Wait I thought outlier weather events like blizzards and heat waves weren't indicators of global climate as the media so likes to lecture about when it's not in favor of their narrative.
Wait, no, Global Cooling!
Actually guys, it's "Climate Change".
And now the latest hotness (pun intended) is an increase in "extreme" weather events.
Why does the alarmist metric always seem to be changing to something that is more difficult to actually measure?
And the more scary and unpredictable this all seems, the more political will is generated for unbridled and unquestioned spending.
I believe something quite similar to this happened about ~20 years ago: Scared populace, constantly shifting threats/objectives, incredible amounts of money unproductively spent chasing shadows.
If we didn't have data on it, nobody would have even got the idea in the first place.
I think this is important. Temperature trends confirm that global warming is happening, so a lot of the argument we see is over extreme weather events. A freakishly cold winter will be used by one side to claim that global warming is not happening. It will be used by the other side to claim it is a sign of climate change.
If there is a match between expectations of extreme weather events and temperature change, the deniers have less of a leg to stand on. If there is a mismatch between the expectation of extreme weather events and temperature change, climate models can be adapted and improved upon. Either way, it is a net win.
There is plenty of oral history among Native American tribes of great fires, droughts, and natural disasters that come along every 100-200 years. There are also many ancient civilizations that were wiped out before European colonization due to climate change (Chaco Canyon, for example). Western North America has always had an unstable climate regardless of Climate Change.
It's probably fair to hold two ideas at the same time.
. Climate change is a way to accumulate rank and wealth in society.
. Climate change is real
It's interesting to ask what everyone is really after in terms of climate. Lack of change or natural events occurring. Would an upcoming ice age result in a cry for more CO2?
I like to think of it in terms of carrying capacity. Too many people results in environmental degradation (of all sorts), social unrest, scrabbling at the bottom for wages, squabbling at the top for status.