Climate change is making severe storms both more common and more intense.

First the river rose in Texas. Then, the rains fell hard over North Carolina, New Mexico and Illinois.

In less than a week, there were at least four 1-in-1,000-year rainfall events across the United States — intense deluges that are thought to have roughly a 0.1% chance of happening in any given year.

“Any one of these intense rainfall events has a low chance of occurring in a given year,” said Kristina Dahl, vice president for science at the nonprofit organization Climate Central, “so to see events that are historic and record-breaking in multiple parts of the country over the course of one week is even more alarming.”

It’s the kind of statistic, several experts said, that is both eye-opening and likely to become more common because of climate change.

  • yucandu@lemmy.world
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    3 months ago

    Fun fact, the reason we all call it “climate change” and not “global warming” was because the George W Bush administration directed NASA to do so, as they deemed it less “scary” to the public:

    In interviews, Republican politicians and their aides said they agreed with the strategist, Frank Luntz, that it was important to pay attention to what his memorandum, written before the November elections, called ‘‘the environmental communications battle.’’

    In his memorandum, Mr. Luntz urges that the term ‘‘climate change’’ be used instead of ‘‘global warming,’’ because ‘‘while global warming has catastrophic communications attached to it, climate change sounds a more controllable and less emotional challenge.’’

    Also, he wrote, ‘‘conservationist’’ conveys a ‘‘moderate, reasoned, common sense position’’ while ‘‘environmentalist’’ has the ‘‘connotation of extremism.’’

    President Bush’s speeches on the environment show that the terms ‘‘global warming’’ and ‘‘environmentalist’’ had largely disappeared by late last summer. The terms appeared in a number of President Bush’s speeches in 2001, but now the White House fairly consistently uses ‘‘climate change’’ and ‘‘conservationist.’’

    https://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/02/us/a-call-for-softer-greener-language.html

    What drives me insane is how everyone on the left just… went along with it. Now we retroactively rewrite history and claim that they were always separate terms with entirely different distinct meanings. And knowing that so many highly educated, inquisitive, independent thinking people didn’t think to question that or look into that, it frightens me.

    • Catoblepas@piefed.blahaj.zone
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      3 months ago

      While the Bush administration certainly had (very obviou$) reasons for trying to downplay it, I also remember at least some scientists at the time arguing that climate change was a better term because people are particularly stupid about the term global warming when it paradoxically results in some places having a greater number of and more extreme cold events.

      Ex: every time some dumbfuck Republican brought a snowball into Congress to talk about how global warming is fake because look here’s snow!!

    • BilboBargains@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      Good to know! They should have been a little more creative and called it something familiar and snappy like Sport Utility Environment or Gas Guzzler.

    • chunes@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      The left went along with it because they were tired of all the “then why is it so cold in winter?” comments from the stupid half of the family tree.

    • Dorkyd68@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      Honestly it was Obama. Biden died long ago and the wh just used a clone of him. See he used biden as a puppet so he could still have access to the white houses adrinochrome stash. They keep it stock piled in the basement.

      Source: my friends older brother that smokes weed all day

  • altphoto@lemmy.today
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    3 months ago

    Make large reservoirs to catch all the water! This will cause it to never rain again. Just like setting up flood alarms. If it does ever rain you’ll catch water.

    • prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      3 months ago

      Believe it or not, there’s actual science and statistics that go into what is considered a “100 year storm” or “1000 year storm”, and yes they will be adjusted. That’s how it’s meant to work.

  • unexposedhazard@discuss.tchncs.de
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    3 months ago

    This is gonna create some real bad problems for building codes. Lots of stuff is designed with statistical probabilities in mind, where they account for varying levels of rare extreme weather events. If the 1 in 100 years storm becomes a 1 in 10 years storm, then lots of stuff will be in trouble.

  • Pacattack57@lemmy.world
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    3 months ago

    The weather this year is scaring me more than normal in south Texas. Not because the abnormal amount of rain but because the absolute lack of heat. Usually this time of year it’s 100+ for weeks on end.