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Comment by tuatoru | Hacker News Reader

> Some scientists are beginning to worry they might have underestimated how quickly the climate will change. Or have we just misunderstood extreme weather events and how our warming climate will influence them?

James Hansen pointed out long ago (eight years? more?) that the variance of the PDF of temperature difference from climatological average increases, not just the central location.

(In layman's terms: not only is the bell-shaped curve shifting over to the right, it's also getting squashed down flatter and wider.)

So you don't just get proportionately more extreme weather events: you get a lot more than that. As well as many, many more extreme heat-related events, we can expect to see extreme cold events at a similar rate as in the past (or perhaps slightly more of them). Like Texas's this year.

I think this point is not widely appreciated.

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> (In layman's terms: not only is the bell-shaped curve shifting over to the right, it's also getting squashed down flatter and wider.)

Maybe you've already accounted for this, but I'm bringing it up anyway: increasing variance doesn't necessarily mean flatter and wider bell curve. There are at least two more options:

- A bell curve with a more pronounced peak, lower shoulders, and more mass under the tails. This would correspond to experiencing even more normal weather, but the extreme weather that does occur is insanely out of whack with normal.

- The peak separating into a low number of different peaks which drift apart. This would correspond to weather flip-flopping in its behaviour based on time or location.

I'm not saying this is what happens, I'm just saying we ought to be mindful of automatically committing the Gaussian fallacy whenever we hear summary statistics!

Unfortunately, I think it is widely appreciated: by people who use it to mock the term “global warming.” I know it’s outdated terminology, but one still sees it used occasionally as a synonym for “climate change.”

Climate Change sounds cute and cuddly. Global Weather Chaos is a term I prefer since it describes what will be affected and implies that it grows more energetic as well as 'bad' in layperson impressions.

A political consultant in the 2000s specifically recommended “climate change” [1] as a term that sounds less alarming. A more recent study suggested that “climate crisis” [2] does a better job at catching people’s attention.

[1]: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2003/mar/04/usnews.c...

[2]: https://grist.org/article/why-your-brain-doesnt-register-the...

Catching attention doesn't necessarily help if it instinctively sets someone against you. I think climate change is the correct term in that it's reasonably objective, but climate chaos is ingenious for the visceral depiction of what things are going to be like going forward.

I like that. But Chaos sounds a little bit like chance/random, throwing the burden of action away.

I can't think of a word to truly feel how life on the line huge this crisis is?

Climate Catastrophe is what I have been using. But with $ for eyeballs news pushing so many tragedies so it loses it's punch. Mad Men Don Draper has a good rant about degrading the word love.

To me, "Catastrophe" also removes the burden of action by framing climate change as a fait accompli. It makes it sound like something that has already happened and now we need to deal with the consequences, rather than something we must act to stop. (I appreciate that in reality it is both.) I like "Climate Crisis" more because everyone understands a crisis as something that must be solved urgently.

Yeah I like crisis too. words are hard!! maybe we should just stack a bunch of adjectives together ;)

I like "Climate Catastrophe" more than "Climate Crisis" which is the term in vogue in left wing circles here in Britain. But I think I still prefer Climate Change because to me the other terms fail to relate that what's happened is we've hijacked earth's systems and it's changing in response.

For me, crisis and catastrophe are too immediate and too direct. What's insidious about the climate is how diffuse and difficult to comprehend it is. Additionally, while I do expect a lot of peoples lives to get more difficult in the coming decades (at least re: weather) it is by no means the end of the world, excepting of course island communities and countries for whom it literally is. That I am happy to call a crisis.

I prefer something like “everybody alive past 2035 is royally fucked if we don’t do something now.” But, hey, that’s just me.

I leave off the conditional.

I’ve noticed most the climate scientists and related people are using the term “climate emergency” now. It’s a lot clearer.

Global warming is still the current terminology. As is climate change. Global -- as in at a global scale -- warming is the mechanism that is leading to climate change, even where that can even mean colder conditions at a local level.

There is nothing outdated about it.

I see a lot more climate change anecdotally. I think it's a response to the classic "bUt It'S sNoWiNg RiGhT nOw In (somewhere usually warm)" response from climate deniers.

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