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.
You’d think that would be eye opening and somewhat concerning to folks. But I’ve found what tends to happen is ‘record fatigue’.
We’ve had ‘record high’ temperatures here in the Netherlands frequently the past few years. Meaning, the news will report ‘it’s the hottest july 1st since the start of the measurements’ and that ‘the previously hottest july 1st was in 2017’
Basically, it’s telling you two things:
Which obviously means things are getting worse. But most people just shrug and go ‘Gee, another record high temperature, how boring, those happen so often’.
Same thing with other types of problematic weather. At least stuff like record rainfall or flooding is hard to ignore.
They’re literally turning to “weather control” conspiracy theories rather than just accepting the known science.
Because to the average ignorant mind, the conspiracy is the better choice. They can‘t change the weather anyways, so why not believe in an explanation that supports their hateful beliefs?
I think this too, but I think the reason people get desensitized to it is that it just happens so frequently that it turns into background noise. Similar to alarm fatigue that nurses experience in ERs. Sort of an interesting piece of alarm fatigue is that too many warnings make people ignore them completely, and we get increasingly alarming news about climate almost daily at this point.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alarm_fatigue
This, but also a, “WTF more than I’ve already done am I supposed to do about it?” attitude.
The billionaires are still globetrotting in their private jets. The corporations are still spewing out pollution in the name of shareholder value. And our political leaders are, at best, saying, “Golly, maybe we should do something about this,” and at worst, actively denying that there’s a problem and doing everything they can to block any attempts to fix anything.
So you can’t really be surprised when regular people just throw up their hands and say, “Fuck it! I did my part. I need to prioritize protecting myself and my family now.”
Absolutely understand the point of view, but also think the doomer mentality is exactly what those fuckers want. I know this will be a huge shocker, but the richest people running around causing the most pollution are broadly made up of actual narcissists. They don’t care about the future past themselves, and they don’t care why people quit giving a shit as long as they can continue with their lifestyle. Oil companies are also just fine with doomers, too, as long as they aren’t actually doing anything about it.
I think the doomers have alarmed me almost more than the deniers. I can’t really argue with them like I can deniers, because they are working on the same set of facts. All I can do is basically plead with them to start giving a shit, which is almost as ineffective as arguing with deniers. I think more painfully is that it means we’ve just given up on trying to make things better. That we’re ready to just lay down and let the planet be squeezed by the greed of a few. Which means that we’ve given up on even a CHANCE that we’ll make the changes necessary to stop climate change.
Trying to stop that well funded greed train means taking a LOT of L’s. I’m just not a person that gives up easily. I genuinely believe that if we all keep hammering on it then it still has a chance of changing. That if we keep it as a priority that we can at least stick it to those greedy fuckwits a tiny bit. More than that though it means that we still have a chance to actually tackle this problem, where the doomer mentality takes that chance away.
On the other hand, I also spend my free time hand writing letters to conservative politicians to get them to replace Confederate statues with statues of John Brown. So my tolerance for pissing into the wind is quite high.
Another term for “record fatigue” might be “maximal misery”.
As in… I already feel miserable about climate change and additional bad news can’t make me feel significantly worse because I can’t sustain a more miserable outlook.
Another part of the same thing is that the additional news isn’t actionable. We’re all already living our best sustainable lives, a new record doesn’t change anything.
Don’t worry, it is not just in the US.
There was devastating floods in Germany about 4 years ago, killing some 200 people. Just a few months before the ruling “conservative” party CDU lead coalition in one of the states affected badly had scrapped some flood protection laws. During the election campaign for the federal election the chancellor candidate of the “conservative” party was laughing his ass off in the background as the German president held a commemoration speech for the victims in one of the villages heavily destroyed.
The CDU came out strongest again in the next state level elections, including in the areas that were destroyed by the floods and had many people killed.