worst-case you're expecting. A worst case you're expecting is almost an oxymoron.

The good news is that we'll have a longer temperature window to invest in technologies that will help us eliminate carbon-based problems which will have knock-on effects on other emerging systemic risks, like water and air pollution by micro plastics, or an energy crisis.

You'll need to provide some better evidence of the scientific consensus turning around that those two links since they're not that compelling.

A well referenced link that provides evidence against the solar cycle cooling theory is here:

"Peer-reviewed research, physics, and math all tell us that a grand solar minimum would have no more than a 0.3°C cooling effect, barely enough to put a dent in human-caused global warming."

https://skepticalscience.com/grand-solar-minimum-mini-ice-ag...

Googling the NASA scientist mentioned in the 2nd URL gives me this rebuttal: https://www.iflscience.com/space/no-there-isnt-going-to-be-a...

And another: https://wattsupwiththat.com/2018/11/15/skepticism-is-a-full-...

But welcome to 2019 Internet, random websites (ironically, so are the links I posted) claiming all sorts of things, misciting authorities like NASA or reputable journalistic institutes. Like blogs with "eco" in the URL taking the diagram of how the Fukushima quake caused a small tsunami in California and screaming "This diagram shows Fukushima radiation reaching California!"...

But well, climate change will also cause extreme winter events, as well as deadly summer heatwaves. What's your point?

I don't think this article is attributing individual weather events to climate. It states that climate change can increase the severity / impact of weather events. The closest this article comes is to use the phrase "climate-related disasters".

I think most scientists are still wary of attributing individual weather events to climate change, or even attributing severity of specific events to climate change. They will however draw correlations between the rate of severe events appearing, and climate change.

Careful about the assumption that disasters are worsening due to global warming. This is arguable.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/rogerpielke/2019/11/07/everythi...

Choice quote, “ climate change resulting from the emission of greenhouse gases from the burning of fossil fuels poses significant risks to our collective futures, including influences on extreme events. As a consequence, it makes sense to focus policy on the mitigation of emissions and adaptation to reduce vulnerability and exposure to weather and climate.”

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